The Unicorn Hunters: A Novel(20)

Now Anne waited. A hush settled into that clearing. She couldn’t even hear the panting dogs anymore, or the swish of the horses’ tails. Just the droning of bees, and the whisper of water, somewhere out of sight. Jonquil did not put her head down to try to crop the grass, but she dozed, her weight on three legs, while the mist collected on the leather of her saddle and sparkled on her bit.

Suddenly, distantly, Anne heard horns blowing the avaunt—the cry for a general chase—and with them a great baying of hounds. But the clamor was far away, distant noise in the gray morning.

Those are not ours, she thought in astonishment. There is another hunt.

The Breton hounds had not set up their own barking, though they must have heard the distant dogs. There was no sound at all from her own party hidden in the trees. She couldn’t even see them moving.

A creature came bolting between a gap in the trees, sides heaving. The ragged quarry of that distant hunt.

Jonquil shied.

Anne thought her heart would stop.

The beast’s neck seemed too slender to support the weight of the horn, as long as a broadsword and glowing like fine-carved alabaster. The eyes were dark as winter water, the coat raw white silk, stretched tautly over her panting ribs. She was like the first snow of a bright winter, unsullied and shining.

The unicorn saw Anne and raised her head, nostrils flared red like a horse’s. Anne realized that the glow in the horn was not some inner light. It was a strong sunlight shining through the ivory. But what sun? That day was all ragged clouds and mist, veiled still after that night’s storm. She was reminded of anaon, of a room with impossible moonlight.

Hoofbeats were rattling nearer; smears of color moved in the woods behind the unicorn. The strange horns sounded again. Anne could not make out any of the hunters’ faces. She caught a flash of light from the blade of a spear.

The unicorn took a single soundless step, and Anne saw the crushed primrose where her foot had been. The glow went from the horn, as though she’d stepped out of the brilliant sun.

The other hunt disappeared. For a breath, it was just they two, alone in that clearing, standing startled under the light of the same gray day. Anne knew in that moment that to kill the unicorn would be a monstrous and deadly sin, and that she had made a terrible mistake.

Then seven hells broke loose at her back. A horn winded; twenty voices shouted, urging the dogs forward. Distinct among them was the voice of La Trémoille, crying out in wordless savagery at the sight of the beast.

“Go!” cried Anne to the unicorn. “I’m sorry, forgive me—you have to go!”

The unicorn did not move.

The first of the hounds shot into the clearing, doing the work they were born for, which was to startle the beast into flight.

Still the unicorn stood, head raised, staring at Anne.

No, oh, God, no. Anne had never imagined coming across a unicorn; nor that the legends spoke truly, and the unicorn would stand beside her and let herself be slain.

She imagined La Trémoille’s face triumphant, her white gown streaked with the unicorn’s blood. The horn chopped off, the skin flopping loose on a houndsman’s saddlebow, all of it to be carried straight to the court of France.

The dogs shattered the peace of the glade with their barking, and behind them came the lords of France and Brittany, hefting their spears. The unicorn kicked the first dog away, but the others were swarming. Anne snarled at her in Breton, “You must run!”

And when the unicorn still did not, she wheeled Jonquil and set the mare galloping away into the trees.

The unicorn followed.

Anne was a good rider. However much she would have preferred to stay in her castle, tidy and dry, with her gossiping court around her, a woman of birth must be able to course a stag and fly a goshawk in the field. Anne had dutifully learned. So she was not wholly unused to hurtling her horse into a thick forest, with dogs yelping at their heels and a swift-running creature in view. Nor was her mare unfit for the task; Jonquil had the heart of a courser, though she was not large.

But Anne had never ridden with the van, the reckless forefront of the hunt, where the brave leaped obstacles and dodged trees in pursuit of the stag, the sternest test in the world for riders and for horses. She had always cantered along happily in back.

This ride was like a nightmare. The unicorn hung close to her stirrup as the dogs leaped at their heels. Anne felt herself pursued, the terror of a wild thing run down, and though she tried to call to dogs and men to stop, the wind whipped away her voice. Jonquil’s ears lay flat against her straining neck and Anne feared that she’d take the bit between her teeth and bolt. A fall amid those trees, at that speed, would be fatal. Why would the unicorn not flee?

“Please,” shouted Anne. “Please, you have to go, you cannot die this way.”

But the unicorn only halted again. Anne sat back and Jonquil came to a shuddering stop. The Breton dogs were nowhere to be seen. She realized that they had stopped in a sunbeam; bright warmth pinned them like a blanket of golden sea-silk. The primroses under their feet were blue as the vaulting sky. But now the other hunting-horn sounded, shriller than theirs. Anne saw, disbelieving, that the first hunt, the other hunt had wheeled instantly onto their track.

The unicorn’s head hung low as she panted. She was being hunted in the mortal lands—and—could it be—in the Lost Lands? Anne stared disbelieving at the sky-blue primroses.