The Unicorn Hunters: A Novel(28)
No one replied. There was an uneasy pause; the fire popped and settled and Henri went to stab it with the poker.
Anne said, “We will know when he wakes and is able to speak.”
“The korriganed are gone,” said Henri, breaking a half-burnt log and adding another. “Don’t you heed when Hawiz tells you stories? They passed into the hollow hills; they dwell with the other lost things.” Anne wasn’t entirely sure of that anymore, but she held her tongue.
“Gone isn’t dead!” Isabeau retorted passionately. The fire flared, fretting her with light. “Don’t they live forever? Perhaps he knows all about the enchantments that men have forgot. Perhaps we can learn his enchantments and use them to repel the French and then our sister may stay in Brittany.”
Everyone glanced again at the seafoam-white fibers aligning under Anne’s hands, otherworldly in their beauty. She said, looking up, “I am married now, Isabeau. I have made a promise that I cannot break. I will not be able to stay in Brittany.”
Isabeau lurched to her feet, unappeased. “You won’t even try? Not even if there were enchantments? The world would be all different if it were so. You will not even ask this stranger?”
“Isabeau,” said De Rieux, “child, we feel your grief, but some things cannot be changed.”
Hawiz spoke unexpectedly. “And wise children do not wish for the interference of the korriganed. They cannot be trusted. They draw you into their realm, and if ever you escape and return whence you came, a century has passed. The korriganed cannot accept God because the ordinary turnings of the year, the calendar of the liturgy itself, are impossible to follow in the Lost Lands.”
Isabeau glared at them. “Why aren’t you helping? It’s as though you want her to go. When we all need her here!”
“Isabeau,” said Anne gently.
But Isabeau was suddenly crying, gasping; she turned from them and ran from the room. Her feet pattered down the stairs.
Henri shook his head. “She sounds like me in my heart, only I’m too old to give voice to such thoughts. And I am not fool enough to go and ask the korriganed for help. If they are even alive, in their hills.”
Anne rounded on him with unaccountable anger, white threads tangling between her fingers. “Do you blame me for leaving? What choice do I have? Is it better to be conquered? Do you not think I’d have found another way if there was one? Do you think I want this?” She broke off, already regretting her loss of control. Vivid in her memory was the night of her proxy-wedding, all those impersonal eyes. She bent over the mess of her work, not daring to let them see her face.
“No, little sister,” said Henri, after a pause. He sounded kind, and tired. “I know you don’t. And I know you’d walk through hellfire for the rest of us. You just haven’t noticed how much the rest of us don’t want you to have to. I’ll go and find Isabeau.”
* * *
Elesbed had thought at first, quailing inwardly, that they had put her to live in the kitchen as punishment. But no, she soon realized, it was because, as Hawiz told the cook, that it was best the child learn a skill. And the kitchen was full of food and smelt nice and the cook had a face like a ripe apple.
“Come, child, you’re skinny as a cricket,” she said. “We shall begin with supper and a sleep.”
Elesbed ate to bursting. The kitchen delighted her, with its steams and good smells. The kitchen delighted Butter too, who instantly fought a duel with the other kitchen cat, both of them yowling while everyone cheered and Elesbed hopped from foot to foot with anxiety. Butter emerged triumphant, and the other cat fled the field. Butter proceeded to kill three mice and then went to the hearth and sat expectantly. The cook gave her a saucer of cream while Elesbed wept over the cat’s scratches. “It’s all right, they’ll tolerate each other now,” said the cook comfortably. “And your fine lady is a mouser if I ever saw one. She is welcome, and so are you.”
Elesbed slept on her pallet of fresh straw until the kitchen stirred for the watch, the dark hour of the night. She woke to the sound of gossiping, as the kitchen staff sat together near the fire, passing a bottle back and forth. One said, “It is true, then? The lady touched a unicorn?”
“Yes. I had it from her guard. She cut a lock of its hair.”
“That happy, virtuous lady. Bless her, and damn the French to hell. They shan’t have her.”
The whole castle was full of intriguing sounds. Laughter, someone singing. The stairs upward from the kitchen tempted her, and her full belly had made her brave. “We ought to go exploring,” she whispered to her cat.
No one saw her when she got up and slipped away, and the cat ran up the stairs ahead and pounced at shadows. Or perhaps on unseen mice.
The scale of the castle dizzied her. Elesbed hid behind coffers and draperies and in the shadows along walls and watched in fascination as people talked their incomprehensible French and drank and laughed and put their heads together and whispered and sometimes played games with cards or sang songs.
She came at length to a room that was empty of people but full of furnishings. Butter ran ahead and darted behind a vast great box, elaborately carved. Next moment, someone shrieked.
Elesbed peered over the top and saw a girl upon a cushion, with tears all over her face.
The girl scrambled to her feet. “Who are you?” she demanded.