The Unicorn Hunters: A Novel(38)

She remembered how she’d talked to him before, always prattling, while he indulged her absently. How she’d longed for his notice.

But not anymore. Far from it. He knew her history, her advisers, had friends in court whom she could only guess at. He was best placed to learn that she hid the Austrian marriage. She was certain that his freedom was conditional on her marrying Charles of France. He was dangerous, all the more so because she remembered what it was like to trust him.

She felt his eyes on her as they paraded into Nantes, passed the fish-market and the great warehouses, winding past the houses of merchants, toward the cathedral. Did he suspect something? What was he thinking? The crowd stirred with recognition as he passed; elbowing their neighbors and whispering.

Behind them rolled the carts of the different guilds, the marching elephants, cupids, and mermaids, the smiling, sun-warmed faces.

Calyx would hear from the diviner in Flanders soon—perhaps today—to say that Maximilien had taken ship, would sail with his army to Saint-Malo, then ride fast to Rennes. All this would be over soon, God willing.

The cavalcade passed through a deep shadow as two buildings butted their heads together and the street narrowed, and then they came out straight into the dazzling sunlight. Anne blinked. Just for a moment, the shadows lay wrongly. As though they had been pitched by a lower, less cloud-fettered sun.

She heard a swell of disquiet in the crowd and followed their staring eyes.

A few places behind them rolled the beautiful, absurd cart of the carpenters’ guild of Nantes, the one bearing a model of the city of Keris. It ought to have been quite dry, with its bearded queen and portly king sitting happily on top, waving to their friends in the crowd. The pump and barrel of water had never worked properly.

But the water was flowing from the cart. Anne could just see it glimmer. It fell in a torrent, splashing the street. Malgven and Gralon, two carpenters in royal costumes, shouted down to the boy below that he must stop pumping. The boy replied, swearing vilely, that the pump was broken but the water was flowing by itself.

People started trying to get away from it but were blocked by folk farther back. They pushed, but those behind them pushed back. A priest shouted vade retro at the water as if it were a demon.

Then someone screamed that the water was not sweet but salt, and where had it come from? The crowd began to heave. Anne’s guard closed up around her, shoving people back as they surged forward. “Don’t hurt anyone!” Anne said. Her court, riding behind in hunting-dress, was milling in confusion.

“But why are they frightened?” asked Isabeau, craning.

Louis and Henri put their great horses between the crowd and the wooden unicorn. Something was wrong with the flowing water. The light did not lie upon it as it should; the water sparkled violently, as though it could catch more sun than the world contained.

“We must get the duchess and her sister away,” said Louis to Henri. “These people are going to panic.”

Certainly the Nantais would panic if they saw the duchess fleeing. People would be trampled, people would die. And she—her scheming—was the reason they were all there.

“No,” said Anne. Her pose of foolishness was fraying, but there was no help for it.

Both men stopped agreeing with each other and turned to argue with her. Anne said, “I am not afraid of an oxcart.” She said it loudly, so people nearest could hear and whisper to their friends. “I shall stand upon the thing myself.” The glitter on that flowing water was hurting her eyes, but the incipient riot could go either way. “Henri, take Isabeau on your horse and go back to the ch?teau.”

“But you—”

“Now,” she said flatly. The crowd had begun to push again, frightened, shaking the cart and startling the oxen. Some of the hunters’ horses were close to panicking; Louis and Henri had been right to ride their war-horses. Still the water came roaring down, still people cried that it was salt. It was washing about the street now, ankle-deep. “Belle, go with Henri,” Anne said. “Take half the guard. This is no place for you now.”

This was also not something Anne had meant Louis ever to know—that both her siblings knew when not to argue with her. Henri caught up Isabeau without a word and sat her across his saddlebow, holding on to her while she wrapped both hands in his cloak. He began using the sheer mass of his huge horse to force a way through the crowd.

One of the elephants squealed, and its keeper shouted. The beast would be stampeding in a moment: the last thing this mess needed. “Orléans,” she said. “You must take me across to the carpenters’ cart.” The street was wet, the dust and filth mingled to mud. She could not get down and walk.

Louis, naturally, did try to argue with her. “Why, in God’s name?”

Did he think her still in the nursery? “To show them that there is nothing to fear. I planned this pageant; I am not having anyone die because we all panicked. Help me.” Tired of arguing, she let herself overbalance, crashing into him from her perch above on the wooden unicorn. She did not think he would let the duchess of Brittany tumble under his horse’s hooves.

Louis swore, and his destrier threw up its great head, but Orléans had quick reflexes and his jousting-arm was muscled like steel. Suddenly she was crosswise on his horse’s withers and being jabbed mercilessly by the high pommel of his saddle; he was guiding the horse with his knees. One hand held her, and the other held his sword.