The Unicorn Hunters: A Novel(39)

She told him, “Put up your sword; we are trying to get people to panic less. Where’s your common sense? That way.”

“I am trying to preserve your life,” he said between his teeth. She could feel his heart beating hard under his doublet. A destrier was trained to rear and kick out when people crowded him, clearing room for his rider’s sword. The rolling, white-rimmed eye said the stallion very much wanted to. The shoving of the crowd was growing worse. Louis said, “Damn you, Kestrel, this isn’t a mêlée.” His arm shifted them both, keeping her in balance before him.

Anne said, “They won’t panic if they think I’m not afraid of it. I’m the virtuous duchess.”

Still the uncanny water gushed. Kestrel half-reared and Anne’s head knocked against Orléans’s jaw. She brushed his hair out of her face. He said, “Maybe you should be afraid of it.”

Anne said, “So help me, I will jump off and walk.”

To her surprise, he laughed. “Rage at me by all means, Highness; better than sweet words with hidden thorns.” Surprising her again, he put his horse around. Someone came too close and Kestrel, goaded beyond endurance, lashed out, knocking the man into his fellows. Anne lurched, but Orléans held her, reins bridged now in his free hand. She put an arm round his neck and he glanced down into her face. “I don’t know what you think you can do.”

“Go,” she answered. People shouted, but the horse was a moving mountain. They got out of its way. There was the cart. Anne could feel all the staring eyes.

Anne turned a little in his grip, startling him enough that his arm loosened, and she slid off the stallion’s giant shoulder before Orléans could react. Suddenly she stood at the apex of a model of a city that wasn’t real. Frigid salt water was pouring onto her feet, her skirt, soaking her slippers. She tasted salt on her lips. The water was silver as though with dawn, though the noon light was strong. The wrongness hurt her head.

“It is only water,” she said to her people. The crowd had stilled, watching her.

She looked down at the water. For an instant she seemed to see where it had come from, saw a great silver expanse of water at dawn. “Don’t be afraid,” she told them.

The water seemed to be trying to spread in her sight, to become a great shallow sea, smelling of ebb-tide. For an instant it was as though she was standing in two places at once. Telling herself not to be fanciful, she blinked the glitter out of her eyes.

When she did, the water stopped flowing.

She swayed with the shock. But she caught herself and said, pitching her voice to be heard, “As I said, there is nothing to fear.”

Quick as it had come, the water began to drain away. Startled cheers filled the street.

Anne wondered how to extricate herself gracefully. She wondered what had happened. Her slippers and hem sloshed. Her knees did not want to hold her up. The whole city seemed to be staring at her.

Louis of Orléans also wasted a second with shocked staring. Then he dismounted with unexpected presence of mind, came around his horse, and pushed the destrier nearer so she could mount from the cart. Anne did so. A destrier was very high off the ground. “I’ll lead the horse,” said Louis shortly. She could not tell what he was thinking. “We cannot ride double all the way to the castle.”

She could not retreat to the castle now. All this had been frightening, uncanny; she must cast her part in it in a pious light or dark rumors would spread. The duchess who had touched a unicorn could not risk her reputation for virtue. “No. We are proceeding to the cathedral, where we shall at once hear Mass and confess our sins to God.”

He forgot his dignity so far as to stare up at her. “Your shoes are wet.”

She had closed both her hands over the pommel of his saddle so he would not see her shake. “We must hope that God will not mind.”

“Anne?” he said, very low. “Where did the water come from? And why did the water stop? Was it—was it a trick? Was that your doing?”

“It wasn’t,” she said, with perfect truth. “I don’t know what happened. Will you take me to the cathedral?”



* * *





De Rieux and the seigneurs of Anne’s council had ridden ahead during the Entry and become separated in the confusion. They reached the cathedral ahead of her, and Anne could see by their faces that some garbled rumor had reached them already. They all looked anxious. De Rieux handed her down and gave the duke of Orléans another look of frosty dislike. How they had despised each other during the war. De Rieux said, “Are you all right, my daughter? They say—I can hardly credit it—”

Anne pressed her guardian’s hands reassuringly. “I will tell you later. All is well.” She was glad to take comfort in his familiarity, glad to turn her back on the disquieting Louis of Orléans.

All through the service, Anne thought, Moreau said that the king of the korriganed means to marry me. And he said the first sign would be water. Was today then proof? Is there a king of the korriganed? During the Te Deum, Anne let herself imagine it: a faerie-husband to go against a French army, their pikes all turned to flowers, like a tale of long ago. But every chronicle said the korriganed were malicious, not to be trusted.

But what if this—faerie-king—came to Nantes? What powers would he wield? What would she do?