The Unicorn Hunters: A Novel(46)

Anne remembered the look on Julien Moreau’s face when he told her his history. Lost for two hundred years, she thought with sinking fear. Lost to all he loves. And not a single memory to show for it. This is malice beyond my ken, and it has come here to my father’s castle and demanded my hand in marriage.



* * *





In the black hour of Matins, on the night of the fire that was not, Marguerite of France was awakened by the sound of stealthy movement and the smell of a renewed fire in her bedchamber. She was restless after that evening, and when she heard the noise, she pushed back the hinged doors of her bed, her heart beating fast. With a wrench of terror she saw an unfamiliar head silhouetted. Then she recognized him and said in outrage, “I will call the guard.”

Julien Moreau whispered, “I had no other way to come to you unseen. I am sorry. You did wish to speak to me in private?” He did not rise from his chair.

“Villain. How did you get in here?”

“Does it matter? I came to help you. I am a child of France, after all.”

“How can you help me?”

“In more ways than you know, my lady. I escaped my gaolers to come to you.”

She weighed that, startled. “Do they know you have come?”

“They will never know I left.”

At that she put her stockinged feet on the floor, wrapped a mantle around herself, and went to the fire. She watched his face carefully. “How much do you really remember of your own history?”

He hesitated, smiled just a little, and then gave her his answer like the fairest of secrets. “Everything.”

She reached out and turned his face so she could see his expression in the firelight. His skin was cool. “Who, then, is the king of the korriganed?”

He raised his eyes to hers, his gaze unveiled, sharp with a delicate cunning. She dropped her hand abruptly. He said, “I myself, if anyone.”

His eyes were yellow in the firelight. Was it his time in the Lost Lands that put that color in them? She seized the iron fire tool, but he put out a hand and touched it. He was not burned. “No,” he said. “I am a man, to be sure. I can say the ‘Our Father,’ if you like, or touch the chrism, or any iron you like. I am not a korrigan. I was a diviner in the court of Philip the Fair.”

“Explain, then.”

“My mirror was stolen.”

“What?”

He shrugged. “No matter. The korriganed had nothing more to teach me and I wearied in their dreamlike country. I have come out because I wished once more to hear the speech of men, and lend my power to a worthy cause. And what better cause than this? I am a loyal son of France.” A brief sadness. “I didn’t know so much time had passed.”

“You wish to help us?” She was still wary. “Were you responsible for what happened today? The—the barrel in Nantes and the contretemps tonight?”

A flick of three fingers dismissed the question. “Flummery tricks, no more. I could not do anything else without my mirror. But I have regained it this night, and so I came to you, my lady. No one will know I was here.” He lifted a small, exquisite mirror in one hand. It was the size of his palm. The back was jeweled with some kind of red flower. He caressed it with a tender hand.

He had very fine hands. The firelight gilded his pale skin, made him beautiful. She went to sit opposite him so she could see the light play on his face. “What exactly did you learn, in two hundred years?”

“Arts lost to humankind,” he answered, eyes soft upon his mirror. “Arts that can make France the queen of the whole world.”

“Arts that can make the duchess of Brittany the wife of my brother Charles?”

“That too,” said Julien Moreau. “Imminently, if you wish.”



* * *





Anne’s bed felt cold and alien that night when she at last tried to sleep. Her body was weighted with weariness, but she was still awake. In frustration, she finally pushed the big panel back and slipped to the icy floor. Hawiz was sitting by the fire; she looked up. Anne put a finger to her lips. “I shall go to the oratory.” Just down the stairs. She put a robe of damask over her chemise. “Not alone,” whispered Hawiz.

“The guards will follow.”

Three of her maids-of-honor were awake in the garderobe, but Anne reassured them and passed through the door. Downstairs, it was quiet in the oratory, Anne’s private chapel. Her guards filled the doorway, their backs to her. There was only the single lamp, the devotional candles, the fading altar flowers. Anne knelt alone and bowed her head into her hands and said aloud, “Father, saints, and angels, I don’t know what to do. I do not know what to fear more.”

But no voice spoke to her in answer, not from the altar nor from the sky.

Then footsteps came up from below, and the pikes of Anne’s guards clashed as they barred the way to the oratory. She lifted her head. Louis of Orléans was fully and finely dressed, as though he had not yet troubled to go to bed. Anne straightened her back, aware of her loose damask robe and the single childish plait of her hair. But he’d carried her sister from the castle during the fire. Was she to scold him away now? “It’s all right,” Anne said to the guards. “Let him in.”

They stepped back. He bowed, formally. “Highness.” After a hesitation, he knelt beside her at the altar rail.