The Unicorn Hunters: A Novel(58)

Moreau, Anne thought. They had forgot, because it had been so many years, that some powers went beyond divination, and that men as well as the korriganed once had them. Perhaps he had merely conjured the korrigan in the garden, as a scapegoat for himself. How deep did his lies go? Had he allied with France? He was born a Frenchman.

“Let him be arrested!” said Henri.

Isabeau whispered, sounding horrified, “He said he’d help us if I got his mirror for him. He promised.”

“Let him not be arrested,” said Anne. She did not open her eyes. “Send the guards to go and kill him. For I think he is more dangerous than we know.”

A silence fell. Anne forced her eyes open. They had not responded to her orders. Orléans had come back and was standing in the doorway. He met her gaze and said, “Jean de Rieux has turned. His guard are opening the gate. There is a French company outside. He has agreed to let Marguerite of France take you away by force, for fear of the power of the korrigan-king.”



* * *





De Rieux and Marguerite had a swift conversation in the garden. De Rieux looked very old and frail and exhausted. At last he said, “Yes. I will do it. But there is—there is another complication.”

“Tell me.”

“The duchess is married already,” said Jean de Rieux.

Of all the half-baked plots, Marguerite had not anticipated that one. “To whom is she married?” she asked, with deadly calm.

“She was married in Brocéliande before the unicorn-hunt, by proxy, to Maximilien of Austria.”

It took Marguerite a moment to absorb the scope of this revelation.

How did all of Europe’s diviners not know? But…of course. That unicorn-hunt, its details buried in the glamour of Moreau’s appearance and that pretty glowing skein of unicorn hairs. Anne had used the opportunity to get herself married in the one place where diviners could not see.

All Anne’s luminous-eyed chatter, the Triumphal Entry, the unicorn-hair fillet, had been distractions. The duchess was buying time while her husband marched to her aid.

Had Anne bought enough time? Perhaps she would have, save for that which was beyond her control: Moreau’s sorcery and De Rieux’s treachery. In a measured voice, Marguerite said, “Have the gate open. We will make ready to ride as soon as she is secured.”

“I think she is ill.”

“She will be looked after. Go!”

When De Rieux had gone, his steps wavering like an old man’s, Marguerite hurried up to her own chambers, firing off messages to her diviner as she walked. But when she stepped into the room, Moreau was there before her, watched by her anxious servants. The irons from the garden were gone from his hands, and he was unguarded and laughing.

“Was that your scheme?” she asked him without preamble. “That—monster in the garden? Well, you have raised the duchess’s reputation higher still with it and for what? Are her guards looking for you now?”

He swallowed his laughter, but he still glinted with it. She wanted to bite his laughing mouth. “Does it matter? And no,” he allowed. “It was only the anaon I summoned. That beast on two legs, with his long white hair. He gave up his patrimony long ago, they say, for his mother was a mari-morgan, and his soul is of the sea. I meant the duchess to think he was her unseen suitor; it would have taken her suspicions from me. I suspect that it was he who called the sea-drake, out of pique. I should have realized. Forgive me.”

“Only if you help me secure the duchess quietly and simply this night.”

“Oh,” he said, and smiled. “There will be no difficulty there, Madame.”





Chapter


18

    Isabeau said, after a shocked pause, “But—Jean cannot betray us. He is our guardian. Father named him our guardian.”

“It isn’t a betrayal to him, I think,” said Anne as gently as she could, hollow with shock herself, still fighting a dizzy headache, the world’s impossible confusion. “He will give me to the French to save me from the korrigan.”

Already there was noise mounting outside. To Louis she said, “Have you come to persuade me to agree quietly? For my own good? To hold the door open so Marguerite’s guard need not take me by force?”

Henri said, “Orléans, I’ll kill you.” It was a statement of fact.

Louis did not speak or move.

“What are we going to do?” Isabeau whispered.

Anne hadn’t taken her eyes off Louis.

He said, “Marguerite has learned a secret that I do not know, and it has alarmed her greatly. She is moving at speed; she had soldiers in readiness, you know.”

Anne croaked, the world still spinning, “I imagine that De Rieux has told her my secret.”

Louis just waited.

Anne, with a dry throat, said, “Some weeks ago, I was contracted in marriage to Maximilien of Austria.”

His color changed. “I see.”

Quietly, she said, “You have brought us your news. Now you’d better go.”

The gate-guard were nearly all De Rieux’s men. They badly outnumbered her Bretons, her personal guard. She could hear them outside, already massing to defend the stairs.

“Go,” she told Louis, sharply. “You have given your message. I imagine you were not charged to warn me, and for that I thank you. Now leave us.”