The Unicorn Hunters: A Novel(63)

No one answered. They all knelt, even Ch?teaubriant, and Louis saw her take in their homage like a touch, straightening her back. She added, practically, as though trying to will them all back to earthly matters, “The French are coming after me and there is no time.” The confessor had his hand to his mouth.

“This moment, Highness,” Ch?teaubriant said at last.

The confessor said, “But you must hear Mass. You have been delivered by God.”

“I hope God will forgive me if I say my prayers when I reach Rennes.” Anne smiled at them all and there was a sunrise in Louis’s heart, his foolish romantic heart, because it was the imp’s smile, with dimples, that he’d thought he would never see again.





Chapter


20

    After Ch?teaubriant, they drove their horses hard; Anne and Isabeau put up their hoods to fend off the ever-present mist, not quite rain, that blew into their faces. They stayed off the main road and went as fast as the horses could manage. Elesbed was mounted behind one of the escort that Ch?teaubriant had sent with them, bouncing like a flour sack, clinging to his belt, looking down at the galloping horse with acute suspicion. She didn’t know how to ride.

When Anne closed her eyes, she still saw the horn, shining and tipped like a sword, against the skin of her throat. Felt again how her inward wound, torn open by sorcery and the touch of that sea-drake’s blood, had closed again. Every breath felt like a miracle now.

But still she was furious with herself. She’d trusted De Rieux to see her interests as she did. And she hadn’t imagined that Moreau had such power, nor that he would move so quickly to ally with the French. She’d made mistake after mistake, and now she was fleeing, her choices narrowing, her young sister in flight beside her.

She pressed her borrowed horse along the road in silence.

The cavalcade was walking to let the horses blow when Louis’s horse came abreast of hers; she glanced at him, behind the curve of her deep hood. He had carried her outside, hadn’t flinched at the unicorn’s horn.

He had put his future in her hands.

Louis caught her eye, and his smile was crooked. No point at all in pretending that she hadn’t been watching him. Anne gathered her courage, nudged her horse nearer until they were stirrup to stirrup. Gravely, she said, “What will you have of me?”

She did not see him startle at the formality in her voice, but she did see his altered balance in the set of his horse’s ears. She went on, as sensibly as she knew how, “Now, here I am with a debt, and no means of repayment. You saved my throne and my life, at great risk. We would not have escaped Nantes without you.”

His mare tried for a mouthful of leaves; he booted her behind the girth and said evenly, “First, tell me: What will you do now?”

“Go to Rennes, gather what men I can. Prepare for a siege and wait for my husband.” Unspoken between them was the memory of the siege of Nantes, the fear and hardship and cannon by night. She could not meet his eye; she looked straight ahead.

Louis said, “But will your husband come to you? France might take the city first. They have allied with this—sorcerer, have they not? Who knows what he can do? And they will move quickly.”

His questions echoed those whipping round her mind. “We shall find the means to thwart him. Perhaps the Guild in Rennes can help me. And my husband’s diviners will aid us, when Maximilien comes. To invest a city, and take it, is not the work of a few days.”

She would not say if Maximilien comes. She would not think if he comes.

Though she was no longer drugged with the sea-drake’s blood, she could still see the layers in light and shadow that made up the world. If she concentrated. She hadn’t told anyone.

“Ah,” said Louis.

She added, too quickly, “It will be all right. I will welcome Maximilien and be his wife and he will safeguard my family and my realm, and that is more important even than my life, do you understand?” She had not meant to say so much. “I ask again, what will you have of me?” she finished.

He was looking straight ahead. Then he said, with equal stiffness, “I do not know.”

“You shouldn’t have done it.” Ruin his life for her sake, she meant. Why did you? She didn’t dare ask.

He made an impatient flicking gesture. “It is done.”

She hurried on. “I will do what I can to mend it. Do you want to go? You may have an escort to my border, and money—” Though she had no idea where she was going to get money.

She actually heard him grinding his teeth. “Very well—for reward, I will ask you not to treat me like a subject to whom you can grant favors. I am not going to leave now to go and be a vagabond.”

She felt the color creep into her face. They rode in silence for a while. “I am sorry.”

“There is nothing to forgive. I did ensnare myself, after all,” he said shortly.

Perhaps he would have said more, but Isabeau had touched up her pony to trot between their walking horses. She asked Anne, sounding happy, “When will you drive the French away?”

Anne blinked. “When my husband comes with an army, I suppose.”

“No,” said Isabeau blithely. “With sorcery. Like Emrys.” She’d picked that name up from Elesbed. “The one we call Merlin.”

“Well—never, I fear.” Henri was on the road just behind them, and Anne was certain that he and Louis were listening.