The Unicorn Hunters: A Novel(65)

Part


    III





Chapter


21

    The night in the castle of the dukes of Brittany dragged in an endless blur; the walls rang with angry voices and booted feet and alarums and now and again a scream or a clash of steel. But through it all, Moreau merely stared, riveted, into his mirror as though all the secrets of Creation could be found in its depths.

Marguerite of France was not a woman who trusted easily, but when Moreau had shown her what he could do, she was dazzled, and when he told her of the trap he meant to lay for the duchess, she believed him. So she waited for Anne of Brittany to stumble, quite against her will, out of the shadows and into the waiting guard, as Moreau said she would.

Anne did not. The men of the duchess’s council had been quietly waylaid at their houses in Nantes, their persons had been secured, they had been told that they must swear oaths to France or find themselves impoverished when Charles was made duke of Brittany. Dunois, Marguerite gathered, was particularly enraged. But they had sworn. There was nothing they could do.

But they had not secured the duchess.

It was near dawn; the bells had rung for Lauds. There were dead men in the courtyard.

Moreau slipped his mirror abruptly into his sleeve. He got to his feet and braced one hand on the hood of the fireplace, as flushed as though he’d coursed a stag on a hot day. His eyes filled disconcertingly with sunlight, then moonlight, then the points of the fire.

Marguerite said to him coldly, “Where, then, is the duchess?”

Before Moreau could answer, De Rieux burst in, disheveled, uneasy. Marguerite was getting tired of him. He echoed, “Where is the duchess? Where is my ward?”

“She is gone,” Moreau told them both. He sounded grave, even apologetic, but his expression was strangely thoughtful. Even pleased. He was shaking his head. “I had forgot the nature of sea-drakes’ blood, nor did I know—” He broke off. “Well. We shall see if she survives it.”

In strident tones that could not mask anxiety, De Rieux said, “What are you saying? Survives what? You are an impertinent knave.”

The shifting light fixed suddenly in Moreau’s eyes, bright and still, something dangerous in the lie of his hand on the mirror. “Am I?” he said, softly.

De Rieux hadn’t heard; he was already hectoring Marguerite. “I ordered my men to allow your soldiers into this citadel particularly to ensure the duchess’s protection, not to—”

“Send her into flight?” asked Marguerite, her patience at end. “Yes, we meant to catch her; it was only ill-chance that we did not succeed.” And the intervention of Louis of Orléans. She damned his foolishness, a man of nearly thirty throwing everything away for that big-eyed slip of a girl. Well, it would be the last mistake of his life, which he would spend in that tower, a guard on every door.

“A pity,” added Moreau gravely. He winked at Marguerite, who leveled a glare at him. “And now she is in the wind, far from her loyal guardian. Surely now this wicked korrigan-king will strike.”

De Rieux muttered, “Oh, that headstrong, headstrong— You are saying this monstrous being will try again?”

“Undoubtedly,” said Moreau. Smiling, he opened his palm and reached into the empty air and drew from it a rose. Then another. When he had a bouquet, he went and knelt at Marguerite’s feet and put them into her hands. “The king of the korriganed is a sly creature who always gets what he wants.” He smiled up at her. She did not smile back, but she knew her eyes had warmed a fraction, despite herself.

Utter silence.

De Rieux’s lower jaw went slack and began to tremble. Marguerite had the peculiar and not very pleasant experience of watching an old, worried, pompous, respectable man realize that he had made a terrible mistake. “It was you,” he whispered to Moreau. “Just you, wasn’t it? There is no korrigan-king. It was—a trick. A lie.”

Moreau’s gaze slid sideways to the mirror, and when he raised his eyes again, his face blazed with sunlight that was not there. He looked like an angel, at the throne of God. He got to his feet, saying nothing. She wanted to put her hands into that light. De Rieux stumbled back, breathing hard.

“I admit,” Moreau said, “that I told some untruths. But do not look so miserable. Anyone could have been taken in. Now I am restored to the bosom of my dear nation of France. I appeal to your patriotism; would you not have done the same?”

De Rieux’s mouth said Anne, without a sound. The castle was quiet at last. A deathly silence reigned, so that they could hear the whisper of the fire.

She said, in measured tones, “I think none of us can do anything more tonight.”

Moreau shrugged ruefully. “I fear not.”

De Rieux said nothing. He might have nominal control of the castle now, but he was the sort who shatters upon his mistakes instead of rectifying them. There was no defiance in his eyes, only bewildered sorrow.

“I beg you will leave me.”

Moreau, very subtly, quirked a brow at her; she lifted her chin in response and a little catlike smile touched his mouth. He didn’t move.

But De Rieux left slowly, shoulders bowed, his step that of a broken man. At dawn his soldiers would find him where he had fallen after leaping from the wall-top in the night.