The Unicorn Hunters: A Novel(83)
For the first time, outside the gates of Rennes, Anne met Charles of France, called by some the Affable. He was hardly older than she and exquisitely dressed, with a good-natured face, long-chinned and button-nosed, a missing incisor when he smiled, brown marks running up his teeth. His pockmarks were pits of darker color in his flushed face.
His gaze lingered on the fillet in her hair. He said, “I have heard of this talisman, Madame, and have greatly desired to see it. Is it true you embroidered it with your own hands, from the hair of a unicorn’s mane?”
Anne said, “It is true, Sire.”
“Then,” said Charles happily, “you shall soon have more hairs for your working. Perhaps you will embroider my hat with it, so everyone will marvel at us.”
She could not pretend to misunderstand, but she said, delicately, “If the hairs are sent me and I can do anything to please you, kinsman, I shall, as a mark of friendship between our realms.”
Another man might have returned a sharp riposte to her delicate verbal parry; he merely waved a dismissive arm and wished her knights luck in the joust. He was cheerful, untroubled, indulgent. Affable, in fact.
The two parties separated and were escorted to their raised seats, heavily cushioned, with awnings for shade, the French on one side of the lists and the Bretons on the other, their backs to the city wall. The gates of Rennes were open now and a steady stream of ordinary folk spilled out, already glazed and greasy with hand-pies, dipping their cups into the great vats of chilled hypocras, everyone chattering. Agreeing to this tourney had bought her and Maximilien time, bought her the complaisance of the people of Rennes, who were beside themselves with delight. She had every eye she could muster on the lookout for treachery, for signs of sorcery. And if there was treachery, her men on the walls would fight the harder in their fury.
But still she wondered if she’d chosen rightly, agreeing to this. She did not know all that a sorcerer was capable of.
And she still did not see Julien Moreau.
* * *
Charles of France had been delighted with the idea of presiding over a chivalrous contest upon this field of war since the moment he heard of the scheme. As they took their places, Marguerite discovered that Charles was delighted with the duchess too: her dark eyes and ravishing mouth and the moon-white thread of the unicorn’s mane. Seated in his great chair, Charles said, to eager nods from the young men of his household, “No wonder the unicorn liked her. I think I will like her, when we are married. Such a bosom!”
“As you say,” said Marguerite. “All the more reason to wed her quickly.”
“Straightaway,” said Charles.
Marguerite was pleased, and had her mouth open to say so.
“As soon as we have come home with the unicorn’s horn,” added Charles, and Marguerite ground her teeth. She was frantic to get out of Brittany, to go home, to see her husband, her baby daughter. Even now, when she closed her eyes, she had visions of that red-walled chapel and Moreau’s eyes, hardly seeing her, snatching at her instead, full of desperate defiance, forgetting entirely who she was. Her body was bruised, her pride outraged, her heart afraid. She should have had him dragged off and killed.
But she had not. He was indispensable to this most vital scheme, and if she tried to have him killed and failed, what was to stop him coming to her again in secret, dragging her back into the wild unseen places of the world, to be lost to all her kin?
She had dreamed of power, of the glory she’d lost when Charles was crowned. But, dazzled, she had forgotten that this power was not really hers.
Forgotten how the chronicles said the Lost Lands drove men mad.
The crowd stretched upon the field in every direction, making a noise to fright the birds to silence. French infantry and washerwomen and camp-followers mingled with the street-sweepers and pasty-sellers of Rennes, with the rich tradesmen, the burghers, the diviners and prelates sweating in the stands. They trampled the green below to mud and called to their friends.
And why would they not revel, Marguerite thought. They thought that the king and the duchess had decided to replace the real war with this spectacle, and then the siege would be over.
Poor fools.
Banners bearing the golden hedgehogs of the duke of Orléans drooped in the hot sun beside Anne’s snowy ermines. The brother, Avaugour, was wearing his black ermines and sea-serpents; he had some lady’s scarf trailing from his lance, and his frog-head helmet was topped by a perfect explosion of dyed plumes. The Bretons cheered him. Marguerite rested indifferent eyes on the spectacle, wished fleetingly that this was to be an ordinary joust, with the usual sweaty, boastful feast to follow.
In the midst of all the hubbub was the great tilt, the barrier that kept the jousters apart, made of light wood wrapped in bright ribbons. The knights paraded, saluted their sovereigns, and then the first contestants took their places in the lists.
* * *
Henri broke a lance upon the Bastard of Foix, and Louis of Orléans unhorsed his kinsman Edmond of Amboise, to screams from all the watchers. The common people delighted in watching the men who governed them roll in the dust for their entertainment. Louis saluted Anne as he rode away, and Anne nodded back with dignity, telling herself she was merely flushed from the sun. She began to think that no disaster would attend this tourney at all.
Then a knight on the Breton side took his place in the lists.