The Unicorn Hunters: A Novel(84)

A man she did not know.

And this time the herald was silent, for this man had no banner, no device. His destrier was spectacular. Big, hard bones under rolling muscle; deep chest, short back, straight legs that made light of their own caparison. A heroic sight.

Except that this knight rode in a different daylight.

The sky overhead was puffed with dry cloud, yet rainwater gathered in dimpled drops upon the etched surface of his breastplate and ran like tears down the metal, from helm to gorget to the barding of his horse. The crowd began to whisper.

The herald did not speak.

The knight’s visor was down. His destrier stamped once, and all saw the raindrops fly. There was a flash along his armor, as though reflecting unseen lightning.

Anaon, the Bretons had begun to murmur to each other. Anaon. There was fear on their faces. What purpose did this presence serve? On her side? What was Moreau’s game? To make her people afraid of their own knights?

Well, that could be remedied.

“I suppose you have come to joust for us, fair ghost,” said Anne to the stranger, hiding her own fear. “And to deliver us from enemies.”

The knight bowed in silence.

As Anne had hoped, a cheer, first tentative, then stronger, rose from the Breton side. Ours has always been a haunted land, the Bretons murmured to one another. Why shouldn’t the anaon come in a time of need?

The French knight at the other end of the lists hesitated. But finally he set spurs to his horse and so did the stranger and they ran at each other, lances braced tight to their armor, horses flying.

Just as they were about to collide, the light shifted, and the stranger-knight’s horse galloped into nothing and vanished.

The French horse recoiled, jibbed, sent his rider to the ground, rolling, as the horse bolted. The crowd was on their feet, the Bretons cheering, the French shouting foul.

Squires carried the dazed French knight off the field. A shadow came over the sun. Chills raced over Anne’s arms. Suddenly the whole world felt like something that had been sliced in half and stitched together wrongly.

The ghostly knight reappeared. He returned to his place in the lists, awaiting a second challenger. But none appeared. Darkness gathered fast. The world was plunged into twilight. Was this some night in the Lost Lands, dragged into the living world? Anne tried to find the ordinary daylight in the layers of the world, to drag it back. But it was too big, too strange, her knowledge too small. Moreau was ready for her now, and she could not. The day got steadily darker. “Isabeau, take the guard, go back inside the walls,” she said.

“Not without you,” breathed her sister. They were holding hands.

The crowd’s murmurs became frightened cries. Another French rider faced the phantom stranger. Their two horses bolted down the lists, the two lances came down. Dust flew in spiraling clouds from beneath the hooves of the French horse, in thick clots of mud from the challenger, and the whole world turned gray. In the fast-rising shadows, the French horse missed its footing and somersaulted, a parabola of doom in the growing darkness.

“Treachery!” screamed a dozen voices.

“A judgment!” someone screamed in French. “A judgment of God!”

The fallen French knight crawled toward his writhing horse.

A few stars could now be seen. Terror spread like cold, flooding fog. People rose to their feet shouting; priests made the sign against evil. Some were fleeing.

What was the goal of this chaos? Where was he?

The night-birds were beginning to sing. On the other side of the lists, Charles shouted something.

Anne tried again to see the day, to throw back the dark.

Almost she did. But suddenly, she saw flames. The French stands had caught fire. Someone on the French side shouted, “An attack! An attack!”

Her concentration shattered.

The fire was climbing the stands, setting people to stampeding. A few knights dropped their jousting-lances—made to break—and drew their bitter-edged swords. Two men were fighting, then four, and then there was a general mêlée, the clatter and screech of swords on armor.

What could she do?

She sat still, staring straight ahead, pushing through the layers of the world. “Anne?” said Isabeau. “What’s wrong? The light is changing in your eyes.”

Anne couldn’t heed her. Rain—the ghost-knight had been in the rain. She sought the light of that day, pale and sodden. With her eyes half-closed, she wrenched the rain to herself, from whatever lost day it had fallen upon.

The rain came.

It fell without warning, a great deluge, soaking them all at once, extinguishing the fire, veiling all the field in curtains of silver. People were still screaming, and the world was wholly out of joint: the darkness too heavy, the air too cold. The French and Breton knights were fighting in earnest now, never mind the danger of taking a sword-cut on their lighter jousting armor. Her own guard had closed tightly around her and Isabeau. The king of France was nowhere to be seen, hidden by the rain.

There came a familiar cry. Elesbed had wriggled through the guard. She had a great red mark starting on her face and a split lip. She shouted, “I saw him! He went up to the lady of France.”

The lists had become a battlefield. The Breton archers crowded the walls of Rennes, but they were unwilling to shoot while the citizens were in full stampede, shrieking treachery against the French.

From within Rennes came the sound of running feet, clashing steel. Who was fighting? The city’s approaches were guarded, its other gates shut. Anne’s guard was trying to get her and Isabeau away. Isabeau was clutching Elesbed by the hand.