The Unicorn Hunters: A Novel(85)
Someone sprinted up and cried that the French were inside the walls.
“Impossible!” Dunois bellowed back.
“Nay—they opened the old tunnel beneath the walls, the one from the last war.”
“But that tunnel was collapsed long ago! Who even remembers where it was?”
Lost, the tunnel had been lost. But it had existed, and nothing stayed lost. Not now. That was the scheme all the time, Anne thought in horror. To overrun Rennes. Isabeau’s hand was torn from hers, but one of the guards had her. Better so. Moreau was the architect of this and he had to be stopped.
Anne remembered how light had lain upon the battlefields outside Nantes during the siege. The low, unmistakable warlight. Not allowing herself to think, she stepped into that light and found herself separated from her guard, on the battlefield that the lists had become.
A body lunged in front of her just as a sword came down. A huge man, with a mace, upon a rearing horse, was beside her, swearing. A head went rolling past, and all was confusion and terror, and then the huge man dismounted, his shield arm bloody, and she realized that it was her brother, with Louis of Orléans at his shoulder.
And Polhaim? Polhaim was at her feet, his skull open. He’d caught the downstroke of an attacking knight. “No,” she whispered.
Henri pulled her away. Louis was saying, “Avaugour, get her out of here!”
Her brother said, “You’ll be crushed, damn you, how came you here?”
“Come with me,” she whispered, and gripped hard onto his armored hand. What greater echo on that field than that between her and the lady of France, whose shared circumstances would have made them closer than kin were they not implacable enemies?
She and Henri stepped out of the shadows into a knot of people. Marguerite of France was watching the chaos unfold, surrounded by her guard. Beside her, Julien Moreau had his arms outstretched, his mirror in his hand, laughing, pointing, showing the world how a man could take a city and conquer a realm singlehanded. Anne’s eyes met Marguerite’s.
Henri didn’t hesitate. One step, a two-handed swing.
Moreau whirled a second before it would have cleaved his head from his body, and his eyes flickered from the mirror to the man. Henri’s sword became a child’s wooden sword, an absurd thing in Henri’s big, mailed hand. The sudden change of weight threw him wholly off balance, for he took a second step, stumbling. No one saw him take a third. For he was simply—not there.
Anne made no sound, so shocked was she.
Julien, chest heaving, said to her, “This is your last chance. Accept my suit, yield to my will, and I will save your city and your realm. Otherwise—”
And then he stopped. Stopped with his mouth open and his eyes wide, and turned in the direction Anne was staring. Marguerite of France stood with blood on her hands and streaked across one cheek. A dagger in her hands. She had knifed Moreau.
Moreau’s mouth opened. “Seize him,” snarled Marguerite to her horrified guards, but a moment too late. Moreau had not dropped his mirror; his side was a spreading mass of blood, but he took a single step and disappeared into an impossible light.
Anne must disappear too. She threw herself forward. Too late.
Cold, armored hands closed on her shoulders and her wrists, and they did not let her go. Marguerite’s voice was saying, “We have the duchess, and the army is in the city. Let us go now. There is much to do before Maximilien of Austria arrives.”
Chapter
29
Isabeau had been separated from her guard when they panicked at the duchess’s disappearance, and suddenly Elesbed found herself in a terrified crowd, high in the rickety stands, holding tight to a frightened Isabeau’s hand. Isabeau was brave, but she had never been outside the watchful protection of her family. She could not squirm away unnoticed the way Elesbed could. She looked like a princess and she was dressed like a princess. She could hardly run in her layers of silk. Elesbed saw the wild fist coming at Isabeau blindly, moved to take it herself, feeling her eye start to swell shut. Whoever had struck her didn’t even know they were there.
She didn’t know what was happening. She didn’t know where was safe. They had to hide and then see. It was a big jump down from this part of the stands, but the moat was there to catch them. “We can cross the moat,” said Elesbed. “Hide in the shadow of the wall. We can’t stay here.”
Isabeau said, panting, “I can’t swim, I’ll sink.” Already her dress was torn.
“It’s too shallow to sink,” Elesbed said. “Someone is going to try to capture you unless we get out of sight.” She didn’t trust that this unnatural dark rain would last, and it was the only thing half-hiding them.
Isabeau set her jaw, obviously nerving herself to do it, but as she hesitated, the darkness parted like bed-curtains and Elesbed saw someone notice them, squinting through lingering shadows. “Jump!” she cried, and Isabeau did, and Elesbed right after.
Isabeau almost did drown, for her skirts got heavier in water than ever Elesbed could have imagined. She floundered frantically, until Elesbed untied her sleeves and her overskirt and pushed them off so they could scramble onto the bank in the shadow of the wall. They were both soaked and already beginning to shiver. The darkness had leached all the heat from the day. Isabeau’s hair clung to her face, but she’d taken off her crespine herself and mussed the elaborate plaits of her hair. Elesbed was already unlacing her dress. “Take mine, you can’t go about in just a chemise,” she said.