Chapter 4
Chapter
Wolfgang von Polhaim racked his brain all along the sloppy spring road between Nantes and Ghent, but still he did not know what he would say to his king, did not know how to frame his account of Brittany and her duchess.
She is clever, Polhaim imagined himself saying. She is desperate. She is beautiful. She is young. Bring her to Vienna and that whole court of vipers will eat out of her hand. She would make a good empress when your father is dead.
She is playing upon your emotions, Sire. Your love and your loneliness.
Perhaps you could love her. Your Mary was clever too.
Perhaps she will drag you into a long war that you cannot win.
When Polhaim returned at last to Maximilien, he was summoned informally, behind the stables of the castle of Gravensteen in Ghent, and he came before his master still at a loss for words.
Maximilien of Austria was then styled King of the Romans, heir apparent to the Holy Roman Empire.
He was thirty-nine years of age, his skin beginning to slacken over the haughty bones of his face.
He was a knight, a warrior, a general, perhaps the last monarch of unquestioned chivalry in Europe.
He had seen too much of men to be anything but impatient with them.
All around him the usual sprawl of councilors and courtiers studded the grass like spring flowers in dew-starred velvet. There was a palfrey in work nearby, a mare wearing a silk headstall, turning restless ears as she cantered round and round.
“Sire,” Polhaim said when Maximilien beckoned. He found he could not bring himself to mouth one of the pieced-together sentences he’d constructed on his journey. In silence he laid Anne’s letter in his monarch’s hand.
The king broke the seal. His brows drew together. “A proxy-wedding?” he murmured through pursed lips. “And the French in Nantes, bidding her betroth herself to Charles?”
Polhaim said cautiously, “The duchess—her council—believes that if the wedding is solemnized, as the Bretons suggest, in the chapel of a convent in this Brocéliande, it will not be noted by France’s diviners, and no word of it could be spread via divination.
In this way the union may be kept secret until it is a fait accompli.
France, for all their insistence, would have no opportunity to do anything but accept that Brittany has been put out of their reach. ”
A little humor came into Maximilien’s face, a bright nostalgia. “And thus France shall be confounded again, as it was in my youth. Did the Bretons tell you the day of this proposed proxy-wedding in—Brocéliande?”
“She—they—the Bretons—await word of your willingness.”
Maximilien considered. He had been commanding armies since before his twentieth year and knew all the dangers of delay. “How quickly can you ride to Brocéliande?”
“Sire?”
Impatiently Maximilien said, “You needn’t return to Nantes.
We shall send our acceptance via diviner; less chance of accident.
Who else but you would be my proxy? You have met the lady, her court, and her council, you shall go and marry her on my behalf.
Or do you not wish to be my proxy in this matter? ”
Polhaim tried desperately to turn into the shadow so it would not be obvious how fast the color had risen beneath his fair skin.
“Your will is mine, Sire,” he managed. He did not want to stand in a church and say sham marriage-vows to Anne of Brittany.
Still less did he want to pretend to consummate the marriage, as custom dictated.
But Maximilien merely frowned, awaiting an answer, his mind made up.
“A fortnight,” Polhaim said, accepting his doom. “If I could have a diviner for messages and fresh horses ready.”
“Let it be so,” said Maximilien of Austria, beckoning a secretary.
“And we shall have my companies muster in the meantime, to march when the word comes.” A little excited color warmed the cheekbones of his austere face.
This was his master’s youth all over again, thought Polhaim doubtfully, and Anne was his Mary come back.
But Anne was nothing like Mary of Burgundy.
“France will rue the day,” said Maximilien.
“Yes, Sire,” said Polhaim, thinking, I only hope that you will not. And that the duchess will not either.
After drawing out every frivolous preparation, Anne of Brittany with her court and her noble guests of France set out from Nantes to hunt a unicorn in Brocéliande on a day when the wheat showed like green glaze against the black-ploughed fields.
A rider on a fast horse would have found himself under the boughs of Brocéliande late on the second day out from Nantes, but Anne did not want to run ahead of Polhaim, riding back to them from Ghent. She insisted that a unicorn-hunt must be stately.
Reluctantly, La Trémoille agreed.
Only a select few of Anne’s circle knew all her plans.
The rest were just there for the longed-for unicorn, plumes and banners curling in the wanton spring wind, the barding of their horses rippling and shining over their coursers’ glossy necks.
It was convincingly gaudy, delightful, magnificent, ruinously expensive.
Anne had borrowed money to pay for her part in it; she suspected half her nobles had done the same.
But what choice was there? Maximilien could pay her creditors, if only their wedding could be solemnized.
At least the road was drying under the pure light of a rare sunny day, and La Trémoille suspected nothing.
He entertained the company with caustic tales while Anne rode beside him and listened meekly.
She would have done so, tirelessly compliant, all the way to the edge of Brocéliande had she not happened to turn her head just as they were passing a ruined farm.
The roads of Brittany were studded with ruins in those days; the sight of each one hurt Anne like a fist to the throat.
Sometimes it was the work of soldiers, but more often it was the work of brigands.
The war had bred them up and turned them loose, and her treasury had not the silver to pay for soldiers to check them properly.
Nothing unusual about this rain-rotted hulk, but when Anne glanced across the fallow field, her eye caught a flicker of movement. A small, ragged head ducking out of sight. Without thinking, she reined her horse.
La Trémoille broke off his discourse. “Highness?”
If that was a woman hiding in this ruin, or a woman with children, she would not reveal herself to armed men. Suddenly Anne wanted, on a flare of pure rebellion, to aid someone with her own hand instead of endlessly talking. She said, “There is someone in that ruin.”
La Trémoille looked baffled. “I dare say.”
“I want to see.” Anne made the utterance childish for La Trémoille’s benefit. She turned her palfrey, Jonquil, and cantered across the fallow field.
Behind her, she could hear De Rieux saying soothing things to La Trémoille, heard Henri spurring after her. “Highness, what now?”
Anne didn’t answer, having come into the ruined farmyard, half her startled party following.
The air breathed out smoke and old death; some beast’s bones had been picked clean.
Jonquil sidled uneasily. Anne was aware of her courtiers exchanging curious glances.
She said in Breton, “Let any who live here come out to me at once. For I am the duchess of Brittany.”
The fresh breeze whistled in the ruined roof. A horse snorted.
“There is no one,” said La Trémoille, who had evaded De Rieux and cantered across.
A small face peeped around a smoke-streaked wall. She could have been ten or five or fifteen, it was hard to know with ill-nourished children. Over a chorus of well-bred murmurs, Anne said, “Are you alone, child?”
The child was staring, as at an apparition. “They’re all dead,” she whispered finally, also in Breton. The folk of the countryside spoke no other language.
Softly Anne said, “God rest their souls. Would you like to ride a horse and have some bread?”
The child nodded once, looking dazed. Anne caught the eye of Peryn, the most reliable of her grooms. He got down and picked up the child before she changed her mind and bolted. He put her on his saddlebow, got up behind her. Anne said, “Child, have you anything to bring with you?”
“No,” whispered the girl, with a face full of frightened wonder. “No, nothing.”
Anne could do no more; La Trémoille was already beginning to radiate confused hostility.
She let her mind fill with all the day’s frustration, and when the tears came spilling from her eyes, she put a hand on his sleeve and whimpered, “I just cannot bear it when the children suffer.” The tears smeared furrows in the careful tints on her face. “God tells us to succor them.”
“Indeed,” he said slowly. “Indeed.” And because he was the kind of man who cannot bear a crying woman, he spurred his horse on and left her alone.
“Where are we going?” Anne heard the child ask from Peryn’s saddlebow. He’d produced the heel of a loaf and she was gnawing like a mouse.
Peryn was unflappable. “We are going to the nuns in the forest. Perhaps you may live there and they will take care of you, if you say your prayers.”
“Where the korriganed live?” inquired the girl. “Will they not eat my eyes?”
“I think not,” said Peryn. “There are no more korriganed, and in any case the duchess would not allow it.”
Near the edge of the forest, the bulk of the hunting-party turned off to pass the night jammed up tight in the castle of the sieur de Trécesson. Anne, with her maids-of-honor, Henri, and De Rieux and a small escort, went to spend the night in a convent called Paimpont.
Polhaim was to meet them there, riding straight from Ghent on fast horses with the marriage-contract, a bewildered bishop to solemnize it, and a letter from Maximilien. He had promised faithfully via diviner to be prompt to his hour. Anne did not know what she would do if he did not come.