Chapter 6
Chapter
Hawiz, who had Anne’s confidence, was unsettled by this tale of a mirror.
She said, tentatively, “In tales of long ago, when men strayed near the Lost Lands, they saw ghosts more often than not, and sometimes lost objects would drift into the world of men like sea-wrack.” She locked the mirror tight into the bottom of a coffer.
“Let us think no more of this thing until we are far away from here.”
Anne agreed. But her sleep was full of nightmarish mirrors, each one showing the terrified face of a woman who was not her.
The next morning, she sat in a troubled stupor while her hair was plaited, and her traveling household stirred to life around her.
Only when her abstracted gaze met a pair of half-familiar gray eyes peering at her did Anne come properly awake.
Elesbed had something under her arm, and her mouth was sticky.
She’d been given a pallet for the night, but evidently she had not stayed there.
Anne said, “Elesbed, come here.”
The child seemed torn between the urge to flee and fascination with Hawiz plaiting up Anne’s hair.
The previous day’s food had put color in her face.
Someone had chopped off the hopelessly matted, lousy snarls of her hair, and someone else had cut a respectable dress down to size for her.
Anne eyed the child’s stickiness and said mildly, “I suppose you were not simply handed a honey-jar in the kitchen before dawn and told to help yourself?”
The girl almost bolted, but somewhat to Anne’s surprise, she stilled and said, “No,” guiltily.
“That is—no, Highness.” The word was awkward in her mouth.
“But I was looking to see if there were any korriganed and I came upon the jar and it smelt so good. I just meant to shoo away an ant.” The gray eyes appealed to Anne’s good nature.
“They say anaon was abroad last night and my gram told me that is always the fault of the korriganed.”
Firmly, Anne said, “There are no more korriganed. If you are to live here in this abbey with the holy sisters, you cannot steal their honey.”
The child’s eyes grew huge. “I cannot stay with the sisters! If the korriganed come back, I shall be eaten. They eat your eyes.”
“I doubt that.” But she remembered the abbess’s toothy smile, the haunted look of the ghost in the chapel. The cold, sourceless moonlight. Without thinking Anne said, “Would you rather come back with us to Nantes?”
“Nantes!” said the child instantly. “Hawiz told me a story of the castle as big as the sky where if I am good, I may have meat on feast-days.” And she added in a burst, “Maybe there are korriganed there and you don’t know it. My gram said some people can’t see what’s in front of their own faces.”
Anne said, dryly, “Very well, at least you may be trained as court jester. What is that you have there?” For all this time, the girl had held an indeterminate object tucked under her arm.
“It is mine,” said the girl defensively, clutching the thing tighter. It was a ratty doll. “She’s from home. But I lost her there, when the brigands fired the house.”
“Not so lost, since you carried her here,” Anne said.
“No, I did not carry her,” returned Elesbed. “I found her behind the honey-jar. It is because the Lost Lands are near. Lost things start to come back.”
They made sure, of course, that Elesbed had not stolen the doll. The child had stolen the honey, after all. But no children lived near; no one claimed the poor ragged thing.
“The Lost Lands?” Anne murmured to Hawiz, as she was helped into her hunting-dress.
“You ought not go farther into Brocéliande, lady.”
“It is too late,” said Anne. “But we will take all precautions.” She remembered her supper the night before, that moonlight. “Have the abbess summoned. I wish to question her.”
But the abbess, when she appeared, was not the same lady as the night before.
She had many fewer teeth and was quite timid, overwhelmed by her company. She said the Pax Vobiscum in a cracked, anxious voice and asked Anne what she desired.
Anne stared in astonishment. No one else seemed to notice anything amiss. “You are the Mother Superior of this convent?”
The abbess, unsure what had disturbed the duchess, answered in half-panicked affirmative. When Anne asked to greet the nuns—there were only ten or so—none of them was the lady she remembered either.
She did not dare mention it. Rumors of madness were just as fatal for a woman as whispers of the uncanny. She wanted only to get away. She was glad Isabeau was not there.
The Austrians had assembled already, dressed for a hard day of riding, checking girths and head-collars.
The rain had given way to mist, a soft invisible sky.
Polhaim’s butter-yellow hair was bright in the grayness.
He had the documents attesting the marriage signed and sewn into the lining of his saddle.
With the marriage confirmed, Maximilien would march across the border bearing Anne’s seal, securing garrisons as he came.
Then he and she would be united and this anxiety at an end.
She smiled at Polhaim, where he stood by his horse’s chestnut head. “I shall never forget your kindness. You have ridden back and forth like a hero and a true friend.”
“It was my duty, Highness.”
Lower, she said, “I beg you will forgive me.”
He seemed surprised. But he did not pretend to misunderstand. “It is my own fault.”
“And I— Please do not fail me.”
He kissed her gloved fingertips. “I shall not fail you.”
Anne drew off her glove. “Give this to my husband. With all my hopes.”
He bit his lip. “I will.” He tucked it between his doublet and his shirt.
Anne stepped back and lifted her hand. The Austrian party mounted.
Anne did not speak again. But her eyes were perhaps more eloquent than she knew, because Polhaim said again, “I will not fail you.” He touched his heel sharply to the flank of his restive horse and shot away bright as a bird, cloak streaming in the morning mist, and all his escort followed.