Chapter 11 #2
The wide eyes turned to her at once, and this time Marguerite noticed the fillet round the girl’s brow.
Her breath caught. It was merely a band of cut-velvet, embroidered in white and silver.
And yet Marguerite knew, without a word being spoken, that the white thread of its embroidery was the hair of a unicorn’s mane.
The thread did not glow, exactly. It merely—caught the light, seized the eye, held it fast. So the rumors were true, then: This rattle-brain had touched a unicorn, and wore the proof upon her person.
Dear God, what an heirloom. Would other princes covet it?
Covet her? How to reconcile it, the pretty, silly face and this proof of highest virtue?
The duchess was answering her question. “Why—late for the Triumphal Entry, of course.”
“Triumphal Entry?” said Louis. Marguerite thought with exasperation that he was swallowing a desire to laugh.
“Oh, yes,” said Anne. She nudged her mare confidingly between them, while the ladies of her escort mingled, chattering, with the riders from the French court.
“Because of the unicorn. Didn’t General de La Trémoille tell you of the unicorn?
I was sure he would. We are commemorating the occasion.
With a Triumphal Entry into Nantes. We shall enter and go in solemn procession to the cathedral and there hear Mass.
I am riding that unicorn”—she gestured broadly at the wooden unicorn on the cart—“just so everyone knows how it was when the unicorn appeared in Brocéliande. Though of course I did not ride it then. We thought first to attach a horn to my palfrey so I could ride her, but Jonquil did not care for it. My sister is joining the Entry, and a great escort, dressed for hunting. Oh, it will be famous.”
Marguerite was almost speechless with outrage.
Anne talked blithely on. “And such an Entry—we have also brought the elephants out of the menagerie—did you know my father had bought a pair of elephants before the war? Poor Father. They are a bit old, but very hale, their keeper tells me. And some oxen for carts. Most of the court is riding in the procession and all the merchants’ guilds have made carts and they will be riding too.
With banners. We are adding a unicorn to my coat of arms, I think.
My guardian says so. And there will be my knights—oh, such an Entry.
But—” They had come nearer the pavilions now, and Marguerite saw what must be the entire court milling, most of them in the process of putting on costumes worthy of a Twelfth Night.
Some girls dressed as mermaids were shouting shrilly that their tails did not fit, and a cupid with a beard had hiked up his toga to scratch.
This had clearly gone much further than a mere reenactment of a hunting-party.
Marguerite’s horse pinned its ears, objecting to the mermaids.
“What is that?” asked Louis.
Anne followed his finger. “That? That’s the cart from the carpenters’ guild.
It was supposed to represent the city of Keris sinking into the sea.
Do you know the story? That man there is dressed as Malgven, the korrigan-queen.
He is to sit atop. There will be a King Gralon and a fair daughter Ahèz and also a devilish beast—that boy in the horns—who opened the seawalls and drowned them all.
The cart’s got a barrel built in below and it’s supposed to pump water.
So that it will gush up from below and flood like Keris in the tale?
” Lower, she confided, “But I don’t think it works. ”
As they watched, the model-city on the cart emitted a squirt of malodorous water. The boy who was doing the pumping thrust his head out and shot a volley of vile curses before he vanished again.
Louis asked, in fascinated tones, “What have they done to that ox, though?” The ox in question was harnessed stoically in front of the carpenters’ mock-city, wearing a long silver hat.
Anne was impatient. “It is dressed as a sea-drake, like the ones from long ago that had captains like ships and brought treasures to Keris. Would you like to make the Entry too? We can caparison your horses. Do you have hunting-dress? Unless you wish to ride the unicorn with me, Madame? There is room.”
Marguerite ground her teeth. By then they were well among the throng of people.
The mermaids with the ill-fitting tails had given up and were passing a wine bottle back and forth.
Cupid must have fleas; he was scratching again, and ahead of them were the gates of Nantes, flung open wide, bright with flowers.
Virtue? This procession was a stew of vice.
The whole city would be making scurrilous jokes about horns and unicorns.
Or would they? Marguerite’s eye was drawn again to the pure white light that crowned that girl.
Marguerite said, “Did your guardian have nothing to say to this frivolity?”
“Oh, you may ask him,” said Anne. “He is riding in procession with the hunters—there”—she waved, but the gentleman was already riding over. “Jean—you remember the gracious lady Marguerite of France? I am sure you remember Louis of Orléans. My guardian, Jean de Rieux.”
The guardian was a man of middle years and slack, kindly, anxious face, riding a liver chestnut. “Indeed I do,” he said, stiffly. “You are welcome, Madame, Monseigneur.” His gaze was cold when it fell on Orléans.
Louis said, “Come, De Rieux, you needn’t look that way. The war is over.”
“As you say,” said Jean de Rieux, not thawing in the slightest.
A kindly man, perhaps, Marguerite thought, watching De Rieux, if inclined to hold a grudge.
But not a man of sufficient fiber to restrain the duchess.
The girl might be a fool, but La Trémoille had called her agreeable, and that had been a damned piece of foolishness.
Marguerite had charge of many girls in her own household; she knew implacably headstrong when she saw it.
Her glance went again to the fillet in Anne’s hair.
To De Rieux, she said, “And you have approved this—the manner in which the duchess will disport herself today?”
De Rieux bristled; Marguerite saw a man who might have doubts himself but would not reveal them to an outsider.
“The people of Nantes deserve to share in her triumph, and I hope no one will think Her Highness wanting in conduct—not when she is wearing the proof of her virtue and the unicorn’s favor. ”
Anne looked remorseful. “Forgive me, Madame, do you disapprove? I thought it was your sister Jeanne who was the saintly one, the one who they say wept for a month when she was made to marry my lord of Orléans.” Louis’s eyes narrowed.
Anne bulled straight on. “Wouldn’t you like to ride the unicorn with us?
It is a very respectable construction. Quite safe. ”
Jean de Rieux’s mouth gaped, though he said nothing. “I would not,” said Marguerite.
Anne said, “A great pity, but of course you are tired from your journey.” She turned vast, appealing eyes on Louis. “Surely you will like to ride with us? My guardian says that touching the unicorn was an occasion to be commemorated. Don’t you, Jean?”
“I do,” said De Rieux firmly.
Louis said in a smothered voice, “Then I should be honored.”
Anne favored him with a smile that wiped the laughter suddenly from his face.
Marguerite could not resist saying outright, “That band in your hair, is it truly made from—?”
“Unicorn hair,” said the girl. “Isn’t it nice? I borrowed against it to pay for all this.” She indicated the gathering procession with a careless arm. As though the unicorn-hair fillet was a mere bauble, a commonplace surety for the moneylender.
Louis said to Anne in that same stifled voice—Marguerite suspected that he was trying to make the situation worse—“But hold. You must first tell us if the rumors are true, Highness.”
Anne seemed distracted, watching the churn of people getting to their places, but Marguerite, who was watching her, saw the momentary tensing of her shoulders. De Rieux also stiffened. That was interesting.
The duchess said, “What rumors?”
Louis said, “That the king of France has competition for your hand.”
The faintest hesitation. Then Anne said in a new voice, “Oh! You mean the korrigan-king. That.”
Louis, unruffled, said, “Yes, that.”
She said, “Well, we met a man in Brocéliande who said he came straight from the court of the king of the korriganed but no memory did he have of this court except that its king wished to make me his bride. He said that the korrigan-king would send me signs.”
“You have been hoaxed,” said Marguerite impatiently. “I hope you imprisoned this man.”
“Oh, no,” said Anne. “My guardian said we ought to send him to the Guild—didn’t you, Jean?—and so we did. He says he was a diviner in the court of Philip the Fair. Well, he did not renounce the claim, and so it became Guild business.”
“Poor man,” said Marguerite indifferently. The Guild took impostors very badly, and the diviners didn’t care whether such men were mad or merely criminal. Impostors died slowly and painfully.
Anne was distracted by the adorning of her wooden unicorn.
“Yes—more flowers, the lilies!—I suppose being tested wasn’t very pleasant.
But this man did pass, you know. He is a diviner.
” Earnestly, she added, “My own guards will escort you with honor to the castle, Madame. I am sure if you go to the wall-top you may see something of the Entry. Farewell, dearest cousin, and my best welcome to you.”
The duchess of Brittany kissed her hand gaily to Marguerite and then slid off her horse once again and disappeared into the cheerful throng. Most of her court followed.
Louis gave Marguerite a glance. “I never saw a paragon of virtue as free-spirited as that before. Nor did I ever think to see you stampeded by a girl. She has changed.”
Marguerite was watching Anne go, grimly. “She must be secured for Charles, and that priceless thing she is wearing also, before she trades it to a passing tinker for baubles. See to it, Orléans.”
Louis bowed, far more soberly than the duchess had, and disappeared in the direction she and her entourage had taken.