Chapter 12 #2
But the water was flowing from the cart.
Anne could just see it glimmer. It fell in a torrent, splashing the street.
Malgven and Gralon, two carpenters in royal costumes, shouted down to the boy below that he must stop pumping.
The boy replied, swearing vilely, that the pump was broken but the water was flowing by itself.
People started trying to get away from it but were blocked by folk farther back. They pushed, but those behind them pushed back. A priest shouted vade retro at the water as if it were a demon.
Then someone screamed that the water was not sweet but salt, and where had it come from? The crowd began to heave. Anne’s guard closed up around her, shoving people back as they surged forward. “Don’t hurt anyone!” Anne said. Her court, riding behind in hunting-dress, was milling in confusion.
“But why are they frightened?” asked Isabeau, craning.
Louis and Henri put their great horses between the crowd and the wooden unicorn. Something was wrong with the flowing water. The light did not lie upon it as it should; the water sparkled violently, as though it could catch more sun than the world contained.
“We must get the duchess and her sister away,” said Louis to Henri. “These people are going to panic.”
Certainly the Nantais would panic if they saw the duchess fleeing. People would be trampled, people would die. And she—her scheming—was the reason they were all there.
“No,” said Anne. Her pose of foolishness was fraying, but there was no help for it.
Both men stopped agreeing with each other and turned to argue with her.
Anne said, “I am not afraid of an oxcart.” She said it loudly, so people nearest could hear and whisper to their friends.
“I shall stand upon the thing myself.” The glitter on that flowing water was hurting her eyes, but the incipient riot could go either way.
“Henri, take Isabeau on your horse and go back to the chateau.”
“But you—”
“Now,” she said flatly. The crowd had begun to push again, frightened, shaking the cart and startling the oxen.
Some of the hunters’ horses were close to panicking; Louis and Henri had been right to ride their war-horses.
Still the water came roaring down, still people cried that it was salt.
It was washing about the street now, ankle-deep.
“Belle, go with Henri,” Anne said. “Take half the guard. This is no place for you now.”
This was also not something Anne had meant Louis ever to know—that both her siblings knew when not to argue with her.
Henri caught up Isabeau without a word and sat her across his saddlebow, holding on to her while she wrapped both hands in his cloak.
He began using the sheer mass of his huge horse to force a way through the crowd.
One of the elephants squealed, and its keeper shouted. The beast would be stampeding in a moment: the last thing this mess needed. “Orléans,” she said. “You must take me across to the carpenters’ cart.” The street was wet, the dust and filth mingled to mud. She could not get down and walk.
Louis, naturally, did try to argue with her. “Why, in God’s name?”
Did he think her still in the nursery? “To show them that there is nothing to fear. I planned this pageant; I am not having anyone die because we all panicked. Help me.” Tired of arguing, she let herself overbalance, crashing into him from her perch above on the wooden unicorn.
She did not think he would let the duchess of Brittany tumble under his horse’s hooves.
Louis swore, and his destrier threw up its great head, but Orléans had quick reflexes and his jousting-arm was muscled like steel.
Suddenly she was crosswise on his horse’s withers and being jabbed mercilessly by the high pommel of his saddle; he was guiding the horse with his knees.
One hand held her, and the other held his sword.
She told him, “Put up your sword; we are trying to get people to panic less. Where’s your common sense? That way.”
“I am trying to preserve your life,” he said between his teeth.
She could feel his heart beating hard under his doublet.
A destrier was trained to rear and kick out when people crowded him, clearing room for his rider’s sword.
The rolling, white-rimmed eye said the stallion very much wanted to.
The shoving of the crowd was growing worse.
Louis said, “Damn you, Kestrel, this isn’t a mêlée.
” His arm shifted them both, keeping her in balance before him.
Anne said, “They won’t panic if they think I’m not afraid of it. I’m the virtuous duchess.”
Still the uncanny water gushed. Kestrel half-reared and Anne’s head knocked against Orléans’s jaw. She brushed his hair out of her face. He said, “Maybe you should be afraid of it.”
Anne said, “So help me, I will jump off and walk.”
To her surprise, he laughed. “Rage at me by all means, Highness; better than sweet words with hidden thorns.” Surprising her again, he put his horse around.
Someone came too close and Kestrel, goaded beyond endurance, lashed out, knocking the man into his fellows.
Anne lurched, but Orléans held her, reins bridged now in his free hand.
She put an arm round his neck and he glanced down into her face.
“I don’t know what you think you can do. ”
“Go,” she answered. People shouted, but the horse was a moving mountain. They got out of its way. There was the cart. Anne could feel all the staring eyes.
Anne turned a little in his grip, startling him enough that his arm loosened, and she slid off the stallion’s giant shoulder before Orléans could react.
Suddenly she stood at the apex of a model of a city that wasn’t real.
Frigid salt water was pouring onto her feet, her skirt, soaking her slippers.
She tasted salt on her lips. The water was silver as though with dawn, though the noon light was strong. The wrongness hurt her head.
“It is only water,” she said to her people. The crowd had stilled, watching her.
She looked down at the water. For an instant she seemed to see where it had come from, saw a great silver expanse of water at dawn. “Don’t be afraid,” she told them.
The water seemed to be trying to spread in her sight, to become a great shallow sea, smelling of ebb-tide. For an instant it was as though she was standing in two places at once. Telling herself not to be fanciful, she blinked the glitter out of her eyes.
When she did, the water stopped flowing.
She swayed with the shock. But she caught herself and said, pitching her voice to be heard, “As I said, there is nothing to fear.”
Quick as it had come, the water began to drain away. Startled cheers filled the street.
Anne wondered how to extricate herself gracefully. She wondered what had happened. Her slippers and hem sloshed. Her knees did not want to hold her up. The whole city seemed to be staring at her.
Louis of Orléans also wasted a second with shocked staring.
Then he dismounted with unexpected presence of mind, came around his horse, and pushed the destrier nearer so she could mount from the cart.
Anne did so. A destrier was very high off the ground.
“I’ll lead the horse,” said Louis shortly.
She could not tell what he was thinking.
“We cannot ride double all the way to the castle.”
She could not retreat to the castle now.
All this had been frightening, uncanny; she must cast her part in it in a pious light or dark rumors would spread.
The duchess who had touched a unicorn could not risk her reputation for virtue.
“No. We are proceeding to the cathedral, where we shall at once hear Mass and confess our sins to God.”
He forgot his dignity so far as to stare up at her. “Your shoes are wet.”
She had closed both her hands over the pommel of his saddle so he would not see her shake. “We must hope that God will not mind.”
“Anne?” he said, very low. “Where did the water come from? And why did the water stop? Was it—was it a trick? Was that your doing?”
“It wasn’t,” she said, with perfect truth. “I don’t know what happened. Will you take me to the cathedral?”
De Rieux and the seigneurs of Anne’s council had ridden ahead during the Entry and become separated in the confusion.
They reached the cathedral ahead of her, and Anne could see by their faces that some garbled rumor had reached them already.
They all looked anxious. De Rieux handed her down and gave the duke of Orléans another look of frosty dislike.
How they had despised each other during the war.
De Rieux said, “Are you all right, my daughter? They say—I can hardly credit it—”
Anne pressed her guardian’s hands reassuringly. “I will tell you later. All is well.” She was glad to take comfort in his familiarity, glad to turn her back on the disquieting Louis of Orléans.
All through the service, Anne thought, Moreau said that the king of the korriganed means to marry me.
And he said the first sign would be water.
Was today then proof? Is there a king of the korriganed?
During the Te Deum, Anne let herself imagine it: a faerie-husband to go against a French army, their pikes all turned to flowers, like a tale of long ago.
But every chronicle said the korriganed were malicious, not to be trusted.
But what if this—faerie-king—came to Nantes? What powers would he wield? What would she do?
Marguerite of France will use these rumors, her heart whispered.
Even if she doesn’t believe a word, she will still use the opportunity to press for a quicker betrothal and my removal from Nantes.
For my own safety. Tales of the korriganed cast a long shadow; the chroniclers agree that they are beyond God’s grace.
The bishop gave the dismissal, and Anne’s head was no clearer than when the Mass began.
A crowd packed the streets beyond the cathedral-square and cheered when they saw her.
She had meant to walk back with De Rieux, passing through her city with all humility—and soothe him as she went—but Louis was there first, offering his arm.
She told herself that it was better he talk to her than intrigue among her courtiers. They set off, nodding to the crowd. Louis said, low, “Anne, will you tell me what is going on?”
“A banquet, I believe,” said Anne. “In the castle.” She was smiling at the people she passed.
His voice was crisp. “Anne. The water stopped when you touched it.”
She pretended not to hear.
“They are whispering this nonsense tale of a faerie-king coming for you. Anne, are you in danger?”
She was still smiling. She kissed her hand to the crowd; she caught a flung flower and put it to her lips, to cheers. “You would like me to be in danger, wouldn’t you? That you might hurry me off to France the faster?”
“No,” he said coldly. “I would like to keep you from danger, because your father’s ghost would smite me from the grave if I let anything happen to his daughter.”
She glanced back. A mistake. The shared memory of a lost time lurked in his eyes.
She told herself to smile, to be the girl that Marguerite and La Trémoille thought she was. Vivacious, silly. But she found herself saying, “Anything happen to his daughter? Such as being made to marry his greatest enemy?”
“That cannot be helped.”
She felt blinding rage, but fought for reason.
Orléans had been dragged off the battlefield at Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier and taken away, imprisoned.
He was caught now as much as she was, making bitter compromises also.
Perhaps if he saw how she resented the French marriage, it would never occur to him that she had also moved to circumvent it.
Low, she said, “Did she offer you your freedom if you ensure I marry Charles of France?”
“Yes.”
She said nothing.
“I am sorry, Anne.”
Her name, his eyes on her: persistent, aching memory.
How glad she would have been if he’d walked with her thus before, his arm under hers, his glance turned often to her face.
The bridge from Nantes to the castle proper loomed before them.
“We have all done what we wish we had not,” she said finally. “But you will not use my name again.”
They were nearing the courtyard now, and all around were milling people, grooms and courtiers, a wellspring of furious gossip. Louis said, “Do not think of me as your enemy, Highness.”
She gave him her most brilliant smile. “Do not worry, Monseigneur. I shall not think of you at all.”