Chapter 16
Chapter
Anne dreamed that she had married Maximilien of Austria and was very happy even though her husband called her by the wrong name.
“Mary,” he called her. “Mary, my darling.”
“No, I’m Anne,” she told him plaintively. “I’m Anne.”
The faceless man said he loved her, dearest Mary, caressed her while she wept, and she didn’t know whether it was her husband or the korrigan-king come to take her away.
Then she realized Louis was dragging her down a long corridor.
She knew an instant’s relief, but then she realized he was dragging her toward a great throne, where Charles of France waited, smiling.
She woke still crying, with the new day but a single egg-white brushstroke on the horizon. She crawled sweating from bed, left Isabeau sleeping, and drank some cider, watered down, with a little of last night’s bread. It settled her stomach, but the fear would not leave her.
Was Maximilien even now coming to her? Were the korriganed here, watching, mocking, unseen? Should she yield to France? She felt trapped in the castle, as though the siege of years ago had never ended. She felt trapped in her own skin.
I shall go riding. I will take Jonquil into the water-meadow and clear my head. A duchess does not hide in her chambers, afraid of shadows, or of the future.
Of course she could not merely set off for the stable.
An escort must assemble. De Rieux, hearing of her preparations, thought she should stay indoors, considering recent events.
With exasperation Anne told him that she was going with a guard and furthermore did not mean to start living like a toad under a stone.
He said he was going to ride with her, armed.
“Naturally,” she said. “If we might get off before midday?”
At least Isabeau was asleep still. Oh, Anne thought, as a vast peacocking crowd assembled in the courtyard, this would all be so much easier, so much more straightforward, if her castle was not roiling with unfathomable enchantments and Maximilien had already landed at Saint-Malo.
Louis of Orléans had gone riding at first light, unable to sleep or think or do anything worthwhile. It was with a certain resignation that he saw the duchess’s party come after him into the water-meadow. Why would she not haunt his waking hours, as she had haunted that night’s fragmented dreams?
Quelling the urge to disappear between the trees, he spurred across to her, bowed from the saddle, and said, with some vexation, “Highness, did no one try to make you stay safe in the castle?”
Her face had a fine-drawn look under the maquillage. “Certainly they did. Jean thinks I shall be snatched out of the meadow like a rabbit when the hawk stoops. But I wished to ride.”
De Rieux was on her other side, shooting Louis dark looks. He said, “Do you jest about it, my daughter?”
“No,” said Anne shortly. “But we are here now, and I have you to keep the korriganed at bay.” She bit her lip, effectively distracting him, smiled at them both, and changed the subject. “Remember how it was here before? The hunting and picnicking? Father loved this place.”
“We all loved it,” Louis answered. “Poor Francis.” Francis and his elder daughter were alike in some ways, but Francis had been sweet-tempered, and there was something implacable in Anne’s face, for all her delicacy.
Anne had not taken her eyes from his. He felt his breathing alter.
De Rieux cleared his throat. “Orléans, I should like you to know that—”
Anne looked away abruptly and said to Louis, “Did they tell you how Father died?”
“I heard—a fall from his horse.”
Anne’s mare took a sly nip at Louis’s courser, and the duchess paused to recall her to her duty.
They were riding in dappled shade, so he could not read her expression.
De Rieux made an exasperated noise. Anne said, “Yes. After the battle of Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier—Father changed. He had given up somehow. He was coming to Isabeau and me at Coiron, when his horse shied. He fell badly. De Rieux picked him up broken and brought him to us.” She threw her guardian a warm glance, though the down-sweep of her lashes shadowed her cheek and there was darkness there that the tints could not hide.
“He made Jean promise to act as our guardian, and he made me promise to”—she hesitated—“care for Brittany.”
“As he himself could not?” Louis was startled to feel the undimmed heat of four-year-old anger. How often had he tried to stop Francis putting his faith in weak men? In his opinion, Jean de Rieux was such a one, and Anne trusted him as her father had done.
Anne’s voice turned wintry. “My father was a good and generous man who loved his people.”
“Yes, he was. Though he took bad advice and it got worse toward the end.” Louis bit his tongue.
He had not meant to reminisce with her, still less to fight with her.
He meant to urge Charles of France’s suit.
That he would like to hold her again, to speak to her without restraint; that he regretted that her father’s fecklessness had put her in an impossible situation—none of those things was important.
But he found himself asking, after a pause: “Isabeau was there when he died?”
The anger left her voice as quickly as it had come. “Yes. I should have sent her out. Not let her see. But both of us were clinging to him. I couldn’t bear to send her away.”
“I am sorry.”
“I am sorry they dragged you off the field and made you prisoner.”
Louis said nothing. He could almost feel De Rieux watching them, bristling. The worst days of both their lives lay heavy between them. As though in some kind of acknowledgment, Anne offered him a truth. “Isabeau is angry that I must marry and leave her.”
Did Anne accept, then, that she was soon to marry? Cautiously, he said, “You could take Isabeau with you.”
“Pack her up like baggage? No. I am not so cruel as to take her from everything she loves except for me. Besides, I want her to know her own—” She broke off.
“Highness?”
She shook her head, smiling a little. “Stop staring into my face as though you cared what I was thinking. You have nearly tempted me into maudlin confidences.”
“Who does not care what you are thinking? You are the duchess.”
She laughed. “They care what I do and what I say. It is not the same.” Perhaps she was jesting.
But he heard the desolation in her voice.
He thought again of how she’d let him hold her, thought that she, although surrounded by people, might understand the loneliness of the prisoner in a tower that he’d so recently been.
The first reply that came to mind was useless: Speak to me, then. What are you thinking? But she did not need his kindness, and what good would it do for her to lean on him? His unexpected, inconvenient desire, the vulnerability beneath her courage—both were dangerous.
He managed to say, with hectoring reasonableness, “Can’t you see the sensible course here, Highness? Don’t submit to Charles like a captive, and don’t defy the French like a madwoman. Negotiate for your sons.”
Her eyes flew to his face and he could have bitten his tongue. She said, “I have no sons.”
He made himself go on. “You will have. Highness, you can trade your cooperation in this French marriage for a clause in your marriage-contract that says your first son will be king of France but the second the duke of Brittany, and so preserve the realm’s integrity. It is all you have left to play for.”
“That is good advice,” she said evenly. He got the impression she wanted to spit at him.
No— Anne. Forgive me. He bit the words back. Malicious enchantments or no, she would still marry Charles. The king of France would take her to bed and write the conquest of Brittany into her body while his court looked on. The truth of it left no room for remembered friendship.
She’d already taken hold of herself. Her smile was lovely. “Good, cousinly advice, and I thank you for it.”
“Anne.” Her name slipped out before he knew. She just looked at him, the white embroidery on her crespine catching his eye, reminding him that she kept some secrets close.
“Highness.”
She inclined her head in acknowledgment. “Good day, Monseigneur.” She cantered off and her guards stayed with her. He fought the urge to follow.
De Rieux had not been near enough to overhear, but perhaps he’d seen Anne’s face. He spurred his horse up and said, “I don’t care that Marguerite of France has dragged you to Nantes, you will not make her unhappy. She trusted you once; she loved her father. She—”
His voice was cut off as a chorus exclaimed among the trees. Louis sent his courser flying after the sound of Anne’s voice and pulled up at the edge of a familiar clearing, one that had seen a thousand picnics over the years, after the day’s hawking was done.
There was no picnic planned now, yet the clearing was spread for a feast.
A feast now past its best, spoiled past saving, mostly devoured, and the remainder none the better for the day’s heat: wine greasy in overwarm jugs, flies coming to the bread, clustered thick on the cheese.
It was as though some unseen power had heard him and Anne talking and was laughing slyly to itself, reminding them that the feast was over, their stolen peace gone, the voices silenced, friendship impossible.
Every hair on his body rose. He almost expected to see Francis step from behind the trees, or his own blithe, brave self of five years ago.
Or the korrigan who had wrought this monstrosity. “We have to go,” he said.
Anne did not speak. She put a quick hand to her brow, where she wore her shining white fillet. She stared into the wood with startled eyes.
Someone in the staring crowd muttered, “This is just how His Grace liked the table spread.”
“That was his favorite—that is sugared ginger. How the ants swarm!”
“The shadows,” Anne whispered. “The shadows are wrong. Can you see? The sun is not coming from that direction. Those are shadows of men, but no one is casting them.” Her mare was sidling, throwing her head. Anne was turning, bewildered, in the saddle.
Louis had drawn his sword; her guard had done likewise. He nudged his horse in nearer, skin prickling. One of the spilled cups on the table was gently rolling. Anne was still staring into the trees. Almost Louis thought he saw bodiless shadows of men that stepped across the grass.
“Father,” she whispered. And then— “Can you see the light? It’s like—” She pressed her horse forward a step, her expression strange. Like a girl in a dream. “It’s like the last day we picnicked here. Look at the light. Could I go back? Could I—?”
Louis caught her bridle. “Highness, we must go!”
“We must!” De Rieux echoed urgently at her back.
Louis didn’t know how to protect her at all.
Neither from this, nor from France. When she would have pressed her mare forward again, he kept his grip on the rein and wrenched the mare about as the guards pressed close around them.
He did not let the rein go until they were all out of the water-meadow.
She did not protest.
Nor did she smile at him again. She rode with abstracted face and dismounted in the courtyard; her attendants surrounded her and they all left him there without saying a word.