Chapter 17 #3
“Daughter,” he said. “Anne, please—” He broke off. They had passed the courtyard and gone into the summer garden, and Marguerite of France had followed them, with her train. Anne must turn away and greet her, and privately curse the lady’s unholy timing.
Marguerite greeted her in return and stood pensively a moment.
Then she said, without fanfare, “Let us understand each other, cousin. If you do not wish to wed my brother, you need not. If you will only resign your claim to the Breton throne, you may have a grand pension and your choice of husband. You could go and live where you please, with all the money you could ever want.” She added, “Provided you do not reside in Nantes or Rennes.”
Anne listened as courteously as she could. Her painted eyelids veiled her eyes. “You are a great and generous lady.”
Marguerite said kindly, “I was regent once, I had a realm to look after and an unruly court. It is a burden. But one you need not carry. Truly.”
Anne listened to Marguerite, but her eyes were on her rattled court.
They gathered around in low-voiced clumps.
There were guards everywhere. Marguerite went on, “If you will not abdicate, then we shall leave for Amboise today, under the protection of a strong company. You shall be safe and honored. There will be no more uncanny happenings, whether they are pranks or the work of a faerie-king. You will have new clothes and new jewels. You will be crowned queen of France.”
Anne said, without thinking, “Baubles to while away my hours? You are too kind.”
“You must be safely married, Highness; surely you see you have no other recourse!”
Anne did not reply.
Marguerite added, coaxingly, “Many brides are frightened. It is natural.” Of course royal brides were frightened. The all-but-public consummation. The vital yet dangerous pregnancies. “But Charles is a kindly man.”
“Oh, yes, like all kings,” said Anne, unable to keep the edge from her voice. “I hear he likes stag-hunting.”
“As much as anyone I’ve ever known. And he is skillful.”
“I am sure the hinds all say so, when they are run to earth.”
“Do not play me a melodrama, Highness. What is your answer?”
Anne said nothing.
“I see,” Marguerite said slowly. “You will only bring suffering upon yourself with defiance.”
Anne was saved from a reply, for at that moment they brought Julien Moreau down from the Roman tower in chains.
Anne had no wish to be cruel, but she was not taking chances either.
Moreau’s expression was one of quiet dignity, though the shackles were heavy.
Marguerite had put a startled hand to her mouth when she first saw him, but she recovered and looked merely bored.
Moreau was pulled across the sward to where Anne had gone to meet him, and when he came he was made to kneel.
“Let him stand, for heaven’s sake,” said Anne. “I am not going to play at brutality.” She could see Isabeau watching, and Henri, standing beside Louis of Orléans.
Moreau was pulled to his feet. Anne said, “My sister said you banished a ghost.”
Moreau looked abashed. His chained hands were limp and pale. “I did. Did I do wrong? It was frightening her.”
“How did you do this thing?”
He dropped his eyes. She saw that he was trembling. “With the reflection in a cup of wine,” he answered. “If you ask the Guild, Highness, they will tell you that my augury is in mirrors. I learned—I think—perhaps that augury relates to the other sorcerous arts.”
“To banish a ghost is not augury.”
Moreau tried to spread his chained hands, then dropped them with a clank.
All the guards swayed closer. De Rieux had his head near Marguerite’s.
Orléans had his hand on his sword. Anne told herself not to be warmed by the duke’s protectiveness; his only aim was to rule her.
Anne said, “My sister gave you a mirror. Where is it, please?”
“In my sleeve,” he said, “I thought—I thought it was a sanctioned gift. Truly. Please, Highness.”
The garden had fallen silent. Anne could see Marguerite’s head lifted, watching. De Rieux, stern-faced, murmured orders to Anne’s guard.
“I am just a poor tool of the korriganed,” Moreau said, almost weeping.
“I am sorry you and your court are beset. I will help you if I can.” He shook his wrist just so, and despite the irons, the jeweled mirror fell into his palm.
Anne saw Isabeau make a restive movement, only to be restrained by Henri.
Anne looked at his face. Her breath caught.
The light on him was not the light of that day.
In fact, his eyes seemed to flicker, as though unseen lights and shadows passed through his gaze.
“What are you not telling me?” she snarled, just as he stepped back with a gasp and her court erupted into cries.
A tall man stood in the center of the garden.
No, not a man. A korriganed. He was half-naked, and he seemed young, though his hair was white like the foam of the sea.
He did not seem to notice them. Water streamed down his body; his feet were bare, his eyes were on some distant horizon.
His fingers were long and thin and his ears angled like joinery.
All around the garden, spears were leveled, swords drawn.
Isabeau shouted something; the korrigan seemed suddenly to become aware of them all.
He bared his teeth at them, laughing wildly, took a single step, and disappeared again, drops of water flying. It had been only a glimpse.
But the light was still strange; it was the light of the seashore. Bright: silver bright.
“That was him!” cried Moreau. “Please—that is he, your monster, that is the king of the korriganed!”
The strange light was only growing stronger. “Back!” cried Anne. “Everyone get back! Into the castle!”
Moreau, yanked away by his guards, gave her a startled, narrow look. Henri had Isabeau and was nearly at the postern-door. Louis was running toward her; the guards were turning in circles, looking for danger, hustling Marguerite away, though no one knew exactly what was wrong.
Then, out of the hot silver light, directly in front of Anne, came a monster.
Water flew from its scintillating scales, silver-black in the sun, and it writhed across the ground as though it could advance by pushing the whole world back.
It had a great ruff just behind its head, like the frill of a collar.
A webbing was wrapped around it, looking almost as though it had been twisted by human hands.
Eyes like greenish lamps bulged from its head.
She heard Moreau cry out. Her court erupted in shouts.
The beast slithered fast toward her and her cluster of maids-of-honor. The sea-drake opened its mouth and hissed.
A flung spear shot past Anne’s head and buried itself in the open mouth. The beast recoiled, and then Louis stood beside her, his sword drawn. He had seized someone’s spear and thrown it. Guards converged, but could even guards kill this beast before it bit her in half?
Time slowed. She remembered the tales she knew of sea-drakes, of how, long ago, they heeded men.
On panicked instinct, she shouted at it in Breton.
And the snake closed its mouth. Its head dropped; its writhing progress stilled.
Louis moved to drive his sword into one of the bulging eyes, but Anne snarled, “Be still!” in a voice even she did not recognize.
The world seemed to freeze altogether. The injured beast put its head flat to the ground.
It put out its tongue and—tasted her, she supposed.
A panicked stir came from the guards. Louis again made to drive forward with his sword.
She caught his arm, terrified but also full of jagged wonder. “Everyone keep back!”
She pushed in front of him, and Louis let her go, perhaps too shocked to catch the movement. He was breathing unevenly.
The teeth could have closed on her face. Her mouth was dry. She said to it, “You are far from home.”
The snake put its tongue out again and touched her face, and the band of unicorn hair she wore about her brow. “It was given me,” Anne told the snake softly.
The tongue flickered.
Louis swore.
Anne whispered, still in Breton, feeling the mist from its skin on her face, “How came you here?”
It didn’t have speech the way a human did. The cold eyes watched her and she saw an intelligence. Like the unicorn. Perhaps, like the unicorn, it slipped dreamlike between the mortal world and the Lost Lands.
She stepped forward and took hold of the spear and pulled it from the sea-dragon’s mouth.
It had not gone in so deeply. The blood flowed out suddenly in a cold silver wave, smelling of the sea.
Ichor covered her palm, her silk sleeve.
Spattered her face. She tasted it, felt it sparkling in her eyelashes. She let the spear fall.
The serpent flicked its tongue at her again, and when she focused her eyes, the shadows had become a terrible jumble. As though the blood on her skin had opened her senses to a truth her mind could not grasp: dawn and day and dusk and night all tangled together. There were layers in the world.
“Can you go home?” she whispered.
How had the light been when the monster came? Silver-lucent, like that upon the noonday sea. That light was still there, mixed with the rest, clear to her suddenly opened eyes.
It set the sea-drake glimmering. Anne smelled salt.
All around her was the silver of the sea, another daylight altogether.
It felt as though she could take one step and the rest of it would be real: cold water and wind; she would be somewhere else.
Her heart was racing. A spike of pain went through her head.
“Go,” Anne whispered to the sea-drake, covered in its blood.
It turned and plunged back into the light of its own day. A gout of water mingled with the blood on her, and when the wave subsided, the sea-drake was gone.