Chapter 18
Chapter
Isabeau said, after a shocked pause, “But—Jean cannot betray us. He is our guardian. Father named him our guardian.”
“It isn’t a betrayal to him, I think,” said Anne as gently as she could, hollow with shock herself, still fighting a dizzy headache, the world’s impossible confusion. “He will give me to the French to save me from the korrigan.”
Already there was noise mounting outside. To Louis she said, “Have you come to persuade me to agree quietly? For my own good? To hold the door open so Marguerite’s guard need not take me by force?”
Henri said, “Orléans, I’ll kill you.” It was a statement of fact.
Louis did not speak or move.
“What are we going to do?” Isabeau whispered.
Anne hadn’t taken her eyes off Louis.
He said, “Marguerite has learned a secret that I do not know, and it has alarmed her greatly. She is moving at speed; she had soldiers in readiness, you know.”
Anne croaked, the world still spinning, “I imagine that De Rieux has told her my secret.”
Louis just waited.
Anne, with a dry throat, said, “Some weeks ago, I was contracted in marriage to Maximilien of Austria.”
His color changed. “I see.”
Quietly, she said, “You have brought us your news. Now you’d better go.”
The gate-guard were nearly all De Rieux’s men. They badly outnumbered her Bretons, her personal guard. She could hear them outside, already massing to defend the stairs.
“Go,” she told Louis, sharply. “You have given your message. I imagine you were not charged to warn me, and for that I thank you. Now leave us.”
But still Louis did not move.
Louis of Orléans had thought he’d left the impulsive passions of his youth behind.
These passions had won him nothing but suffering, left him captured, imprisoned, vanquished.
During those long, clawing days in Bourges, where each hour hung as heavy as a stone on a spiked wheel, he had sworn to himself that if he ever won his way free, his head would rule his life, never again his unthinking heart.
She is married.
Married and betrayed. Her own guardian had betrayed her.
And here was the reason for the Triumphal Entry, the feasting, her seeming foolishness.
She’d been delaying, counting on Maximilien of Austria to come and save her.
But he had not come in time. And what frivolity could maintain its facade under the unrelenting strain of the last days’ surprises?
Marguerite will take the duchess away—and Isabeau as well, to ensure her sister’s compliance—and with their company will ride for the French army as hard as ever a horse can gallop, and thence to the French border.
Whatever proxy-vows she has said to Maximilien of Austria cannot survive a consummated union with Charles of France.
Not with a pope in Rome, ready to take French gold to annul the Austrian marriage.
Marguerite will threaten Isabeau if Anne does not agree, and then when she is at Amboise, pregnant with Charles’s firstborn, it will be too late.
Maximilien will not take her back if another man has her first.
Anne was holding tight to her sister, her gaze turned inward, obviously thinking fast, looking for a way out. Her pupils were still dilated, misted over with silver.
Damn you, Louis of Orléans said to himself, violently.
Damn you for a romantic, deluded fool. He went to the door of the garderobe and listened.
Marguerite had no reason to think he’d deceive her.
It was too far against his own interest. Anne could give him nothing, while Marguerite could give him what he wanted most.
The firelight played in soft stained-glass colors over Anne’s cheek, and he was shaken by his heart’s own triumphant beating as it overbore, at last and forever, his head.
“You must go to Rennes,” he said. “You can’t stay here. I’ll take you.”
A fleck of silver spatter lingered on her cheek. “You can’t. You know what Marguerite will do to you—if you betray her now and she wins anyway.”
“I’ll thank you to leave my personal affairs to me. We still have to get out of this castle.”
Henri seemed about to speak, but one of Anne’s maids-of-honor put a hand on his arm and he closed his mouth. A crash came from outside, a neighing and a great chorus of shouts.
Isabeau went to the window. “Someone let out all the horses. The courtyard is full of them. The soldiers can’t move around, they are swearing.”
“No one wants the duchess to be French,” piped Elesbed triumphantly, pushing in behind her.
All very well, thought Louis, but how to get out of the castle?
Henri had broken free of the women; he said, low and savage, “Why would you do this? Orléans, on your honor, why? Is this a trick?”
“A fit of madness,” said Louis. “On my honor.”
Henri’s face relaxed a fraction.
Then Anne’s diviner passed the guard outside and came staggering in, his face like chalk. He said, slurring, “Highness, Highness, there are soldiers at the gate.” He was carrying an empty cup. He must already have drunk it, never mind what a terrible state he was in. “I will tell you where to go.”
“Calyx, you can’t divine now,” said Anne sharply. “It is dangerous; you hurt yourself earlier when your divination touched the Lost Lands. You can’t help me. It’s all right. You must go back to bed.”
“I can,” he said. His eyes were scarlet and bleary. He tilted the cup into the firelight.
“Don’t!” cried Anne.
Too late. His eyes rolled back, the cup clutched convulsively in his hands.
He whispered, “The servants’ postern, out through Nantes, cross the river.
It is unguarded yet.” Calyx’s voice faltered, then rallied.
He stared harder than ever into his cup.
“I see—there is a city in the sea. That is your salvation, Highness. A city in the sea.”
Diviners could not make prophecies. They knew the world as it was. But at the moment of death, the limits of the mind faltered and a diviner could see a little more. Anne’s voice was thick with tears. “Calyx, no.”
Calyx slumped into a chair, and the cup fell away, clattering on the stones. They were all shocked at the suddenness. His face was gray and still.
Now, outside, there were the shouts of guards, squealing horses, arms clashing in the courtyard, the running feet of servants.
Louis and Henri put the old diviner’s limbs straight and covered him with a cloak.
Anne wiped tears from her eyes. “Stay with him,” she told three of her maids-of-honor. “It’s safer here; they seek only Isabeau and me. My guardian is not cruel; he is doing this out of love and fear. He will protect you.”
They all nodded, though Louis saw that they were crying. “Madeleine?” said Anne.
“I’m going with you, of course,” said the tall, fair girl. “You will have to break your journey at Chateaubriant. My father will think I am a true coward if I am not with you.”
“Never that,” said Anne, sadly.
The noise rose again outside: thudding and shouting, the scream of splintering wood. “Elesbed, you must come with us,” said Anne. “Moreau wishes you ill. Leave your cat with Hawiz.”
Elesbed started to cry. But she nodded, her chin wrinkled and quivering. She put her fat yellow cat into Hawiz’s arms. The cat made an irritable noise, but she let herself be passed. Elesbed said, “I love you, Butter. I’m ready, Highness.”
The shouting was mounting toward the castle. Anne had bitten her lip bloody. Her eyes fell again on the unmoving Calyx.
“We have to go,” said Louis, and offered her his arm.
When Anne blinked, she felt her eyelashes clumped wet. “Yes.” She kissed Hawiz. Isabeau and Elesbed were holding tight to each other. “Now.”
The group went fast and quietly, with Anne and Louis ahead, Henri and Madeleine behind with Isabeau, and a dozen of her guard following.
Anne and Isabeau had snatched up cloaks and sturdier shoes.
Henri and Louis were in court-dress. Any delay, and they’d be bottled up, trapped. She would not think of De Rieux.
“Help me,” she told Louis at the staircase. She was clumsy on stairs. She put an arm around his neck; he took her weight on his shield-arm and they ran down together. She still could not believe he was there.
“Are you sure?” she whispered as they ran.
He looked down into her face. “No,” he said. “But I could not do otherwise.”
She did not ask again. Outside the castle proper rose the sounds of wild confusion now, men at the gate, men fighting on the wall, her Bretons rallying, the furious servants with pikes and cleavers.
Then, with only one more room to cross before the servants’ door, Anne saw the wrongness in the shadows.
She stopped dead, and the others followed suit.
There was a faint patch of sourceless firelight on the floor.
Where had it come from? She narrowed her eyes, gritted her teeth as another spike of pain went through her head.
She saw—could it be? The firelight was from a room in that very castle, Marguerite and Moreau standing together with guards clustered warily.
Anne stumbled back. They were working together, Moreau and the lady of France.
This was a trap. She was sure of it. If Anne, half-crazed with the sea-drake’s blood, could pull Elesbed between the layers of the world, Moreau could surely drag her from this light to that. And then she would be made prisoner.
In a rage, she pushed that firelit layer of the world away, bid it be dark and still and ordinary night. To her surprise, the unnatural light on the floor disappeared.
Was the trap then gone? She took a hesitant step forward. Nothing happened.
“Come on,” said Anne.
They went on. Her head throbbed with every step.
Out the door, into the fine starlight, through the postern-gate, across the bridge facing Nantes, into the city, heads down, hurrying. They had not had time to get horses from the castle proper; there was a relais with horses across the river. If they could only reach it.
They came out into the cathedral-square and, gasping, halted.
The square was full of people.
But not one head in the crowd turned. They were walking slowly and somberly, faces lit brightly with the absent sun, pacing toward an end she couldn’t see.
“Who are they?” whispered Isabeau.
Henri said, “Anaon,” and Elesbed said, “Enchantments.”
“They are here to slow us down,” said Louis practically.
Anne’s headache was becoming a red mist. She tried again to find the right layer of the world and separate it out, taking these people with it. They vanished, but she bit back a scream. The pain of the effort had nearly stopped her breathing.
“What in God’s name?” muttered Louis. “Anne?”
“We have to get to the river,” said Anne, sweating and shaking.
Commotion was spilling from the castle; they’d realized Anne and Isabeau had slipped away.
But now the tones of shouting citizens mingled with the running feet of soldiers.
The Nantais were proud of their independence and they were fond of her.
They were spilling into the streets as garbled news spread from the castle.
There was a burst of shouting, a clatter of hooves.
Henri hauled them down a side street. They were passing the grain warehouse, moving faster now, Louis taking most of her weight. The river was near.
Another incongruous patch of light; Anne saw and cried a warning just before a wild boar stepped out of the shadows between them and the water.
Anne tried to see the beast’s layer of the world, but it was no anaon.
It was really there, and she couldn’t fix her mind on the proper light.
It was going to charge, and whoever it charged was going to die.
Nothing is more dangerous than a charging boar.
There was rain on its back, though no rain fell in Nantes.
It scraped the earth with a delicate foot.
Swords were useless against such a beast.
But Louis took a renewed grip on his sword. “I’ll draw its charge,” he said to Henri. “Get the duchess to the water.”
Henri pulled her away from Orléans; she was in too much pain to argue. She burrowed frantically through the layers of the world like turning the pages of a book, while agonized tears fell.
There it was. A gray cold day, a rain falling fast. She screamed as eerie autumn light burst over that summer night, and the boar charged into nothing.
Anne fell, still screaming from the pain in her head.
The city was alight with lanterns, clashing and shouting.
Her Bretons were coming out of their houses, crowding the streets.
Helping her. But that was an abstract thought, without force.
She could not think what to do about it.
No. She must not fail them. She must be awake, she must ride.
“Anne,” said Louis, into her hair. “Anne!”
“We have to go,” she managed, gasping. “You’ll have to take me on your horse.”
All around her shivered impossible lights, strange shadows. Perhaps these were the shadows of the Lost Lands that sent diviners mad. She only hoped the shadows would spare her. She wasn’t sure. Her vision kept trying to go dark.