Chapter 28
Chapter
That day at dawn, before the gates of Rennes, a lone knight came riding.
This knight was a Frenchman called Gaston, known as the Bastard of Foix.
He was dressed as Saint George, with a pennon of silver drakes rippling on the end of his long scarlet lance and the names of saints embroidered on the green barding of his charger.
He galloped to the gates of Rennes to a burst of trumpets, and at the gate, with galleries of interested heads peering over like owls at dawn, he roweled his horse into a plunging rear.
As the iron-shod hooves tore at the soft morning air, he roared out gallantly, “Let any knight of courage come out and break a lance with me now, in honor of the ladies!”
A shout of affirmation came from all within earshot.
Anne and Isabeau were watching from the walls, hemmed in by attendants; when the Bastard of Foix had said his piece, she called for the drawbridge to be let open.
Henri galloped out, bearing his ermine shield quartered with lilies and sea-drakes, his destrier already darkening with sweat, and the two men saluted, plumes flying, wheeled their horses, and rode a mock-pass at each other, pulling their lances at the last moment and saluting again.
“Let all men come forth,” cried Henri. “For the honor of the duchess and the ladies of Brittany.”
The Breton knights came spilling out from the city, throwing the sun into everyone’s dazzled eyes from the perfection of their armor. Their pennons snapped in a freshening breeze.
So the day of the tourney began.
Rennes was ringed with a series of defensible ditches, and between them lay a wide and smooth grassy space dotted with flowers that was called the Champs de Lys. It had seen many tests of skill, mounted and afoot, lethal and joyous, in its day.
Seating had been built on both sides of that great field for the rich and high-born, hammered together by the engineers of the mercenary companies of France, painted and gilded and draped as finely as any noble hall, though Anne’s ermines were—annoyingly—displayed beside Charles’s lilies over and over.
Behind the stands and stretching far to both sides of the lists were small silk pavilions for the knights, studding the grass like jewels amid the tough, sweating crowds of squires and farriers and armorers and servants.
Everywhere marvelous horses grazed or stood or backed half-rearing.
Overhead, a forest of banners rippled together, dazzling men’s eyes with hints of gold and silver thread.
After the knights, the ladies of Rennes rode out, on safe-conduct from the king himself, Anne at their head on a very fine chestnut palfrey, wearing a scarlet gown. Her own Jonquil was in Nantes, and the horse had been a gift from the citizens of Rennes. She was smiling.
What the smile cost her, only a few knew.
Isabeau rode a black pony, and had contrived to keep herself tidy. Once she would have exclaimed in open delight at the color and movement, the smell of rare perfume, of spiced wine and hand-pies roasting. But now she took it in silently.
The king and his royal sister Marguerite were waiting to greet them.
Anne could not see Julien Moreau. Henri and Louis would be watching for him, and Elesbed had gone out quite anonymously with the commons of Rennes to search for him.
“Easier for me,” she had said cheerfully. “No one will look twice.”
Anne had caught a fleeting envy on Isabeau’s face; her sister would never know that freedom even once in her life. But Isabeau did not speak of it. Anne had not thought it would pain her so much to see Isabeau growing up.
For the first time, outside the gates of Rennes, Anne met Charles of France, called by some the Affable.
He was hardly older than she and exquisitely dressed, with a good-natured face, long-chinned and button-nosed, a missing incisor when he smiled, brown marks running up his teeth.
His pockmarks were pits of darker color in his flushed face.
His gaze lingered on the fillet in her hair. He said, “I have heard of this talisman, Madame, and have greatly desired to see it. Is it true you embroidered it with your own hands, from the hair of a unicorn’s mane?”
Anne said, “It is true, Sire.”
“Then,” said Charles happily, “you shall soon have more hairs for your working. Perhaps you will embroider my hat with it, so everyone will marvel at us.”
She could not pretend to misunderstand, but she said, delicately, “If the hairs are sent me and I can do anything to please you, kinsman, I shall, as a mark of friendship between our realms.”
Another man might have returned a sharp riposte to her delicate verbal parry; he merely waved a dismissive arm and wished her knights luck in the joust. He was cheerful, untroubled, indulgent. Affable, in fact.
The two parties separated and were escorted to their raised seats, heavily cushioned, with awnings for shade, the French on one side of the lists and the Bretons on the other, their backs to the city wall.
The gates of Rennes were open now and a steady stream of ordinary folk spilled out, already glazed and greasy with hand-pies, dipping their cups into the great vats of chilled hypocras, everyone chattering.
Agreeing to this tourney had bought her and Maximilien time, bought her the complaisance of the people of Rennes, who were beside themselves with delight.
She had every eye she could muster on the lookout for treachery, for signs of sorcery.
And if there was treachery, her men on the walls would fight the harder in their fury.
But still she wondered if she’d chosen rightly, agreeing to this. She did not know all that a sorcerer was capable of.
And she still did not see Julien Moreau.
Charles of France had been delighted with the idea of presiding over a chivalrous contest upon this field of war since the moment he heard of the scheme.
As they took their places, Marguerite discovered that Charles was delighted with the duchess too: her dark eyes and ravishing mouth and the moon-white thread of the unicorn’s mane.
Seated in his great chair, Charles said, to eager nods from the young men of his household, “No wonder the unicorn liked her. I think I will like her, when we are married. Such a bosom!”
“As you say,” said Marguerite. “All the more reason to wed her quickly.”
“Straightaway,” said Charles.
Marguerite was pleased, and had her mouth open to say so.
“As soon as we have come home with the unicorn’s horn,” added Charles, and Marguerite ground her teeth.
She was frantic to get out of Brittany, to go home, to see her husband, her baby daughter.
Even now, when she closed her eyes, she had visions of that red-walled chapel and Moreau’s eyes, hardly seeing her, snatching at her instead, full of desperate defiance, forgetting entirely who she was.
Her body was bruised, her pride outraged, her heart afraid.
She should have had him dragged off and killed.
But she had not. He was indispensable to this most vital scheme, and if she tried to have him killed and failed, what was to stop him coming to her again in secret, dragging her back into the wild unseen places of the world, to be lost to all her kin?
She had dreamed of power, of the glory she’d lost when Charles was crowned. But, dazzled, she had forgotten that this power was not really hers.
Forgotten how the chronicles said the Lost Lands drove men mad.
The crowd stretched upon the field in every direction, making a noise to fright the birds to silence.
French infantry and washerwomen and camp-followers mingled with the street-sweepers and pasty-sellers of Rennes, with the rich tradesmen, the burghers, the diviners and prelates sweating in the stands.
They trampled the green below to mud and called to their friends.
And why would they not revel, Marguerite thought. They thought that the king and the duchess had decided to replace the real war with this spectacle, and then the siege would be over.
Poor fools.
Banners bearing the golden hedgehogs of the duke of Orléans drooped in the hot sun beside Anne’s snowy ermines.
The brother, Avaugour, was wearing his black ermines and sea-serpents; he had some lady’s scarf trailing from his lance, and his frog-head helmet was topped by a perfect explosion of dyed plumes.
The Bretons cheered him. Marguerite rested indifferent eyes on the spectacle, wished fleetingly that this was to be an ordinary joust, with the usual sweaty, boastful feast to follow.
In the midst of all the hubbub was the great tilt, the barrier that kept the jousters apart, made of light wood wrapped in bright ribbons. The knights paraded, saluted their sovereigns, and then the first contestants took their places in the lists.
Henri broke a lance upon the Bastard of Foix, and Louis of Orléans unhorsed his kinsman Edmond of Amboise, to screams from all the watchers.
The common people delighted in watching the men who governed them roll in the dust for their entertainment.
Louis saluted Anne as he rode away, and Anne nodded back with dignity, telling herself she was merely flushed from the sun.
She began to think that no disaster would attend this tourney at all.
Then a knight on the Breton side took his place in the lists.
A man she did not know.
And this time the herald was silent, for this man had no banner, no device. His destrier was spectacular. Big, hard bones under rolling muscle; deep chest, short back, straight legs that made light of their own caparison. A heroic sight.
Except that this knight rode in a different daylight.
The sky overhead was puffed with dry cloud, yet rainwater gathered in dimpled drops upon the etched surface of his breastplate and ran like tears down the metal, from helm to gorget to the barding of his horse. The crowd began to whisper.
The herald did not speak.