Chapter 30
Chapter
Anne was taken, courteously but firmly, to the Guardhouse and locked in her chambers, with only French, none of her own attendants. She had begged Marguerite of France, whose face was blank, with blood on her nails where she had not cleaned it away, to find her younger sister.
Polhaim was dead.
And Henri—where was Henri? A prisoner of the Lost Lands? Anne almost stepped into the shadows to search for him. But if she did, Marguerite would learn of her gifts. She was being carefully watched. Anne didn’t know what would happen to her then. She kept still.
No word came, but then, as dusk was falling, Louis of Orléans startled her by entering her chamber quite openly, with Isabeau and Elesbed running before him. For an instant Anne forgot the conquest beating its steel wings outside; she ran to her sister and clutched her in her arms.
Then she straightened, wiping her eyes. “What has happened?” she asked Louis. “Are you a prisoner?”
Louis looked as tired as the rest of them.
“Not yet,” he said. “Though I cannot stay. I got to Charles before Marguerite could get to me, and threw myself upon his mercy. The king pardoned me with the greatest good nature, and we rode into the city together. Isabeau was hiding with her servant in the shadow of the city walls. Charles took them up. He has always been kind.” He added a little bitterly, “Though there is no telling that I might not be a prisoner tomorrow, if my lady of France has her way. What happened?”
Anne told him. His face grew grimmer as she spoke. Before she had done, Isabeau broke in. “Have you betrayed us, then?” she demanded.
“No,” said Anne, not taking her eyes from Orléans. “For he knows it is better to stay near the king of France than be taken alone to a locked tower.”
Louis made no answer. “Moreau is dead, then?”
“I don’t know. Gone, certainly.”
He added, very low, “Are you contemplating a great escape?”
“No,” she said, understanding him. “If I leave Rennes now it means I have abdicated, and that I will not do. I am watched, I cannot even look for Henri.”
“What happened to him?”
“He isn’t dead,” said Anne, low and fierce. “He isn’t. He’s lost. He’s in the Lost Lands.” She was almost sure that it was true. She willed it to be true. She wanted to cry, but everything was yet cold inside her.
She said, “Are you all right?”
He smiled, without humor. “For now. I am in Charles’s good graces.
He has had a soft spot for me ever since he was a boy and I his gallant uncle.
Marguerite is angry, but Charles has all the stubbornness of the indolent.
” Louis shrugged. “I’d have got out of Bourges sooner if only I could have reached Charles. ”
“You told him you would speak with me to urge his suit, didn’t you?” said Anne. “That’s why they let you come in to see me.”
He hesitated and then nodded. “As I said, I cannot stay.”
She couldn’t look at him. She could hardly comprehend how quickly everything had changed. Maximilien was coming. But what could his army do, with Rennes taken and Anne captured? Nothing. Perhaps he would simply turn around and sail home.
“You will do what you can, and so will I,” Anne said to Louis at last.
He nodded gravely. “But I want you to make me a promise.”
She straightened. “What is it?”
“When you go to look for Henri in the shadows, you will take me with you.”
“I am not—” That was a lie. “I promise,” she said.
He nodded once, and left her there.
Marguerite wondered if she had killed Moreau.
She thought she had. He had not been found.
Her knife had gone in deep. Perhaps he had gone forever down the wild byways his power opened for him, and there died.
But his absence was a prickling terror in the back of Marguerite’s mind, and she could not stop looking over her shoulder and searching for him in the shadows.
Diviners fell ill when they divined for him, without success.
And still Marguerite could not leave Brittany, could not go home.
The duchy lay within her grasp; she had but to close her fingers quick enough.
Maximilien was coming. There was no time to waste.
And still Charles would not take the wretched girl to bed because he wanted to hunt a unicorn!
La Trémoille was abetting him in this, and so, Marguerite suspected, was Louis of Orléans, whose motives she did not trust in the least.
In exasperation, she went to Anne, early on the day after the tourney, and said without preamble, “Put this folly of unicorn-hunting out of Charles’s head.”
Anne’s smile was a little whimsical. “How could I? For such a lover of sport as he?”
“Make him, or I swear you will regret it.”
Anne had been embroidering, with nothing else to occupy her in the locked room. Now she put her silks aside and said gently, “I regret many things, cousin. Including the fact that I have no influence with the king.”
“Make him, or I will tell him that there is doubt of your virginity.”
There—damn the girl—finally. A flicker of eyelids. But Anne said, “There is not.”
“I will tell him that you have concealed the extent of your deformed hip. That it might impede child-bearing.”
Some of the fresh color had left Anne’s face, but she said, picking up her embroidery again, “Ask a physician, then. Send one of your own. Send four.”
Marguerite leaned closer. “Physicians can be bribed. Babies born to others can be passed off as one’s own. The court will want to see for itself.” She saw Anne understand. Saw her swallow once. Hated herself in that moment, but she was desperate. Let the girl yield. Let this be over.
“I will not pretend to misunderstand you,” said Anne. There was no color in her face anymore, but her voice was steady. “But I fear that I will not impede the king’s pleasure, which is to hunt unicorns.”
“Or your pleasure—which is to delay, even after you are beaten.”
Anne said nothing.
“I fear you will regret this,” said Marguerite. It was a fact, not a threat.
Anne said nothing.
Marguerite said, “Very well,” and went straight to her brother.
Amiably, Charles agreed to Marguerite’s proposal that Anne’s fitness for queenship be judged in public, for of course there must be no doubts.
Best to get it out of the way and then they would all eat their victory feast. Then the hunt would go to Brocéliande.
A day’s hunting, a unicorn taken, and he and the duchess married. All would be well.
Marguerite was not sure that all would be well. But she could think of no other way to break the duchess’s will.
She even let Louis go and tell the duchess what awaited her, so that Anne would have ample privacy to urge him to do something rash. Or perhaps he would do the rash thing all by himself. Perhaps that would be best. She very much wished to drive a wedge between Louis and Charles.
Louis came to Anne late, after Isabeau had gone to bed. “You must leave Rennes,” he said. “You went to Maximilien once; go back to him now.”
She didn’t move. “Marguerite told you, I suppose. It’s just a threat to force me to put this idea of unicorn-hunting out of Charles’s head. But I won’t do it. It’s all right.”
He crossed the room, knelt at her feet. “She means to humiliate you. Strip you in public. Do you think all the court does not know the real reason? This is not about child-bearing. This is because you defied them.”
“I know.”
He took both her hands. “You need not endure it. You know you need not.”
“There is nowhere to go,” she said firmly. “If I leave Rennes now, I will be instantly deposed. I cannot go. You know she’s doing this because of you also, to make you angry at Charles, to pry you loose from him.”
Louis was silent.
Anne said fiercely, “You can do nothing for me or yourself if you are sent away from the king. You must stand and watch tomorrow, and that is all.”
There was a cold fire such as he’d never seen in her eyes. She said, “His Majesty agreed to it because his mind does not go so far as to imagine any other person’s feelings. And the rest of the court, well…”
“They will enjoy it,” said Louis, trying to make her understand. “A harmless spectacle, and they will only be amused if you weep.”
“As though I would,” said Anne. Her smile was almost convincing. “Truly, this is for the best. After all, the king would have taken me to France to marry me already, except that you and I and La Trémoille are keeping it in his head that he must go unicorn-hunting.”
“Anne.”
She leaned forward. “I am not beaten and I shall not break,” she told him, though her eyes were afraid, and her voice was not quite steady. “And neither shall you.”
Anne of Brittany did not act as she ought, Marguerite thought. But when had she ever? She was childish when she ought to be serious, too clever by half when her youth and inexperience ought to have worked against her.
At the hour that had been set for her public examination, Anne swept into the great hall of the Guardhouse like a queen into her own throne room, smiling at them all: Charles’s cronies, the priests and diviners, the whole watching court. She made the king a reverence and said, “Sire.”
“Madame.” Charles was staring. She had never been more beautiful. Beside him, the duke of Orléans looked bored.
The duchess said, her voice troubled, “Have the diviners spoken ill of me?”
To Marguerite’s annoyance, Charles was leaning forward, watery eyes bright. “No, no. But we must just make sure of you. For the unicorn-hunt. And to have my sons. Since you were married, which was very wrong of you.”
“It was terribly wrong of me,” said Anne composedly. “Especially since I brought that dreadful man Moreau out of the forest— Oh, forgive me. Was he not your ally? I suppose we can’t choose our allies.”
“He certainly was not!” Charles sat straight up. Anne was going to have Charles in full political debate in a moment, forgetting why they were there. Marguerite signaled to her own maids-of-honor. An interested stir went through the court.