Chapter 30 #2
Anne stood still as her sleeves were untied, her skirt, her bodice, piece by piece, every eye in the hall riveted.
The only sign of her disquiet was her posture, taut as an angry cat.
Finally, when Anne was in nothing but her chemise, her feet and shoulders bare, with their hands reaching for the ties at her neck, she slipped out from between the maids-of-honor, catching one with a cold eye when she would have prevented her.
She walked steadily across the floor.
Anne had high-arched feet and delicate collarbones; her limp was more obvious without her shoes or stockings. As she crossed the open floor, she collected eyes like a herald, but her gaze was on Charles alone.
The startled room held still.
Mummery, thought Marguerite in anger. All this was mummery, just like the Triumphal Entry, yet no one in the room could look away.
Anne came all the way to the king’s chair and knelt.
Her hair was still plaited up in the fillet of unicorn hair.
She looked like a princess in a tale of long ago. Charles hesitated.
Very softly, Anne said, “What kind of innocence does this preserve, my lord, for your hunting? Will not the unicorn see the impress of all these eyes? For no man has seen me before this day, and I swear it upon the Almighty God.”
Now, at last, Marguerite saw Louis move; a tiny twitch of his closed fist. But he did not speak.
“Do you swear it?” Charles whispered to Anne, like a boy exchanging secrets.
She looked steadily up into the king’s face, as though they were alone. He was entranced now. “Yes.”
Charles put his own cloak over her and Anne rose and smiled at him.
When he offered his arm, she took it: perhaps the first gallant thing he’d ever done in his life.
The room sighed, and Marguerite knew, with anger, that Anne would drag this game out to the bitter end, create more chances to ruin all if she could.
Charles still meant to hunt a unicorn, and Marguerite could not yet go home.
And if the duchess wept afterward, Marguerite did not see, and if Louis had bitten blood from his own mouth, watching, she would never know.
Louis was seated at the high table beside Charles of France, where he could watch Anne enter the room for the feasting, fully dressed now, layered like an armored saint, Isabeau beside her.
Anne had asked for the child to be excused, but of course Marguerite would not agree.
This was ritual, this was statecraft; the heirs of Brittany in the keeping now of France.
She must have taken all the gold the French had to buy that dress, Louis thought. It was scarlet and black with gold thread and jewels in her hair and the band of the unicorn’s mane holding the crespine. A small defiance, but he was glad of it.
They all watched her come before them and make a courtesy to the king.
Louis could understand why she had let them take off most of her clothes before she went and hypnotized Charles.
Her performance had been flawless, as good as any traveling player.
They’d seen enough of her to stop baying for her blood.
She had come out with her dignity intact and the king ready to eat out of her hand. Marguerite had been furious.
So had Louis, for quite a different reason.
The duchess and her sister were seated. Charles made a joke that Isabeau, sitting stiff and studious, did not smile at.
The meats came round, the wine. The feast was a glittering thing, funded by the deep-pocketed French, and largely attended by them too.
Marguerite was taking no chances of any Breton noble making an untoward declaration of loyalty.
Orléans knew that assessing eyes were on him, but he would not give them fodder.
He could do that much for her. He conversed with his neighbors and did not lift his eyes beyond.
Would Maximilien continue on to Rennes? Perhaps; it would go against a king’s pride to have his wife taken so.
But what could he do? No one had expected Rennes to fall so fast. Louis ate and conversed with his neighbors, kept his eyes from Anne, made himself agreeable to Charles. Made himself think of nothing.
A stir went through the room. The music stopped.
And in that silence, like that of rabbits when the hawk comes circling, Julien Moreau walked out of nothing into the center of the room. He moved awkwardly; his face was a bad color. Beneath a robe tawdry with frayed embroidery was the bulge of bandages, a bloodstain working its way through.
The room froze.
Then the king’s guard was moving fast, their blades drawn, but the swords fell through a patch of strange daylight and the blades turned to branches bursting with fruit. The guards flung them away, gasping, and dared not advance.
Moreau walked forward, his pallid face shiny with a different daylight. Marguerite wore a look of stark terror.
Moreau said, “Well, here I am after knifings and betrayal. Such foolishness when God created woman for man.” He shook his head. His face was pained. “But I will have my due.”
One step, and Moreau was in the middle of the hall. The next, he was behind the high table, catching Anne round the throat. Next moment, Isabeau had thrown herself across Moreau’s back, yelling and pounding with her fists; she bit him like a dog, grabbing at the wounded place in his side.
Moreau swore, stumbled back. Isabeau fell with him.
“Isabeau!” Anne was still in her place, crying out as Moreau stepped again from nothing into the center of the hall, except now he had the child by the hair.
Isabeau was struggling hard. “Where is Henri—where is my brother?” she screamed at him.
Anne cried, “Let her go. I will go with you if that is what you wish. I will repudiate the duchy and go with you.”
“No, you will not!” said Charles.
Moreau said, “Come, then, if you are so eager.”
Anne moved toward him, but Charles caught her.
Moreau was smiling a pained smile at them all. “I will take this one, for a hostage and a bride, unless the duchess comes.”
“No, you won’t!” shouted Anne, but still Charles held her.
They couldn’t get to him with a blade; they couldn’t shoot arrows in a room so crowded. What, then?
“Give her back,” said Anne, her voice level. “Let her go. I’ll do what you wish. I will.” She was fighting Charles’s grip. But there were more hands holding her back now: La Trémoille had joined Charles of France. She twisted, but they would not let her go.
Moreau shook his head. “So be it,” he said.
Anne fought, but she could not break free. “No,” she shouted to him. “No!”
“Anne!” cried Isabeau.
At that moment, a small, scuttling-quick figure darted across the open floor, and in the breath before the sorcerer and Isabeau stepped away into nothing, seized Isabeau by the hand. The shadows swallowed her too.
And in their wake, a beast appeared in the room.
It was some creature that Louis had never seen.
Horns longer than a man, and great cloven hooves, its coat shaggy and stinking, its head lowered, snorting.
As though it had been rent from some mad, unseen fabric of a lost world.
A parting gift. A stray from the Lost Lands.
Instant pandemonium. The guards came to surround the king. Anne’s eyes met Louis’s, both full of panic. The king was holding on to her; the guards were approaching the monster with pikes and drawn swords.
Louis saw the desperate plea in Anne’s face and did the most insane thing he’d ever attempted in his life.
He plunged forward, though he was unarmed, and knocked down the king with all his weight in the point of his shoulder.
He broke La Trémoille’s wrist and wrenched Anne round the table, clear of all the restraining hands.
The blade of a pike missed his head by a feather.
They fell, rolling, in the center of the hall. His hand held hers, wrist to wrist, and guards were converging. They were going to behead him for this. Unless—
“Anne?” he whispered, and knew she heard. He pulled them both to their feet. Saw the light of another day caught brilliantly in her open eyes. For a breath, he was afraid. But he did not let her go. “Come on,” she whispered.
When she stepped into the quivering air, she yanked him with her.
Then it was suddenly as dark as the birth of the world and they were somewhere else.