Anne could not disagree. But she said consolingly, “My first child will be baptized in a cathedral in daylight with flowers, and when that happens there will be peace in Brittany. The rest doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t it? That yellow-haired creature Polhaim is half in love with you,” murmured Henri as they paced together up the aisle. “Didn’t you see his face?”
Anne felt her color rise. “It is easy to be in love with someone you do not know, whom you must rescue from her enemies.” She had encouraged Polhaim, of course; he was Maximilien’s confidant and his courage and dispatch could make or break this scheme. She let hersideways stare convey some of that to Henri, who looked affronted. “Just as you like, go on and break hearts; when I have to kill the fellow who’s finally broken yours, I shall congratulate him before I run him through.”
“Don’t be dramatic,” began Anne, but she had no time for more, because they had drawn near the bishop and the wedding-mass must soon begin.
It was very long and seemed longer because of the hour and their weariness and the mildewed damp of that chapel, the faintly inimical air. Anne stood and knelt and stood again, and all the while her hip wound tighter and tighter. She wished she hadn’t had to do this straight from a day’s riding. Polhaim saw her difficulty, and when next they had to rise, his arm went unobtrusively under hers, helping her stand.
She smiled at him and he flushed. Perhaps hehadfallen in love with her, she thought, though she knew she could not love him. Love was the same as trust for her; it was reserved for Isabeau and Hawiz and De Rieux and Calyx, for the people of her innermost circle. And passion? Passion was for ordinary flesh, not for a body that could be bartered and conquered and offered like territory. She would find Polhaim someone to love him, a clever girl as pretty as he himself.
“What God has joined, let no man put asunder,” intoned the rheumy bishop. Anne raised smiling eyes to her proxy-husband, who kissed her hand. “Very well,” she began. “Shall we—”
She broke off, the question dangling. The door at the far end of the nave was creaking open.
De Rieux had posted guardsspecificallyto prevent interruptions.
But a young woman crept through the gap, wearing an open robe of antique cut. Her hair streamed loose over the rose-colored silk. She stopped to listen at the door, taking no notice of the crowd near the altar.
“What the devil?” muttered Henri. Polhaim wore no sword, but the two young men closed protectively, shoulder to shoulder, a brutish wall of muscle blocking her view.
“Stop that, it’s just a lady,” said Anne, craning around them.
The lady listened with frozen face at the door, one jeweled hand laid trembling on the wood. Then she hurried up the echoing nave. Her feet whispered like wings on the stone, on the graves in the floor. She ran past them all without even a glance, straight to the altar, and half-fell to the floor by the font, burying her face in her arms. Her whole body shook.
“Madame,” the bishop tried. Henri and Polhaim, both trained to fight from childhood, were watching the door warily.
“He’s coming,” the lady whispered. She spoke Breton, but in an odd rhythm. With concentration, Anne could understand her.
“What is she saying?” the bishop demanded.
“Oh, God, help me,” the girl whispered. “He is coming. It was all for nothing. I will die like the others. He cannot find a way for himself; I could not find the way for him.” Her laugh was bitter, muffled against the stone of the grave-strewn floor. The very air seemed to lie wrongly upon the earth.
It was because of the light, Anne realized. The light on the lady. Her clothes and her hair were bright, as though she lay before the altar in daylight. But it was the darkest part of the night.
“God,” the lady whispered. “God, please.”
Anne sidestepped her brother and Polhaim and said clearly, in Breton, “What is wrong?”
The lady had not seemed to hear or to see them until that moment. But when Anne spoke, she raised her head. Daylight shone in that lady’s open eyes, streamed through the ruddy floss of her hair. Anne’s skin was crawling. Henri and Polhaim chorused protest at her back.
“Anaon, are you one of us?” whispered the lady. “I have seen the others sometimes. They comforted me. Our sisters. But I never saw you before. He is going to kill me now. Did he kill you? I am glad I will not be alone at least, my sister. Will you stay with me?” The impossible sunlight lit tears in her eyes.
Anaon were the unquiet dead.
Anne did not know what the lady meant, nor what to say. “I am noghost. We will not let him kill you,” she said at last. “My brother is here; he will not let anyone hurt you.”
Henri tensed: He did not know enough Breton to follow the conversation, but he had registered the words “hurt” and “kill.” “Anne, what is happening?” he said between his teeth. His sword came hissing free of its sheath, never mind the bishop’s protests.
“I cannot see your brother,” said the lady. “And even if I could, he cannot help me. My lord cannot be stopped. Even the korriganed are afraid of him. His power is still growing.”
Anne said, “Who is your lord? Why does he mean to kill you?”
“My husband,” said the girl, so matter-of-factly that Anne, dressed in her proxy-wedding dress, felt all her skin turn cold. “He kills all of us in the end. At least I stole his mirror.” She reached a sunlit hand into her rose-silk robe, beneath the sash, and withdrew an object the size of her palm. It glittered in the light that was not there. “Can you take this? He cannot have it. He ruins everything with it.” The girl was stepping toward Anne—reaching out an arm. All the room shouted, and Henri tried to push in front of her again.
“Be still,”said Anne, pitching her voice to carry. In the startled pause, she reached for the girl. Their fingers touched, and that palm-sized thing, surprisingly heavy, was suddenly fast in Anne’s grip. The girl backed up. Her eyes were as full of death as Anne’s father’s had been when he lay drowning in his blood in that bed at Coiron. “We can help you,” said Anne.
“No, you can’t, fair anaon, candlelight ghost,” said the lady. “Stay in the shadows. But you must keep the mirror.”
