Anne hesitated, then pushed it into her sleeve. “Why?” she whispered.
The lady did not answer. “Oh, God!” she cried just as the door burst open. Anne spun toward the sound. No one entered. But the whole chapel changed, grew dark, and now the fire did not flicker along its painted walls. The girl in rose-colored silk stood rigid, but now three other women stood beside her. One was drowned-blue and one was hanged-black, holding her own rope. One threw her headback screaming, for she was on fire, though the fire gave no light. And the girl in the rose-silk robe stared at Anne sadly, and her rose silk bloomed blood from her cut throat and she held a bloody sword. “Beware,” she said, and then all four were gone. The candles burned bright once more.
But the door stayed open, gaping onto nothing. The startled faces of the guards outside peered through the gap. Henri did not sheathe his sword; he strode down the nave and demanded to know what they had seen, and they protested that no one had gone past them.
Polhaim made the sign against evil. He had stayed beside Anne, as though proxy-vows entitled her to his protection. “Are you all right, Highness?” He did not ask what the lady had given her. He did not ask who the other women had been. Could he not have seen? The mirror was heavy where Anne had thrust it into her sleeve.
The bishop said, in revelatory tones, “I think that that was a cursed soul. Highness, you banished it with your holy light.”
That was an—excellent interpretation. Anne hardly knew what had happened. That final glimpse had left her disoriented, nauseated, afraid and trying to hide it. Only one soul. The bishop could not have seen the other women standing dead. She said nothing.
Henri was coming back, having inspected the empty corridor. He sheathed his sword. Polhaim offered Anne his arm. Henri muttered, “Anaon, if I have ever seen one.” Ghosts were not unknown in Brittany. “I knew this place was evil.”
“This place has served its purpose,” retorted Anne, with an effort. She did not want dark rumors to get back to Maximilien. “This night is not over; keep your opinions to yourself.”
According to Austrian law, a proxy-consummation must follow a proxy-wedding, and Anne would have been embarrassed if she weren’t so shaken by the encounter in the chapel. Or if it weren’t so wholly absurd.
She and Polhaim went straight from the chapel to the guesthouse asquietly as possible with the abbey sunk in sleep. Austrian and Breton attendants watched them, rendered mere shadows beyond the strong light of pillar-candles. A screen gave Anne privacy to take off bodice, skirt, and sleeves; she was left in her chemise, shoulders rippling with gooseflesh.
When she came out, Polhaim kept his eyes studiously averted. He wore full armor, with his right leg and right hand bared. Nothing could have been further from the rose-strewn bower of Anne’s girlish dreaming. But her true wedding-night would be watched too. It would be an affair of state, bloodless as a council meeting, except that she must then do it unclothed.
Polhaim managed a smile and helped her into the high bed, so she would not be ungainly, and kept careful space between them. Ceremoniously, even gracefully—courtiers were taught to be always graceful—Polhaim touched his gold-fuzzed knee to hers, ran a foot privily up to her thigh, looked at her solemnly, then hastily got out of bed.
And that was all. He had touched her under those watching eyes. The marriage was legal. Most of the watchers dispersed in silence. Hawiz put a robe round Anne’s shoulders. Madeleine poured out wine. Anne wanted to laugh, yet felt strangely desolate. “Thank you,” she said to Polhaim, who had guarded her dignity and tried to be kind.
Polhaim bowed to her carefully. He looked embarrassed, in his one-legged armor. “It was my honor.”
Henri didn’t think much of these legal antics. Or perhaps he saw that his sister was sad. He said, “Never mind all that. What did you say to that girl in the chapel? Who was she?”
Only Hawiz and her maids-of-honor remained in the room now; their heads tipped to listen. “I don’t know,” said Anne. Polhaim peered abstractedly into his wine, his yellow hair reddened by firelight, but she knew he was listening too. A breath of the uncanny around any woman could be fatal. Even a sovereign.
Madeleine said, “The restless dead are not unknown in old places, Highness. Did you not remark the strange light she walked in?”
“I remarked it,” said Henri darkly. All the Bretons nodded. Brittany was full of ruins that men ought not visit and crossroads that they should not pass and drifting phantoms in antique clothes. Anaon. One knew them because they stood in the light of their own living days, and not in the world as it is.
But Polhaim was from a more rational country; he seemed astonished at their nodding acceptance. “A ghost, Highness?”
“Yes,” said Anne. “A poor shade of long ago. We are a haunted land.” She did not say that this apparition was strange even for Brittany—anaon did not speak as a rule—nor did she mention the mirror. Not in front of Polhaim. She added, smiling, “Enough for one night. We must save some strength for the unicorn-hunt.”
Chapter
6
Hawiz, who had Anne’s confidence,was unsettled by this tale of a mirror. She said, tentatively, “In tales of long ago, when men strayed near the Lost Lands, they saw ghosts more often than not, and sometimes lost objects would drift into the world of men like sea-wrack.” She locked the mirror tight into the bottom of a coffer. “Let us think no more of this thing until we are far away from here.”
Anne agreed. But her sleep was full of nightmarish mirrors, each one showing the terrified face of a woman who was not her.
The next morning, she sat in a troubled stupor while her hair was plaited, and her traveling household stirred to life around her. Only when her abstracted gaze met a pair of half-familiar gray eyes peering at her did Anne come properly awake. Elesbed had something under her arm, and her mouth was sticky. She’d been given a pallet for the night, but evidently she had not stayed there.
Anne said, “Elesbed, come here.”
The child seemed torn between the urge to flee and fascination with Hawiz plaiting up Anne’s hair. The previous day’s food had put color in her face. Someone had chopped off the hopelessly matted, lousy snarls of her hair, and someone else had cut a respectable dress down to size for her. Anne eyed the child’s stickiness and said mildly,“I suppose you were not simply handed a honey-jar in the kitchen before dawn and told to help yourself?”
The girl almost bolted, but somewhat to Anne’s surprise, she stilled and said, “No,” guiltily. “That is—no, Highness.” The word was awkward in her mouth. “But I was looking to see if there were any korriganed and I came upon the jar and it smelt so good. I just meant to shoo away an ant.” The gray eyes appealed to Anne’s good nature. “They say anaon was abroad last night and my gram told me that is always the fault of the korriganed.”
Firmly, Anne said, “There are no more korriganed. If you are to live here in this abbey with the holy sisters, you cannot steal their honey.”
The child’s eyes grew huge. “I cannot stay with the sisters! If the korriganed come back, I shall be eaten. They eat youreyes.”
