At that moment, a man alone came stumbling from the wood. Anne and Jonquil both startled back. She did not recognize him. Could he be one of the bright riders? The ones coursing under strong sunlight? But he was on foot. His clothes were torn. He was short and slender, his eyes light and dazed.
Then the stranger took another step, and it was like the unicorn in the glade. All the sunlight left him at once. His hair lay in tight, dark-copper curls, his face bloodless, his clothes heavy and archaic, trousers and surcoat instead of hose.
He crumpled slowly to his knees. “Lady,” he said in strange French, “who are you?”
Holding on to Jonquil’s rein, she said, “Nay, who areyou,Monsieur? Were you in the Lost Lands? Were you hunting the unicorn?”
His reddened lids had opened all the way. His face was garish white. “I—am— I do not— No. I was told to say—not that either. I wanted a way back. But what does that mean? I misremember. What year is it?”
She stared. “Anno Domini fourteen ninety.”
His face went stark with horror. He dropped abruptly to his knees in the moss. “It cannot be.”
“Do not be distressed—” Anne began, but suddenly hoofbeats filled the wood again, and the barking of the dogs. To her inexpressible relief, she heard Henri’s booming voice calling her name. She answered.
Her own court burst into view. Henri dropped from his horse in an instant, already taking off his cloak to put over her wet gown, wrapping her tight, holding her in the crook of his arm. “Anne, what in Heaven’s name—?” The dogs were giving the call that meant they’d lost the unicorn’s trail. Anne hoped devoutly that they never found it.
De Rieux was off his horse an instant later. “Are you well? Highness? What happened? Who is this man?” He stood on her other side, another warm presence, full of concern.
She managed a smile for him. “Like mother hens, all of you. I am well.”
La Trémoille had not dismounted; he circled on his sweat-streaked horse. “Where did it go? Which direction?”
He was not answered, and then he too saw the stranger, hatless, with his disheveled silk, kneeling in the moss, his face wet. “Who is this man?”
“I mean no harm,” said the stranger in stiff, strangely accented French, and staggered to his feet.
Anne said, “I do not know him; he came through the wood—I think he is ill.”
“Was it an assignation?” demanded La Trémoille with a startling want of logic. “Have you schemed to thwart—?” He broke off. His face was whitening under the flush of exertion.
De Rieux said to Anne, “This man might have been a brigand, better not to have got off your horse, Highness. And your gown—what has happened?” Thankfully, most of the ruin was under Henri’s cloak. Anne disliked appearing before her court with a wet skirt and loose hair, hardly able to keep her feet. Her maids-of-honor came galloping up; tried to help dry her. Madeleine, flushed with riding and anxiety, exchanged worried glances with Henri.
“Where is the unicorn?” demanded La Trémoille again. “The hounds lost the scent.”
“It fled,” said Anne.
Tell them the rest? Yes.For no one in Christendom will ever wonder why I tarried in Brocéliande if I emerge with a lock of a unicorn’s mane.
In her open hand it lay like raw silk, loosely knotted, luminous with a moonstone light. Murmurs became exclamations. Henri whistled low between his teeth. She said, “The unicorn is a holy creature. It gave me a lock of its mane and I have put my hands upon it. I do not think it right that we should kill it.”
La Trémoille said, “God has given us all the beasts of the field to kill.”
Almost she said,Just as he gave you my lands to pillage?
But then the stranger spoke, swaying on his feet. “Forgive me. Am I among men?”
After a startled pause, Henri said, “You are, sir. In the duchy of Brittany.”
The stranger closed his eyes. “And you say it is the year fourteen ninety?”
Henri again answered courteously. “Yes.”
A burly knight caught the stranger’s elbow, else he must have fallenagain. The stranger said, “Know then that I am a man like other men. But I strayed into the Lost Lands two hundred years ago, and I am lost now to all I loved.”
Then he fell on his face in the moss, heedless of their startled exclamations, his arms over his head, and spoke no more. When many hands lifted him up and the physician pried up his eyelids, they found that he had swooned quite away.
Part
