Someone must have seen them; sudden turmoil erupted among the pavilions. A group of riders burst from between the tents, most of them dressed and caparisoned for hunting.
“What on earth?” said Marguerite. Her escort pressed in closer.
Orléans said, “A welcoming-party, I think.” She could not tell if he was amused or dismayed. A girl on a white palfrey called, laughing, to the others, “I saw them first,” just as she came up with them. She dismounted, handed someone her reins, and made an extravagant courtesy, strands of hair coming loose. She straightened, smiling. “Well met, cousin.”
“The honor is mine,” Marguerite said automatically, for this could only be Anne of Brittany, mussed and sweating and modishly dressed; nothing like the stiff paragon of virtue Marguerite had envisioned. Vast, melting eyes, tender mouth, a figure that owed nothing to the dressmaker’s art. At least there would be no objections to the match from Charles, she thought. If Marguerite were the girl’s mother, she’d have been negotiating a marriage for her sooner, not later.
“You have come on a blessed hour, cousin,” the duchess said, looking up earnestly.
Marguerite was off balance, and when was the last time that had happened? “Have we?”
“Oh, yes,” said Anne forthrightly. “Wait, come and ride with meand I will tell you.” She turned back to her palfrey, then frowned. “I do forget it’s harder to remount. Henri—come and help me.”
A tall young man, strapped all over with muscle, wearing a thin silk doublet and an ostrich hat, leaped down from his courser and—without a word, but with a very censorious look—boosted the duchess back into the saddle.
This must be the brother,Marguerite thought. The one deep in the duchess’s councils according to La Trémoille. The baron of Avaugour, Francis’s bastard. “As I was saying, this is a blessed day,” the duchess continued breathlessly as she remounted. “But— Oh, it is my lord of Orléans!” She kissed her hand to Louis and said, “Monseigneur, you are welcome. We had thought you were in prison.”
Was that a barb? Marguerite wondered. Or was the duchess just very naïve?
“So I was,” returned Louis. “Decayed, forgotten, the black hole, bread and water. But quite restored now to the bosom of my dear cousins of France.”
What did Orléans mean by that answer? A warning? Or was it mere irony?
The duchess had noticed nothing. She was still rattling away innocently. “It must have been dreadful,languishingin prison, with all your French relations resenting you for betraying them.”
“Present company excepted,” said Louis, with a bow toward Marguerite.
“Of course,” said the girl ingenuously, misunderstanding him. “You never betrayed Father, that is true. Though he was quite angry with you after all those battles were lost. But now all is forgiven. Come, or we shall be late.”
Had the duchess misunderstood? Or was she needling him?
Was she as wholly guileless as she seemed?
Marguerite couldn’t tell. Her gelding stood stolidly, but she still felt she was being heaved along by a runaway horse. “Late for what, Highness?” They put their horses into a trot toward the pavilions.
The wide eyes turned to her at once, and this time Margueritenoticed the fillet round the girl’s brow. Her breath caught. It was merely a band of cut-velvet, embroidered in white and silver. And yet Marguerite knew, without a word being spoken, that the white thread of its embroidery was the hair of a unicorn’s mane. The thread did not glow, exactly. It merely—caught the light, seized the eye, held it fast. So the rumors were true, then: This rattle-brain had touched a unicorn, and wore the proof upon her person. Dear God, what an heirloom. Would other princes covet it? Covether? How to reconcile it, the pretty, silly face and this proof of highest virtue?
The duchess was answering her question. “Why—late for the Triumphal Entry, of course.”
“Triumphal Entry?” said Louis. Marguerite thought with exasperation that he was swallowing a desire to laugh.
“Oh, yes,” said Anne. She nudged her mare confidingly between them, while the ladies of her escort mingled, chattering, with the riders from the French court. “Because of the unicorn. Didn’t General de La Trémoille tell you of the unicorn? I was sure he would. We are commemorating the occasion. With a Triumphal Entry into Nantes. We shall enter and go in solemn procession to the cathedral and there hear Mass. I am riding that unicorn”—she gestured broadly at the wooden unicorn on the cart—“just so everyone knows how it was when the unicorn appeared in Brocéliande. Though of course I did not ride it then. We thought first to attach a horn to my palfrey so I could ride her, but Jonquil did not care for it. My sister is joining the Entry, and a great escort, dressed for hunting. Oh, it will be famous.”
Marguerite was almost speechless with outrage.
Anne talked blithely on. “And such an Entry—we have also brought the elephants out of the menagerie—did you know my father had bought a pair of elephants before the war? Poor Father. They are a bit old, but very hale, their keeper tells me. And some oxen for carts. Most of the court is riding in the procession and all the merchants’ guilds have made carts and they will be riding too. With banners. We are adding a unicorn to my coat of arms, I think. My guardian says so. And there will be my knights—oh, such an Entry. But—” They hadcome nearer the pavilions now, and Marguerite saw what must be the entire court milling, most of them in the process of putting on costumes worthy of a Twelfth Night. Some girls dressed as mermaids were shouting shrilly that their tails did not fit, and a cupid with a beard had hiked up his toga to scratch. This had clearly gone much further than a mere reenactment of a hunting-party.
Marguerite’s horse pinned its ears, objecting to the mermaids.
“What is that?” asked Louis.
Anne followed his finger. “That? That’s the cart from the carpenters’ guild. It was supposed to represent the city of Keris sinking into the sea. Do you know the story? That man there is dressed as Malgven, the korrigan-queen. He is to sit atop. There will be a King Gralon and a fair daughter Ahèz and also a devilish beast—that boy in the horns—who opened the seawalls and drowned them all. The cart’s got a barrel built in below and it’s supposed to pump water. So that it will gush up from below and flood like Keris in the tale?” Lower, she confided, “But I don’t think it works.”
As they watched, the model-city on the cart emitted a squirt of malodorous water. The boy who was doing the pumping thrust his head out and shot a volley of vile curses before he vanished again.
Louis asked, in fascinated tones, “What have they done to that ox, though?” The ox in question was harnessed stoically in front of the carpenters’ mock-city, wearing a long silver hat.
Anne was impatient. “It is dressed as a sea-drake, like the ones from long ago that had captains like ships and brought treasures to Keris. Would you like to make the Entry too? We can caparison your horses. Do you have hunting-dress? Unless you wish to ride the unicorn with me, Madame? There is room.”
