Isabeau was not to be put off. “Orléans saved us for you.”
They were crossing the lowered drawbridge now, with burghers and city fathers ranged to greet them. “Because he thought he owed it to Father,” Anne said. She was trying not to blush.
“I don’t think so,” said Isabeau. “Why would Orléans do a senseless thing for Father now that he’s dead? He did it for you.”
Anne could not possibly have answered. Sacrifice was always somethingshewas bound to do; that the duke had done it instead filled her with bewildered warmth. She was glad that the whirl of their entrydrowned further speech. The Guardhouse, the ducal residence, had been kept against her return; its linens were aired, and the leaded glass windows glittered like passementerie in the torchlight. Anne was instantly plunged into the realm’s business, and she was glad of that too. It stopped her from remembering.
She had spent her childhood rambling from Nantes to Rennes and palaces in between; most courts were peripatetic. But Rennes was where the justiciars worked, where the chamber of accounts wrote out its reports, and where the sovereign might convene the Breton estates—a body that met only at her will—to discuss the realm’s business. This body comprised lords and prelates and burghers, chosen by their fellows and charged to advise her. Anne had hardly passed her own door before she unearthed a secretary, who wrote out a summons of the estates to the great hall of the Guardhouse.
Everyone within range of her summons came the next day, prompt to his hour, collecting in ones and twos, passing along God knew what rumors that had attended Anne’s flight from Nantes. Anne received her guests herself, and they packed the great hall of the Guardhouse to hear her.
With Henri beside her, Anne poured wine with her own hands and greeted many of them by name, and when the pleasantries were over, she told them in plain speech why she had come.
In the end she said, “I will not subject the city to this violence of a siege without your consent, but the alternative is to yield at once to Charles of France and be made vassals.”
She fell silent. Henri gave her a quick, reassuring look, and Madeleine, acting as maid-of-honor, poured her out a fresh cup.
The estates muttered among themselves. Anne saw their eyes returning, over and over, to the white-embroidered fillet, which had come with her from Nantes and now held back her veiled hair. Finally the eldest of the burghers addressed her unexpectedly. “We have heard a strange tale that followed you from Nantes, Highness, but we know not if we can credit it.”
“What is this tale?” said Anne. She felt her heart begin to sink.What garbled version would have come to them of the chaos of her last days in Nantes? What would they think of her in consequence?
“That—we do not understand how it happened—but that a sea-dragon appeared in the garden of the castle in Nantes, and you tamed it.” His face wanted to be skeptical, but his gaze kept straying back to her hair.
Anne, startled, managed to say, “I grew from childhood on tales of the sea-drakes of Keris that heeded the word of men. So I spoke to this—creature—in our own tongue, and it heeded me.”
“It heeded the trueborn sovereign,” said a low voice. Mutters of agreement went round the room.
The Rennais had been plying the roads and rivers of their cold green country for years uncounted before the Romans ever marched west. They had long memories. They knew what the duchess was asking of them and what it might cost. Rennes had been besieged during the last war of succession, had almost been taken by sappers digging under the city walls. Only by fortunate chance had their great-grandfathers heard the tunneling, had countermined and killed the intruders. They understood what it would mean for war to come under the walls of Rennes.
Anne waited.
At length, one said, “Highness, if your marriage stands, will we not be vassals of the Holy Roman Empire?”
Anne said, “Maximilien of Austria has resigned all claim to Brittany after his death and promised also that whoever inherits his title will not also be duke of Brittany. As he has a son from his first marriage, I hope very much that my firstborn son will be raised here and inherit the duchy in his own right.”
She was glad they could not know how much her palms sweated, how much she regretted this precipitate arrival, with no husband, with no Austrian army camped in the pastures by the western gate to give substance to her far-reaching plans. But there was the unicorn’s mane in her hair, and also this tale of the sea-drake. She could see that both had struck them deeply. It lifted her heart that they might followher because of her own deeds, not merely because of her birth or their duty. Another said, “Is it certain that Maximilien of Austria will come to our aid, Highness?”
Her answer was measured. “He and I are married in law, and he owes us his protection. The contracts will be provided for your perusal. And”—her mouth went dry, but she said it evenly—“my lord of Orléans, whom you remember as a friend of my father’s, has gone to hasten my husband’s arrival. I have done all I can. But my lord of Austria is a chivalrous prince, and I believe he will keep his word.”
“We had heard that Orléans was in the pay of France,” said the eldest. “Can he be trusted?”
More glances flew around the room. Louis of Orléans had cut a fine swath through Brittany in the days of Anne’s father, but they all knew the terms of his capture, his imprisonment, and could probably guess the terms of his release, and that he’d broken them.
“He can be trusted,” said Anne. She didn’t want to give them details. Her face suddenly felt hot.
On and on they wrangled, but Anne, sensitive as a weathervane, could sense the room turning in her favor. They had crowned her, and it went against their pride for France to come and say they could not now have their chosen sovereign.
“Very well,” said the eldest at last. “We shall prepare for a siege and for the coming of Maximilien of Austria. God be with us, and with him. And with you, Highness.”
When Anne smiled, the room cheered.
She feasted them all afterward, had fresh wine poured, took time for merriment. She told them, laughing, of the unicorn-hunt, and the confusion of France. It was well past Vespers when they went away at last, and Anne, smiling still through her exhaustion, knew that, for the moment, she had their trust.
But the hall of the Guardhouse felt empty when they had gone. The servants were drawing the cloth from the boards. Her guests’ voices seemed to echo on the flagstones. Anne had drunk a glass of wine too many; it made her unsteady when she and Henri climbed toher suite above. Henri was full of plans to man and defend the city walls. Anne smiled and listened and tried not to feel that her very conception of the world had turned fragile as old cobweb. She was still surprised by stray shadows when she turned her head too quickly, and sometimes she fancied her skin burned where the silver blood had splashed her. Moreau would be riding with the French army, a danger she did not know how to counter.
There was a solar over the great hall, a sitting room built to take the summer light, with her bedchambers adjoining. It was nearly bare, since it was not ordinarily furnished and Anne had not been able to bring any household goods. But someone had unearthed a great sheepskin rug, and on this Elesbed and Isabeau were sitting knee to knee before the fire. It had wanted only the absence of nurse and tutor and strict routine for an unbreakable friendship to spring up. When Anne walked in, Isabeau was asking, in fascinated tones, “But what was itlike,this castle in the Lost Lands?”
“I don’t know. It was so dark,” said Elesbed, biting a knuckle. “Moreau said it was called the castle of Never-Was. I don’t know why. I think maybe the korriganed built the castle. It didn’t make any sense. A mortal’s mind wouldn’t have thought to build anything that way at all. It had very beautiful rooms, but Butter wouldn’t let me go into any of them. Butter made me go through these dark places instead and scratched me with her paw until I listened to her. Suddenly I saw a fire, and then I saw the duchess. My mamm always said that cats know more than we think.”
