Marguerite wondered if she had killed Moreau. She thought she had. He had not been found. Her knife had gone in deep. Perhaps he had gone forever down the wild byways his power opened for him, and there died. But his absence was a prickling terror in the back of Marguerite’s mind, and she could not stop looking over her shoulder and searching for him in the shadows. Diviners fell ill when they divined for him, without success.
And still Marguerite could not leave Brittany, could not go home. The duchy lay within her grasp; she had but to close her fingers quick enough. Maximilien was coming. There was no time to waste. AndstillCharles would not take the wretched girl to bed because he wanted to hunt a unicorn! La Trémoille was abetting him in this, and so, Marguerite suspected, was Louis of Orléans, whose motives she did not trust in the least.
In exasperation, she went to Anne, early on the day after the tourney, and said without preamble, “Put this folly of unicorn-hunting out of Charles’s head.”
Anne’s smile was a little whimsical. “How could I? For such a lover of sport as he?”
“Make him, or I swear you will regret it.”
Anne had been embroidering, with nothing else to occupy her in the locked room. Now she put her silks aside and said gently, “I regret many things, cousin. Including the fact that I have no influence with the king.”
“Make him, or I will tell him that there is doubt of your virginity.”
There—damn the girl—finally. A flicker of eyelids. But Anne said, “There is not.”
“I will tell him that you have concealed the extent of your deformed hip. That it might impede child-bearing.”
Some of the fresh color had left Anne’s face, but she said, picking up her embroidery again, “Ask a physician, then. Send one of your own. Send four.”
Marguerite leaned closer. “Physicians can be bribed. Babies born to others can be passed off as one’s own. The court will want to see for itself.” She saw Anne understand. Saw her swallow once. Hated herself in that moment, but she was desperate.Let the girl yield. Let this be over.
“I will not pretend to misunderstand you,” said Anne. There was no color in her face anymore, but her voice was steady. “But I fear that I will not impede the king’s pleasure, which is to hunt unicorns.”
“Or your pleasure—which is to delay, even after you are beaten.”
Anne said nothing.
“I fear you will regret this,” said Marguerite. It was a fact, not a threat.
Anne said nothing.
Marguerite said, “Very well,” and went straight to her brother.
Amiably, Charles agreed to Marguerite’s proposal that Anne’s fitness for queenship be judged in public, for of course there must be no doubts. Best to get it out of the way and then they would all eat their victory feast. Then the hunt would go to Brocéliande. A day’s hunting, a unicorn taken, and he and the duchess married. All would be well.
Marguerite was not sure that all would be well. But she could think of no other way to break the duchess’s will.
She even let Louis go and tell the duchess what awaited her, so that Anne would have ample privacy to urge him to do something rash. Or perhaps he would do the rash thing all by himself. Perhaps that would be best. She very much wished to drive a wedge between Louis and Charles.
Louis came to Anne late, after Isabeau had gone to bed. “You must leave Rennes,” he said. “You went to Maximilien once; go back to him now.”
She didn’t move. “Marguerite told you, I suppose. It’s just a threat to force me to put this idea of unicorn-hunting out of Charles’s head. But I won’t do it. It’s all right.”
He crossed the room, knelt at her feet. “She means to humiliate you. Strip you in public. Do you think all the court does not know the real reason? This is not about child-bearing. This is because you defied them.”
“I know.”
He took both her hands. “You need not endure it. You know you need not.”
“There is nowhere to go,” she said firmly. “If I leave Rennes now, I will be instantly deposed. I cannot go. You know she’s doing this because of you also, to make you angry at Charles, to pry you loose from him.”
Louis was silent.
Anne said fiercely, “You can do nothing for me or yourself if you are sent away from the king. You must stand and watch tomorrow, andthat is all.”
There was a cold fire such as he’d never seen in her eyes. She said, “His Majesty agreed to it because his mind does not go so far as to imagine any other person’s feelings. And the rest of the court, well…”
“They will enjoy it,” said Louis, trying to make her understand. “A harmless spectacle, and they will only be amused if you weep.”
