The Lady and the Unicorn (14 page)

‘Less talk, more thought to your work,’ Georges said. ‘Or we'll be at this till nightfall.’

It was not as long as that, though. We were finished at last, and I could go and sort out dinner.

‘
Viens
, Aliénor,’ I said. ‘You can help me choose the pie that smells best.’ Aliénor loves going to the baker's house.

‘Please, Madame, I'll fetch one for you if only you'll let me have some as well,’ Madeleine said.

‘It's scorched lentils for your dinner, girl. You just fetch the men some drink when you're done here and then get to scrubbing that pot.’

Madeleine sighed, even though Nicolas winked at her. Georges Le Jeune frowned again. When Nicolas took a step back and put his hands up as if to show that he hadn't touched her, I suddenly wondered at my son and Madeleine. Perhaps Nicolas had seen something I hadn't.

I looked over Aliénor as we left. She keeps herself well but sometimes she gets soot on her cheek and doesn't know it, or, as I found now, cherry twigs in her hair. She is fair enough, with long gold hair like mine, a straight nose and a round face. It is just her big empty eyes and her crooked smile that make people sorry to look at her.

Aliénor held my sleeve just above my elbow as we stepped along the rue Haute. She is spry on her feet and those who don't know her don't guess, just as Nicolas did not. She knows her way so well that she doesn't really need me to guide her, except for the dung or slops from chamberpots that she would tread through or have flung on her, or the horses that bolt. Apart from that she walks through the streets as if angels were leading her. As long as she has been there before, she can find a place. Though she has tried to explain how she does it — the echoes of her footfalls, the counting of the number of steps, the feel of the walls around her, the smells to tell her where she is — her surefootedness is still a miracle to me. She prefers not to walk alone, though — she would rather hold my arm.

Once when she was a girl I did leave her alone. It was a market day in autumn, and the Place de la Chapelle was heaving with people and wares — apples and pears, carrots and pumpkins, bread and pies and honey, chickens, rabbits, geese, leather, scythes, cloth, baskets. I saw an old friend who'd been abed many weeks with a fever, and she and I got to wandering and gossiping to catch up. I didn't even notice Aliénor was gone until my friend asked after her and I felt then that her fingers weren't on my sleeve. We looked everywhere and finally found her standing in the middle of the bustle, dead eyes teary, moaning and wringing her hands. She'd stopped to fondle a lamb skin and let go of my sleeve. It is rare to see her blindness get the better of her like that.

Ahead of us I could smell the baker's wife's beef pies. She puts juniper berries in them, and stamps the crust with a jester's laughing face. That always makes me smile.

Aliénor was not smiling. Instead she was wrinkling her nose, her face screwed up with misery and disgust.

‘What's the matter?’ I cried.

‘Please, Maman, can we go to the Sablon, just for a moment?’ Without waiting for my answer, she pulled me into the rue des Chandeliers. Even upset, she had still counted her steps and knew where she was.

I stopped. ‘The baker's wife will stop selling soon — we don't want to miss her.’

‘Please, Maman.’ Aliénor kept pulling my arm.

Then I smelled what she already had underneath the beef and juniper. Jacques Le Bœuf. Suddenly that foul stench was everywhere. ‘Come.’ Now I was pulling her along. We reached the rue des Samaritaines and were ducking into it when I heard Jacques call, ‘Christine!’

‘Run,’ I whispered, and put my arm around her shoulders. We stumbled over the uneven stones, bumping into walls and passers-by. ‘This way.’ I pulled her to the left. ‘The Sablon's too far — let's go to the Chapelle instead. He's not likely to look there.’ I led her quickly through the
place
, where the stall keepers were packing up to go home to their dinners.

We reached the church and ducked inside. I pulled Ali-énor into the Chapel of Our Lady of Solitude not far from the door and pushed her to her knees where a pillar would block Jacques Le Bœuf's view if he came in. I knelt and whispered a prayer, then sat back on my heels. We didn't say anything for a time but let our breaths go quiet. If it hadn't been Jacques we were running from, I might have laughed then, as we must have looked comical. But I did not — Aliénor's face was full of woe.

I looked around. The church was empty — Sext had ended and people were at home eating. I like the Chapelle well enough — it is big and light with all its windows, and it is very close to us — but I prefer the Sablon. I grew up a stone's throw from its walls, and it has served the weavers in this area well. It is smaller and made with more care, with better stained glass and stone animals and people peering down from the outside walls. These things are lost on Aliénor, of course — the best parts of a church mean nothing to her.

‘Maman,’ she whispered, ‘please don't make me go to him. I would rather join a convent than live with that smell.’

That smell — of the fermented sheep's piss they soak the woad in to fix the colour — is what has kept woad dyers marrying their cousins for many generations. In Aliénor Jacques Le Bœuf must see fresh blood as much as a dowry and a tie to the workshop of a fine
lissier
.

‘How can I live with that stink just to produce a colour I can't even see?’ she added.

‘You work on tapestries you can't see either.’

‘Yes, but they don't smell bad. And I can feel them. I can feel the whole story of them with my fingers.’

I sighed. ‘All men have faults, but that is nothing compared with all that you get from them — food and clothing, a house, a livelihood, a bed. Jacques Le Bœuf will give you all of those things and you should thank God that you have them.’ I sounded more forceful than I felt.

‘I do, but — why shouldn't I have a man more to my liking, as other women do? No one else wants him, the smelly brute. Why should I?’ Aliénor shuddered, her body rippling with disgust. Hers would not be a happy bed with Jacques Le Bœuf, I could see that. It was hard to think of his blue hands on my daughter's body without shuddering myself.

‘It's a good business match,’ I said. ‘If you marry Jacques you will help his woad business and your father's workshop. He'll get steady orders from Georges, and Georges will get cheaper blue from him.
Tu sais
, your father and I married so that our fathers' workshops would be combined. My father had no son, and chose Georges as his own by having him marry me. That hasn't stopped us from making a good marriage.’

‘Mine is not a business match,’ Aliénor said. ‘You know it's not, Maman. You could have married me to any other business — one of the wool merchants, or a silk merchant, or another weaver, or even an artist. Yet you would have me be with the one man with so many faults of his own that he will overlook mine.’

‘That's not true,’ I said — though it was. ‘Anyone can see how useful you are to us, that your blindness doesn't stop you from keeping a house and helping in the workshop and growing your garden.’

‘I've tried so hard,’ Aliénor muttered. ‘I've worked so hard to please you, but in the end it's made no difference. What man would choose a blind girl over someone with eyes that aren't broken? There are many girls in Brussels who will be chosen before I am, just as most men will be accepted before Jacques Le Bœuf will. He and I are what is left when the barrel is empty. That is why we are meant to have each other.’

I said nothing — she had done my arguing for me, though she did not look persuaded. Her brow was crumpled and she was wringing out a bit of her skirt. I placed a hand over hers to stop them. ‘Nothing's decided,’ I said, pushing her hands away and smoothing the crushed cloth. ‘I will talk to your father. Anyway, we need you for these new tapestries — we can't spare you just yet.
Tiens
, Jacques must be gone by now. Let's get to the baker's house before they eat our pie.’

The baker was home already, and the family sitting down to eat. I only got his wife to sell us a pie by promising her a basket of peas from Aliénor's garden. There were no beef pies left, only capon. Georges does not like those so much.

When we were close to our house, Aliénor shied like a horse and clutched my arm. The sheep's piss stench was there — Jacques Le Bœuf must have been coming to see Georges when he first spied us on the rue Haute. Of course he chose the hour when we eat for his visit so that we would have to feed him.

‘Go and stay with the neighbours,’ I said. ‘I'll come and get you when he's gone.’ I led her to the door of the cloth weaver two houses from us and she slipped inside.

Jacques was drinking beer with Georges in the garden. Unless it is very cold we always take him there when he visits. I suppose he must be used to such treatment. Nicolas' paintings of Sound and Smell were still tacked up on the wall, but the painter was gone. Jacques Le Bœuf has that effect wherever he goes. ‘Hello, Jacques,’ I said, stepping into the garden to greet him and trying not to gag.

‘You ran away from me just now,’ he rumbled. ‘Why did you and the girl run away?’

‘I don't know what you mean. Alienor and I were just going to the Chapelle to pray before we stopped at the baker's house. We had to hurry before the baker shut, so we were running, but not from you. You will stay to dinner,
bien sûr
— there's pie.’ Unbearable or not, asking him to stay was the decent thing to do, especially if he was to be our son-in-law.

‘You ran away from me,’ Jacques repeated. ‘You shouldn't have done that. Now, where's the girl?’

‘She's out — visiting.’

‘Bien.’

‘Jacques wants to talk to us about Alienor,’ Georges interrupted.

‘No, I want to talk to you about your pitiful order for blue in these tapestries.’ Jacques Le Bœuf gestured at Sound. ‘Look at that — hardly any blue there, especially with all those flowers. This taste for
millefleurs
will be the death of me, all red and yellow. And even less blue in this one, it looks like.’ He peered at Smell, sketched out but only the Lady's face and shoulders painted. ‘You told me there would be much more blue in these tapestries — half of the ground would be blue for grass. Now it's just islands of blue, and all this red instead.’

‘We added trees to the designs,’ Georges replied. ‘The blue in them will make up for most of the missing grass.’

‘Not enough — half of the leaves are yellow.’ Jacques Le Bœuf glowered at Georges.

It was true that we had changed the amount of blue we were ordering from him. Now that we had one of the designs to scale, Georges and I had sat down the night before and worked out how much we would need for all of the tapestries. Georges had sent Georges Le Jeune around this morning to tell Jacques Le Bœuf.

‘The designs have changed since we first spoke,’ Georges said calmly. ‘That often happens. I never promised you a certain amount of blue.’

‘You misled me, and you'll have to make up for it,’ Jacques insisted.

‘Will you take your pie out here?’ I cut in. ‘It is nice to eat outside sometimes. Madeleine, bring out the pie,’ I called inside.

‘Jacques, you know I can't guarantee quantities,’ Georges said. ‘That's not how the business works. Things change as we go.’

‘I'm not supplying you with any blue until you agree to what I ask for.’

‘You will deliver that wool tomorrow, as promised.’ Georges spoke slowly, as if explaining something to a child.

‘Not until you make a promise too.’

‘Promise what?’

‘Your daughter.’

Georges glanced at me. ‘We haven't discussed this with Aliénor yet.’

‘What's to discuss? You give me her dowry and she'll be my wife. That's all there is to say to her.’

‘We need Aliénor yet,’ I interrupted. ‘These tapestries are the biggest commission we've taken on, and we need everyone working. Taking away even Aliénor may mean we can't complete them in time, and then that will mean no orders of blue to you at all for them.’

Jacques Le Bœuf ignored me. ‘Make your daughter my wife and I'll supply you with blue wool,’ he said as Madeleine brought out the pie and a knife. She was holding her breath so that she wouldn't breathe in his smell, but she let it out in a surprised huff when she heard what he said. I frowned and shook my head at her as she dropped the pie on the table and hurried back inside.

‘Christine and I need to discuss it,’ Georges said. ‘I'll give you my answer tomorrow.’

‘Good,’ Jacques said. He picked up the knife and cut himself a large wedge. ‘You give me the girl and you'll get your blue. And don't try to go to other woad dyers — they know me better than they know you.’ Of course they did — they were all cousins.

Georges had been about to cut himself some pie, but paused with the knife held over the crust. I closed my eyes so as not to see the anger in his face. When I opened them again he had plunged the knife tip into the pie and left it sticking straight up. ‘I have work to do,’ he said, getting up. ‘I'll see you tomorrow.’