The Lady and the Unicorn (16 page)

The Times

‘Chevalier is too careful and thoughtful a writer to paint by numbers. Although the premise of
The Lady and the Unicorn
superficially resembles that of
Girl with a Pearl Earring,
the more important similarity lies in their author's ability to populate a period setting with subtly rendered, surprisingly complex characters
.’

New York Times

‘Chevalier has a keen eye for period detail and her vocabulary, smells, noises and visions evoke a very atmospheric Paris at the turn of the fifteenth century. Readers will look at tapestries with new insight and a keener eye … in all, a zesty read
.’

Irish Examiner

‘I started in a state of puzzled ignorance about this beautiful but inaccessible work of art, and now find myself loving it. For this, I owe Tracy Chevalier my thanks.’

Country Life

‘Seductions, betrayals, intrigues and small tragedies abound in this rich tale, in which characters are threads woven together against the central canvas, crossing and meeting with more or less intimacy, leaving more or less of them selves in the grand design
.’

Daily Telegraph

III
PARIS
AND CHELLES
Eastertide 1491

NICOLAS DES INNOCENTS

I didn't expect ever to see the tapestries or their designs again. When I paint a miniature or a shield, or design stained glass, I see it only as I work on it. What happens after doesn't concern me. Nor do I think of it after, but go on instead to paint another miniature, or a carriage door, or a Madonna and Child for a chapel, or a coat of arms on a shield. It's like that with women — I will plough one and enjoy it, then find another and enjoy that. I don't look back.

No, that is not wholly true. There is one I do look back to, one I think of all the time, though I've not had her.

Those Brussels tapestries stayed with me for a long time. I would think of them at odd moments — when I saw a posy of violets on a market stall along the rue St Denis, or smelled a plum tart through an open window, or heard monks singing during Vespers in Notre Dame, or chewed a clove seasoning a stew. Once when I was with a woman, I suddenly wondered if the lion in Touch looked too much like a dog, and my staff wilted under the girl's fingers like a limp lettuce.

Most work I quickly forget, but I could recall many details in the cartoons — the long orange sleeves of the servant in Sound, the monkey pulling at the chain around its neck in Touch, the flip of the Lady's scarf as the wind caught it in Taste, the darkness in the mirror behind the unicorn's reflection in Sight.

I had proven something with those designs. Léon Le Vieux now treated me with more respect, almost as if we were equals rather than a wealthy merchant tolerating a lowly painter. Though I still painted miniatures, he began to get me commissions from other noble families for tapestries. He shrewdly held onto the paintings I'd made of the six Ladies, making excuses to Jean Le Viste about returning them, though they were Monseigneur's to keep. He showed them to other noblemen, who told others, and from the talk came demands for more tapestries. I designed other unicorn tapestries — sometimes sitting alone in the woods, sometimes being hunted, sometimes with a Lady, though I was always careful to make them different from the Le Viste Ladies. Léon was gleeful. ‘See how excited people are now, just with the small designs,’ he would say. ‘Wait till they see the real tapestries hanging in Jean Le Viste's Grande Salle — you'll have work for the rest of your days.’ And money for his pocket, he might have added. I was happy, though — if things continued this well I would never have to paint another shield or coach door.

One day I went to Léon's house to discuss a new tapestry commission — not of unicorns, but of falconers out hunting. Léon has done well by his commissions. He has a large house off the rue des Rosiers, with his own chamber for business. Dotted about the room are beautiful objects from far away — silver plates with strange letters scratched onto them, filigree spice boxes from the East, thick Persian carpets, teak chests inlaid with mother-of-pearl. As I looked around I pictured my plain room above Le Coq d'Or and frowned. He has probably been to Venice, I thought. He has probably been everywhere. One day soon, though, I too will have earned enough for such fine things.

As we talked about the commission I sketched a falcon's wings and tail. Then I threw down my charcoal and sat back. ‘With the weather better I may go away when I've finished this design. I'm bored of Paris.’

Léon Le Vieux also sat back. ‘Where?’

‘I don't know. A pilgrimage, perhaps.’

Léon rolled his eyes. He knew my church-going was not regular.

‘Truly,’ I insisted. ‘South, to Toulouse. Maybe all the way to Santiago de Compostela.’

‘What do you expect to find when you get there?’

I shrugged. ‘What one always finds on a pilgrimage.’ I didn't tell him I'd not been on one before. ‘But that's not something your kind know much about,’ I added, to tease him.

Léon didn't bother with such a gibe. ‘A pilgrimage is a long journey for possibly little reward. Have you thought of that? Think of all the work you will give up to go and see — well, very little. A tiny part of the whole.’

‘I don't understand you.’

‘These relics you go to look at. Doesn't Toulouse hold a splinter of our Saviour's cross? How much of a cross can you see in a sliver of wood? You may see it and be disappointed.’

‘I wouldn't be disappointed,’ I insisted. ‘I'm surprised you haven't been on a pilgrimage, good Christian that you are.’ I reached over and picked up one of the silver spice boxes. The filigree was cleverly wound to make a door with hinges and a lock. ‘Where did this come from?’

‘Jerusalem.’

I raised my eyebrows. ‘Perhaps I should go there.’

Léon laughed loudly. ‘I would like to see that, Nicolas des Innocents. Now, you speak of travel. The roads between Paris and Brussels are clear now and I've had word of your tapestries from a merchant I know. He stopped in at Georges' workshop for me.’

Léon and I had not spoken of the tapestries in months. By the beginning of Advent the roads were too poor for most to make the journey easily between Paris and Brussels. Léon had no more word of their progress and I had stopped asking. I set down the spice box. ‘What did he say?’

‘They finished the first two after Christmas and began the next two at the Epiphany — the two long ones. They've fallen behind on them, though. Some in the house were ill.’

‘Who?’

‘Georges Le Jeune and one of the outside weavers brought in for the work. They're better now, but time was lost.’

I was relieved to hear it was not Aliénor. That surprised me. I picked up the charcoal and drew the falcon's head and beak. ‘How do the tapestries look?’

‘Georges showed him the first two — Sound and Smell. The merchant said they are very fine.’

I added an eye to the falcon's head. ‘What about the two they're making now? Where have they got to?’

‘They were weaving the dog that sits on the train of the Lady's dress in Taste. In À Mon Seul Désir they have reached the servant. Of course you can only see a little strip of what they're working on.’ He smiled. ‘A tiny part of the whole.’

I tried to remember the details of the designs. For a long time I knew them so well I could draw them with my eyes shut. I was surprised to have forgotten that a dog sat on the Lady's dress. ‘Léon, get out the paintings. I want to look at them.’

Léon chuckled. ‘You haven't asked to see them in some time,’ he said as he took his keys from his belt and unlocked the teak chest. He pulled them out and laid them on the table.

I looked at the dog in Taste and began to estimate how long it would take the weavers to reach the Lady's face. Claude's face.

It was months since I'd seen Claude Le Viste. I hadn't been inside the house on the rue du Four after returning from Brussels in the summer. There were no other commissions for me there, and the family was at their château near Lyons. At Michaelmas I heard they'd returned, and sometimes stood near Saint-Germain-des-Prés, waiting for a glimpse of Claude. One day I saw her on the rue du Four with her mother and her ladies. As she passed I began to walk alongside on the other side of the road, hoping she would look over and see me.

She did. She stopped then as if she'd stubbed her toe. The ladies poured around either side of her until there was just her and Béatrice left standing in the road. Claude waved on her lady and knelt as if to adjust her shoe. I let a coin drop near her and stepped over to pick it up. As I knelt next to her we grinned at each other. I did not dare to touch her, though — a man like me does not touch a girl like her in the street.

‘I've wanted to see you,’ Claude whispered.

‘And me you. Will you come to me?’

‘I'll try, but — ’

Before she could finish or I could tell her where I lodged, Béatrice and the groom escorting them rushed up to us. ‘Go away,’ Béatrice hissed, ‘before Dame Geneviève sees you!’ The groom grabbed me and hustled me away from Claude, who remained kneeling in the street, her light eyes gazing after me.

After that I saw her once or twice from a distance, but there was little I could do. She was a noblewoman, after all — I couldn't be seen with her out in the street. Though I was keen to have her in my bed, I doubted I could ever get through the guard of ladies around her. I went with other women, but none satisfied me. Each time I finished feeling I was not completely emptied, like a mug with a mouthful of beer still left at the bottom. Looking at the Lady in Taste now made me feel the same way. It was not enough.

Léon reached over to gather up the paintings. ‘
Un moment
,’ I said, laying my hand on À Mon Seul Désir, where the Lady stood frozen with her jewels in her hands. Was she putting them on or taking them off? I was not always sure.

Léon clicked his tongue and folded his arms across his chest.

‘Don't you want to look at them?’ I said.

Léon shrugged. ‘I've seen them.’

‘They don't please you, do they, even though you speak so highly of them in front of others.’

Léon picked up the spice box I'd been playing with and set it back on the shelf with the others. ‘They're good for business. And they will make Jean Le Viste's Grande Salle a room worth feasting in. But no, I am not seduced by your Ladies. I prefer useful things — plates, chests, candlesticks.’

‘Tapestries are useful too — they cover rough walls and make rooms warmer and brighter.’

‘So they do. But for myself I prefer their designs to be purely decorative — like this.’ He pointed at a small tapestry hanging on one wall that was just of
millefleurs
, with no figures or animals. ‘I don't want ladies in a dream world — though perhaps for you they are real.’

I wish they were, I thought. ‘You're too down-to-earth.’

Léon tilted his head to one side. ‘That is how I survive. That is how we have always survived.’ He began to collect the paintings. ‘Are you going to draw something now or not?’

I drew quickly — falcons attacking a heron as men and ladies looked on, with dogs running along the bottom, all to be filled in with
millefleurs
. I had designed enough tapestries now that it all came easily to me. Thanks to Aliénor's garden, I could even draw the
millefleurs
accurately.

Léon watched as I drew. People often do — drawing for them is magical, a show at a fair. For me it has always been easy, but most people who take up the charcoal draw as if they're holding a candle stub.

‘You've learned much over these months,’ he said.

I shrugged. ‘I too can be down-to-earth.’

That night I dreamt of a strip of tapestry with Claude's face on it, and woke sticky. That had not happened in some time. The next day I found a reason to go to Saint-Germain-des-Prés — a friend there could tell me more about hunting with falcons. Of course I could have asked someone on the rue St Denis, but this way I could walk down the rue du Four and look up at the Le Viste house. I had not done that in some time either. The windows were shuttered, though it was only just after Easter and I didn't think the family would have already gone to Lyons. Though I waited, no one came in or out.

My friend was not in either, and I wandered back towards the city. As I passed through the city walls at the Porte St Germain and pushed through the market stalls surrounding it, I saw a familiar woman, frowning at some early heads of lettuce. She was not so fat now.

‘Marie-Céleste.’ I called her name without knowing I'd remembered it.

She turned and looked at me without surprise as I stepped up to her. ‘What do you want?’ she demanded.

‘To see you smile.’

Marie-Céleste grunted and turned back to the lettuces. ‘This one's got spots all over it,’ she said to the man selling them.

‘Find another, then,’ he shrugged.

‘Are you buying those for the Le Vistes?’

Marie-Céleste sorted through the lettuce heads, her mouth a grim line. ‘Don't work there now. You should know that.’

‘Why not?’

‘I had to go away to have the baby, didn't I. Claude was to put in a word for me, but when I came back there was another girl in my place and mistress didn't want to know.’

Hearing Claude's name made me shiver with desire. Marie-Céleste glared at me and I tried to think of something else. ‘So, how is the baby?’

Marie-Céleste's hands stopped moving for a moment. Then she began shifting the heads again. ‘Gave her to the nuns.’ She picked up a lettuce and shook it.

‘What? Why?’

‘I had to go back to my job, to keep my mother. She's too old and sick to look after a baby. It's just what I had to do. Then I didn't even have a job to come back to.’

I was quiet, thinking about a daughter off somewhere with nuns. It wasn't what I expected of any children I might have.

‘What did you name her?’

‘Claude.’

I slapped Marie-Céleste so hard the head of lettuce flew from her hand.

‘
Holà
!’ cried the lettuce seller. ‘You drop it, you pay for it.’