The Lady of the Rivers (14 page)

The kitchen servants have loaded their essentials onto a line of wagons; we are bringing food as well as hens, ducks, geese, sheep and a couple of cows that will walk behind the wagons to give us fresh milk every day. The hawks from the mews are loaded on their own specially made carriage, where they can perch, blinded by their hoods; and the leather curtains are already tied down to shelter them, so they are not frightened by the noise of the road. My lord’s deerhounds will run alongside the procession, his foxhounds whipped in at the rear. The master of horse has all the work-horses harnessed to the wagons, and all the spare riding horses are bridled and in the care of a groom who rides one horse and leads one on either side. And this is only half the procession. The wagons, carrying the essential goods to make us comfortable tonight when we stop at Senlis, have already gone; they left at dawn. And amid all this noise and chaos Richard Woodville comes smiling up the stairs, bows to my lord and to me and says, as if hell were not boiling over in the yard, ‘I think we are ready, my lord, and what they have forgotten, they can always send on.’

‘My horse?’ the duke asks. Woodville snaps his fingers and a waiting groom brings my lord’s great war horse forwards.

‘And my lady is going in her litter?’

‘Her Grace said she wanted to ride.’

My lord duke turns to me. ‘It is a long way, Jacquetta, we will go north out of Paris and sleep tonight at Senlis. You will be in the saddle for the whole day.’

‘I can do that,’ I say, and I glance at Woodville.

‘She’s a strong horse, you chose well,’ he says to my husband. ‘And the duchess is a good rider, she will be able to keep up. It would probably be more pleasant for her than jolting around in her litter, though I will have it follow behind us, so if she gets tired she can change.’

‘Very well then,’ the duke agrees. He smiles at me. ‘I shall enjoy your company. What d’you call your mare?’

‘I call her Merry,’ I say.

‘God send that we are all merry,’ he says, stepping on the mounting block to haul himself into the saddle. Woodville takes me by the waist and lifts me up into my saddle, and then stands back while my lady in waiting bustles forwards and pulls the long skirts of my gown so they fall down either side, hiding my leather riding boots.

‘All right?’ Woodville asks me quietly, standing close to the horse as he checks the tightness of the girth.

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll be just behind you, if you want anything. If you get tired, or need to stop, just raise your hand. I’ll be watching. We will ride for a couple of hours and then stop to eat.’

My husband stands up in his stirrups. He bellows
‘À
Bedford!’ and the whole stable yard shouts back
‘ve;
Bedford!’. They swing the great gates open and my lord leads the way, out through the crowded streets of Paris, where people stare as we go by and cry out for alms or favours, and then through the great north gate, and out into the country towards the narrow seas and England, the unknown shore that I am supposed to call home.

My lord duke and I ride at the head of the procession so we are not troubled with dust, and once we are away from Paris my husband judges that we are safe enough to go before the armed guard so it is just him and me, Woodville and my lady in waiting riding out in the sunshine as if for pleasure. The road winds ahead of us, well travelled by English merchants and soldiers going through the English lands from the English capital of Paris to the English castle of Calais. We stop to dine at the edge of the forest of Chantilly where they have set up pretty tents and have cooked a haunch of venison. I am glad to rest for an hour in the shade of a tree; but I am happy to go on when Woodville orders the guard into the saddle again. When my husband asks me if I would like to complete the journey sitting in my litter drawn by the mules, I tell him no. The afternoon is sunny and warm, and when we enter the green shade of the forest of Chantilly we put our horses into a canter and my mare pulls a little and is eager to gallop. My husband laughs and says, ‘Don’t let her run off with you, Jacquetta.’

I laugh too as his big horse lengthens its great pace to draw neck and neck with Merry, and we go a little faster, and then suddenly, there is a crashing noise and a tree plunges down, all its branches breaking together like a scream, over the road in front of us, and Merry rears in terror and I hear my husband bellow like a trumpet,
‘À
Bedford! ’Ware ambush!’ but I am clinging to the mane and nearly out of the saddle, slipping backwards, as Merry plunges to the side, terrified by the noise, and bolts, madly bolts. I haul myself into the saddle, cling to her neck, and bend low as she dashes among the trees, flinging herself to right and left, fleeing where her own frightened senses prompt her. I cannot steer her, I have dropped the reins, I certainly cannot stop her, I can barely cling on, until finally she slows to a trot, and then a walk, and then blows out and stops.

Shakily, I slip from the saddle and collapse to the ground. My jacket has been torn by low-hanging branches, my bonnet knocked from my head and is flapping on its cord, my hair is falling down, tangled with twigs. I give a little sob of fear and shock, and Merry turns to one side and nibbles at a shrub, pulling at it nervously, her ears flicking in all directions.

I take hold of her reins so she cannot dash away again, and I look around me. The forest is cool and dark, absolutely silent but for birdsong from high in the upper branches, and the buzz of insects. There is no noise of marching men, creaking wagons; nothing. I cannot even tell where I have come from, nor how far I am from the road. Merry’s headlong flight seemed to last for a lifetime, but even if they were close at hand I would not know in which direction. Certainly, she didn’t go straight, we twisted and turned through the trees and there is no path for me to retrace.

‘Goddamn,’ I say quietly to myself like an Englishman. ‘Merry, we are completely lost.’

I know that Woodville will ride out to find me, and perhaps he can follow Merry’s little hoof prints. But if the falling tree was an ambush then perhaps he and my husband are fighting for their lives, and nobody yet has had time t think about me. Even worse, if the fight is going against them, then perhaps they will be captured or killed and there will be no-one to search for me at all, and then I am in danger indeed: alone and lost in a hostile country. Either way, I had better save myself if I can.

I know that we were travelling north to Calais, and I can remember enough of the great plan in my husband’s library to know that if I can get myself onto the north road again there will be many villages, churches, and religious houses where I can find hospitality and help. It is a road well travelled and I am certain to meet a party of English people and my title will command their assistance. But only if I can find the road. I look on the ground around us to see if I can trace Merry’s hoof prints and follow them back the way we came, and there is one hoof print in the mud, and then another, a little gap where the leaves cover the ground, but beyond it, the trail picks up again. I take the reins over her head and hold them in my right hand, and say in a voice I try to make sound confident, ‘Well, silly girl, we have to find our way home now,’ and I walk back the way we came with her following behind me, her head bent, as if she is sorry for the trouble she has caused.

We walk for what seems like hours. The tracks give out after a little while, for the floor of the forest is so thick with leaves and twigs that there are no prints to follow. I guess at the way, and we go steadily, but I am more and more afraid that we are wandering lost, perhaps even going round in circles like enchanted knights in a fairy-tale forest. Thinking this, I am hardly surprised when I hear the sound of water and turn towards it and we come to a little stream and a pool. It is almost a fountain, so round and banked with green moss. I have a moment when I think perhaps Melusina will rise from the magical pool to help me, her daughter; but nothing happens so I tie Merry to a tree and wash my face and drink the water, and then I bring her to the stream and she drops her white head and sucks up the water quietly, and drinks deep.

The trees have made a little glade around the stream and a beam of sunlight comes through the thick canopy of leaves. Still holding Merry’s reins, I sit down in the sunshine to rest for a few minutes. In a moment, I think, I will get up and we will put the sun on our left and walk steadily; that will take us north and must take us, surely, to the Paris road where they will, surely, be looking for me. I am so tired, and the sun is so warm, that I lean back against a tree trunk, and close my eyes. In minutes I am fast asleep.

The knight left his horse behind with his comrades, and followed her tracks on foot through the forest, a burning torch held before him, calling her name; calling her name over and over. The forest was unearthly at night; once he caught a glimpse of bright dark eyes and stepped back with an oath and then saw the pale rump of a deer slide away into the shadows. As the moon came up he thought he would see better without the torch, doused it on the ground in the thick leaf mould, and went on, straining his eyes in the silvery half-light. Bushes and trees loomed up at him, darker in the gloom, and without the yellow torchlight he felt he did not want to shout out loudly for her, but instead walked in silence, looking around him all the time, a fear gripping at his heart that he had failed to teach her how to ride, that he had failed to train the horse, that he had failed to tell her what to do in just these circumstances, that he had failed to predict that such a thing might happen: that he had utterly and comprehensively failed her.

At this thougt, so awful to him since he had sworn privately that he would serve and protect her to death, he stopped still and put his hand to a tree trunk to support himself, and bowed his head in shame. She was his lady, he was her knight, and at this, the very first test, he had failed; and now she was somewhere lost in the darkness and he could not find her.

He raised his head, and what he saw made him blink his eyes, what he saw made him rub his eyes, to see without a doubt, without a shadow of a doubt, the glimmering white light of an enchantment, a chimera, and at the heart of it, gleaming, a little white horse, alone in the forest. But as it turned its head and he could see its profile, he saw the silvery horn of a unicorn. The white beast looked at him with its dark gaze, and then slowly walked away, glancing over its shoulder, walking slowly enough for him to follow. Entranced, he stepped quietly behind it, guided by the flickering silvery light, and seeing the little hoof prints that shone in the dead leaves with a white fire, and then faded as he walked by.

He had a sense that he should not try to catch the unicorn; he remembered that all the legends warned that it would turn on him, and attack him if he came too close. Only one being in this world can catch a unicorn, and he had seen the capture in half a dozen tapestries and in a dozen woodcuts in story books, since his youngest boyhood.

The little animal turned off the path and now he could hear the splashing sound of water as they came upon a clearing. He bit his tongue on an exclamation as he saw her, asleep like a nymph, as if she were growing in the wood herself, at the foot of the tree as if she were a bank of flowers, her green velvet dress outspread, her brown bonnet like a pillow under her golden hair, her face as peaceful in sleep as a blossom. He stood waiting, uncertain what he should do, and as he watched, the unicorn went forwards, lay down beside her and placed its long head with the silver horn gently in the lap of the sleeping maid, just as all the legends had always said that it would.