by Trisha Telep
“A mark of gold!” the Vicomte spat. “Absolutely not.”
“Of course we must kill the unicorn,” said Dufosset. “That is the purpose of the hunt!”
“Not at that price,” said the Vicomte. “It’s outrageous.”
Gitta remained impassive. “And yet it is the price. Unicorns are scarce, in France and elsewhere, and this one has been with the Order for quite some time. She’s very well-trained. I assure you, she can feign an excellent death, should you desire.”
“I desire—” said Dufosset, “to see the creature’s head on a pike.”
“That will cost you eight ounces of gold,” Gitta replied, keeping her voice even. Outside at the hitching post, Enyo felt her distress, and Gitta sent soothing thoughts in the unicorn’s direction. She had been through these negotiations before. Officially, the price for a dead unicorn was only four ounces of gold, but these French squires did not know that, and Rome was very far away.
The Vicomte turned to the girl. “My dear, I shall not have this interloper wasting your father’s money on some trifle.”
“And I shall not allow our family tradition to be reduced to some cheap bit of playacting,” said Dufosset. “If we are to have a unicorn hunt, then by God we shall kill a unicorn.”
No, Gitta would kill Enyo, if they paid her price. Adolphe Dufosset could give her one mark of gold or twenty, but he would never deliver the death blow himself.
The girl looked at Gitta. “Perhaps,” said she, her voice trembling, “the hunter has a suggestion for pursuing this alternative. I do not relish the thought of anyone butchering an animal in my lap.”
Ah, so she was fastidious as well as soft. The perfect combination for disaster. The girl would be lucky if Enyo didn’t run her through at their first meeting. “Most families are satisfied with a symbolic slaying,” is what Gitta said aloud.
The girl gave her a look of annoyance, which Gitta ignored. Far too good to sully her silk gowns with unicorn blood, but still concerned with family pride? Ridiculous. Had the girl any real family pride she would have learned to be a hunter. But it was unlikely she had the ability to do so—so few maidens did anymore, despite what their family crests might say. And then there were those like Gitta: no surname of distinction, but still worth ten of these silk-encased porcelain dolls.
“Shall we carry symbolic spears and knives, then?” said Dufosset. “Perhaps wooden swords. Or toothpicks? Is this whole thing to be nothing more than a pageant?”
“Ideally,” grumbled the Vicomte. “Right now it is nothing more than a delay tactic.”
“I am trying to honor our family heritage, my lord. Traditionally, a de Commarque wedding is marked with a unicorn hunt. Surely you cannot begrudge my cousin and me of that, given our recent tragedy.”
The Vicomte snorted and turned away.
Adolphe smiled at Gitta in triumph. “We will pay the mark. Make what preparations you must.”
Gitta kept her face impassive. “Yes, sir. I will need a few days to prepare—the maiden.” She gestured awkwardly at the girl.
“My name,” said the girl, “is Elise de Commarque.”
Gitta merely bowed her head.
***
Elise de Commarque, the daughter of the former Le Seigneur de Commarque, stood before her wardrobe and frowned. The unicorn hunter had summoned her down to the courtyard to test her against the unicorn, whatever that meant. She’d told Elise to wear something she didn’t mind getting dirty.
As if Elise owned the type of rags that this Sister Maria Brigitta traveled the countryside wearing: that worn brown bed-skirt and scarf, and that horror of a torn gray petticoat. This was absurd. Elise had half a mind to call down to the servants’ wing and ask them to send up a smock.
Eventually she compromised on her oldest gown and a torn apron she’d been meaning to deliver to the rag basket. As her maid helped her dress, her pug dog, Bisou, wove in and out between her feet and tugged on the bottoms of her skirts. She scooped him up in her arms and buried her face in his soft fur. Bernard had already informed her that his father the Vicomte did not allow dogs in his house. She would have to leave Bisou behind. And who knew if she and Bernard would ever return here? Perhaps, once they had children...
With Bisou safely stashed in the crook of her arm, Elise went down to the courtyard to meet this hunter and her animal. The servants were still nowhere to be seen. The woman stood holding the unicorn on a chain, and as Elise entered, it looked up and began to growl.
“I knew it,” the older girl grumbled, then stopped. “Wait. Is that a dog in your arms?”
“Of course.” Elise patted Bisou on the head. The poor thing was trembling and clawing at his mistress’s sleeve.
“Take it away!” the hunter exclaimed. “You are destroying the test. You might as well have brought Enyo a bloody ham.”
The unicorn snapped its jaws and lunged. Bisou squealed. Elise grasped him and fled, racing through the house and back up the stairs to her room. Bisou leaped from her arms and darted beneath the bed. Elise gasped, yanking at her stays until she could breathe again. The hunter had set the monster on her.
Eventually, she squared her shoulders and marched back downstairs. Sister Maria Brigitta of the Order of the Lioness could have as much contempt as she wished for her French hosts. But she could not mistreat her in her own house. Elise’s father never would have stood for it, so neither would Elise de Commarque.
Back in the courtyard, she found a scene of carnage. The unicorn had caught one of the lawn peacocks and was engaged in tearing it to shreds. The hunter stood apart from the spatters of blood and calmly sharpened her knives.
Elise screamed, covering her hands with her mouth. The unicorn paused, its snout a mess of gore and green feathers, dropped the carcass of the bird, and began to approach her. The hunter glanced over. Spikes of greasy black hair had escaped her scarf and hung in her amber-colored eyes.
“Sister!” hissed Elise, freezing where she stood. “Your ... animal.”
“Sorry,” said the hunter. “Enyo was hungry, and after the dog ... well...” She shrugged. “Was the peacock worth so very much?”
But Elise had forgotten about the peacock entirely. She backed up a step, whimpering as the beast drew near. If she reached out, she could almost touch its long, sharp horn. But then the unicorn stopped, lowered its head, and knelt. Elise was so surprised, she almost curtsied in return.
Across the courtyard, the unicorn hunter stood, her knife gripped firmly in her rough, weathered fist. “Touch her,” she commanded.
Elise obeyed, not for the sake of the hunter, but for that of the unicorn. There was something in its eyes. Something she’d seen before in Bisou, or in her father’s horse Templar, or in Noir, the cat who lived in the kitchen. She leaned and slid her fingers along the unicorn’s brow. Its hair was softer than she’d thought it would be. Tangled and filthy, to be sure, but silky and fine. The unicorn, still bowing before her, bleated.
“I don’t believe it,” said the hunter. “You are a daughter of the blood.” Her tone was one of awe, but her expression remained locked in a scowl.
Elise withdrew her hand and somehow resisted wiping it off on her apron. “Of course. We traditionally hunted unicorns. That is why you are here.”
The hunter laughed. “My lady, do you know how many great houses I visit where they claim their girls are daughters of the blood?”
Elise chose not to respond. The de Commarque claim was true. What did she care about some other house? “Does this make your task easier? To—train me for this, I mean.”
“Yes,” replied the hunter stiffly. “It shall be easier if you hold Enyo still while I kill her.”
“Enyo,” said Elise. “That is the animal’s name?”
The hunter looked away. “Yes.”
“Enyo,” repeated Elise. The unicorn looked up at her, its eyes watery with age. “I have never heard that name. Is it German?”
“Greek.” The unicorn hunter made a small s
ound in her throat, and the animal snapped to her side, a move so quick Elise was surprised she could follow it. “It is the name of one of Ares’s companions.”
Elise smiled as the hunter crouched low over her unicorn, pressing her scarved head against the animal’s neck. “That is nice. I am not familiar with this Ares. My doggie’s name is Bisou. You know—”
“I know what it means,” the older girl hissed, straightening. “And Ares, you illiterate prig, is a god of war.”
Elise blinked in shock. No one had ever been allowed to speak to her in such a manner. And now, this—this nun, with her dirty clothes and rusty-handled knives and filthy animal with its strange, foreign name—
“Forgive me, my lady,” said the hunter, her rage vanishing as quickly as it had flared up. She bowed her head. “I should not have said that. It was uncharitable.”
And untrue. Elise had read—well, a large part of the Bible. And a whole book on herbs. In Latin, no less! Plus her elementary readers, and a history of France. Lots of books. “You forget yourself, Sister,” she said, her tone haughty.
The hunter nodded, eyes still cast downward. “I beg your pardon, my lady. I am used to a degree of camaraderie among my fellow hunters. Your power took me by—” she trailed off. “You’re right. I’m very sorry. I am tired, from my travels. And ... hungry.”
Elise sighed. “Go around to the kitchen. They’ll see to your food and find you a place to sleep. It’s two days yet until the wedding and the hunt. I assume you will be able to teach me better starting tomorrow?”
The hunter stared at the ground.
Elise snapped her fingers and the older girl looked up. “I trained for ten years to become a unicorn hunter,” Gitta said. “But if we only have a day, we will have to settle for teaching you how to stay alive.”
***
The cook gave Gitta a pallet in a room with two scullery maids—an offer Gitta might have accepted if she didn’t have Enyo to think about. Her living arrangements in the Cloisters hadn’t been better, but there, at least, she and the other hunters kept their pet zhi by their sides at night. If left unchecked, Enyo would eat the scullery maids, and Gitta might even let her. After all, the poor thing deserved a good last meal, and from the look of the scullery maids, they wouldn’t mind shrugging off their miserable mortal coils.
Enyo remained hungry. That peacock had been nothing more than a scrawny snack. Perhaps she should have let the zhi eat that stupid dog as well. With any luck, Elise de Commarque would have had Gitta and Enyo driven from the house, and then no one could blame Gitta for her failure to complete her mission. They could take off again—go somewhere new. Somewhere wild.
Instead of the pallet, Gitta took Enyo out into the forest beyond the fields and gardens surrounding the château, and slept with her there, her arm curled tightly around the animal’s throat. She’d only had the unicorn for a year, but Enyo had lived with hunters for all her life. She’d been given to Gitta by Sister Maria Artemisia when she’d left the order to care for her widowed niece. Gitta had recently lost her third zhi, Brunhild, to a village festival near Seville. The villagers had attempted to eat the meat of the corpse. Gitta had refrained from warning them against it, for which her superiors in the Order had reprimanded her harshly, though the villagers’ illness had only lasted a few weeks. Artemisia took pity on her, though. The old nun was pushing fifty, and knew what it was like to outlive one’s unicorns. Enyo, Artemisia had explained when she passed the animal over, was old and wouldn’t mind dying so much. Gitta soon learned differently. Enyo might be old and frail and nearly blind, but she was every bit as fierce as her namesake. Together, they’d survived three of these so-called hunts thus far.
How sad, then, that Enyo would be sacrificed for some petty ceremony that no one in this de Commarque house seemed to actually want.
This wasn’t what a hunter was, Gitta reflected as she lay in the dim forest and let the scent of the earth wrap around her. Not what it used to be, anyway. Once upon a time, her sisters had protected estates like this one. They’d come when the residents were threatened by wild unicorns. When a hunt was necessary. Now there was nothing but playacting. It was a disgrace, not only to the Order of the Lioness, but also to the families, whether truly of the blood or otherwise.
The unicorn moaned softly and kicked its hooves in its sleep. Its belly rumbled. It would need to eat something soon. Gitta hoped there were deer in these woods.
She curled her body around the beast’s for warmth. Gitta could speak seven languages and had traveled all over the continent. Why then, here in this little French woods, did she suddenly feel so small?
***
As he did every evening at sunset, Bernard de Veyrac appeared beneath Elise’s bedroom window with a flower twined round a little scrap of paper. And every day, Elise lowered a little basket for him to put the flower in, pulled it back up to the window, and read the poem he’d inscribed on the paper. Today’s was very good, comparing Elise’s breath to violets and her complexion to a lily’s. It was almost as good as the one that said she was more fair and lovely than a summer’s day. It would have been better, perhaps, had he thought to use a violet or a lily as the flower, but instead, he’d tied the note to a morning glory. Odd. Though Bernard seemed to have a way with poetry, her betrothed was sorely lacking when it came to that sort of planning. Foolish trifles of a boy in love, her father had said, but Elise knew better. She’d heard the way the servants talked about Bernard. She’d heard the stories about the peasant girls. Still, the poems were an unnecessary token, given their parents’ wishes. That he took the trouble gave her comfort. Theirs would be a pleasant marriage.
She blew a kiss to Bernard from her window, and he pretended to catch it and press it to his heart. “Six days, my fair Elise!” he cried from the garden, his eyes shining in his handsome face. “Six days until you’re mine!” And then he turned and left, and Elise smiled at him until she noticed he was trampling all the seedlings in her garden with his big brown boots.
“Bernard!” she shouted. “My tarragon!”
He leaped off the plants as if burned and landed squarely in the lavender.
Elise sighed and shook her head as she returned to her supper.
There was a knock at her door and a moment later, Adolphe appeared, powdered and wigged to within an inch of his life. Elise sat calmly by the window as he approached and stooped to kiss her hand. He towered over her, but it was an illusion. The heels of his coral satin shoes had to be at least six inches.
“My dear cousin,” he said. “How are your spirits this evening?”
“Well enough,” she replied. They would have been better had she not heard that five more of Adolphe’s men had arrived at the estate this evening. She hadn’t bothered writing to the Vicomte, though. He no doubt knew already, in that way he had of knowing everything that happened here. Her wedding couldn’t come quickly enough.
She tossed a piece of chicken to Bisou, who was still hiding beneath her sofa. Perhaps the treat would draw him out.
“I worry for you, my dear,” said Adolphe. “Left all alone, in this cruel world—”
“Not for long.” She toyed with the flower in her lap. “Bernard and I shall soon be wed and then—”
“Such a pity your poor father did not live to see that day.” Adolphe’s voice betrayed not the slightest hint of human pity, though he’d shown up quickly enough the day after they’d placed Le Seigneur in the ground. “Do you not think it wise to delay this marriage? We have hardly had the chance to set his affairs in order.”