The Lady and the Unicorn

by Tracy Chevalier

  ‘No.’

  ‘In the Grande Salle?’

  ‘No.’ My suggestions were annoying her, even as her hesitation annoyed me. I turned and looked at the river again, stifling my desire to shout at her. It's always better to be patient with Béatrice.

  Two men were fishing in a boat not far from us. Their lines were slack but they didn't seem bothered — they were chatting and laughing about something. They hadn't seen us and I was glad, for they would have bowed and moved away if they had known we were there. There is something cheering about seeing an ordinary man happy.

  ‘It was in your husband's chamber,’ Béatrice whispered, even though there was no one to hear but me.

  ‘Sainte Vierge!’ I crossed myself. ‘How long was she alone with him?’

  ‘I don't know. Just a few minutes, I think. But they were — ’ Béatrice stopped. I really did want to shake her.

  ‘They were?’

  ‘Not quite —’

  ‘Where in Heaven's name were you? You were meant to be keeping an eye on her!’ I had left Béatrice behind with Claude to keep her out of such mischief.

  ‘I was! She gave me the slip, the silly thing. She asked me to fetch her —’ Béatrice rattled her rosary — ‘oh, it doesn't matter. But she didn't lose her maidenhead, Madame.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes. He was not — not yet undressed.’

  ‘But she was?’

  ‘Only partly.’

  As angry as I was, part of me wanted to laugh at Claude's brazenness. If Jean had caught them — I couldn't bear to think of it. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I sent him running! I did.’

  She hadn't — I could see it in her face. Nicolas des Innocents had probably laughed at Béatrice and taken his time leaving.

  ‘What are you going to do, Madame?’ Béatrice said.

  ‘What did you do when he left? What did you say to Claude?’

  ‘I told her you would be sure to speak to her about it.’

  ‘Did she beg you not to tell me?’

  Béatrice frowned. ‘No. She laughed in my face and ran off.’

  I gritted my teeth. Claude knows only too well how valuable her maidenhead is to the Le Vistes — she must be intact for a worthy man to marry her. Her husband will inherit the Le Viste wealth one day, if not the name. The house on the rue du Four, the Château d'Arcy, the furniture, the jewels, even the tapestries Jean is having made — all will go to Claude's husband. Jean will have chosen him carefully, and the husband in turn will expect Claude to be pious, respectful, admired, and a virgin, of course. If her father had caught her — I shivered.

  ‘I will speak to her,’ I said, no longer angry at Béatrice but furious at Claude for risking so much for so little. ‘I will speak to her now.’

  The ladies had already gathered my daughters in my chamber when Béatrice and I returned. Petite Geneviève and Jeanne ran to greet me as I came in, but Claude sat at the window playing with a little dog in her lap and would not look at me.

  I had forgotten why I'd had the other girls called to my chamber. But the two of them — especially Petite Geneviève — were so eager to see me that I had to make up something quickly.

  ‘Girls, you know that the roads will soon be clear of mud and we'll go down to Château d'Arcy for the summer.’

  Jeanne clapped her hands. Of the three she most liked our stay each year at the château. She ran wild there with children from the nearby farms, and hardly wore shoes the whole summer.

  Claude sighed heavily as she cupped the lapdog's face in her hands. ‘I want to stay in Paris,’ she muttered.

  ‘I have decided that we will have a May Day feast before we go,’ I continued. ‘You may wear your new dresses.’ I always had new dresses made for the girls and my ladies at Easter.

  The ladies began chattering at once, except for Béatrice.

  ‘Now, Claude, come with me — I want to look at your dress. I'm not sure of the neckline.’ I walked to the door and turned to wait for her. ‘Just us,’ I added as the ladies began to stir. ‘We won't be long.’

  Claude pursed her lips and didn't move, but continued to play with her dog, flopping its ears back and forth.

  ‘You will come with me or I'll rip that dress apart with my own hands,’ I said sharply.

  The ladies all murmured. Béatrice stared at me. ‘Maman!’ Jeanne cried.

  Claude's eyes widened and a look of fury crossed her face. Then she got up, pushing the dog from her lap so roughly that it yelped. She walked past me and through the door without a glance. I followed her rigid back through the rooms separating hers from mine.

  Her room is smaller than mine, with less furniture. Of course she doesn't have five ladies with her for much of the day. My ladies need chairs and a table. They need cushions and footstools and fires, tapestries on the walls and jugs of wine. Claude's room simply has a bed dressed in red and yellow silk, a chair and small table, and a chest for her dresses. Her window looks onto the courtyard rather than towards the church as mine does.

  Claude went straight to her chest, pulled out the new dress, then threw it on the bed. For a moment we both gazed on it. It was a lovely thing, made of black and yellow silk in a pomegranate pattern, with a pale yellow overdress. My new dress used the same pattern, though as the under-dress, with a deep red silk covering it. We would look striking together at the feast — though now that I thought on it, I wished we would be wearing completely different dresses so that there would be no comparisons.

  ‘There's nothing wrong with this neckline,’ I said. ‘That's not what I want to speak to you about.’

  ‘What, then?’ Claude went and stood by the window.

  ‘If you continue to be rude I'll send you to live with your grandmother,’ I said. ‘She'll soon remind you to respect your mother.’ My mother would not hesitate to take the whip to Claude, heiress to Jean Le Viste or no.

  After a moment Claude muttered, ‘Pardon, Maman.’

  ‘Look at me, Claude.’

  She did at last, her green eyes more confused than angry.

  ‘Béatrice told me what happened with the artist.’

  Claude rolled her eyes. ‘Béatrice is disloyal.’

  ‘Au contraire, she did exactly as she should. She is still my woman, and her loyalty is to me. But never mind about her. What ever were you thinking? And in your father's chamber?’

  ‘I want him, Maman.’ Claude's face cleared as if there had been a storm there and now the clouds had been blown away.

  I snorted. ‘Don't be absurd. Of course you don't. You don't even know what that means.’

  The storm returned. ‘What do you know of me?’

  ‘I know that you're not to mix with the likes of him. An artist is little better than a peasant!’

  ‘That's not true!’

  ‘You know too well that you will marry the man your father chooses. A noble match for a nobleman's daughter. You aren't to go ruining that with an artist, or with anyone.’

  Claude glared at me, her face full of spite. ‘Just because you and Papa don't share a bed doesn't mean I too must be dry and hard as a shrivelled old pear!’

  For a moment I thought I would hit her across her plump red mouth so that it bled. I took a deep breath. ‘Ma fille, it's clearly you who knows nothing of me.’ I opened the door. ‘Béatrice!’ I bellowed so loudly it carried throughout the house. The steward must have heard it in his storerooms, the cook in his kitchen, the grooms in the stables, the maids on the stairs. If Jean were in he would certainly hear it in his chamber.

  There was a short silence, like the pause between the lightning and the thunder. Then the door to the next room burst open and Béatrice came running through, the ladies behind her. She slowed when she saw me standing in the doorway. The ladies stopped at intervals in the room, like pearls on a string. Jeanne and Petite Geneviève remained in the doorway to my chamber, peeking out.

  I reached for Claude's arm and pulled her roughly to the door s
o that she was facing Béatrice. ‘Béatrice, you are now my daughter's lady-in-waiting. You are to remain with her at all hours of the day and night. You will go with her to Mass, to market, to visits, to the tailor's, to her dancing lessons. You will eat with her, ride with her, sleep with her — not in the closet nearby but in her bed. You will never leave her side. You will stand by her when she pisses in the pot.’ One of the ladies gasped. ‘If she sneezes, you will know it. If she belches or farts, you will smell it.’ Claude was crying now. 'You will know when her hair needs combing, when her courses run, when she cries.

  'At the May Day feast it will be your task, Béatrice, and all my ladies, to see that Claude comes close to no man there, either to speak to him or dance with him or even to stand next to him, for she cannot be trusted. Let her have a miserable evening.

  ‘First, though, the most important lesson my daughter must learn is respect for her parents. To that end you are to take her immediately to my mother's at Nanterre for a week — I will send a messenger to tell her she may be quick with the whip if she needs to.’

  ‘Maman,’ Claude whispered, ‘please don't — ’

  ‘Quiet!’ I looked hard at Béatrice. ‘Béatrice, come in and get her packed.’

  Béatrice bit her lips. ‘Yes, Madame,’ she said, lowering her eyes. ‘Bien sûr.’ She slipped between me and Claude and went over to the chest full of dresses.

  I stepped from Claude's room and strode towards my chamber. As I passed each lady she fell in line behind me until I was like a mother duck leading her four ducklings. When I reached my door my other daughters were standing together, heads bowed. They too followed me when I passed. One of the ladies shut the door. I turned around. ‘Let us pray that Claude's soul may yet be saved,’ I said to their solemn faces. We knelt.

  II

  BRUSSELS

  Whitsuntide 1490

  GEORGES DE LA CHAPELLE

  I knew the moment I saw him that I wouldn't like him. I don't normally judge so quickly — I leave that to my wife. But when he walked in with Léon Le Vieux he looked around my workshop as if it were some slummy Paris street rather than the rue Haute off the Plâce de la Chapelle — respectable enough for a lissier. Then he didn't bother to meet my eye but watched Christine and Aliénor as they moved about the room, him with his well-cut tunic and tight Paris hose. This one is too sure of himself, I thought. He'll be nothing but trouble.

  I was surprised he had come at all. I've been weaving thirty years and never had an artist travel all the way from Paris to see me. There's no need for it — all I want are the artist's designs and a good cartoonist like Philippe de la Tour to draw them large. Artists are no help to a lissier.

  Léon hadn't warned me he would be bringing with him this Nicolas des Innocents, and they came earlier than expected. We were all in the workshop, preparing for the cutting-off of the tapestry we had been weaving. I had detached the cartoon from under the tapestry and was rolling it up to store with the other tapestry designs I own. Georges Le Jeune was removing the last of the bobbins. Luc was sweeping a place clear on the floor where we would lay out the tapestry when we had cut it from the loom. Christine and Aliénor were sewing shut the last slits in the tapestry left between the colours. Philippe de la Tour stood by, rethreading Aliénor's needle, looking for it when she dropped it, finding more slits in the tapestry for her to sew. He wasn't needed at the workshop, but he knew today was the cutting-off and found reasons to stay.

  When Léon Le Vieux appeared at one of the workshop windows that open onto the street, my wife and I jumped up, and she ran to open the door for him. We were surprised that a stranger followed him in, but once Léon had introduced Nicolas as the artist who made the designs for the new tapestries, I nodded and said, ‘You are welcome, gentlemen. My wife will bring you food and drink.’ Christine hurried through the doorway connecting the workshop and the house at the back. We have two houses together, one where we eat and sleep, the other the workshop. Both have windows and doors opening into the street at the front and the garden at the back, to give the weavers clear light to work by.

  Aliénor got to her feet to follow her mother. ‘Tell your mother to bring in some cheese, some oysters,’ I said quietly as she slipped away. ‘Send Madeleine to buy some sweet cakes. And serve them double beer, not small.’ I turned back to the men. ‘Have you just come to Brussels?’ I asked Léon. ‘I was expecting you next week at the Feast of Corpus Christi.’

  ‘We arrived yesterday,’ Léon said. ‘The roads were not bad — very dry, in fact.’

  ‘Is Brussels always so quiet?’ Nicolas said, picking bits of wool off his tunic. He would give that up soon if he stayed here long — wool clings to everyone in the workshop.

  ‘Some say it is already too lively,’ I answered coolly, annoyed that his first words were spoken with such a sneer. ‘Though it is quieter here than by the Grand-Place. We don't need to be so close to the centre for our work. I expect you're used to different down in Paris. We get reports of the doings there.’

  ‘Paris is the finest city in the world. When I go back I shall never leave it again.’

  ‘If you like it so much, why did you come here?’ Georges Le Jeune demanded. I shook my head at my plain spoken son, though I couldn't really blame him for speaking so. I wanted to ask it myself. When a man is rude I want to be rude back.

  ‘Nicolas has come with me because of the importance of this commission,’ Léon cut in smoothly. ‘When you see the designs you will understand that they are very special indeed, and may require some supervision.’

  Georges Le Jeune snorted. ‘We don't need minders.’

  ‘This is my son, Georges Le Jeune,’ I said. ‘And my apprentice Luc, who has two years training yet with us, but does fine millefleurs. This is Philippe de la Tour, who makes the cartoons from artists' designs.’

  Nicolas glared openly at Philippe, whose pale face went red. ‘I am not in the habit of having other men change my work,’ Nicolas sneered. ‘That's why I've come to this loathsome city — to be sure that my designs stay as I made them.’

  I had never heard an artist so keen on his own work. He should know better — first designs always change when cartoonists make them into the large paintings on cloth or paper that weavers follow as they make the tapestries. It is the nature of the thing that what looks fine small doesn't when made large. There are gaps to be filled — figures must be added, or trees or animals or flowers. That is what a cartoonist like Philippe does well — when he draws large he fills the empty space so that the tapestry will be full and lively.

  ‘You must be used to designing for tapestries and the changes that must be made to them,’ I said. I did not address him as Monsieur — he might be a Parisian artist, but I ran a good workshop in Brussels. I had no reason to grovel.

  Nicolas frowned. ‘I am known at Court for —’

  ‘Nicolas has a fine reputation at Court,’ Léon interrupted, ‘and Jean Le Viste has been content with his designs.’ Léon said this too quickly, and I wondered what Nicolas was really known for at Court. I would have to send Georges Le Jeune to find out at the painters' guild. Someone must have heard of him.

  By the time the women returned with the fare, we were ready to cut off the tapestry. The cutting-off is a good day for a weaver, when a piece you have worked on for so long — this time eight months on the one tapestry — is ready to be taken off the loom. Since we are always working on just a strip of tapestry the size of a hand's length, which is then rolled inside itself onto a wooden beam, we never see the tapestry whole until it is done. We also work on it from the back and don't see the finished side unless we slide a mirror underneath to check our work. Only when we cut the tapestry off the loom and lay it face-up on the floor do we get to see the whole work. Then we stand silent and look at what we have made.

  That moment is like eating fresh spring radishes after months of old turnips. Sometimes — when the patron won't pay upfront and the dyers, the wool and silk merchants, the gil
t wire sellers begin demanding payments I can't make, or when the weavers I've brought in refuse to work unless they see money first, or when Christine says nothing but the soup gets thinner — on those days only knowing that one day the moment of silence will come keeps me working.

  I would have preferred that Léon and Nicolas weren't there for the cutting-off. They hadn't broken their backs over the loom for all those months, or cut crisscrosses into their fingers while handling the gilt wire, or had headaches from looking so hard at the warp and weft. But of course I couldn't ask them to go, or let them see that I was annoyed. A lissier does not show such things to the merchant he is to haggle with.

  ‘Please eat,’ I said, waving at the plates Christine and Aliénor had brought in. ‘We'll take this tapestry off the loom and then we can discuss the commission from Monseigneur Le Viste.’

  Léon nodded, but Nicolas muttered, ‘Brussels fare, eh? Who can be bothered?’ Nonetheless, he wandered over to the plates, picked up an oyster, tipped his head back, and slurped it down. Then he licked his lips and smiled at Aliénor, who stepped around him to fetch a stool for Léon. I chuckled to myself — eventually she would surprise him, but not yet. He was not so clever after all.

  Before the cutting-off we knelt to say a prayer to St Maurice, patron saint of weavers. Then Georges Le Jeune handed me the pair of scissors. I took up a handful of warp threads, held them taut and snipped through them. Christine sighed at that first cut, but no one made a sound as I cut through the rest.

  When I was done, Georges Le Jeune and Luc rolled the tapestry off the bottom beam. They had the honour of cutting through the other end of the warp before they brought the tapestry over to the cleared space on the floor and laid it down. I nodded, and they unrolled it so that the tapestry was facing up. Then we all stood still and looked — save Aliénor, who went back into the house to fetch beer for the boys.

  The scene in the tapestry was of the Adoration of the Magi. The Hamburg patron who commissioned it had paid handsomely. We had used both silver and gilt wire among the wool and silk, and where possible had dovetailed the colours, with plenty of hachure for the shading. These techniques made its weaving take longer, but I knew the patron would find it had been worth the cost. The tapestry was glorious, even if it was the lissier saying so.