The Lady and the Unicorn

by Tracy Chevalier

  I am nothing like the ladies in these designs. I don't know how to play an organ, and I don't have the time to feed birds or plait carnations or gaze into mirrors. The only Lady I understand a little is she who has grasped the unicorn by the horn. That is what I would do — make sure I've got a firm hold on him.

  We have money but Georges does not spend it on fine things. Our house is larger than most, that is true — we have put two houses together so that there's a large room for the workshop, and there are beds for the apprentice and others helping us. I have my necklace and we have a good bed made of chestnut. The cloth for our dresses, though plain, is of good quality and well cut. And Aliénor and I have three dresses each, where others have only two, or one. But we wear clothes for working in, not for show. Our sleeves don't get in the way of our work.

  Georges does not flaunt our wealth, but uses it to buy tapestry designs — he has more than most other lissiers in this city. And we have two good horizontal looms where another workshop like ours would have but one. He pays handsomely for Masses to be said for our family, and for part of the building of the Church of Notre Dame du Sablon.

  It is only now and then that I wish my dress were blue instead of brown, and had a bit of silk in it rather than just wool. I would like a fur to keep me warm, and the time to dress my hair, and a lady to do it properly. Madeleine tried once but it looked like a bird's nest. I would like my hands to be soft as the rose petals these Ladies in the tapestries must soak theirs in. Aliénor has made an ointment from petals for me but I handle too much rough wool for it to be of use.

  I would like always to have a fire to sit by, and more food than I need.

  Only sometimes do I think of these things.

  I had been so busy stringing heddles in the workshop with the others that it was good to stand in the garden and just look for a moment at what Nicolas des Innocents and Philippe have painted. This cartoon — Sound — was the only one painted large so far, and was pinned up on the wall in the garden, where the men were working. Philippe did all the drawing, as Nicolas did not understand that we weave back to front and so need cartoons that are mirror images of the final tapestries. There is a special talent in taking a small design and drawing it large and left to right rather than right to left. We all laughed at the look on Nicolas' face when he first saw Sound drawn backwards. But he got used to it, and has managed the painting well. Cocky as he is, he is a fine artist and learns fast.

  Aliénor and Nicolas were in the garden when I came out — he painting, she on a ladder pruning the cherry trees. Philippe had gone to his father for more paints. Though they were at far ends of the garden from each other and were busy with their work, I did not like them being alone together. There was little I could do about it, though — I have too much to do to chaperone my daughter. She is a sensible girl, though I have seen her change when he walks into the room.

  Nicolas was working now on the next cartoon, painting onto a large piece of linen where a sketch had been made in charcoal. This one was of Smell, with the Lady making a bridal crown out of carnations, the flower of betrothals. This Lady must think she was sure to catch her unicorn if she was already making her crown. Nicolas was painting her face but had not yet started on her dress. I was impatient to see it.

  He stopped painting and came to stand with me in front of Sound. ‘What do you think of the painting, Madame? You've said nothing about it. Very pretty, n'est-ce pas?’

  ‘You're never one to wait for a compliment, are you? You're happy to make one to yourself.’

  ‘Do you like her dress?’

  I shrugged. ‘The dress is fine, but even better are the millefleurs. Philippe has done a fine job, and with the animals in the grass too.’

  ‘I've done the unicorn and the lion. What do you think of them?’

  ‘The unicorn is too fat, and is not as vigorous as I expected him to be.’

  Nicolas frowned.

  ‘There's no time to change it now,’ I added. ‘It will do. The lion at least is full of character. You know, with his round eyes and wide mouth he looks a bit like Philippe.’

  Aliénor chuckled from up the cherry tree.

  I moved over to Smell. ‘What is the Lady's dress like in this one? And the servant's?’

  Nicolas smiled. ‘She wears the red pomegranate brocade under a blue dress, with the overdress hitched up and fastened at her waist so that you can see the red underside. The servant's dress mirrors her mistress's — blue overdress, red underdress — but the cloth is a plainer moiré.’

  He sounded so smug as he described them that I had to say something. ‘A servant should not wear two necklaces,’ I said. ‘One would do, and a plain chain at that.’

  Nicolas bowed. ‘Anything else, Madame?’

  ‘Don't be cheeky.’ I lowered my voice. ‘And stay away from my daughter.’

  Aliénor's steady rustling in the tree stopped. ‘Maman!’ she shouted. I am always surprised by what she can hear.

  Before either could say more Georges called us all into the workshop to warp the loom. We had already begun preparing the loom for weaving — setting the warp threads into a raddle and attaching them to the beam at one end of the loom. Now it was time to wind the warp onto the back beam before attaching it to the front beam to make the surface to weave on.

  Warp threads are thicker than the weft, and made of a coarser wool as well. I think of them as like wives. Their work is not obvious — all you can see are the ridges they make under the colourful weft threads. But if they weren't there, there would be no tapestry. Georges would unravel without me.

  To warp a loom for a tapestry of this size you need at least four people to hold bundles of warp threads and pull on them while two men turn the roller to wind the warp around the back beam. Someone else checks the tension of the threads as they go. That must be just right at the start, otherwise there are problems with the weaving later on. Aliénor always does this — her hands are so sensitive they are well suited to the task.

  Georges and Georges Le Jeune were already standing at each end of the roller when we came in. Aliénor went to join her father while I showed Nicolas the bundles of warp threads laid out for us. Luc stood holding some at one end.

  We were one person short. ‘Where's Philippe?’ Georges asked.

  ‘Still at his father's,’ Nicolas said.

  ‘Madeleine, put the lentils at the back of the fire and come out here!’ I called.

  Madeleine appeared from the fire, sooty and hot. I had her stand between me and Luc so that she wasn't next to Nicolas — I didn't want them making eyes at each other when they should be working. We took up a bundle in each hand and stood at a distance from the loom. I showed Nicolas and Madeleine how to hold the threads tightly and evenly around their hands and pull firmly. It's not easy to do this so that each thread is as taut as the next. We held our bundles and were pulled slowly towards the loom as Georges and Georges Le Jeune turned the cranks at each end of the roller. When they stopped for a moment, Aliénor stepped up to the warp as it lay across the roller and walked along, brushing her hand over the threads. Everyone was quiet. Her face was bright and attentive, a look I see on Georges' face when he is weaving. For a moment I almost thought she could see. When she reached the end she turned and walked back, stopping with her hand across threads Nicolas held. ‘Too loose,’ she said. ‘Here, and here.’ She reached along and touched threads of Madeleine's. ‘Pull harder with your left,’ I ordered both. ‘Those are your weak hands — always pull harder with them.’

  When the threads were even, Georges and Georges Le Jeune turned the crank again, slowly winding the warp around the beam as we four strained against it. When we were pulled all the way up to the loom we let go of the warp and then began again, taking up the threads further along. Aliénor checked the tension again. This time Nicolas' right hand was too loose, then part of Luc's left hand. Then Madeleine, and then Nicolas again. Aliénor and I told them how much to pull.

  Nicolas groaned. ‘
This could take hours. My arms ache.’

  ‘Pay attention and it will go faster,’ I snapped.

  As Georges and Georges Le Jeune turned the crank I smelled something burning. ‘The lentils!’

  Madeleine jumped. ‘Don't let go!’ I cried. ‘Aliénor, go and take the lentils off the fire.’

  A fearful look crossed Aliénor's face, chasing away her brightness. I knew she does not like fire, but there was nothing for it — she had the only free hands.

  ‘Madeleine, did you move those lentils to the back as I asked you?’ I said as Aliénor ran from the workshop.

  The girl scowled at the threads in her hands. Her fingers were red and white from the threads wound around them so tight.

  ‘Stupid girl.’

  Nicolas chuckled. ‘She's like Marie-Céleste.’

  Madeleine raised her head. ‘Who's that?’

  ‘A girl who works at the Le Viste house. Just as saucy.’

  Madeleine made a face at Nicolas. Georges Le Jeune frowned at them both.

  Aliénor came back. ‘I've put the pot on the floor,’ she said.

  We went back to the warping, with us pulling, the Georges cranking, Aliénor testing. It was not so much fun now. My arms ached too, though I would never have admitted it. I fretted too about dinner and what I would serve. I would have to run to the baker's wife for a pie — she sells them from her house while her husband is at the Bread Hall. Madeleine huffed and sighed and sulked next to me, and Nicolas began rolling his eyes from boredom. ‘What do you do after you finish this tedious task?’ he asked.

  ‘We thread the heddles, to make the shed,’ I said.

  Nicolas looked blank. ‘Heddles are strings that pull every other thread apart so that you can run the weft through them,’ I explained. ‘You push a pedal and the warp separates into two. The space between those sets of threads is the shed.’

  ‘Where do you put the tapestry as you're weaving it?’

  ‘It gets wound onto this beam here in front of us.’

  Nicolas thought for a moment. ‘But then you don't see it.’

  ‘No. Only the strip you're working on, then it gets wound on. You don't see the whole tapestry at once until you've finished.’

  ‘That's impossible. It would be like painting blind!’ Even as he said it he winced and looked at Aliénor, who continued feeling the threads as if she had not heard him.

  Still he kept asking questions. ‘Where will the cartoon go?’

  ‘On a table we put underneath the warp, so we can look at it as we weave. Philippe will trace the design onto the warp threads as well.’

  ‘What's that for?’ He pointed at the wool mill in the corner.

  ‘Lord, will he never stop talking?’ Georges Le Jeune said what we were all thinking. Ours is a quiet workshop, where others are louder and more boisterous. When Georges brings in other weavers to help out — as he will for these tapestries — he always chooses quiet ones. Once we had in a weaver who talked all day, and Georges had to let him go. Nicolas talks all the time too — Paris gossip, mostly, all of it nonsense. He asks so many questions I want to slap him. It is just as well he is mostly working in the garden, otherwise Georges would shout. He's a mild man but he cannot abide silly talk.

  Nicolas opened his mouth to ask another question, but Aliénor plucked at some threads then and he pulled his left hand tight.

  ‘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 se
rved 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.’