‘Mine is not a business match,’ Aliénor said. ‘You know it's not, Maman. You could have married me to any other business — one of the wool merchants, or a silk merchant, or another weaver, or even an artist. Yet you would have me be with the one man with so many faults of his own that he will overlook mine.’
‘That's not true,’ I said — though it was. ‘Anyone can see how useful you are to us, that your blindness doesn't stop you from keeping a house and helping in the workshop and growing your garden.’
‘I've tried so hard,’ Aliénor muttered. ‘I've worked so hard to please you, but in the end it's made no difference. What man would choose a blind girl over someone with eyes that aren't broken? There are many girls in Brussels who will be chosen before I am, just as most men will be accepted before Jacques Le Bœuf will. He and I are what is left when the barrel is empty. That is why we are meant to have each other.’
I said nothing — she had done my arguing for me, though she did not look persuaded. Her brow was crumpled and she was wringing out a bit of her skirt. I placed a hand over hers to stop them. ‘Nothing's decided,’ I said, pushing her hands away and smoothing the crushed cloth. ‘I will talk to your father. Anyway, we need you for these new tapestries — we can't spare you just yet. Tiens, Jacques must be gone by now. Let's get to the baker's house before they eat our pie.’
The baker was home already, and the family sitting down to eat. I only got his wife to sell us a pie by promising her a basket of peas from Aliénor's garden. There were no beef pies left, only capon. Georges does not like those so much.
When we were close to our house, Aliénor shied like a horse and clutched my arm. The sheep's piss stench was there — Jacques Le Bœuf must have been coming to see Georges when he first spied us on the rue Haute. Of course he chose the hour when we eat for his visit so that we would have to feed him.
‘Go and stay with the neighbours,’ I said. ‘I'll come and get you when he's gone.’ I led her to the door of the cloth weaver two houses from us and she slipped inside.
Jacques was drinking beer with Georges in the garden. Unless it is very cold we always take him there when he visits. I suppose he must be used to such treatment. Nicolas' paintings of Sound and Smell were still tacked up on the wall, but the painter was gone. Jacques Le Bœuf has that effect wherever he goes. ‘Hello, Jacques,’ I said, stepping into the garden to greet him and trying not to gag.
‘You ran away from me just now,’ he rumbled. ‘Why did you and the girl run away?’
‘I don't know what you mean. Alienor and I were just going to the Chapelle to pray before we stopped at the baker's house. We had to hurry before the baker shut, so we were running, but not from you. You will stay to dinner, bien sûr — there's pie.’ Unbearable or not, asking him to stay was the decent thing to do, especially if he was to be our son-in-law.
‘You ran away from me,’ Jacques repeated. ‘You shouldn't have done that. Now, where's the girl?’
‘She's out — visiting.’
‘Bien.’
‘Jacques wants to talk to us about Alienor,’ Georges interrupted.
‘No, I want to talk to you about your pitiful order for blue in these tapestries.’ Jacques Le Bœuf gestured at Sound. ‘Look at that — hardly any blue there, especially with all those flowers. This taste for millefleurs will be the death of me, all red and yellow. And even less blue in this one, it looks like.’ He peered at Smell, sketched out but only the Lady's face and shoulders painted. ‘You told me there would be much more blue in these tapestries — half of the ground would be blue for grass. Now it's just islands of blue, and all this red instead.’
‘We added trees to the designs,’ Georges replied. ‘The blue in them will make up for most of the missing grass.’
‘Not enough — half of the leaves are yellow.’ Jacques Le Bœuf glowered at Georges.
It was true that we had changed the amount of blue we were ordering from him. Now that we had one of the designs to scale, Georges and I had sat down the night before and worked out how much we would need for all of the tapestries. Georges had sent Georges Le Jeune around this morning to tell Jacques Le Bœuf.
‘The designs have changed since we first spoke,’ Georges said calmly. ‘That often happens. I never promised you a certain amount of blue.’
‘You misled me, and you'll have to make up for it,’ Jacques insisted.
‘Will you take your pie out here?’ I cut in. ‘It is nice to eat outside sometimes. Madeleine, bring out the pie,’ I called inside.
‘Jacques, you know I can't guarantee quantities,’ Georges said. ‘That's not how the business works. Things change as we go.’
‘I'm not supplying you with any blue until you agree to what I ask for.’
‘You will deliver that wool tomorrow, as promised.’ Georges spoke slowly, as if explaining something to a child.
‘Not until you make a promise too.’
‘Promise what?’
‘Your daughter.’
Georges glanced at me. ‘We haven't discussed this with Aliénor yet.’
‘What's to discuss? You give me her dowry and she'll be my wife. That's all there is to say to her.’
‘We need Aliénor yet,’ I interrupted. ‘These tapestries are the biggest commission we've taken on, and we need everyone working. Taking away even Aliénor may mean we can't complete them in time, and then that will mean no orders of blue to you at all for them.’
Jacques Le Bœuf ignored me. ‘Make your daughter my wife and I'll supply you with blue wool,’ he said as Madeleine brought out the pie and a knife. She was holding her breath so that she wouldn't breathe in his smell, but she let it out in a surprised huff when she heard what he said. I frowned and shook my head at her as she dropped the pie on the table and hurried back inside.
‘Christine and I need to discuss it,’ Georges said. ‘I'll give you my answer tomorrow.’
‘Good,’ Jacques said. He picked up the knife and cut himself a large wedge. ‘You give me the girl and you'll get your blue. And don't try to go to other woad dyers — they know me better than they know you.’ Of course they did — they were all cousins.
Georges had been about to cut himself some pie, but paused with the knife held over the crust. I closed my eyes so as not to see the anger in his face. When I opened them again he had plunged the knife tip into the pie and left it sticking straight up. ‘I have work to do,’ he said, getting up. ‘I'll see you tomorrow.’
Jacques Le Bœuf took a great gulp of pie — he didn't seem insulted by Georges walking away from him as he ate.
I backed away as well, and went to find Madeleine. She was bent over the lentil pot, her face red from the heat. ‘Don't you say a word to Aliénor,’ I hissed. ‘She doesn't need to know about this just now. Besides, nothing has been decided.’
Madeleine glanced up at me, tucked a stray clump of hair behind her ear, and began scrubbing again.
Jacques ate half of our pie before he left. I didn't touch it — I had no stomach for it now.
Aliénor didn't say anything when I fetched her from the neighbour's — she went straight to her garden and began picking the basket of peas for the baker. I was glad, for I don't know what I would have said.
Later she offered to take the peas to the baker's wife on her own. When she was gone I pulled Georges to the far end of the garden by the rose-covered trellis so that no one could hear us. Nicolas and Philippe were working side by side on Smell, Nicolas painting the Lady's arms while Philippe began the lion.
‘What are we going to do about Jacques Le Bœuf, then?’ I demanded.
Georges gazed at some pink dog roses as if he were listening to them rather than me.
‘Alors?’
Georges sighed. ‘We will have to let him have her.’
‘The other day you were joking that the smell would kill her.’
‘The other day I didn't know we would cut back on the blue in the tapestries. If I don't get that blue soon we'll run lat
e already and be fined by Léon. Jacques knows that. He has me by the balls.’
I thought of Aliénor's shudders in the Chapelle. ‘She detests him.’
‘Christine, you know this is the best offer Aliénor will get. She's lucky to have it. Jacques will look after her. He's not a bad man, apart from the smell, and she'll get used to that. Some people complain of the smell of the wool here, but we don't notice it, do we?’
‘Her nose is more sensitive than ours.’
Georges shrugged.
‘Jacques will beat her,’ I said.
‘Not if she obeys him.’
I snorted.
‘Come, Christine, you're a practical woman. More so than me most of the time.’
I thought of Jacques Le Bœuf chomping his way through half of our pie, and of his threat to ruin Georges' business. How could Georges agree to such a man for his daughter? Even as I thought it, though, I knew there was little I could say. I knew my husband, and he had already decided. ‘We can't spare her now,’ I said. ‘We need her to sew on these tapestries. Besides, I've made nothing for her trousseau.’
‘She won't go yet, but she could when the tapestries are almost done. You could finish the sewing on the last two. By the end of next year, let us say. She could certainly be at Jacques' by that Christmas.’
We stood silent and looked at the dog roses growing along the trellis. A bee was worrying one, making its head bob up and down.
‘She must know nothing about this for the moment,’ I said at last. ‘You make it clear to Jacques that he can't go about bragging of his wife-to-be. If he says a word the betrothal is broken.’
Georges nodded.
Perhaps that was cruel of me. Perhaps Aliénor should be told now. But I couldn't bear to live with her sad face for the next year and a half while she waited for what she dreaded. Best for everyone if she knew only when it was time.
We walked back through Aliénor's garden, which was bright with flowers, tangles of peas, neat rows of lettuce, clipped bushes of thyme and rosemary and lavender, of mint and lemon balm. Who will look after this when she's gone? I thought.
‘Philippe, stop your painting now — I need you to draw on the warp once we've put the cartoon underneath,’ Georges said, stepping ahead of me. He went up to Sound. ‘Tiens, help me take this inside, if it's dry. Georges, Luc!’ he called. He sounded stern and brisk — Georges' way of leaving behind our talk.
Philippe dropped his brush into a pot of water. The boys hurried out from the workshop. Georges Le Jeune climbed up a ladder to detach the cartoon from the wall. Then, one man at each corner, they carried it inside to the loom.
With the cartoon gone the garden suddenly felt empty. Nicolas and I were alone. He was painting the Lady's hands now as she held a carnation. In his own hand he too held one. He did not turn around but kept his back to me. That's unlike Nicolas — he doesn't usually give up the chance to talk to a woman alone, even if she is older and married.
He was holding his back and head very stiff and straight — from anger, I realized after a moment. I gazed at the white carnation between his fingers. Aliénor grew them near the roses. He must have come over to pick one while Georges and I were back there talking.
‘Don't think badly of us,’ I said softly to his back. ‘It will be best for her.’
Nicolas didn't answer immediately, but held his brush up to the cloth. He did not paint but remained with his hand suspended in the air. ‘Brussels is beginning to bore me,’ he said. ‘Its ways are too boorish for me. I'll be glad to leave. The sooner the better.’ He glanced at the carnation he held, then threw it down and crushed it under his heel.
That evening he painted until very late. These summer nights it is light almost to Compline.
‘Chevalier's gift is not limited to undercover education and the creation of lively characters. What she does best is to study a famous work of art with the eyes of a bright, inquisitive child, teasing out a story that might lie behind it. The marvellously enigmatic medieval tapestries of her title are a gift to this, her own brand of historical fiction.’
Independent on Sunday
‘Chevalier sets her imagination free to create a story peopled by the artists, weavers and the women whose likenesses appear in the tapestry … an engaging and enjoyable read.’
Daily Mail
‘Cartoonists, weavers, dyers, financiers, even those who trim the hem, all add a dash of their own desires to the mix. Thus when the tapestry is unrolled there shimmers beneath its brilliant surface another shadowy net of threads, weaving together the loves and longings of all involved … The Lady and the Unicorn will perhaps eclipse Girl With a Pearl Earing … Her characters are not tossed about by large well-documented events; it is the machinations of their inner worlds that make the story and then drive the plot. Yet there is no doubt that the past is a beautiful and somehow apt surround for her tales of human nature, in much the same way that antique settings can add a golden gloss to jewels.’
Guardian
‘A beautifully written tale, I could not put it down … an exquisite, moving and convincing story, drawing realistic and rounded characters who each tell their aspect of the tale … This is not just a novel about the creation of a work of art, but a tale of ambition, lust, betrayal and heartbreak … a compelling and enormously enjoyable work.’
Evening Standard
‘The strongest scenes in Tracy Chevalier's charming novel concern the lives of the craftsmen in late 15th-century Brussels weaving the tapestries … the novel neatly presents a weave of first-person narrative voices, each speaker creating a new strip of plot … Nicolas functions as a sort of running stitch, tying the various stories together, looping back and forth between Paris and Belgium, one woman and another. Eventually, he himself is caught, and stitched in to a woman's design.’
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 loo
ked 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.
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