A Plague of Unicorns

by Jane Yolen

  As for the orchard, it looked ready for a feast rather than a war.

  14

  IN WHICH JAMES WITNESSES THE BATTLE OF THE MAZE

  Summoned by James, who knocked on the palace door, the abbot went out at once to see Sandy, who waited for them in front of the finished maze.

  “The unicorns are coming, hero,” said the abbot.

  “I have heard them these three nights already,” Sandy told him. “They are restless and hungry.”

  “You heard them because you’re a hero?” asked James.

  Sandy laughed. “I heard them because I have been sleeping on the ground, little monk, little brother, while you are on a cot in the dortoir.”

  “What do you need from me?” asked Abbot Aelian.

  “Only that you keep the monks and priests and all the oblates indoors,” Sandy said. “A hero’s business can be complicated by well-wishers and onlookers who get in the way and have to be rescued themselves.”

  “I will personally shut them in,” said the abbot. “Intellego omnes” — Latin for “I understand all.”

  “I believe you do,” said Sandy.

  The abbot took James by the hand and led him away, something he had never done before, and he did not look back.

  But James did, his palm cold in the abbot’s hand, his worry written large on his face.

  The unicorn herd arrived at daybreak the next morning as the canonical hour of Lauds was rung in by Great Tom. They came in a parade of trotting silver hooves, swirling silver manes, and spiraling horns. They pranced and pirouetted, making strange bleating sounds, their hooves kicking in the air.

  Sandy stood in the center of the orchard maze, spear raised in both hands overhead, waiting.

  The great lead stallion cried out a challenge, the sound somewhere between the whinny of a horse and the blat of a goat. Then he rose on his hind legs and sniffed the air.

  Sandy began to sing in a lilting tenor voice:

  Thread the maze,

  Find the maid,

  Seek the hero

  Unafraid.

  Bend your neck,

  Bend your knee,

  Come to me,

  Come to me.

  When the last note of the song ended, the unicorns suddenly leaped like goats, high over the stone walls into the garden, their hooves never even touching the rocks.

  Capering, almost dancing, they began to thread the maze. The wind blew the golden ribbons that James had tied onto the palings till they were like banners in the air.

  It was not the holy water on the ribbons nor the magic of the rowan boughs that called the unicorns in, but the song that Sandy sang.

  James wondered, Is it magic? An incantation? A wizard’s spell?

  Whatever or wherever the song came from, the unicorns came into the maze as if pulled there by a golden thread. Head to tail to head to tail, they paced through the maze as though enchanted, as if they’d been tamed. They didn’t stop to graze or nuzzle the remaining windfalls of apples; instead they crowded into the center pens and waited till their leader, the great stallion, marched right up to the hero.

  Sandy stood still in full armor, back against a tree so laden with golden apples, they draped over the armor like a golden robe.

  The stallion pointed his horn at Sandy’s chest but did not thrust forward. Nor did Sandy pierce him with the spear. Instead, hero and unicorn gave twin sighs and sank down together at the foot of the tree, the unicorn’s head resting in Sandy’s lap.

  Gently, Sandy removed a yellow ribbon from the spear head and tied it halter-like over the stallion’s nose, under his chin, pulling his white forelock through, braiding it quickly into a lover’s knot.

  The stallion’s eyes, the color of antique gold, closed as Sandy began to sing again, so quietly only the two of them could hear.

  When the song was done, Sandy pushed the great beast’s heavy head away and stood, pulling him up at the same time. Then together, hero and beast walked back through the maze, the rest of the unicorns following docilely behind.

  They went down the road till they were lost in the bright sunlight, till those who watched through the window slits — though they’d been warned against it — thought the hero and the herd had disappeared into heaven itself.

  But James knew differently.

  And so did the abbot.

  Heaven would not have held either Sandy or the unicorns long in any case. But a stronger pen or a farther shore could. Sandy would lead the unicorns to a safe haven, not heaven, though it might mean many days and weeks of travel.

  In the early evening, well after the bell rang for Nones, James was summoned once again to the abbot’s palace. This time he wasn’t worried about any punishment or blame. He wasn’t worried that he’d done anything wrong.

  This time when the abbot was sitting again by the fire, there was another chair, a smaller chair, pulled up next to his.

  Without preamble, the abbot asked, “What do you think about the disappearance of the beasts?”

  James liked that it was the abbot asking questions of him, not the other way around.

  “The unicorns,” he said thoughtfully, “may be gone this fall. But they could come back the next.”

  The abbot nodded. “Fine answer.”

  James swelled inside with pride, but he knew that he was close to a sin. So he didn’t show on the outside any bit of it.

  “I am certain,” the abbot said to James, “that Sandy will return if needed.”

  Neither one of them spoke for some time, but the fire did, spitting out a crackling response they both ignored.

  The abbot’s eyes closed and his head slumped down on his chest. If he was breathing at all, it was hard to tell.

  For a moment James wondered if he should call for one of the priests. Or the infirmerer. But before he had to make that decision, the abbot’s eyes fluttered open. “Your hero left the white horse behind.”

  “Yes,” James said, his face a sudden misery. “Its name is Carrywell. I expect the hero worried about its safety.”

  “A good name for a horse,” said the abbot carefully.

  James’ lower lip trembled. “A good horse, too.”

  “I think the horse needs to go home,” the abbot said. “Can you manage?”

  James’ face dared to show some hope. “Yes,” he breathed. “Oh, yes.”

  “Word came this morning that your uncle has taken a bad turn. Your mother needs you. She has sent a pair of soldiers to escort you back.”

  James’ face was suddenly wreathed in smiles. Not because his uncle was sick. He would never have wished for such a thing. But because he was about to go home.

  “Yes,” the abbot continued, “your mother needs you and so, I think, does your sister. When you see her, give her my thanks.”

  “My . . . sister?” Smiles all gone, James looked at the abbot, trying to read his face.

  “The hero,” the abbot told him. “Sandy. She will need her horse — and her brother — when she gets home with that herd.” He smiled. It made his face look years younger.

  James took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Certes,” he said, because he was a quick learner.

  A smile almost played about the abbot’s lips. “Before you go, I have something to show you.”

  “What is it?” asked James.

  “It is called a telescope,” said the abbot, “an instrument for seeing long distances. It was made by a Hollander man from a description in a book by our own John Dee.”

  James had heard of John Dee, the queen’s magician, and said so, adding, “Isn’t he of . . . a devilish nature?”

  “Not a devil and not really a magician,” said the abbot, “though he may seem so to those who do not understand science.” He got out of his chair carefully, as if his bones were made of stained glass and might shatter. “But with this telescope, I shall show you a marvel.”

  The abbot led James over to the window, where a strange metal object pointed up to the sky. “Put your rig
ht eye here,” he said to James, “and close the other.”

  James did as he was told, and a huge circle, the color of an old gold bangle that his mother had on a chain, a gift from his father, sprang into view.

  “The moon,” said the abbot.

  James took another deep breath and looked closely. “Not cheese at all, then.”

  “Certes,” the abbot said, and made a sound deep in his chest as if the sea were laughing.

  At that, James laughed with him, happy for the moon, happy for the hero, happy for the unicorns, and most of all, happy for the promise of home.

  AFTERWORDS

  James did get home, and was embraced so long by his mother, he almost suffocated in her arms. She wept an ocean onto his collar, and asked his forgiveness for sending him away. “I listened to my brother when I should have been listening to my son.”

  “But I learned so much at the abbey,” he told her. “Some Latin, some Greek. How to write in italic. And I want to learn more.”

  “So you shall, my brave boy. The abbot has told me everything.”

  Alexandria the Hero, with the herd of unicorns, came home as well, seven days after her brother. She and the beasts had stopped in other orchards along the way, and in meadows filled with milleflowers. They had to stay away from the roads. Besides, Alexandria was walking and singing to the stallion. Her voice was harsh from the seven days.

  Their father, with a right leg that would never again work as well as the left, came home from the Holy Land the next season. He had spent nearly a year in a terrible prison, which was why he had disappeared for so long and had never written.

  So James didn’t have to worry about becoming the duke until many, many years later.

  But when he did become duke, he was a thoughtful one like his father and a kind ruler like his mother. He always listened carefully to the questions the people of his shire asked and made careful and considered rulings in law. He was a strong steward of the land, which contained all that his father had left him, especially the hardy grove of golden apple trees — the seeds of which had been a present from a grateful abbot.

  Uncle Archibald left Castle Callander to become a priest at Cranford Abbey. There he experimented with the golden apple seeds, planting and tending dozens and dozens more Hosannah trees for many years. He and the abbot became best of friends and spent long evenings discussing plants and herbalries, which they wrote together. When he was too old to work in the fields anymore, Father Archibald wrote a treatise on the care of golden apples, while the abbot wrote his own masterwork on the feeding of unicorns.

  But it was James, and his children after him, who were the careful shepherds of the herds of unicorns that fed contentedly on the Callander apples. The children were allowed to ride on the unicorns’ backs, as long as they wore helms made especially for them by the castle blacksmith, and the unicorns tolerated them — and only them — to ride.

  James founded and funded a local college in association with the abbey, a college in which history, literature, illumination, Bible studies, and especially science, were taught.

  As for James’ hero sister, Alexandria, when not off on an adventure, busily saving princesses — as well as princes — from a variety of wild beasts, she had a home with James and his family for as long as she lived, which was very long indeed.