The Lady and the Unicorn. Tracy Chevalier
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After a moment the steps began again and she reappeared at the door. ‘Are you coming?’ She was still smiling.
‘I will, beauty, if you will walk with me and not hurry ahead as if I were a dragon you had to flee.’
The girl laughed. ‘Come,’ she beckoned, and this time I hopped down from the table. I had to step quickly to keep up with her as she ran from room to room. Her skirt flapped, as if she were blown along by a secret wind. Up close she smelled of something sweet and spicy, underlined with sweat. Her mouth moved as if she were chewing something.
‘What do you have in your mouth, beauty?’
‘Toothache.’ The girl stuck out her tongue – on its pink tip lay a clove. The sight of her tongue made me hard. I wanted to plough her.
‘Ah, that must hurt.’ I will suck it better. ‘Now, why does your mistress want to see me?’
The girl looked at me, amused. ‘I expect she’ll tell you herself.’
I slowed down. ‘Why rush? She won’t mind, will she, if you and I have a little chat along the way?’
‘What do you want to talk about?’ The girl turned up a round staircase.
I leapt onto the stair in front of her to stop her from climbing. ‘What sorts of animals do you like?’
‘Animals?’
‘I don’t want you to think of me as a dragon. I’d rather you thought of me as something else. Something you prefer.’
The girl thought. ‘A parakeet, perhaps. I do like parakeets. I have four. They eat from my hand.’ She ran around me to stand on the stairs above me. She didn’t go higher. Yes, I thought. I’ve set out my wares and she’s coming for a look. Come closer, my dear, and see my plums. Squeeze them.
‘Not a parakeet,’ I said. ‘Surely you don’t think of me as a squawker and an imitator.’
‘My parakeets make no noise. But anyway, you are an artist, non? Isn’t that what you do – imitate life?’
‘I make things more beautiful than they are – though there are some things, my girl, that cannot be improved upon with paint.’ I stepped around her and stood three steps above. I wanted to see if she would come to me.
She did. Her eyes remained clear and wide, but her mouth was twisted into a knowing smile. With her tongue she moved the clove from one cheek to the other.
I will have you, I thought. I will.
‘Perhaps you’re a fox instead,’ she said. ‘Your hair has a little red in among the brown.’
I pouted. ‘How can you be so cruel? Do I look devious? Would I cheat a man? Do I run sideways and never straight? Rather I’m a dog who lays himself at his mistress’ feet and is loyal to her forever.’
‘Dogs want too much attention’, the girl said, ‘and they jump up and muddy my skirts with their paws.’ She stepped around me and did not stop this time. ‘Come – my mistress waits. We must not keep her.’
I would have to hurry – I’d wasted too much time on other animals. ‘I know which animal I want to be,’ I panted, running after her.
‘What’s that?’
‘A unicorn. Do you know of the unicorn?’
The girl snorted. She’d reached the top of the stairs and was opening the door to another room. ‘I know it likes to lay its head in maidens’ laps. Is that what you like to do?’
‘Ah, don’t think of me so coarsely. The unicorn does something far greater than that. His horn has a special power, you see. Did you know that?’
The girl slowed down to look at me. ‘What does it do?’
‘If a well is poisoned—’
‘There’s a well!’ The girl stopped and pointed out of a window to the courtyard. A younger girl was leaning over the edge of a well and looking down into it, the sun bathing her hair in gold light.
‘Jeanne always does that,’ the girl said. ‘She likes to look at her reflection.’ As we watched the girl spat into the well.
‘If your well there was poisoned, beauty, or sullied such as Jeanne has just done, a unicorn could come along and dip his horn into it and it would become pure again. What do you think of that?’
The girl moved the clove around with her tongue. ‘What do you want me to think of it?’
‘I want you to think of me as your unicorn. There are times when you’re sullied, yes, even you, beauty. Every woman is. That is Eve’s punishment. But you can be made pure again, every month, if you will only let me tend to you.’ Plough you again and again until you laugh and cry. ‘Every month you will go back to Eden.’ It was that last line that never failed when I was hunting a woman – the idea of that simple paradise seemed to snare them. They always opened their legs to me in the hope that they would find it. Perhaps some of them did.
The girl laughed, raucously this time. She was ready. I reached out to squeeze her and seal our exchange.
‘Claude? Is that you? What’s taken you so long?’ A door across from us had opened and a woman stood staring at us, her arms folded across her chest. I dropped my hand.
‘Pardon, Maman. Here he is.’ Claude stepped back and gestured at me. I bowed.
‘What’s in your mouth?’ the woman asked.
Claude swallowed. ‘Clove. For my tooth.’
‘You should be chewing mint – that’s much better for toothache.’
‘Yes, Maman.’ Claude laughed again – probably at the look on my face. She turned and ran from the room, banging the door behind her. The room echoed with her steps.
I shuddered. I had just tried to seduce Jean Le Viste’s daughter.
In the times I’d been to the house on the rue du Four I had only ever seen the three Le Viste girls from afar – running across the courtyard, leaving on horses, walking with a group of ladies to Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Of course the girl by the well was one of them too – if I’d been paying attention I would have understood when I saw her hair and how she held herself that she and Claude were sisters. Then I would have guessed who they were and never have told Claude the story of the unicorn. But I had not been thinking about who she was – I’d been thinking about how to bed her.
Claude had only to repeat to her father what I’d said and I would be thrown out, the commission taken from me. And I would never see Claude again.
I wanted her more than ever, and not just for bedding. I wanted to lie with her at my side and talk to her, touch that mouth and hair and make her laugh. I wondered where she had run to in the house. I would never be allowed in there – not a Paris artist with a nobleman’s daughter.
I stood very still, thinking of these things. Perhaps I did so for a moment too long. The woman in the doorway moved so that the rosary hanging at her waist clicked against the buttons on her sleeve, and I stepped back from my thoughts. She was looking at me as if she’d guessed all that was going through my head. She said nothing, though, but pushed the door open and went back in. I followed.
I had painted miniatures in many ladies’ chambers – this one was not so different. There was a bed made of chestnut and hung with curtains of blue and yellow silk. There were oak chairs in a semicircle, padded with embroidered cushions. There was a side table covered with bottles and a casket for jewels and several chests for dresses. An open window framed a view of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Gathered in the corner were her ladies-in-waiting, working on embroidery. They smiled at me as if they were one person rather than five, and I chided myself for ever thinking Claude could be one of them.
Geneviève de Nanterre – wife of Jean Le Viste and mistress of the house – sat down by the window. She had clearly