The Lady and the Unicorn

by Tracy Chevalier

  ‘To think what?’

  Nicolas paused. I felt along the slit of the Lady's eye and jabbed my needle through.

  ‘I heard your parents last summer, speaking of Jacques Le Bœuf. Your father has come to an agreement with him. About you.’

  He was struggling but I didn't help him by speaking.

  ‘You're to marry him. By Christmas, was the agreement — though that may change now the tapestries are needed sooner. But when they're done. By Lent, I should think.’

  ‘I already knew that.’

  ‘You know?’

  ‘Madeleine told me. She heard it from my brother. They —’ I waved my hand and did not finish what Georges Le Jeune and Madeleine were doing. Nicolas could guess. ‘Though she said she wouldn't tell anyone, probably all of Brussels knows. But what do you care about what happens to me? I'm nothing to you — just a blind girl who can't admire your handsome face.’

  ‘I don't like seeing a pretty girl married off to a brute, c'est tout.’ His voice didn't sound as if that were all. I waited.

  ‘It is strange,’ he continued. ‘These tapestries — it's as if they make me see women differently. Some women.’

  ‘But they are not real women doing real things.’

  Nicolas chuckled. ‘They have real faces, though, some of them. That's what I'm known for, after all — painting ladies' faces. And now, tapestries.’

  ‘You've done well from these designs, alors?’

  ‘Better than your father, it seems.’

  ‘Poor Papa is being ground down by your Jean Le Viste.’

  ‘I am sorry about that.’

  We were silent for a bit. I could hear his steady breath.

  ‘What will you do about Jacques Le Bœuf?’ Nicolas said then.

  Luc turned over and muttered something in his sleep.

  I laughed softly. ‘What can I do? I am a blind girl who's lucky to have an offer at all.’

  ‘From a man who smells of sheep's piss.’

  I shrugged, though I didn't feel so carefree.

  ‘Tu sais, Aliénor, there is something you can do.’

  His voice changed when he said that. I froze. I knew what he was thinking. I had thought of it myself. But it could leave me worse off than marrying Jacques Le Bœuf.

  Nicolas seemed to have no doubts, though. ‘Come, beauty,’ he said, ‘and I'll tell you the whole story of the unicorn's horn.’

  I ran my fingers lightly over the tapestry's warp ridges, the rough, even beads of wool and silk tickling my fingertips, and let my hands rest there for a moment. Maman and the priest said it was a sin unless you were married but I had not heard that stop many — not even Maman. For all her saying that she and Papa married for the sake of their fathers' workshops, my brother was born only a month after they began to share a bed as man and wife. Madeleine and Georges Le Jeune didn't seem to fear their sin, nor Nicolas, nor the couples I heard in the alleys, nor the women laughing about it by the fountain or in the market.

  I threaded my needle through the Lady's mouth so that I would know where to start again, then held out my hands to Nicolas. He took them, then pulled me up and lifted me from my seat, carrying me over the sleeping weavers and out to the garden. I clung to his neck and buried my nose in his warm skin. It smelled wonderful.

  He laid me on a bed of flowers — daisies and carnations, forget-me-nots and columbine. I didn't care what got crushed but for the lily of the valley swinging over my face. It is hard to grow and lasts for such a short time, and its scent is so sweet. I shifted sideways away from it. Now my head was in a clump of lemon balm. It brushed my forehead and cheeks with its cool, fuzzy leaves. Luckily lemon balm springs back easily even when it's crushed.

  I had never thought that I would at last be with a man and yet be fretting over my plants.

  ‘What are you laughing at, beauty?’ Nicolas said, his face hovering just above mine.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said, and put my hand up to touch him.

  He pressed down on me, his legs over my hips, his chest on my breasts, his groin pushing hard into mine. I have never felt such weight on me, but I wasn't scared. I wanted him to press harder. He put his mouth on mine, his lips moving, his tongue filling my mouth so that I wanted to laugh again. It was soft and yet hard, and wet and moving. He sucked my tongue into his mouth and it was warm there, and tasted of the beer he'd been drinking, and of something else that I didn't know — the taste of himself. He yanked at my dress, pulling the skirt up and the bodice down. I shivered as my skin met the cool air and his skin.

  Every sense was working, all but one. I wondered what it would be like to see while doing this. From the little I knew about what went on between men and women — when I had heard Papa with Maman at night, or Georges Le Jeune with Madeleine in the garden, or when women joked in the market, or sang songs about it — I had always thought you needed eyes to enjoy it, that it was not something I could do, or only with a man like Jacques Le Bœuf and then it would hurt, and I would always dread it. But now it hurt only for a moment, when Nicolas first entered me, and then my body felt him everywhere, tasting and touching and smelling and hearing him.

  ‘What are you looking at?’ I said to Nicolas when he was pushing in and out, and we were wet between us and making sucking noises like a foot pulling out of mud.

  ‘Nothing — my eyes are closed. It's better that way, for I feel more. It's too dark to see, anyway — there's no moon.’

  So I was missing nothing. I was truly there with him, as much as anybody could be. This was a pleasure I could enjoy too, then. Something began rising in me, higher and higher with the rhythm of his pushing until I couldn't keep up with it, and I cried out as my body tensed and then released itself, a hand making a fist and then letting it go.

  Nicolas clamped his hand over my mouth. ‘Shhh!’ he hissed, but he was laughing too. ‘Do you want everyone to hear?’

  I let out a deep breath. I was not frightened so much as surprised.

  Nicolas was moving faster and making his own noises, his breathing was fast like mine, and then something hot spread out inside me. He stopped moving and slumped over me, his weight now so heavy I couldn't breathe. After a moment he rolled to the side. I heard the crunch of plants, smelled the sweetness of the lily of the valley, and knew it was crushed. But then, it was too sweet, like honey on its own without the bread to spread it on. Under the cloying scent I could smell something else, more real and like the earth. It was the bed smell I had sniffed on others, but it was fresh, like new shoots and dirt when they've been rained on.

  We breathed in and out, in and out at the same time, slower and slower until we grew quiet.

  ‘Is that what you do with your whores, then?’ I said.

  Nicolas snorted. ‘More or less. Sometimes it's better than others. It's usually better when the woman is happy.’

  I was happy.

  ‘What's that smell?’ he asked.

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘The sweet one. I know the other.’

  ‘Lily of the valley. You're lying on it.’

  He chuckled.

  ‘Nicolas, I want to do it again.’

  ‘Now?’ Nicolas laughed harder. ‘You'll have to give me a minute, beauty. Let me have a little rest, then I'll see what I can do.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ I said. ‘And the night after, and the night after.’

  Nicolas turned his face to me. ‘Are you sure, Aliénor? You know what may happen?’

  I nodded. ‘I know.’ All of the talk, the songs, the jokes, had taught me that too. I knew what I wanted. So much had been kept from me because my eyes were broken. I would have this, and its outcome as well.

  For two weeks we worked together in the workshop each day and lay together in the garden at night, crushing all of my flowers. By the end of that time the wool had been sorted, the Ladies in Taste and À Mon Seul Désir were woven, and we were done. Papa slid a mirror under Taste so that Nicolas could see the whole face of his Lady. That night he said goodb
ye to me in the garden. As he laid his head in my lap afterwards he said, ‘Don't be sad, beauty.’

  ‘I'm not sad,’ I said, ‘and I am no beauty.’

  He left for Paris the next day.

  CHRISTINE DU SABLON

  He was a clever one, that Nicolas des Innocents. I'll give him that. He got up to mischief right under our noses and I never even guessed till long after he'd gone. The weaving must have blinded me. I was so busy keeping my eyes on my work that I didn't notice what was going on around me. I blame myself, for my sin of pride in my weaving, pride that became arrogance — that and not going to Mass at the Sablon during the week, as I'd always done before. I was neglecting Our Lady and Our Lord, and we were punished for it.

  One Sunday after Mass Georges and Georges Le Jeune unrolled and hung Sound and Smell, the first two completed tapestries, for Nicolas to see. When they were ready I stood in the doorway admiring them. I did notice, however, that the Lady's hands as she plays her organ might have been better made. If only Georges had decided earlier to let me weave he would have had more time to do the hands properly. I kept this thought to myself.

  ‘Something has made you smug, Madame,’ Nicolas said just then.

  I shook my head at him. ‘I was just admiring my husband's skill,’ I said. He continued to grin at me until I clapped my hands and stepped down from the doorway. ‘That's enough gaping, now,’ I said. ‘Roll them up again or the moths will get them. Aliénor, cut some fresh rosemary.’

  Now that Nicolas had seen the first two tapestries, and the third and fourth as they were being made, he said he wanted to look at the designs for the last two — Sight and Touch — to be sure everything was still all of a piece. So he said.

  I confess I did not think much about this. Luc got out the cartoons for Nicolas and he looked at them alone in the garden while the rest of us worked. Soon after he came back in and said, ‘I would like to make a change.’

  ‘Why?’ Georges said. ‘They've already been agreed.’

  ‘I want to repaint the lily of the valley, now that I've been able to see it in the flesh in Aliénor's garden.’

  Behind the wool mill Aliénor giggled in a way I'd not heard from her before. That didn't tell me anything at the time, though it should have.

  ‘We can change it when we come to weave it,’ Georges said. ‘Remember, weavers can change the verdure as they wish.’

  ‘I'd like to anyway,’ Nicolas insisted. ‘I could do with a change — handling wool has made my fingers so rough I worry what women will say when they feel them.’ He winked at Georges Le Jeune. Aliénor giggled again.

  I frowned, but Georges just shrugged. ‘As you like — the wool's almost sorted anyway. We won't be needing you much longer.’

  Now that I think back on it, no one looked to see what Nicolas did. He had proven his skill the previous summer when he painted the cartoons, and we had no time to be peeking over his shoulder. He worked on the cartoons in the garden, and when they were dry he rolled them up and stored them with the others.

  His parting would have been solemn but we were too busy to think much of it. We were weaving fourteen hours a day then, with hardly a moment for meals, and I was dizzy with the pattern of the tapestry in front of me even when I wasn't weaving. I fell into bed each night and slept without moving until Madeleine woke me in the morning. There was little time left to think about a man's departure. The night before Nicolas went the men did go to the tavern, but they fell asleep over their beer. Even Nicolas came back, rather than have a last go with his yellow whore. He seemed to have gone off her those last days. Now of course I know why.

  After that there was a string of unbroken summer days, one after the other, when we wove, hardly speaking. Summer days are long, with fewer feast days than other times of the year, and we were starting earlier and finishing later. Fifteen hours, sixteen hours we sat at the looms, hot and still and silent. We had stopped talking — even Joseph and Thomas no longer said much. My back ached all the time, my fingers were rubbed hard by the wool, and my eyes went red, yet I had never been happier. I was weaving.

  Madeleine left us alone, bringing in beer without being asked, serving meals quickly and without fuss. Her cooking had improved since I left her to it — rather like Georges Le Jeune's weaving, which I now couldn't tell apart from his father's. Aliénor too was quiet — but then she always has been. She sewed for us and worked in her garden and helped Madeleine in the house. Sometimes she slept during the day so she could sew all night when the tapestries were free from weavers.

  At the end of the summer, just after the Feast of the Birth of the Virgin, we finished. I'd known for weeks that soon we would-my fingers were slowly creeping up to the edge with different colours I was ending-green, then yellow, then red. I had thought I would celebrate, yet when I'd finished the last red edge, tied off the last bobbin, helped Aliénor to sew shut the last slit, I felt flat, like a stew with no pepper in it. The day was no different from any other.

  Of course I was proud when Georges let me use the scissors for some of the cutting-off. I had never before been allowed to cut the warp threads. And when we unrolled the tapestries to see them whole for the first time, they were a joy to see. My own weaving on À Mon Seul Désir did not stand out from the others', but fitted in as if I had always been a weaver.

  We had no time to rest. There were still two tapestries to weave in five months. Georges said nothing but I knew I would be weaving them too. The days were getting shorter and everyone was needed. If Aliénor had been able to see Georges would probably have had her weave too.

  One Sunday after Mass we were going for a walk in the Grand Place — the only time I got out to see people now — when Aliénor grabbed my arm. ‘Jacques Le Bœuf!’ she hissed. Her nose was right — he was across the square, making his way to us. I confess I hadn't given the woad dyer a thought all summer. We hadn't told Aliénor, nor had I stitched even a cap for her trousseau.

  I moved her hand to Georges Le Jeune's arm. ‘Take her to L'Arbre d'Or,’ I whispered — only weavers and their families are allowed inside the weavers' guild. As my children hurried away I tucked my hand into the crook of Georges' arm and we stood close together, as if waiting for a storm to come and knock us over. We both looked up at the Hôtel de Ville, so solid and impressive with its arches and sculpture and tower. Would that we two could be so solid.

  Jacques stumped up to us. ‘Where's the girl gone?’ he shouted. ‘Always she runs from me — not much good to have a wife who runs away every time her husband comes near.’

  ‘Shhh!’ Georges hissed.

  ‘Don't you shush me. I'm bored of keeping quiet. Haven't I kept my mouth shut all this past year? Haven't I said nothing to the market gossips who ask if I'm to marry her? Why should I keep quiet? And why shouldn't I see her? She's got to get used to me some time. It may as well be now.’ He turned towards L'Arbre d'Or.

  Georges grabbed his arm. ‘Not there, Jacques — you know you can't go in there. And I'm only asking you to keep quiet for a little longer.’

  ‘Why?’

  Georges dropped his hand and looked at the ground. ‘I haven't told her yet.’

  ‘She doesn't know?’ Jacques bellowed even louder than before. A crowd was beginning to gather, though at a spitting distance because of the smell.

  I coughed. ‘You must be patient with us, Jacques. As you know, we've been very busy with the tapestries, where your blue wool plays an important part. So important,’ I continued, taking his arm and slowly walking him along, though my eyes filled with tears from the stench, ‘that I have no doubt you will be swamped with orders for more blue once people have seen them.’

  Jacques Le Bœuf's eyes gleamed for a moment — but only for a moment. ‘But the girl, the girl. She'll come to me at Christmas, yes? Have you bought her bed yet?’

  ‘I'm just going to order it tomorrow,’ Georges said. ‘Chestnut, I thought. We have one and it has served us well.’

  Jacques chuckled in a way tha
t made my belly turn. ‘Georges will come very soon to see you about the arrangements,’ I said, ‘for of course we shouldn't be discussing business on the Sabbath.’ I glared at him and he ducked his head. With a little more scolding I was able to get him to go, and the crowd drifted away without finding out the cause of his shouts — though from what he'd said about market gossips they already knew anyway.

  Georges and I looked at each other. ‘The bed,’ he said.

  ‘The trousseau,’ I said at the same time.

  ‘Where will I ever find the money for it?’

  ‘When will I ever find the time to sew?’

  Georges shook his head. ‘What will he say when I tell him it won't be Christmas, but Candlemas?’

  Not long after, I had answers to these questions, though not the answers I'd expected.

  * * *

  At first no one noticed. The looms were dressed for Sight and Touch, then we spent most of a day warping the looms, with Philippe and Madeleine helping. Then Georges unrolled the cartoons, ready to slide them underneath the warp. I studied the edges of the designs, checking to be sure we had the right colours ready. As I did so I glanced at the Lady in the cartoon of Sight. It took a moment for me to see it, but when I did I stepped back as if someone had thumped me in the chest. Nicolas had changed something, that was certain, and it was not just the lily of the valley.

  At the same time Georges Le Jeune began to laugh. ‘Regards, Maman!’ he cried. ‘So that's what Nicolas was doing in the garden. You should be pleased.’

  His laugh made me so angry I slapped him. Georges Le Jeune stared at me, astonished. He didn't even rub his cheek, though I'd hit him hard enough to turn it red.

  ‘Christine!’ Georges said sharply. ‘What is this?’

  I turned my glare to Aliénor. She was sitting on a stool, untangling thread. Of course she couldn't see what Nicolas had done to Sight.

  ‘I was only saying to Maman that Nicolas has made her likeness in Touch,’ Georges Le Jeune said. ‘Then she goes and slaps me for it!’

  I stared at him, then looked over at Touch. I looked for a long time. He was right — the Lady did look like me, with my long hair and long face, my pointed chin and strong jaw, and my eyebrows in high curves. I was the proud weaver's wife, smugly holding a banner in one hand, the unicorn's horn in the other. I remembered the moment he had captured, when I'd been standing in the door thinking of my weaving. Nicolas des Innocents knew me too well.