A Plague of Unicorns Read online

  “My children,” he began, looking down on them from the high pulpit, “God does not want you to overtax yourselves in this practice, nor to make yourselves ill. This is but a rehearsal only. Save your real bravado for when the beasts actually arrive again in the fall.”

  Bartholomew, Aiden, and George — who had bonded in the infirmary — had quite enjoyed overtaxing themselves and then having to take it easy in the soft infirmary beds. They liked being read to as they lay in a half stupor. It wouldn’t be hard to do it all over again as soon as the abbot would let them. They winked at one another and nodded their heads.

  Then Bartholomew whispered, “We’ll get them next time, boys!” Meaning, of course, the unicorns.

  Few of the ordinary duties besides prayer got done that cold winter.

  By March, everyone at the abbey, except Bartholomew and his boys, was exhausted by the unicorn practice, even as modest as it had become. And as Brother Luke cautioned, “They are not practiced in anything now but boredom.”

  So Abbot Aelian allowed them to rest up all spring and summer with only minor practices.

  For the monks and most of the novices, it was a relief to return to the scriptorium or the kitchen or the winter gardening or the animal care — the goats and the cows had suffered the most from neglect. And there were the bell ringing duties and the washing of the stone floors.

  But for the oblates — especially Bartholomew, Aiden, and George — it was a return to a life of order and silence, the hardest thing for young boys to endure. So they practiced at night, in secret, and had to be wakened rudely with a hearty shake each morning by the monk in charge.

  The gardening monks still kept a careful eye on the orchard trees, of course. It was their job. They watched the flowers first, then the buds, then the hard bead of each small apple. They reported what was happening every day to Abbot Aelian, who wrote it down in a notebook labeled Of the Labors of Gardeners. It was, he hoped, to be his greatest work. After defeating the unicorns, of course.

  The gardeners and their novices waited impatiently, then fearfully, then hopefully as the apple beads of late summer grew large and round, and it was clear they were nearing a major harvest.

  They hoped that after the slingshots and fish guts and the rest, the unicorns had decided to go elsewhere.

  And just when they were congratulating themselves on a job well done, and the bell ringers were ringing out the canonical hours, the unicorns came back, threading their way across the meadows of barley towards the orchard.

  It was Bartholomew who saw them first from his perch in the tallest Plainsong apple tree. He sang out his discovery in a voice that mixed pride with a dash of bravado and a pinch of fear.

  Here ends the second part of the Short History of the Unicorn Plague.

  3

  THE SHORT HISTORY OF THE UNICORN PLAGUE, PART THREE

  That fall’s battle was worse than the first.

  Unicorns are wily animals, or so it says in the bestiaries. The monks discovered this for themselves. They watched as the unicorns leaped like goats over fences and noted how they smelled out traps as cannily as badgers. And it seemed the unicorns were no longer afraid of either towels or pitchforks. They also appeared to love the warm water bane. Though they were, perhaps, not wild about the fish guts.

  The abbot watched out his window again and despaired. He saw white beast after white beast evading all the traps the monks had set for them. He saw boys tumble from the trees and have to limp away before they were trampled by those fierce hooves.

  And one boy landed on top of a unicorn and proceeded to try to ride it around the orchard, being dislodged at the last minute and nearly losing a limb to the infuriated unicorn’s horn. Abbot Aelian thought it was Bartholomew, though from so far away he couldn’t be sure. Only the boy’s natural instinct of preservation, plus the fact he rolled into the orchard’s swift river and was recovered downstream by some of the older monks, saved him from more than just another bout of pneumonia.

  It turned out it was Bartholomew, and as he told the story of what happened, he made it even better, speaking of the unicorn’s bugling call of surprise when Bartholomew landed on his back. How the unicorn bucked like a charger when it first feels the weight of a saddle. How the unicorn snorted stars out its nose. Bartholomew made up a lot of it. Well, really, all of it, but in doing so became the hero of all of the boys.

  Now unicorns, as Abbot Aelian had read in the three books in the abbey’s library, can only be captured by a pure maiden with a golden halter. And a maiden — as any fool can tell you — is never allowed in a monastery or on monastery land. No girls. None. Never. It’s an absolute rule.

  Perhaps that was why the unicorns felt so safe doing their apple thievery in an abbey garden, while leaving alone any golden apples that grew at castles and great houses. Or perhaps the Cranford apples were just too perfect and wonderful to resist.

  Besides, what Abbot Aelian had not fully calculated was that if his barely trained army of monks, priests, novitiates, and oblates kept the unicorns from the garden one week, they would simply enter it the next. It was a kind of sliding scale. (But in the abbot’s defense, sliding scales had not yet been invented.)

  Anyway, the count after the second fall’s battle was this:

  One priest and four novitiates injured, though only the priest had to spend time in the surgery.

  Three infant oblates with screaming nightmares, who had to be sent home to their mothers.

  Young Bartholomew in the infirmary with a coughing sickness that the infirmerer feared might turn into pleurisy.

  Abbot Aelian was forced to ask for help.

  After that fall battle, the monks in the scriptorium (and the ones at work in their own cells) had to stop illuminating Bibles and prayer books to crank out about a hundred fancy posters to be tacked on walls around the countryside.

  Each poster was decorated with famous encounters with animals from Scripture, the most popular being Samson’s slaying his enemies with the jawbone of a donkey, Jonah in the whale’s belly, and the ram caught in the thicket where Isaac was bound. Only Mary entering Bethlehem on a donkey and the Gadarene swine were left out.

  That is why, in the third autumn of Aelian’s rule, heroes flocked to the abbey’s door, the line of them sometimes winding all the way around to the outer walls.

  “Who knew,” the abbot mused, “that heroes grew so abundantly in the kingdom.”

  “Not just our kingdom,” grumbled Father Joseph, who tended to the abbey stores. “They have come from as far away as Caledonia and across the seas from Gaul, Germania, Afrik, Cathay, and Rome.”

  The heroes came in all shapes and sizes, mostly big.

  Nearly a hundred heroes in all.

  They spoke languages as diverse as Aramaic, Latin, Mandarin, Pictish, Doric, and Greek. They wore armor or togas or tartans or albs or practically nothing at all. They carried swords, bows, spears, pikes, nunchakus, and slings.

  Father Joseph, who looked hawkish and sunken, made lists of the heroes, and then he made lists of the lists. He mumbled all day long and in his sleep as well. He was not a happy man. For even when — at his insistence — the posters were taken down, the heroes kept arriving.

  “There must be an underground hero network,” he whispered to his best friend in the abbey, Father John. They looked alike and sounded alike, though Father John was a full head shorter than Father Joe.

  “One tells another, tells another,” Father John whispered back.

  “I wonder what they say,” Father Joseph replied.

  “Probably that we serve good food.”

  “And apples.” This last was said in a growl. Father Joseph’s patience was near its end. “I will tell the abbot we must stop feeding the heroes, lest we have nothing for ourselves come next year.”

  But Abbot Aelian was not moved by Father Joseph’s arguments. He insisted on giving each hero a large dinner and an equally large breakfast for three days of hero-work — which furt
her used up the abbey’s stores.

  Father Joseph kept careful count and did not stop complaining to Father John.

  The first of the heroes to arrive was Sir Geoffrey of Stonewait Manor, who sat on a horse with feet the size of dinner plates.

  Sir Geoffrey pounded on the door. He looked much like a hero with long, flowing golden locks, and arms the size of tree trunks.

  “He will do,” Abbot Aelian said with a small smile.

  Sir Geoffrey sat at dinner with the abbot. In between devouring an entire haunch of lamb, three chickens stewed in sherry, and a dessert of apple cobbler, he told the abbot his plan.

  “For combat with a single unicorn,” he said, the words hard to make out between his moustache and his full mouth, “a sword will do. As long as it has a farther reach than the creature’s horn.” He piled two apple cobblers on his plate, then tucked into both of them. “I am your man, abbot.”

  But the next morning, after a huge breakfast, and after he’d gone into the orchard with his newly sharpened sword, Sir Geoffrey came back white-faced and shaking.

  “You did not say it was a herd of unicorns,” he said, reaching for a flagon of apple cider. “A single hero cannot possibly face all of them. You need an army of swords standing in porcupine formation.”

  Father Joseph shook his head miserably, thinking of feeding an army at the abbey.

  “Or a maiden,” Sir Geoffrey said. “Unicorns will follow a maiden, you know.”

  “No maidens allowed here,” the abbot retorted. “No females,” he said. “Not young or old. This is an abbey. That’s the rule.”

  So Sir Geoffrey left, a bag full of scones for his long trip home cadged from Father Joseph, who was delighted to see him go.

  About fifty useless heroes later, the extra-large Sir Humphrey Hippomus of Castle Dire showed up on a horse whose feet were like soup tureens.

  He, too, ate his way through a massive dinner and a bigger breakfast, then went off to fight a single unicorn with a pike. “Because,” as he told the abbot, “my pike is bigger than the unicorn’s spike. It’s simply size that wins in the end.”

  But like Sir Geoffrey before him, Sir Humphrey came back shaking, white-faced, and thirsty. He downed three flagons of the regular apple cider before saying, “That wasn’t one unicorn. It wasn’t a herd. It was a horde of the beasts. You need an army in the porcupine formation.”

  “No army here,” Abbot Aelian said. “Monks are a people of peace. That’s the rule.”

  Father Joseph and Father John counted up the cost, and Father John walked out of the countinghouse shaking his head. Already it was too high, and still the unicorns ate the fruit.

  Fifty or so even more useless heroes came and went before the extra-extra-large Sir Sullivan Gallivant of the Long Barrow arrived. Sir Sullivan was too big for any horse, so he rode in a tumbrel pulled by a pair of matched drays.

  He waddled into the entry hall, ate in the larder, and devoured a half day’s supply of food before getting back into his cart.

  “I’ll bring you back the head of yon unicorn,” he said. “Nae problem.”

  His nae was very loud, and he sounded like a horse himself. He shook his bow in the direction of the orchard.

  The cart made rumbling, tumbling noises as it left, and even louder noises as it returned just a few minutes later.

  “I’ve only ten arrows,” shouted Sir Sullivan, his voice a thunder, “and there must be a hundred head of unicorns there!”

  “A hundred and seventy-two, by last count,” mumbled Father Joseph.

  “Plus or minus,” added Father John.

  The abbot said, “Bring him a flagon of cider,” and one of the monks raced out with it.

  Before they could thank him for his try, he’d turned the cart around and was gone, calling back over his shoulder, “Try a brace of cannons!”

  “No cannons allowed here,” the abbot retorted. “Only canon law,” he added, almost smiling at his own small joke. He was not much given to joking. “That’s the rule.”

  Father Joseph said to Father John, “He’s taken the flagon with him.”

  Father John shrugged. “Even though the chalice is silver, it is worth the price to have him gone. He would have eaten the rest of our stores if given a chance.”

  Soon after that, all the heroes left, having eaten their way through hundreds of pounds of food, having left their trash and carried away treasures, and their horses having trampled the grass around the orchard into a muddy bog. In their own way, the heroes were as bad as the unicorns.

  Maybe even worse.

  Difficult as the heroes were, with no more in sight, Abbot Aelian was distressed. His prayers seemed unanswered, and he began to question whether he should just leave the unicorns to their destructive ways unchecked.

  “Perhaps,” he said to Father Joseph, “the Lord wants the abbey to fail.”

  “If he wanted the abbey to fail,” Father Joseph said softly, “he would not have sent you here to us.”

  The abbot nodded. “But I am out of ideas.”

  “But not out of prayers,” said Father Joseph, and they went back into the sanctuary to pray.

  Now, it’s not written down what the two of them prayed for, but surely it wasn’t for an eight-year-old boy, the heir to a dukedom, with a smudge on his nose. They would both have laughed roundly at that. That is, if they’d been laughing men.

  But sometimes a little child can lead.

  4

  IN WHICH JAMES ASKS TOO MANY QUESTIONS AND GETS TOO FEW ANSWERS

  About fifty miles from the abbey sat Castle Callander, where the nearby Callan River twisted sluggishly like an old dragon. The castle had seven turrets that reached fists towards the sky. It had long, many-paned, corbelled windows, arrow slits left over as defense from the many earlier wars, and a dry moat. The grey stone was worn in places but still had many years to go before parts had to be replaced. And the Duke of Callanshire’s banner — a red dragon rampant — flew on a high flagpole whenever the family was at home. And they were always at home.

  In the castle dwelt the Duke of Callanshire, his wife, the Duchess Ann, their daughter, Alexandria, their son and heir, eight-and-a-half-year-old James, and baby Bruce.

  Callanshire was a lovely land of vast fields and dense forests, of rolling hills and acres of farmland. The shire was divided into three counties: Callan itself, which was where the castle stood; East Riding, where the abbey was situated; and Hockney, where the big market towns crowded together like pigs at a trough.

  Though some distance from Hockney, the castle was close enough to the abbey for the heirs of the dukedom to be educated there, but far enough away so that gossip did not fly between.

  That was why no one at Castle Callander had heard about the plague of unicorns at the abbey. Or if they had, they thought it merely a minstrel’s tale.

  On this morning, the heir to the dukedom, James — who was almost nine years old — was sharing the breakfast with his mother and his sister, Alexandria. The baby was upstairs in the nursery with Nanny. He was still too young to eat downstairs and would be for some time. Bruce was his name, or The Baby. Though he was sometimes called “The Spare,” because if something should happen to James, Bruce would become the next heir.

  James didn’t worry about any of that. He didn’t worry about much. Worry would come later.

  James peered at his mother from under his mop of white-gold hair. His eyes were the sharp blue of a spring sky. He and his mother shared the same color eyes and hair, and they shared the same fierce intelligence.

  Alexandria was even smarter, but not nearly as blonde, and her eyes were a kind of grey, like Spanish steel. Her mother used to say that Alexandria’s spine must be made of steel, too, for she was as straight and true as a well-made sword.

  The thing most people noticed first about James was that mop of hair, then the sharp blue eyes, and the fact that he was still missing an upper tooth on either side of his upper mouth — which gave it the look of t
he castle portcullis. He never seemed to be still, but was a running, tumbling boy who was forever exploring. “His nose,” his father used to say, “leads him like a hound on the hunt.”

  For the most part, James was a tidy boy. Except when he forgot to wash behind his ears. And there was often a smudge on his nose, which Nanny or his mother or Alexandria used to wipe off with a quick rub from a ready cloth. A “clootie,” Nanny called her cloth, because she was from Caledonia, a cold and inhospitable land some said, but not Nanny, who planned to retire there.

  But the thing that most people remembered about James was that he asked questions. All the time. By nature, he was extremely curious. He had long ago tired out everyone in the castle with his questions. They had all grown Weary of Query, as Alexandria had aptly said.

  At this particular morning meal, he was engaged in questioning his mother. He had already asked her in quick succession, “Why does the sun rise in the morning? Is it like one of Cook’s cakes? What are its ingredients?” And then pointing to the eggs on his plate, and without stopping to draw breath, he asked, “Are these duck eggs or goose eggs? Can they lay spotted eggs as well?”

  He didn’t notice the lines growing between his mother’s eyes, a clear sign she was annoyed. Nor did he give her time to answer any of his questions before adding, “When will Father be home?”

  She looked at him, seemed like she was about to say something, then turned her face away.

  Alexandria put her hand on his. “Hush,” she said. “There are some questions that should not be asked.”

  At that, the duchess looked back. Her eyes were shining oddly. “Your father has disappeared in the Holy Lands. Perhaps on his own Crusade. Perhaps following the Saviour’s footsteps. Perhaps dead and buried in the sand. We have sent men to find out what has happened. But if you are to be the next Duke of Callanshire presently, you must learn to school your thoughts.” Her voice was steady, but her eyes shone now with tears. She did not let them drop.