xsl2 saxon8B stripping off unwanted separation charact

I have a problem normalizing strings in xslt2 with saxon 8B. Here is
an example

XML    <a href="http://www.ac-versailles.fr/etabliss/michelet-vanves"
target="_blank"> Lycie
              Michelet</a>
XSL
        <xsl:element name="lycie">
            <xsl:attribute name="nom">
                <xsl:value-of separator=" " select="a"/>
            </xsl:attribute>
        </xsl:element>
        <xsl:value-of select="lycie"/>

RESULT
	    <lycie nom=" Lycie&#xA;              Michelet">

               <xsl:value-of separator=" " select="normalize-space
(a)"/>

	A sequence of more than one item is not allowed as the first
argument of normalize-unicode()
	URL: http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath20/#ERRXPTY0004

What's happening and how is it posible to normalize strings with
saxon 8B ?