Sweet Enchantress

by Parris Afton Bonds

  John reined in his mount. The red-bearded man was born to the life of a professional soldier, although he had come from a family of humble Norfolk squires. "Come now, Paxton. Confess. Ye are like the rest of us. Ye entertain a fascination for the Round Table romances. Ye know—Merlin, Tristan and Iseult, Courts of Love.”

  Montlimoux a Court of Love?

  Paxton recalled the supper he had partaken there and the strutting troubadour who had importuned his mistress's attention with verbose, but conventional, poems of courtly love. Amidst the applause of the knights and their ladies, she had absently rewarded him with a kiss on the cheek and a peacock's feather— and shifted her piercing gaze back to him. The woman was impudent. She would soon know her place as mere chattel, categorized along with his ownership of his prized war horse and other accoutrements. This long awaited confrontation had been more than two fortnights in the planning.

  The reed roofs of a Montlimoux hamlet came into view, and soon honking geese fluttered from under the hooves of the horses. Recalling his own humble status at Montlimoux and anticipating his confrontation with its haughty chatelaine, his next remark appeared precipitous and non-sequential. “Let’s stop at the public bath, John, and scrub off the dust of the road.”

  John grinned knowingly, his teeth white against the auburn of his beard. “Aye, my Lord Lieutenant.”

  “My Lord Lieutenant?”

  “To be more accurate, my new title is a seneschal of sorts to Montlimoux.”

  He had sent ahead green-and-white-capped heralds on horseback to announce his arrival that morning to the Countess Dominique de Bar. In her own Justice Room he would bring to heel that imperious female. For the occasion, he had chosen not the garb of a courtier, but that of a common soldier. Not a jewel, not a ribbon anywhere. Only a shirt of chain mail over a short padded tunic and mail stockings. And, of course, the sword on his left side; on his right the dagger, the misericord for the mercy it dispatched to the mortally wounded.

  At his mild pronouncement, her eyes glowed like the feu follet, those unholy green lights of marsh gas that flitted through England’s peat bogs. Her hands clenched the arms of her justice chair. “A seneschal of sorts? By whose creation?”

  "By the creation of the King of England, one of the twelve peers of France, Count of Ponthieu, and . . .” He paused to emphasize the last. “Duke of Aquitaine, which my Duke-King Edward III holds as feudatory of the King of France.”

  She waved a hand of dismissal. “That is common knowledge.”

  “Perhaps your knowledge doesn’t encompass the fact that within the Duchy of Aquitaine’s boundaries lies the County of Montlimoux.”

  Slowly she stood to face him. Her normally tanned face was as white as a winter moon. The barest tremble of her hands betrayed her, as did the rise and fall of her breasts, indecently exposed by a low décolletage embroidered in old lace. Only the virgin white veil mantling her shoulders offered any modesty. "Those boundaries have never been officially established.”

  She was grasping at straws. He lifted one brow, and his smile was as hard as steel. "Exactly.”

  He watched her face, the fleeting, warring thoughts that passed over it. The people of Languedoc detested the English only a little worse than they did the French, whose armies had ravaged the countryside a century earlier in a holy crusade against the heretical Albigensians. There was no higher power to which she could appeal. Least of all the pope, since Languedoc’s princes and counts had been both tortured and excommunicated countless times over the last century for harboring Albigensians and Jews alike. As she herself had been doing, and her mother before her, and her mother before her.

  She drew herself up, reassuming her mantle of dignity and nobility. "Nevertheless, I am Montlimoux’s comtessa.”

  "You never were,” he said calmly, relishing the moment. "Officially, your fiefdom has been without a suzerain for twenty years, since France adopted the Salic Law, prohibiting females from either inheriting or passing their inheritance on to their descend—”

  "I know the Salic Law!” She moved forward until she stood a cloth bolt's ell from him. Gardenia, lavender, rose, and other delicate scents he was not familiar with invaded him, making him feel strangely off balance. Behind him, he could sense John and the bodyguards tense. Behind her, the towering and aging Knight Templar, along with her lackeys, stiffened their stance.

  "Let me understand you,” she said in a low voice, her words clipped, her eyes narrowed. "Montlimoux is to be passed to King Edward of England, who claims this land as an extension of his Duchy of Aquitaine?”

  "You do show promise of grappling with the intricacies of politics and diplomacy.”

  His sarcasm went ignored. She lifted a brow. "Do you not find it curious that the English king claims the duchy nominally his through his French forebear, the female, Eleanor of Aquitaine?”

  He shrugged. "Your barbarous French passed the Salic Law, not the English.” Which had been the source of Edward’s vexation to begin with. By doing so, the French prevented Eleanor’s Plantagenet descendant from inheriting the French crown, now worn by a Valois, Philip VI.

  "They are not my barbarous—”

  “You are most fortunate,” he said in a quiet, but threatening, tone, "that you do not reside in England, where secular law states that the deaf, the dumb, the insane—and the female —cannot even draw up a contract."

  "That is in England!”

  "Well, then,” he said with imperturbability, “I shall precede on ecclesiastical law, which bases its curtailment of the rights of a woman on her secondary place in creation and on her primary part in original sin.”

  A muscle flickered in her clenched jaw. "You are the barbarian!”

  “As you are now my vassal, mademoiselle, I could have you whipped in public for such an utterance of disrespect. Let it be your last.”

  "Your vassal?”

  The moment had arrived. His smile was tolerant. "Now that King Edward has at last put forth his claim as Duke of Aquitaine and now that I, Paxton of Wychchester, have been appointed Grand Seneschal of its County of Montlimoux, you are by law in my custody. You may still assume the title of Countess but you hold neither the authority which comes with that title nor the authority which comes with the one of chatelaine.”

  She stared at him. Comprehension of the enormity of what had just transpired was evident in the sequence of her facial expressions: doubt, followed by horror, then rage, and, finally, the realization of her helplessness. He half expected her face to turn into a domino of tears.

  Defiant in defeat, she turned abruptly to leave the room with her chin held high. Her retinue stood frozen, unable to cope with what they had witnessed. He let her get as far as the pointed arch doorway, then called, "Mistress, from this moment on, it would be wise of you to take your leave by my permission.”

  She whirled around. Her hands were balled, her dusky complexion waxing scarlet, visible even from that distance. "You . . . I can’t . . . .

  He crossed to her justice chair and sprawled in it. He was fatigued from the day’s journey. "Try,” he told her.

  She swallowed. The span of a moment passed in which his gaze dueled with hers. "With . . . your . . . permission.” Each word was forced, as if she were choking.

  "Messire,” he prompted.

  "Messire!” A cat could not have hissed any better.

  His smile was magnanimous. "I grant you permission to take your leave.”

  For Dominique, Montlimoux held a beauty that was unsurpassed and from her maternal forbears, she had inherited a consuming love for it. As a child, she had reveled in old Iolande’s stories of Montlimoux’s past grandeur.

  In short, the Comté of Montlimoux stood for all that Dominique was, all that went before her, and, in her mind, all that was to come.

  Until Paxton of Wychchester had ridden into her mountaintop principality. She should have taken better heed of the beggar’s underlying appearance of brute force that first evening.

  He
r tread measured her chamber’s perimeters in one direction, then she would pivot to retrace her steps in the other. Her maids-in-waiting glanced at one another furtively. “This cannot be happening,” she muttered. “No warning. No declaration of war. The miscreant just appears with his entourage of soldiers and demands that the chateau and village quarter them.”

  Marthe, one of her maids-in-waiting, glanced up from the wall hanging she embroidered. "What does he mean to do, my lady?”

  "He means to take full control,” Iolande said, as she quietly entered the room. She sniffled in indignation. "His aide, Captain Bedford, has instructed me to bring the demesne’s ledger to his Lord Lieutenant. The man wants a full account of names and manors within your comital domain.”

  So, even Montlimoux’s revenues, such as they were, he meant to sequester! Palms rubbing together, Dominique resumed pacing, circumventing the stool on which another maid-in-waiting sat. The curly-locked Beatrix dropped her needlepoint in her lap and, pale, looked up at Dominique. "Does my Lord Lieutenant intend to evict us from the chateau?"

  Abruptly, Dominique halted. One eyebrow arched. “My lord?" Already the man had usurped her authority. But would he go that far? Put her and her household out into the streets? By her troth, how she loathed the oaf with his cursed abundant dignity!

  She swung about. "Summon Baldwyn.” Within minutes, the Knight Templar lumbered to her chamber door. She shooed the others away and directed him toward one of the low stools. Sitting, he was still almost as tall as she.

  Never had they consulted in her private chamber, but neither her library nor the Justice Room were now to be considered reliable places for her to conduct private business. "What do you know about this man, Baldwyn? Our Lord Lieutenant?" The words on her tongue were as tart as vinegar.

  He clasped his hands between his spread legs and emitted a heavy sigh. "It’s hard to decipher the man. You know he was at your court earlier this month?”

  Her lips compressed. "I well remember.”

  "He came then as a mendicant, now as a soldier. But he led me to believe he also follows the dictum of the Church.”

  The Templar fairly spit out the last word. The pope, in league with the late Philip IV, had envied the Knights Templars’ wealth and had had them suppressed. Many of the Templars had been burned at the stake. Baldwyn's antipathy for the Church was shared by Iolande, who, with the rest of the Jews, had been expelled from France about the same time. They were but two of the thousands who had learned it did not serve to thwart the power of the pope.

  These two outcasts, the Jewess and the Templar, had raised Dominique as their own from the time she was a toddler. Until she had reached her majority, the two had served as co-regents for the county. Despite their loving efforts, she could not shake the feeling of being abandoned, unwanted, so very alone. Perhaps it was because her parents, by electing to harbor the Jewess and the Templar, had chosen principle and death over her. So, there was a vacuum inside her despite Iolande's and Baldwyn's abiding love for her.

  Often, she had wished them married, imagined them as her parents, of whom she had but little recollection. But her nursemaid and the Templar were recalcitrantly independent and had no wish for such bondage. In fact, they seemed merely to tolerate each other. She sometimes imagined herself as they were now, old and lonely. It saddened her. Was there not more to this solitary journey through life?

  ‘Tour true opinion, Baldwyn. What help can I expect from my vassals?”

  "In truth,” he mumbled at last, "little.”

  She stared at the Goliath’s visage. This warrior/monk, soldier/mystic had tutored her in geometry and astronomy as well as astrology, knowledge he had acquired while serving as a young knight in the Holy Land. There he had, also, acquired leprosy. "Surely, I have feudal service owed me.”

  "You know yourself that the last few years, in the absence of wars, your tenants have paid scutage in place of military service.”

  "Yes, but those shield taxes have gone to building a hospital and other improvements. On how many of our local knights can we depend?”

  "Well,” he said, ticking off on his thick fingertips, "Richard, son of Jacques holds fifteen knights' fees. Andre of Gaston, six knights'. Robert holds half a knight’s fee. All in all, mayhap thirty-five knights' fees and a half.”

  "I see,” she murmured. She wondered what Francis would advise.

  The Templar looked up from his interlocked fingers. His eyes held the regret of a man reduced by the years. "Dominique, I have battled the fiercest warriors of the lot, the Muslims. I know whereof I speak. A thousand knights' fees would not save Montlimoux. Should we battle and defeat Paxton of Wychchester, we would still have his English king to deal with. At Edward Ill's hands . . . well, I can only dissuade you from the follies of such a rebellion.”

  She saw that he suffered as much as she at their predicament. She placed her hand on his stooped shoulder. "I know, I know, Baldwyn.”

  "No, you cannot. For an old soldier, it's much worse. Being helpless, being weak. It’s like being castrated. Like being an eunuch!”

  She almost smiled. She wanted to gainsay him, to tell the old soldier that it was far the worse for a woman. She attempted jocularity. "It was you who instructed me in Latin, impressing upon me that its word for ‘woman’ suggested her weakness, this one in faith – fe-minus.”

  “Well, as the peasant says, ‘life and death are in the power of the tongue.’ ”

  She smiled wanly. "I need time alone to think, Baldwyn. Send me Martha, then see I am not disturbed, will you?”

  In silence, a bewildered Marthe helped her change from her tight, tailored gown into a simple undergown of russet linsey-woolsey, then add the peasant’s loose surcoat. The maid-in-waiting knew better than to break into Dominique's agitated ruminations.

  Sending Marthe away, Dominique made her way down a back turret staircase. At its base, an English sentry stopped her, demanding her identity.

  "I am the Comtessa de Bar,” she said, barely controlling her temper at this latest impertinence. "Go tell that to your Lord Lieu-tenant.”

  Abashed, he let her pass with a muttered, "My apologies, Comtessa.”

  Miffed, she swept by him, heading toward her herbal garden, her greatest source of inner peace. She had acquired her knowledge of plants from Iolande, who, like herself, was a member of a matrilineal society.

  Over the years the old Jewess had instructed her in how to cup a plant in her palm and determine its nature and distinctions. By observing the leaves, stems, and roots, she knew whether the plant could be used for healing or food; whether it needed a flood of sunlight; whether it grew harmoniously with other plants.

  The fame of Montlimoux's vineyards was a tribute to both Iolande’s skill with plant life and her reverence toward all living things. Having absorbed these lessons at her nursemaid’s knee, Dominique was loathe to kill even a spider, much less a garden snake.

  For over an hour she worked furiously. The warming sunlight of March never reached the chill of her heart. She felt none of the inner attunement that usually came with gardening. Her hands caressed the rich soil, but she received no corresponding comfort.

  At the quivering of the lichen, she paused. Someone was coming. The alteration in the lichen affected even her body’s vibrating emotions, reducing them to a slower tempo which indicated either fear or anger.

  She knew when the man clad in chain mail stepped into the sunlight that it could only be anger that affected her so. She detested the attitude of superiority reflected in his face, nicked here and there with the scars his violence had wrought.

  Schooling her expression to impassivity, she rose and faced the Englishman who had appeared in her Justice Room as a beggar. Then she had judged Paxton of Wychchester of being her age. Almost as tall as Baldwyn and nearly as brawny, he had presented an imposing figure, much as he did now. “I was expecting you. What plans have you made for me and my household?”

  His experienced eye examined her dirt
-crusted hands, her dusty work dress, and her unbound hair. The dark sweep of his brows met over the high bridge of his nose. "Expecting me?”

  "Are all the king’s lieutenants so slow of thought?” she mimicked. The words had rolled off her tongue before she could halt their flow. Her natural instinct for command, whether by intimidation or by commendation, was a difficult one to subdue.

  He hooked his thumbs in the leather belt of his scabbard, a stance that was now becoming familiar to her. He looked disturbingly patient. "Are you planning to make trouble?”

  "I am surprised you did not summon me to you like a tenant.”

  He waved his hand indifferently, its sunburnt skin also notched with scars. "Your feminine games are inconsequential to me.”

  That pricked her pride. "Do you expect me to placidly accept my subjugation?”

  "I will expect you pay homage to me as my vassal a fortnight hence in the great hall.”

  She gasped.

  He continued calmly. "Heralds will be sent throughout the county of Montlimoux, summoning its inhabitants. A tourney, I think, will serve nicely as enticement. Aye, a tourney, guaranteeing safe conduct to knights and esquires alike. That should well set the stage for a ceremonial transition of authority.”

  So that was what lay behind this visitation. As a woman she might be of inconsequence to him, but not the power she wielded. "I cannot renounce my heritage!”

  "Cannot or will not?”

  "Either. Both!”

  "Mistress, heed me. You cannot even care for your own people. I found here no protection for them, no mercenaries, no army to guard the gates.”

  "And you found here no violence! Non-action means simply refraining from activity contrary to nature.”

  He looked at her strangely. As if she were some unidentifiable species of plant life he had never encountered. "Mistress, do you not perceive—”

  "Chatelaine,” she corrected. Her gaze swept over the soldier-warrior with unmistakable disdain.

  "Mistress," he asserted with the patience of one speaking to the slow of wit. "Do you not perceive that your foolish pride and stubbornness will only beget sorrow for you and those for whom you care?”