"My will is my will,” she murmured, and turned her back to him.
Later in the night, she turned to find him gone. She sat upright, sensing something was amiss. Then, there came a terrible bloodcurdling howl that was more animal than human. Paxton never returned to his bed.
The next morning she learned the horrible truth. At first, she attributed the heavy air to her own gloomy agitation. But Jacotte, helping dress her, was all thumbs. Dominique peered at the maid's face. Her eyes were red from obvious weeping. "What ails you, Jacotte?”
She sniffled but did not meet Dominique's searching gaze. "My Lady Dominique, there is something you should know. There is talk.”
Dominique half-turned to stare at her maid. "Yes?”
"The soldiers are saying that the Lord Lieu-tenant relented during the early-morning hours and spared Denys Bontemp's life.”
A relieved sigh eased from Dominique's fear-blocked throat. "Then I can go to him.”
"No.” The single word was drawn out reluctantly. "He was removed from the dungeon and taken to the barbican.”
Her hand going to her throat, Dominique stiffened. She sensed there was more. "And?”
The maid-in-waiting's face was sallow as candlewax. Her voice trembled with pent-up horror. "They say that the Lord Lieutenant ordered Denys Bontemp's hand, the one that dared touch the mistress, be chopped off!”
CHAPTER XIV
"Denys Bontemps would have raped you, Dominique! Can you not see that? He is fortunate Paxton was charitable enough to spare his life."
Dominique glowered at her reflection in the silver-polished mirror. "His life! His sculpting was his life! Without his work, without his right hand, he has been reduced to a common beast of the field.”
With gnarled and trembling fingers, Iolande readjusted Dominique's bridal mantle, edged with gold lace. "Which was what he behaved as when he tried to rape you. My point exactly.”
Dominique closed her eyes. She felt weak, nauseated, depleted of her powers. Was it the child, Paxton’s child, she carried who could do this to her? Or the horror of the past week? If there was only some way she could get to Denys, some way to console him.
She stood like a statue, lifeless and as cold, while Iolande arranged her clothing for the forthcoming wedding. She wore her best: her finest linen chemise; her best silk tunic, trimmed with fur and a velvet surcoat over it, embroidered with gold thread; her shoes of the most expensive morocco leather were worked with gold; and on her head, the small veil was held by a narrow gold band.
She stared dully at her mirrored image. How could she go through with this wedding? A sham. The joining of two physical bodies only. Not their souls. How sad. How painfully sad!
When, at last, she and Paxton met in the courtyard for that momentous trip to the cathedral, his expression appeared as apathetic as hers. Whatever emotions the warrior possessed, they passed behind the impenetrable curtain of his brown eyes. They reflected nothing at the sight of her in her bridal finery. He, also, was dressed in his best: a short, girdled coat of mahogany satin, tightly fit over his muscular torso; a long, wide cape; and a stiff, broad-brimmed hat.
Side by side in the merciless morning sunlight, they rode down the spiral road to the village. Tapestries decorated the streets, and spices burned in all the squares, where torches and tambourines welcomed them. A little troop of jongleurs preceded them, playing on flute, viol, and harp. Behind rode the wedding guests, a cortege several leagues long. All along the way people crowded the sides of the street to watch.
In the square in front of the cathedral, Paxton dismounted and came around to her side. His large hands encircled her waist. She stared down into that broad, impassive face. The hands she placed on his shoulders as he lifted her down trembled.
This was to be the man with whom she would share a bed—and her body—for the remainder of her days. This was the man who would own her. This was the man who would dictate her life. Panic fluttered in her heart.
She and Paxton were opponents. Each abhorred what the other stood for. He, her paganism, as he called her spiritual mind set. She, his violence. Only one of them could emerge the victor. But which one?
The sight of Francis, waiting under the portico, restored a small measure of inner strength to her. In his hands, he held an open book and the wedding ring. His face was dark with a nameless passion she was unable even to begin to identify, such was her own turmoil.
He began the traditional interrogation of the bridal couple. "Are you both of age? Do you swear that you are not within the forbidden degree of consanguity? Have the banns been published? Finally, do you both freely consent?”
At that point, Paxton took her right hand in his. She, almost inaudibly, he, tonelessly, repeated the vows. Then Francis blessed the ring, which Paxton took and slipped in turn on each of the three fingers of her left hand, saying, "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” Finally, he fitted it onto her third finger, and uttered, "With this ring I thee wed.”
She felt as if a part of her disintegrated at that moment, and in a daze she helped Paxton distribute alms to the poor, who had collected outside the portico. Before the two of them entered the church with the rest of the wedding party, he gave her a fleeting, searching glance. She met it with a blank stare.
Inside, the flickering lights of candles did little to dispel the cold gloom of the massive church. Incense smothered the air. She felt chill, feverish, faint.
She caught sight of Esclarmonde. The young woman’s expression was one of agony warring with anger. A wedding, Dominique thought, should have been a time for rejoicing with friends. How lamentable that she and Esclarmonde would never be friends. But then there was little to rejoice about this wedding either.
Dominique clung to the sight of the familiar, Francis’s face. Here, he ruled supreme, ruled over Paxton even. Francis’s dark eyes seemed to reassure her as he read the nuptial Mass. If only the tedious ceremony would end.
Too soon it did—disastrously.
Traditionally, the priest bestowed on the groom the Kiss of Peace. In turn, the groom was to transmit the Kiss of Peace to his bride. But Francis blatantly and blasphemously disregarded tradition by taking her shoulders and kissing her not on the forehead but fully on the lips. The kiss was little more than the duration of a heartbeat, but it was a kiss she had unconsciously been yearning for from Francis almost all of her life.
A collective gasp of disbelief zephyred through the members of the wedding party. Francis’s smile taunted Paxton, who moved as if he might grab the priest by the golden silk tippet draped around his neck. But the kiss happened so quickly, and in that sacred place Paxton, out of childhood indoctrination, checked his violent reaction. Relief from the others was almost an audible sigh.
Led by the little troop of minstrels, the bridal procession returned to the chateau, where an elaborate wedding feast awaited them: spiced wine by the barrel; legs of beef, mutton, veal and venison; capons; a boar’s head; and a swan in its plumage.
Refusing the meat, Dominique tasted only the wafers, confections, cheeses, and fruit. At her side, Paxton touched only the wine. Both of them devoted only a measure of attention to the acrobats and juggling acts performed in their honor.
The guests danced, and storytellers recounted tales of Hero and Leander, Charlemagne, Paris and Helen of Troy, Samson and Delilah. Wedding gifts were presented, and there was even one from the English king. Edward had ordered made for them an immense round table of English oak.
Throughout the celebration, concern was reflected in the eyes of John Bedford, Iolande, and Baldwyn.
The festivities continued all day and into the night. At last, Francis rose from his place at the banquet table. As bishop and priest, he was signifying that it was time for the bridal couple to adjourn to the nuptial bed.
Led by their priest, the guests accompanied her and Paxton to the bridal chamber where Francis was to give his blessing to the bride and groom. Paxton’s chamber was
scented with summer’s lavender, rose, and jasmine. With feigned reluctance at her part in the ceremony, the cantankerous Iolande inspected the bed to make certain no ill-wisher had secreted anything there to impede conjugal relations, such as two halves of an acorn or granulated beans.
Paxton fixed Francis with a veneer of a smile that was nonetheless lethal. "Do not even think of pilfering more than the kiss you took in the sanctuary of the church. So help me God, I have no qualms against beheading priests who have wandered astray.”
Francis's smile was as thin. ‘‘You will forgive my proprietary interest that derived from our being childhood playmates.”
“The bed is ready for the bridal couple,” Iolande's gritty voice interrupted.
Everyone backed out of the chamber. Francis's face was the last Dominique saw before she turned to Paxton. He appeared weary and his expression seemed so closed to her. How could she surrender to a soul that knew nothing about the possibility of dancing through another soul?
A soul that courted only war and destruction? A soul that recognized only and always male dominance?
As always, he took her by surprise. No demands or orders. Simply, “Will you kiss me, Dominique?”
Wary, she gauged his features. His expression was empty of all subterfuge. She tried steeling herself against any tender feelings for this invading warrior. But her attempts to create an emotional barrier as solid as any wall failed abjectly at the vision his eyes held: a need for another human, a need for her.
She heeded her inclination and took the three steps separating her from him. Rising on tiptoe, she brushed her lips across his. The sensation took her breath away. It was like standing at the very edge of a cliff. She could fall—or she could fly.
Her palms splayed against his chest for balance, and she felt the tremble that rippled through his massive body. That she could be responsible for such a reaction should not have amazed her, but nonetheless it did.
He took her hand in his and tugged her toward the iron chest in the chamber's corner. "I have a wedding gift for you.” Perplexed, she watched as he knelt on one knee to open the metal locks. When he rose to face her, he held cradled in both hands, almost reverently, the length of her hair he had cut away at the tourney. "What I did was a form of striking out. You did not deserve that, Dominique. Between us, there must be no more separation.”
She accepted the shorn hair. Next to her own tresses which had grown considerably, the swath appeared dull without the vibrant red cast that life gave it. From beneath her thick fringe of lashes, she peeked up at him. "Because I carry your child?”
He stared down into her eyes. "Because I know that we are opposite beings, but opposite can also be complementary, as are our bodies when they join.”
He took the length of hair from her hands, laid it atop the chest, then turned back to her. "Kiss me. Really kiss me, Dominique.”
A whisper of energy murmured in her mind, Surrender does not result in loss but in gain. It is the birth of change.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and tilted her head so that she could fit her mouth over his. Their lips joined in perfect complement, as Paxton had told her was possible. His experience caused her a pang of jealousy for the other women who had known his passion. His kiss was soft and giving and hungry, also, like a man who had waited a lifetime. Her heart beat so fast, she was losing all control. She felt lightheaded.
Any thought of why he and she were destined to share a span of life together dissipated under the touch of his hands, smoothing down her spine, clasping her waist, cupping her hips so that she was pressed against him. His heat, his scent, his body, all inflamed her. She was fire and wind and water. And earth’s fertility.
At last, he released her. His breathing was rapid, his voice raspy. "I once said I would prove you were no sorceress, that you had no hold over me.”
She tilted her head, puzzled by his words. "Yes?” Her own voice sounded ragged in her ears.
"I still hold to that.” Wry amusement glinted in his dark brown eyes. "Sorceress, no. But, enchantress, maybe.”
The afternoon sunlight was merciless on Iolande's face, a patchwork of wrinkles. She sighed. "Look at them. 'Tis as if the two were meant for each other.”
Beside her on the battlements, Baldwyn said in a hushed voice, "Me thinks you are right, old woman.”
Together, the two aging people watched the two younger ones cavort on the list below. The older couple’s dreams of what might have been, what could have been, but would never be made the afternoon air heavy with remorse and sorrow.
At that distance, the shared laughter between Dominique and Paxton sounded like the pealing of Whitsuntide bells. Paxton's cat scampered and pounced amidst them in pursuit of a butterfly.
The young couple, wed scarcely three weeks, ceased their frolicking to pick flowers, growing wild along the walls. Deftly for such large hands, Paxton wove a chaplet of the blossoms and placed it on Dominique's brow. Unaware they were being observed from above, the two moved into an embrace, their kisses unabashed, wild, and surely as sweet, as the rapidly wilting plucked flowers.
This time Baldwyn sighed, although his gravelly voice came out more as a grunt. “As the peasants say, ‘Love and a cough cannot be hidden.’ "
"Bah! What know you of love, leper?”
"Love?” He turned his despoiled visage on her. "I would lay down my life this very moment for love of our Lady Dominique.”
Iolande’s nose twitched with a sniffle. “Yes, I can understand that kind of selfless love.”
There was a part, hidden far below Iolande's crusty surface, that yearned painfully to love and to be loved by a man. Nature had created everything, every single thing, to unite with its counterpart. Everything, everyone, but her. Why she had been so destined she had long ago given up trying to divine. “I never would have believed that this savage Englishman could bring our Dominique joy.”
"As the peasant says, 'Bitter medicine may have sweet effects.’ ”
"A plague on your proverbs, Templar! Just watch them. The two fairly radiate with their bliss.”
“Do you remember when our lady Dominique was small, no more than knee high, and —”
“Your knee high, mayhap.”
"—and, climbing that elm in the outer bailey, she accidentally knocked down that beehive we kept for candle wax?”
''Came running to me, sobbing, she did, and with a face full of welts.”
He chuckled. "She looked like a leper, herself.”
"But, as I recall, within the hour she had use of your shoulder as a perch. She was bent on climbing that elm once more, with the bees still swarming."
"I remember, that I do. They clustered all over her. Never stung her. Not once. Stung the fire out of me, though!”
"Remember that time she and Francis and Esclarmonde and Denys got into the battle with the stable's clods of manure?”
This time Baldwyn’s chuckle was almost a wheeze. "Do I! Esclarmonde did not duck quickly enough and—”
Iolande cackled and clapped her twisted hands. "And she looked like one of those black-faced Moorish servants the Saracens keep!”
Their laughter was as one, as their love for Dominique was one. With their fond gazes fixed on the couple, Baldwyn mused, "Denys, the poor young man. I cannot help but wonder what is to become of him, locked in the barbican that way. With but a stump for a hand. I tell you, old woman, no good can come of that episode.”
"Our Lady Dominique would disagree with you.”
"To be sure. But for the life of me, I cannot see how everything happens for a reason that is to the betterment of our souls. No wrong roads to be taken? Simply lessons to be learned from our choices? Me doubts it hardly!”
"She is an advanced one, our Lady Dominique.”
The Templar spared the crone a sidewise glance. "Do you think the English soldier and our Lady Dominique will produce children? Children who we could take as much delight in as we have her?”
Iolande cackle
d again. "Every chance. I secreted a small gemstone of jasper between the sheets for childbirthing powers!”
Paxton heard Dominique's laughter, and like a man bewitched, he followed its siren's beckoning call to her chapel. From the door he spied upon her with a lover's delight. She sat on the floor like a man, cross-legged, and faced Hugh, who held a wooden tablet. She was reading from a Latin grammar, and the boy laboriously scratched into the tablet's green wax.
"‘A is created by God, therefore A exists,' ” she read. ‘“And similarly this. A does not exist, therefore A is not created by God.' Of course, Hugh, the word God is a neutral term for an all-powerful, all-knowing force. God is not masculine or feminine. Do you understand, what I am trying to explain?”
Hugh nodded vigorously, but Paxton had his qualms. His pleasure in his newly acquired wife squelched these qualms, as it squelched his occasional jealousy when her attention focused on other men. His best friend, in particular. Was not John bedding the brunette maid, Beatrix?
Yet would it be easier for Dominique to love John, the son of a squire than himself, a baseborn serf?
She glanced up and spotted him. Her smile came readily. "I felt someone watching.”
His mouth crimped in a wry line. "That does not surprise me.”
Her lax attention afforded Hugh the opportunity to avoid any further schooling, and the boy shot past him. She chuckled. "You would think I were a Dominican monk quizzing Hugh on the torture rack.”
Paxton grinned but could think of no retort. Why was he here? If nothing else he could be cleaning the rust from his armor with sand, as the other soldiers were busy doing. It was a perfect summer day for shedding the shirt and engaging in combat practice or hunting. The partridges were so thick a blindly shot arrow could not miss bagging one. "I thought I would take you fishing.”
Her amazement at his statement only surpassed his by an increment, but after he said it he realized that that was exactly what he wanted to do.
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