Sweet Enchantress

by Parris Afton Bonds

  She would have wished that he would have said that he loved her and needed her. But those few words would have to do. She sat up, the sheets falling away to reveal her breasts, bare and still overly full from the pregnancy. She held up her arms. He blew out the candle and, setting it on the chest, knelt over her welcoming body.

  He buried his face between her breasts, taking great gasps, as if her smell alleviated his own pain. Together, the two of them sought assuagement in one another. He loved her far into the dawn, until their bodies were surfeited with pleasure.

  But the pleasure ebbed each time as quickly as it had come. Because Paxton could never understand the joys of intimacy and warmth, she could never allow him the opportunity of breaking through her emotional barrier.

  As it was, his virile sexuality weakened her physical resistance. She could not help but resent the way he had invaded her senses, moving without restriction into her thoughts. When he took his leave, she felt curiously disoriented and drained, yet filled with a burgeoning need of him again and again.

  She tried to minimize this need by reminding herself that she was the triumphant one during those moments of merging, because she could achieve the greater pleasure without giving any of herself away.

  The tall man with blond hair and beard did not mix well in the crowd of boisterous men who drank at the noisy wharfside tavern of Bordeaux. His regal mien was suspiciously eyed by tavernier, maidservant, and sailors alike.

  His companion who tipped the tankard with him was much taller and heavier muscled, though not as handsome, but his arrogant posture would have proclaimed him the equal of King Edward. And of those in the tavern, only Edward knew that the man had in fact been baseborn.

  Edward took a draught of the ale, inferior in his estimation to English ale that was blended from the same Bordeaux grapes. What he would have preferred would have been brandy. The marvelous golden fluid, that eau d'or, would have restored some of his flagging energy. "The time we have been awaiting has come. Philip has demanded that I go to Avignon and pay homage to my right dear cousin, swearing in the cathedral to become the King of France’s man for the Duchy of Aquitaine."

  Paxton nodded, his smile slight. "As your proxy, I would be delighted to journey to Avignon to bear faith and loyalty to the Valois.”

  "And your wife? From what I hear you dare not leave her alone to foment rebellion with that routier Bontemps against you.”

  This time Paxton's smile twisted into a grimace. "I dare anything, Monseigneur," he said, leaving off the address of "your Majesty.” "Even dealing with the sorceress of Montlimoux.”

  Edward leaned forward. "Paxton, of all my commanders I trust you most. So be warned, your wife cannot get in the way of our—”

  "I shall take care of my wife.”

  CHAPTER XVI

  “As a representative of the Duke of Aquitaine, it is required that I pay homage to King Philip.”

  Dominique might love Paxton, but that did not alleviate her suspicions of him. She had absolutely no desire to leave her fiefdom, much less participate in the political affairs of the French, who for centuries had laid claim to Languedoc and her county. Her county was one of the precious few not within the French fold.

  “Montlimoux needs someone to administer its affairs,” she said. "I prefer to remain here.” Resuming her rule of her county would no doubt restore some of the loss of identity she had felt at Paxton’s usurpation.

  “John is quite capable of administering the county’s affairs for a few months’ time." Paxton did not even glance up from the sheet of parchment he was scanning.

  If only the fire of his love would bum as deeply for her during the day as it did in the unguarded and abandoned hours of the night. “I see.” If only he would reach out and touch her hand, smooth the hair from her brow, wrap his arm around her waist, splay his hand across her stomach, once more flat. Some gesture that demonstrated she meant something more to him than merely a chatelaine.

  "Paxton, is your insistence on my accompanying you to Avignon some sort of revenge for the loss of our child?” She braced her hands on the escritoire. "Do you still blame me for the unborn babe’s death?”

  He settled back in his chair and stared up at her with measuring eyes. "Revenge? Why, Dominique, I thought you would enjoy associating with the most learned minds of the world.”

  Clearly, he would continue to circumvent the issue. "How thoughtful of you.”

  His gaze narrowed on her, his mouth took on a stringent curve. "Besides, your Francis will be there.”

  "He is not my Francis.”

  He picked up the quill pen with which he had been writing. For him, the work was laborious, but he preferred doing his own writing to dictating. "You are quite correct, of course. The Bishop of Beauvais is the Pope's man.”

  He resumed penning his missive. How easily he dismissed her from his mind as well as his presence! She snatched up the oxhorn of ink and hurled it at him.

  "God take your—” Before he could even finish the oath, he was out of the chair and around the desk. Ink splattered his doublet, and a few drops flecked his face, wild now with fury.

  She whirled to flee, but her skirts were too heavy. She barely made it to the door when his hand slammed it shut. Surely, the thud resounded throughout the chateau.

  He jerked her around to face him. He looked as if he wanted to throttle her. She was pressed between him and the door. "'Tis the right and privilege of the husband to discipline an errant wife,” he gritted.

  Her tilted chin, her flashing eyes, taunted him. "And what is it you wish to do to me?"

  His anger matched hers. Blood pounded in his temples, and his teeth clenched. "By Christ’s thorns, I do not know what to do with—”

  She leaned her head close to his, and with her veil gently wiped away the drop of ink sliding down his jaw.

  The resulting quiver crept all the way through to the hands that gripped her. His eyes, as brown as stones beneath deep waters, glazed with the sudden heat that seized him.

  "I do not understand you, Dominique," he rasped.

  His mouth claimed hers in a kiss rapacious with anger and passion and the need to subjugate. She was the embodiment of his fears. She did not let his mouth master hers but responded kiss for kiss, her teeth catching his bottom lip, her tongue dueling with his. Her breathing was heavy in her ears, her thoughts cloudy. She was rapidly losing her centeredness.

  His hands deserted her shoulders to tear open the laces binding her corseted breasts. They burst free to fill his kneading hands. “You burn me, witch,” he muttered against her hardening nipple. “Set me afire. So that I no longer know what is true or false. Right or wrong."

  She cradled his head against her. “Is it wrong to love me, Paxton?”

  "Aye.” He tore away her bodice and pushed up her skirts about her thighs. "Aye, 'tis wrong to love a woman who bewitches as you do.”

  She laughed hysterically at this indirect declaration of love. Her laughter goaded him on, and, pulling her down onto the floor with him, his hands pushed her skirts high on her thighs.

  Her laughter turned to tears of rage. She would not let him dominate her. She rolled atop him and had to smile. Her breasts swaying gently above him captured his immediate attention. "Perhaps, my Lord Lieutenant, I can persuade you that this time, at least, my position is best.”

  An abashed half grin eased the strain of his expression. "Aye, I think you can.”

  Avignon was called a "sink of vice,” where luxury, pomp, and loose morals ruled. Francis had once told Dominique that there was a church brothel in Avignon where girls spent part of their time in religious duties and prayers and the rest of their time in servicing customers, Christians only. So Dominique had not been relishing the journey toward this illustrious city on the Rhone River.

  Day after day, the journey was monotonous, with the redundant creaking of ox-cart wheels, the thudding of hooves, and soldiers’ voices filling the air.

  With Denys still raiding an
d ravaging the countryside, Paxton had taken the precaution of doubling the guards that flanked the procession of soldiers, wayfarers, and the female pilgrims who had taken the opportunity to escape the bondage of domesticity. In addition, the cavalcade included Dominique’s entourage of cooks, ladies-in-waiting, seamstresses, laundresses, and maids.

  At the head of the procession, Paxton rode, sitting tall in a high-pommeled saddle studded with Bertrand’s handicraft of silver. Paxton’s arrogant bearing singled him out from the various country squires and their own pages, riding at his side.

  As usual, Hugh was never far from Paxton. She knew the boy had dreams of one day becoming a squire, then being knighted himself in the traditional ceremony, when the chatelaine of Montlimoux would dub him on the shoulder with a sword blessed by a priest. But first, Hugh as an acolyte would be required to earn his sword.

  Dominique was able to endure the long days of travel that left her saddle-sore by focusing on the evenings to come. After the meals, she and Paxton would retreat into the privacy of their tent or, on warmer nights, would retire beneath a sheltering tree on a spread sheepskin blanket. She was close to rapture, just lying there with him, gazing up at the stars.

  Occasionally, they would talk, but only of the commonplace. Vital issues such as feelings, values, beliefs were avoided. "There are weapons that have fire power to kill,” he told her in an offhand manner one night.

  She did not believe him, even after he described what he had seen. "The Italian mercenaries have used them with mild success.”

  Sometimes she would tell him one of her favorite fabliaux and would be pleased when one of those short, often bawdy stories would bring him to full laughter. At those relaxed moments, she was closest to him.

  Today, she rode just ahead of the pack mules and heavier wagons, weighted with not only clothing needed for the next several months but, also, with camping equipment for the nights spent along the old Roman road, the Domitian Way.

  On this particular afternoon, the road crawled through a narrow river valley with sharp, thickly wooded peaks. With Dominique rode her maids-in-waiting and Iolande and Baldwyn, whom Dominique insisted upon accompanying her or else she would not go at all. Hour after hour, the caravan lumbered on toward the coast, where the traffic would increase, offering safety in numbers.

  She turned to Iolande and said, "One more day on horseback, and I swear by all the pope’s relics I shall take the veil and decamp in the nearest convent.”

  Iolande was cackling. "Paxton would not let a nun’s cell stand in his way. He would be excommunicated for consorting with a—” Iolande’s cackle turned to a choked gasp at the apparition that appeared on a rocky outcrop. It held its arms aloft, as if in succor, then toppled forward to flop near the nervously prancing hooves of Dominique’s gray. She stared in disbelief at the body of one of Paxton's reconnoitering scouts. His eyes had been pierced and his lips and nose severed.

  With shrill war cries, a horde of men slid down in a slither of shale from the rocky defiles to clash with Paxton’s soldiers. Caught off guard, the soldiers were forced step by step backwards. The woods rang with the clang of sword on shield and murderous shouts.

  Along with the other females, she took shelter beneath one of the large wagons as the men engaged in a frenzy of killing. Paxton’s voice could be heard, shouting directions to his men, disbursing some to cover the weaker ground defenses, others to protect the women. Hugh, he specifically charged with her safety. The boy’s eyes were as round as walnuts, but he quickly obeyed Paxton's order.

  In the melee, she glimpsed Denys, deftly using his left hand to hack with his sword a way through the throng of combatants. One man was pierced through, another’s throat was severed, as Denys fought his way toward Paxton, himself besieged by three men with maces and axes.

  Despite the surprise of the attack, Paxton’s men held their own. Training, discipline, and skillful leadership gave them the mental and emotional advantage.

  Denys muscular torso, even more developed since last she had seen him, was blood- streaked and still he battled. Time and again, Denys was obstructed from his target by an opponent. Paxton, likewise, sought to dispatch each foe like a pesky fly because his one goal was the one-handed routier who had dared touch his wife.

  Such foolishness in the name of pride!

  Her breath felt as if it were bottled in her throat by a cork. Her gaze whipped back and forth between Denys and Paxton, encircled by bodies of men they had slain. The soldiers’ shields dripped with blood. Tears at such wanton savagery flooded her eyes, dimming the two leaders who steadily inched closer toward one another.

  A blurred figure sprang up behind Paxton, and she screamed. Perhaps he heard her, or perhaps it was sheer instinct, but he whirled to cut down the man with one powerful swipe of his sword. At that moment Denys reached the diverted Paxton. Denys’s left hand hefted his sword for a deadly downward slash.

  This time the tears in her throat strangled her warning outcry. Paxton’s life would be snatched from her! Even though time was against her, she sprang from beneath the wagon.

  At that same instant, Baldwyn stepped between the two men. The red cross emblazoned on his white habit expanded to cover all of Dominique’s world. He raised his shield to ward off Denys’s blow. The blow was so violent that the shield shuddered and split. The blade glanced off Baldwyn’s helmet and angled downward to pierce his chest.

  "Noooo!” she screamed. A crazed scream that was echoed and re-echoed by Iolande.

  Baldwyn swayed, and Paxton caught him, lowering him to the ground. Denys took ad-vantage of the diversion to withdraw his men rapidly, many of whom were wounded. Their own shields were broken and their swords notched and blunted. Backing away, lashing his sword indiscriminately at the few soldiers who still dared fight, Denys scarcely noticed Dominique as she sped by him toward Baldwyn.

  Some of Paxton’s soldiers blocked her way. They leaned on their swords and halberds, recovering their breath. Pushing past them, she dropped to her knees at Baldwyn’s side. She laid her hand alongside the old giant's throat. The life force barely pulsed there. Wildly, she looked up to find Paxton standing over them. "Quick, Paxton! We need to get him to water—a stream or pond. Something. Oh, hurry, please!”

  "We have been following a river for some time,” he said, gently moving her aside. He knelt beside the Templar and pulled back his eyelid. "I do not think it will help. 'Tis too late.”

  "No!” Iolande shouted. Even to Dominique, the haggard old woman looked as fierce and forbidding as the storied witches. “There are herbs,” the Jewess said. "Incantations. Do as my Lady Dominique says. Get him to the riverside!”

  A camp of canvas tents was immediately pegged in a sheltering wood along a bend of the river where a steep cliff protected against further surprise attack.

  While Dominique’s maids-in-waiting and women pilgrims attended to the other wounded soldiers, she and Iolande worked feverishly over Baldwyn. At the old woman's bidding, men scurried through the woods and along the river's mossy banks, seeking a special type of lichen, bark from a lotus tree, truffles from the base of a white oak, and mushrooms of an exact variety.

  Continuously, Dominique bathed Baldwyn’s naked body with a sponge soaked in apple cider. Meanwhile, a grimly determined Iolande prepared the healing herbs with wagon grease, and Dominique implored the warrior/monk-soldier/mystic, "Hold on to your physical body, Baldwyn! Do not loose the tether. Listen to me! You are needed here. Hold on! Iolande and I, we love you, you old rogue.” Her tears washed his leprosy-wasted face.

  Her hands massaged the space bounding his body. She could sense his spirit straining to pull away, and she lovingly stroked that aura that dimmed and wavered. "You subscribe to the gift of healing, I know. Feel my intangible touch," she urged. "Let my energy complete its circuit from me through you and back.”

  Throughout the night she exhorted him and begged and cried. Curiously, Iolande remained stoically silent in the face of the Templar’s su
bsiding spirit "Tis Paxton’s fault,” Dominique cried bitterly. "All of our misfortunes began with his arrival at Montlimoux!”

  At dawn, she sprang up from the tent and hurried to the river. She ran along its bank, looking for a secluded spot to submerge herself. A small inlet concealed by reeds afforded her the opportunity to wade in unseen.

  Her mind screamed for help but she knew that such inner turmoil was not conducive to communicating with the spirit world. Still she cried within, calling upon her inner resources. She needed help, now more than ever!

  Drawing deep, restorative breaths, she quietened, while the water flowed around her shoulders, fanned out her hair, and tugged at her clothing. Her eyes closed, seeking the radiant white light. Seeking. Seeking. Waiting. She chilled and despaired. There was no inner signal that help was forthcoming.

  She felt depleted, utterly drained. Her foot-steps dragged as she left the river bank. She cursed Paxton of Wychchester with every step. The summer evening's heated breeze fanned her clothing almost dry by the time she reached camp. Fires pulsing before the tents looked like guiding stars.

  When she entered her tent, Iolande glanced up from Baldwyn’s bedside. Recently shed tears reddened her eyes. "The old leper is out of his head. Muttering, but I can tell not what. His ramblings make no sense.”

  Dominique circled to the far side of the makeshift cot. The fact that Baldwyn was no longer unconscious gave her hope until she drew near enough to perceive that he was dying. His lips were moving, and she leaned close. "Tell Iolande . . . tell her I owe her a great apology.”

  She looked up and beckoned the Jewess to kneel with her. Baldwyn continued, “A terrible misdeed . . . I did not realize. I was indifferent with the arrogance of youth . . . to the sufferings of others.”

  "Those early years at Montlimoux are past and done with,” Iolande said, her hooked nose sniffling.