Chateau of Passion

by Monica Bentley

  She snorted in disgust. “Stop whining!”

  He did.

  She took his hand and thinking the command Aeiliope, she dissolved them both into her private whirlwind – another spell she had created when bored one day – taking them upstairs into the Tower workshop. She was proud of Aeiliope. She had been angered that it took so much time to climb the steps to the eyrie on the outside stairs. Inside the Tower, there were floorways – doors cut into the floors with stairs leading up from the livestock and grainery in the base, up to the workshop where she spent most of her days, up to the Unicorn Room where Enchanteur had harangued her with daily stories about the wonders of the Far East or classical Rome or something else extraordinarily boring, up to her night chamber where she slept in the room she had decorated with hummingbirds. But there had been no stairs reaching up from there to the eyrie. After Enchanteur had left, she had spent more and more time up there. She had never gone there when he was here. Why, she was never sure. At first she had decided to turn it into her night chamber. It seemed fitting that she would take the top floor. And, while moving the first pieces of furniture up there with her mind proved easy enough, she quickly realized that she would have to disassemble the bed to fit it through the small floorways. While pondering this one day, standing in the garden – as far from the Tower as the curse would let her, right up to the edge of the surrounding woods – she suddenly wondered if she could move herself up there with her mind, rather than climbing the stairs.

  What had followed was weeks of pondering the question. Vain glimpses of how Enchanteur had moved both of them in just such a way the very first time they had met. Fruitless efforts of trying to move herself. Breaking down the whole process of how she could move things, such as chopping the wood consumed daily in the cooking fires without lifting a finger, or washing her dresses, her body, her hair daily as Enchanteur had made her in the old days, all without bothering to move a muscle, yet not at all able to move herself. Finally, in the midst of one lazy winter afternoon, as she was idly tracing patterns in the falling mist, it had dawned on her that a little assist might be needed. She had stood and – long having learned the virtue of using baby steps to climb lofty summits – turned slowly in the mist as she willed her mind to move her just a few feet away. She had turned and turned and turned until she was sick to her stomach. After vomiting in the mist, now turning into a light rain, however, she merely kept at it. How many glasses had turned who could say? Only that she had stayed there, turning, vomiting, turning, vomiting until the afternoon had become evening had become night.

  It was just before dawn that it had happened. She abruptly realized that she had moved herself. Not really understanding why, then, she sat down and cried. After a while, utterly exhausted, she dragged herself upstairs and collapsed into her bed. Awakening, however, she stuffed some cold porridge, dried several days old in her mouth and got back at it. She had practiced all day and the many days following until she had finally gotten it down to a movement as casual as tossing her hair out of her eyes. That she was dissolving and reappearing – rather than actually moving – had dawned on her quite early when she had seen a butterfly actually pushed out of the way by her appearance. Right in front of her eyes. The butterfly had blithely fluttered on to another bloom in the garden which magically seemed to flower all year round. Why this was so – why she was dissolving, rather than moving – she decided to simply accept. After all, she accepted the garden blooming all year round. Just as she accepted the rain, moonlight, and birdsong.

  Besides, she already knew what Enchanteur would say about it. That she was reweaving the fabric of the world around her, as everyone did, just a little more expeditiously. Finally, remembering her classical Greek studies that Enchanteur had made her learn, she named her spell Aeiliope, a turn on the ancient word for whirlwind. Having named the spell, she was learning that reciting it helped focus her mind to actually cast it. Her mind was usually such a whirlwind anyway, she knew she needed the focus.

  In any case, it quickly became her favorite way of moving about the Tower. Why bother with stairs when you didn’t need them? The floorways were closed after that.

  Looking at the mud-stained, merde-stinking farm boy in front of her, however, she realized with a sigh – while reaching for some cream that would soothe the pain in his eyes – she would have to open the floorways again.

  As long as he stayed, anyway.

  * 2 *

  Tristen ducked under the Navarrese’s attack, the heavy broadsword singing as it cut the air above his head. He could hear it even through his helm. Then, the stench of the man’s rotten garlicky breath hanging in the air, Tristen neatly stepped up under the soldier’s armpit and rammed the point of his own sword in under the arm, watching the eyes bulge above the bloodied cheeks, feeling the weight of the man suddenly come down on his sword tip. Tristen yanked it as the soldier fell to his knees.

  It was a neat trick. One he had learned from the sack of Chateau Brionde almost a year ago. Phoebe’s beau had tried it on him, and it had almost worked. It was so unexpected. Sword fighters were always pulling back far enough for the next swing, never moving in closer for a quick thrust. What was the boy’s name? Louis. That was right.

  Tristen turned, enjoying this, the din of battle all around him. Swords clanging on armor, hitting shields with loud thocks, horses screaming in protest, men shouting out their own obscenities as they felt the killing stroke descend. It was Navarre. Beautiful, heavily forested country just up the mountains from Aquitaine in the plains below. English-held country and, for the Commander, then – grounds ripe for plunder.

  A light mist was falling on the warriors. Tristen saw another coming, awkwardly. He easily dodged the thrust at his chest and, spinning on his heel, caught the fat fighter’s chain mail at the back of his head as the heavily armored soldier stumbled by him, slipping on the wet grass. Tristen slit his throat as he fell. He thought of Louis, again. Then, naturally, of his childhood friend, the kitchen scamp who had slept by him every night as they were growing up, tucking her dirty knees under his thigh to feel protected all night long. He used to watch her sleep, smoothing her straw dingy hair behind her ears. Her grubby cheeks. Wanting to wipe the drip from her nose, letting her sniff it away in her sleep. Well, Phoebe was no kitchen scamp with scabbed knees now. For she had grown into a luscious beauty of blonde. A young woman of consequence at Chateau Brionde. Even in the midst of the sack, the battle clanging all around him as he was busy slitting the throat of the chateau’s Lord, he had noted the way that m’Lady favored Phoebe. It was one of the reasons why he had treated m’Lady with so much respect himself.

  Yet, the absent-minded question of how his childhood friend fared abruptly died as he watched his current one suddenly take a pike in the chest. Across the battlefield. Screaming aloud, Tristen thundered through the battle, pushing aside combatants, knights and men-at-arms, French and English, skidding on someone’s guts to watch the English put his foot on Gaspard’s chest and pull out for another thrust. Tristen hit him in a tackle, thrusting his sword in the soldier’s throat even as they went down. He rolled off and saw a Scot finishing the job with a slice of his knife to his friend’s anguished, choked off cry even as the brigand was reaching down to cut off Gaspard’s coin pouch. Shrieking so loudly that he couldn’t hear himself he dropped his sword, and pulling a dagger, grabbed the Scot by the throat and viciously stabbed him several times up under his mail, in the belly. The worst way to die, so thirsty, screaming for water, your tongue so thick that you can barely form the words. Endlessly. For hours. Unless someone put you out of your misery.

  Tristen didn’t care.

  Battle suddenly wasn’t as fun.

  Feeling the tears patter on his cheeks – when had he stripped off his helm he wondered – he was already dragging Gaspard under a large fir, to shelter under the branches at the foot. He could hear Gaspard’s frantic choking on his own blood. Not knowing what to do – suddenly thinking of Tempeste the wi
tch – she could save his friend – he settled for shushing his companion’s increasingly desperate thrashing around under the branches. Holding him tight. Trying to brush the hair out of his friend’s panicked eyes.

  Gaspard was the clown of the Commander’s condottiere band. Always ready with a joke, usually about the mayor’s wife he intended to befriend as they neared a neighboring town. Or the brewer’s wife. Or the tanner’s wife. Or the dyer’s wife. Or the mercer’s. Endlessly. A man proud to say he would lick any woman’s pussy. Loudly. Sure to collect shouts of disgusted dismay from the others as they sat around their nightly campfires. “Lick her pee-hole! Gad!” He never had, of course. He only took up the refrain after Tristen, extremely drunk one night, had confessed that Tempeste had put a spell on him, making him do her again and again. Until he had actually grown to like it. Liked the smell. Liked the taste. Loved the happy moans of her delighted pleasure. Reveled in the warmth between her thighs.

  Gaspard didn’t. He thought the whole affair revolting. But that didn’t matter to him. If it sounded awful to his ears, it sounded worse to the others. Which meant he could always get a laugh, a reaction on a boring night in the hills sitting by the campfires by claiming to love licking a girl “down there.”

  That Tristen was a prisoner of a witch at the time, captured in that damn circular tower of hers only seemed to excite his friend even more. Whenever they got drunk together, he would ask Tristen about it. At first, Tristen had been angered, brushing him off. Recently, though, as the terror of those weeks had begun to fade from memory with the passing of moon after moon, season after season, he had begun to feel better about talking about it. Even if all Gaspard wanted to know was the parts where they fucked for hours, like running the footrace from Marathon to Athens, in ancient Greece, the smell of fennel in your nose, like the Commander always talked about. du Guesclin had been there once, visiting the old battleground. Every time, he talked about the fields of fennel nearby where the bones of those ancient Greek and Persian fighters were buried.

  Tristen wished they were there now. For Gaspard was failing. He saw his own tears falling on to his friend’s cheeks. Felt his friend’s last struggles to breathe, his last heaves, his last...

  And he was gone.

  Just as the battle itself was dying out. Growing quiet enough for Tristen to hear his own sobs.

  *****

  He found Destrey nibbling in some tall grass under a small copse of trees. Destrey, a strong, tall dark brown war charger with a startlingly white star on his forehead, was a love. Having learned from the Commander the value of a well cared for horse and the expeditious returns of investing in high grade armor and weapons, Tristen followed both practices religiously. Destrey was very loyal to him, he knew. A warrior of several years experience, he never frightened at the shock of battle noise. He merely wandered off, not far away and enjoyed himself knowing that if his owner lived, he would get his habitual treat of oats and clover afterward. He would also get a long rub down. He nickered at the sound and smell of Tristen approaching, raising his head.

  Wiping the tears from his muddied cheeks, Tristen lay his head gratefully on Destrey’s neck, feeling the strength of damp horseflesh, deeply drawing in the scent. He didn’t dare do anymore than that. For fear that he would fall over or, worse, fall to his knees. Others of the band were wandering around, fetching their own mounts, looting a corpse of its coin pouch, dragging a fallen comrade under the branches of a fir. They didn’t stop to bury the dead. Commander’s orders. Let the wolves have them. It was a warrior’s death.

  He realized abruptly that he had forgotten to take Gaspard’s coin pouch. He didn’t care. He couldn’t. He knew that. And, just as abruptly, he knelt down and threw up.

  What was wrong with him?

  The heaves kept coming, the sour bitterness of this morning’s dried venison filling his mouth. He spit it out. His mind ranging over his inner landscape.

  What was wrong? Why now?

  Well, yes, Gaspard was dead. His friend. But he had seen death before. Not to someone as close as Gaspard, yes. But he had meted out death to so many, he honestly thought that he was inured to such silliness.

  He was crying again. He sat there, bending over, heaving. Taking shelter under Destrey’s legs who, seeming to understand, stood where he was, not moving a King’s Foot. The soft crunch of his teeth grabbing and pulling up the sweet grass filling Tristen’s ears.

  Sir Tristen.

  A fake knight who had killed a real one to defend a woman about to be raped.

  A fake knight who had taken the real one’s horse, armor, mail and weapons. And coin pouch. Who had ridden out of the village as quietly as he could.

  A fake knight who had given himself a name from the Arthurian legends that he had heard growing up, working as a kitchen boy in Chateau Brionde. The same chateau that he would one day return to with the Commander’s band and, upon the King’s orders, sack it.

  A fake knight who saw Phoebe, all grown up. Who had seduced her and, for reasons he never truly understood, wound up raping her in the end. Not really. But he certainly hadn’t stopped. When she had tearfully begged him to go softer, he had only gotten harder, rougher, not able to stop. Until she had broken away from him at the end. That was the last time he had vomited, he realized now, with the sound of Tempeste’s husky chuckle in his ears as he cried over what he had done to his childhood friend. Like he had become a monster.

  Moons later, in the middle of one night, hearing the witch’s chuckle again after a particularly awful nightmare in which he was trapped once more in her tower, the stinging thought pricked him that she had cast a spell on him.

  It had proven a startling realization.

  Over the days that followed, as they had ridden throughout central Burgundy, attacking those castles that had allied with the English against the King, Tristen had slowly worked it out. Reliving the moments, as awful, as ghastly as they had been. The sound of Tempeste’s smoky chuckle in the background. Phoebe’s desires. Her moans as he had started, softly, slowly, sweetly. Licking her labia, seeing the downy blonde of her hair lying so gently all around her pink womanhood in front of his nose. The flares of love for her, honest love for her, mingled with the shock of what all this meant. The helplessness of being swept along by her soft voice, urging him on. Thinking this was all wrong. That he loved her. She was too sweet for what he had become. Yet, how could he deny her? She kept urging him. He kept complying until the moment came when he wasn’t just going along with it. Tempeste’s chuckle in the dark corners of the chateau’s Hall. His need. Building. Growing. Tearing. Pushing. Harder. Ripping. Phoebe’s gasps of alarm. Her soft screams. Tempeste’s chuckle. His own groans of horror and sexual need. His strong, harsh cum. Throbs of agony. Not even the slightest pulse of pleasure in it. Just pain. All suffering. Phoebe’s tears. The sounds of her fleeing footfalls.

  Tempeste had made him rape Phoebe. In revenge. For loving his friend.

  That’s what he had come up with. It made him fear the witch even more. All over again. When would she take over his mind once more?

  Every few days he heard her throaty chuckle. Even now. It always made him pause. It never failed to raise the short hairs. Several times he even had a nightmare that he heard it in the midst of ducking the broadsword swing of a Burgundian or a Lombardian or a Germanian. Always different, yet always the same. The sound had made him freeze. Hesitate. For a fraction of a heartbeat. But also long enough to miss a parry and take the broadsword’s slice into the side of his neck. He had watched the blood spurt out spraying his opponent. Had watched himself slowly die to the sound of her laughter.

  Throwing up the last, dry heaves now, he tried to stand. But couldn’t. He pulled himself up by the stirrup, Destrey’s placid munching barely taking a pause. Someone called out his name. Without looking up, he threw out a hand in salute.

  His name.

  Sir Tristen. The Commander had barely blinked when he had introduced himself as a knight to t
he condottiere leader. Taking a chance, for he had heard that du Guesclin was also a Breton, Tristen had emphasized his roots growing up in Brittany.

  The Commander had reacted with typical scorn. “That buys you nothing. I need men who can ride, who can fight.”

  And, for the first time since being thrown out of Chateau Brionde for stealing some bread one night out of sheer hunger, Tristen had known a home. Of sorts. Over time, channeling his fierce desperation not to again be thrown out into the ruthless bloody-mindedness of raiding, watching his martial prowess grow as he dealt out death by death to knights and men-at-arms older than he, taller than he, wider, seeming fiercer but proving not – over time, the Commander began to take a slow shine to his fellow Breton. Not that he ever showed favoritism. Tristen knew that too many of the band were desperate for the Commander’s admiration. Too many of the band were just like him. Like Gaspard. Homeless. Thrown out or on the run. No place to go. Finding safety in their numbers, sleeping next to one another by the campfires, finding solace in a captured girl’s softness. For, while he rarely, if ever, took a woman himself, the Commander always looked the other way.

  And, following Gaspard’s example, Tristen had taken many. Though, every time feeling Phoebe the kitchen scamp’s childlike eyes on him, he had treated them far more gently than the rest of the band. So gently they typically tried to stay. Which always made Gaspard laugh. How many children he had fathered over these last years, he dared not think of.

  In any case, the sack of Brionde, his rape of his childhood friend had ruined it. He wouldn’t take another girl after that. For moons. He didn’t trust himself. Not anymore.

  Finally, at Gaspard’s urging that the men were starting to think that something was wrong with him, that he was setting himself up to be cut out, a few moons ago, he had half-heartedly taken a girl.