Continuing to stare down, he muttered, stuttering a bit, “When you were an-angry with me fo-for not learning Alajistu better, it slipped once.”
Well, well, well. She didn’t even remember it slipping. Early on, after Enchanteur had left, when she began capturing knights, she had found the simple spell obscuring her eyes created a certain mysterious mood when she first began seducing them. It also, she had learned, terrified them near the end, when they began pleading to be let go. Pleading to see her eyes. Pleading for any kind of pity. Or warmth. Or kindness.
None of which she felt now.
The spell was merely what Enchanteur contemptuously termed “nostrum magic” – of little practical value when reweaving the fabric of existence around oneself and, therefore, not worthy of the refined mind to explore. Yet, she had liked it. She had created the spell one day when bored. Some days after that, she wore the mist over her eyes, hiding them when she felt like it. Some days not. Over time, she had learned to put on the mist each morning like others put on their morning smock. Moreover, she liked the power it gave her to inspire lust, then fear, in her prey. Had given her, she corrected herself. And then she wondered where that odd thought had come from. Had she given up for good capturing knights and fucking them to death? Because of Tristen?
Irritated at the chain of thoughts, she shook her head free of them.
“Well?”
“They’re bright blue.”
“I’m aware of that.”
He paused for a very long moment. Then, taking a deep breath, he looked at a robin in the distance sitting at the very top of a fir tree, singing out its song for all the world to hear.
“They’re pretty.”
* 6 *
Even at this distance, he could make out her huge tits. Tristen trotted along the Seine under the age-streaked stone walls of the Palais de la Cité, seeing the large cloud of white hair atop her shoulders. She was strolling along in a light blue gown at the foot of the newly constructed square Tour de ‘l Horloge at the edge of the King’s private gardens. Her smile was beaming down at a bundle in her arms. Her child, Tristen wondered, and hoped not.
Half a length away, his alarm bells began ringing. At what he couldn’t say. Then, he abruptly froze. Discreetly trailing the buxom lady-in-waiting were three Guardsmen of Brionde. Or Brionde-Anjou, he corrected himself. For they wore the distinctive short coats of dark blue sporting the Brionde-Anjou standard with its gold Angevin keys and lions, the hem bordered in a bright coral. Under the coat, of course, was the old hated Brionde uniform of linen blouse topping dark brown breeches and thigh boots. They carried rapiers, of course, in the Brionde style.
Tristen had heard the story of the new Count’s advantageous marriage to m’Lady only to die gallantly at Poitiers just days later. Not before impregnating m’Lady, however. Surprisingly, most of the details had come from the Duchess. She envied the freedom of m’Lady Lela, the Countess of Brionde-Anjou, for it was taken as an article of faith that the Countess had given birth to a son and, therefore, would serve as regent until the young Count reached maturity.
Or, as the Duchess had put it, “Which means, the dowdy bitch is free as a bird for the next twenty-one years for the Dauphine would never dare force a marriage on her now.”
Well, well, well. So the lass with the mammoth teats was Brionde! Slowing to a stroll, he turned his mind away from her, just as firmly as he closed off the prickly memory of the Master of the Guard, paid with a blow job by the kitchen mistress, beating him nearly to death before throwing him out the rear of the Chateau. All because Tristen had grown a King’s Foot that winter, was starving, and had gotten caught stealing a loaf of coarse bread from the kitchen.
Turning around with his thoughts, he decided to return to the Duchess. That suited him much better. Her voice might be screechy, but she did suck like a bellows pulling in air.
“Sir!”
He paused a moment. It was clearly her. A full, rich voice, almost ribald, she sounded Nordic, which intrigued him. How did Vikings fuck? Yet, the thought of mixing with the Brionde crowd, settled him against lifting her gown more resolutely than ever.
“Sir! Tristen, isn’t it? ‘Twas a gallant duel fought the other day. May hap you came by to say hello at last?”
She had pluck, he had to give her that. He felt a wary smile settling on his cheeks as he turned, slowly, back. His hand was already straying to his broadsword, remembering the last time he had crossed Brionde rapiers with it. It had been child’s play. Except for Phoebe’s beau, it had been, largely, child’s work dispatching so many of the much vaunted Brionde Guard.
Without so much as a glance at her escort, he could feel their tautening nerves, the blood beginning to fill, to thicken their fingers, as their hands slowly strayed to their own hilts.
“Now, none of that! I”ll not have you oxen fouling up my night’s fun!”
Tristen was startled to see the Viking turn and wave a brawny arm at her escort shooing them away. Discreet or not, she had apparently known they were there all along.
“Now then,” her dark blue eyes closed with a sultry glance as she took him in from head to toe. “Come and meet Emma.”
A girl? Tristen blinked. Surely this was not m’Lady’s child.
“Someday Countess of Brionde-Anjou. But you knew that.”
In spite of himself, Tristen moved forward and looked down into her thick arms. Wondering anew just what she could do with these arms in bed, he choked off the thought and stared down at the wrinkled visage of a lump of flesh, wrapped in a sky blue blanket. Under a wisp of dark hair haloing her round head, her wee dark brown eyes looked up at him. Her teeny hand with its little wrinkled fingers, so delicate, reached up to him. Absurdly, an image of the witch flashed in front of his eyes. More absurdly, he began to tear up.
Then felt a hefty thump on the back on his shoulders. “Go on, then!”
Bending lower, he spotted the neatly, perfectly shaped nails on the urchin’s fingertips just as they reached out to touch him on the chin.
He was in love.
He blinked.
This could not stand. This would not stand.
He grunted and pulled back a step.
“Well!?”
“Very...ummm...small.”
The Viking chuffed and spat. “Men. See a pair of teats and your cock is crowing at the sun. See a babe and you shrink to the size of a split pea.”
“Well.”
“Ask then!”
“Ask...” Tristen didn’t know what to...
“Named for Emma of Normandy,” the Viking was crowing herself now.
“I don’t...”
“God’s Tears man!” she exclaimed, delivering another wallop to his shoulder which made Emma cry out. Which made the Viking dissolve into a cloud of soft cooos and sssshhh-my-loves.
Tristen wondered whether he should stay or leave. His cock said one thing while his head was muttering something distinctly different. But she was going on again.
“The English Queen. Wife of two kings and mother of two more kings. Back in the days when Angle-land was actually something to worry about. The Danes like Canute the Great sitting on the throne, yeah?”
Tristen could only shake his head slowly. This child bothered him. Why, he could hardly say.
*****
The Duchess, however, had no problem articulating her ideas on the question.
“She is so....umm...uh...Oui! Oui!....Yes!...Ohhhh!....Fuck me! Harder! Deeper!...is so fucked up now! A girl?!...Yes! Oui!...The Dauphine will....Ohhh!....Oui!...Fuck me! Deeper!...will make her marry. No more freedom....ughh!....mmmhhh!...for that bitch!...Ohhhh!”
Tristen wished she would just shut up and fuck him. He heard the witch chuckle, which made the short hairs on the back of his head rise up. God, he hated that! He wished the witch would leave him alone!
“Oui! Oui!”
He had the Duchess on all fours, taking her pussy from behind, the way he liked to do her when he didn’t w
ant to be around her. That way he didn’t have to look into her eyes. She liked it because his muscular arms made her feel so sexy: one wrapped around her taut abs just below her breasts, the other holding them both up. She didn’t even have to put her own arms down, so she was free to reach back and run her hands through his thickly dark, long hair. How he managed it, she didn’t know. She didn’t care. It felt fucking fantastic, or so Tristen surmised.
“Yes, yes, yes, yes...YESSSSSS!”
His cock, thick with need began spurting deep inside her. Starting low down, way low down in his balls, taking seemingly forever to rise up the shaft, hearing her moans turn into shrieks as she felt his cock widen, thicken inside her to blast off like one of those Venetian siege rockets, at last. Pump, thrust, cum. Pump, thrust, cum. Pump, thrust, cum. And he kept thrusting, thrusting, thrusting long after he had stopped cumming.
She adored it. She positively cooed her appreciation, her head falling to the pillow, her silver white hair spilling all around, her ass rising in the air on his cock.
“Mon Dieu, Sir Tristen, c’est vraiment magnifique!”
Really quite magnificent, indeed. He still held them up, feeling the strain finally coming on his left arm, the slight tremors beginning. The witch had taught him how to keep thrusting long after he stopped cumming. Or he had figured it out from their constant fucking.
Saint Denis! He panted, chastising himself. Stop thinking about the damn witch!
The Duchess was mumbling again, pulling herself off his cock, to turn and lay back. They were in her quarters, a new twist. He had never come to her there before. But the conversation with m’Lady’s lady-in-waiting had upset him. The Duchess had only smiled her brightest, most welcoming smile, whispered something about “a half glass” into the ear of one of her own ladies-in-waiting and beckoned him on, through her drawing room into her private night chamber. The sumptuous pink sheets and pillows reminded him a bit of the witch’s room in the tower. But those sheets were a dark sapphire, sometimes a dark emerald, other times a dark ruby. Sometimes he thought he was making it all up. Who changed the sheets when the guy was sleeping in the bed? She probably changed the colors.
He snorted. God’s Teeth! Get the bitch out of your head!
He refocused on another bitch.
Who was positively smacking her lips with delight.
“Mon cher, I want you again! Like a lover does, with your sweet kisses on my lips as your sweet cock fills me completely.”
He sighed. Oh, well. This was what he had come here for.
“Mon Dieu! No more freedom for the Countess of Brionde-Anjou!” She cackled, her thin lips, painted a bright pink smearing her very white teeth.
Surprising himself – though he knew from experience how complicated his feelings toward m’Lady were, mostly because of Phoebe – he popped off a question at the sweaty, almost perfectly shaped, if a bit small, breasts facing him.
“Why do you hate her so much?”
The Duchess’ lips formed a startled O. Then, she smiled. “I don’t hate her. I only desire her home rule. If I cannot enjoy such liberty, certainly no mere countess should. No matter. They say that Burgundy would kill his wife to marry Brionde-Anjou and that Normandy may already have.”
Still panting, not certain how to respond, he only nodded. She might be a pain, but the Duchess sure knew how to put him through his paces. He already felt his mind resetting to the next task at hand. He didn’t like the way she kissed him so deeply when he was on top of her. When she shoved her tongue deep in his mouth, it made him harder, true, but also made him feel like he was choking on her exhaled breath. Remembering another trick from the witch, several fucks ago he had begun nuzzling the Duchess’ throat, particularly around the ears. It had immediately become a favorite.
He began reaching for her when he heard shouting and heavy boots in the hallway outside the chambers.
She gasped. A bit theatrically, he thought, but he was already leaping out of bed, his hand grasping the hilt of his sword which was leaning, as usual, within reach.
The archway’s tapestry was flung aside.
He heard the Duchess shriek. Again too theatrically, he was sure of it now.
“My beloved husband!”
Wearing a richly resplendent velvet gown dyed emerald with sleeves that trailed to the floor in the newest fashion, the Duke de Berry’s eyes flashed at him with a bright red angry glare over cheeks gone white. The first wisps of gray hair were just beginning to streak his light brown beard, worn pointed in the new style. Wags said that he had survived Poitiers by standing on the margins, bidding his men-at-arms do all his fighting for him. Just now, he was flanked by three burly ones, carrying broadswords, but wearing leathers only, as was the custom in the Palais.
Tristen cocked a head, surveying, calculating.
The room went silent for a long beat.
“Take him,” the Duke growled.
Tristen liked what he saw. The men-at-arms had clearly taken a few breaths to recognize him. Yet once they did, they did not at all like what they saw.
He grinned. The lust of battle was already lightening his mood. This was far, far better than jousting with m’Lady’s lady-in-waiting over a brat.
He reflexively reached his free hand down to use it as a spring from which to launch himself into battle when the Duchess abruptly stopped him.
Stopped them all.
Her furious tones scored the room, slowly penetrating the inner din of battle already enveloping his senses. After a beat, he turned to look at her, keeping a wary sense out toward the men-at-arms for any movement, the smallest gesture. But she was going on. She had come up to her knees, her small breasts jutting out with pride, the sex-stained skin appearing to light up the room all on its own as she poured out scorn over them all.
“My beloved husband! I am your wife! Your chérie! And when this...this...foul brigand forces his way uninvited into my chamber!” She was dramatically throwing out a small, sweetly delicate pink hand at Tristen, pointing at him.
“To rape me!”
He blinked. Rape?!
“How do you respond? You make your low men-at-arms do your work of honor for you?! Where is the honor of Chateau de Berry? Where, I ask you?!”
The Duke’s cheeks were beginning to burn a bright red. His lips pulled back with a twitch as he nervously licked them.
She laid a hand with a grand flourish on her breasts. “Would your father, your father’s father, your father’s father’s father, all of tremendous fame that will outlast even some of the monarchs of Francia itself, would they stoop to such dishonor? I ask you. I beg you.” Her voice was growing mournfully softer as she looked down at the sheets. Tristen wasn’t sure, but he thought he spotted a tear falling to them as well.
Then, she suddenly shrieked, “I demand of you! Are you a man? Or a woman? I demand the honor of Chateau de Berry!”
The room – indeed the halls outside the chambers of the Duchess’ private suite – had all grown silent.
The Duke was turning edgy, maybe even a bit skittish. That much was certain, Tristen thought with amusement. The noble’s eyes were darting around the corners of the room, moving faster and faster. Clearly, the gears of his mind were spinning as swiftly as he could make them churn, searching for a way out.
“Well?! My beloved husband? Mon...” her lips seemed now to drip with contempt, “...chéri?”
The men-at-arms were growing restless. That much was also certain, Tristen could see. The Duke was frozen. He had ceded control of the moment to his wife. Unless the men-at-arms moved to take it back through sheer force and numbers.
The thought of what the Commander would do to him for killing the Duke and three of his men-at-arms in the Duchess’ night chamber was not one he even wanted to consider.
So he took the easy way out.
He leapt off the bed, swinging his broadsword around in a long arc, making the Duke and his men take a hasty step back, to end in a flourish as he bowed before the D
uchess.
“Rapiers. The Grand’Salle at dawn.”
Then, he strode out the opposite end of the chamber, wondering if he had used those same words earlier.
And hearing the witch’s chuckle.
*****
Dawn came early.
The soaring twin arches of The Grand’Salle were actually dwarfed by the crowds gathering around the pillars at its base. As he expected, there were hordes of tradesmen and city folk, easily discerned by the muted colors of their smocks: grays, blacks, and dirty browns. And their smell: mud, muck, shit, merde, vomit, you name it. A thick and pungent stench surrounded them in a cloud. They were crying out, jostling for space, shouting as a foot was stepped on or a rib elbowed out of the way. Breaking into fist fights that were quickly smothered by neighboring friends before the King’s Guard came along to break some heads.
A number had brought prize animals in small cages or wicker baskets – chickens, turkeys, ducks, quail, the occasional goose, pigs and hogs – or calves leashed to a pillar, a post or even ankles. One cow was dumping shit on the street under its lifted tail as Tristen approached the crowd, his nose wrinkling at the reeking, steaming mass. Cries of “best eggs here!” and “hogs too heavy to lift!” and other traditional cries were heard here and there. Clearly, the market had moved this morning. Or the farmers didn’t want their most valuable wares to be stolen while they came to watch the fun. A wagon drove up at a fast gallop, the entrepreneur already loudly offering cheap stools for a few denier for spectators to stand on. An argument quickly broke out over whether he would accept the newly minted thick pennies that some called gros d’argent. Tristen slid past a muddy shoulder and moved on.
In the distance, inside the Hall, stood the flower of French gentry, marked by their perfumes and their bright gem-colored gowns: rubies, sapphires, emeralds, citrines, peridots, corals, jades, ambers. Odd how similar this duel was to the last one, right down to the small gathering of King’s Guard at the Black Table of marble in the center. The eyes too far away to be made out, Tristen could nevertheless feel the Commander’s glower, his bandy-legged stance under his pot belly easily recognized. The Duke wasn’t there, however. Nor was the Duchess. So, it wasn’t as if he were late. Other Dukes and Duchesses were, Tristen saw now: Normandy, Aquitaine, Toulouse, Champagne. He didn’t expect to see Burgundy, that constant thorn in the side of the Dauphine. Nevertheless, the nobles stood, flanked by their leading men-at-arms, their stewards or seneschals, arms crossed boldly, coldly, in the front row of the host gathered around the dueling space that the Commander had marked out. Further on, though he didn’t know them all, but from the number of priests surrounding them, he guessed he beheld a number of the Holy Dukes as well: Reims, he knew as the most powerful archbishop, of course, then Beauvais, maybe, or Langres or Chalons. They were mostly from northeast Francia, regions that the Commander’s band had never really worked in. It didn’t matter, his heart starting to skip along merrily as he surveyed the faces – some plainly excited, others dour, a few furious. Aquitaine, looked withdrawn, as if he were calculating some balance of force. Probably already fucking the Duchess de Berry in his mind, Tristen thought with a wicked inner grin, wondering how she would enjoy pushing Aquitaine’s fat belly out of the way in the years ahead as she searched in vain for his cock and her home rule.
Chateau of Passion Page 6