It was a riot of colors, of flowers, all dancing in the air! Lilies, irises, dahlias, roses, daffodils. All in season, as they always were at the Tower. “Ancient magic,” Enchanteur used to mysteriously smile. Tempeste had never cared, either way, just glad to have them.
Now, the bunch of daisies that had moved aside for her just as she had appeared, twirling into the room, bowed to each other as they danced mid-air, very solemnly. Indeed, the entire table, the chairs, the windowsill, every square space available was filled with flowers. She sat on the edge of the bed, spell-bound. It was like watching townsfolk or farming folk do the old dances on a Feast Day. The mothers blushing with joy, the fathers uncharacteristically deferring to their wives, also uncharacteristically clean, and sober, or somewhat so. The children gathered around, clapping their hands.
It was amazing. It was breathtaking. It was wonderful. A part of her mind warned her that she wouldn’t have had the first clue how to create such magic. Another part simply wept at the beauty surrounding her. A drop of water appeared on her hand lying in her lap. Looking down, she realized it was one of her tears. That drop was followed by several others. Something else was teasing her ears. A melody of some sort.
Now Aluin was expanding his show to include butterflies, calling them in through the window, one after another. They were large, with showy, colorfully dramatic wings that fluttered from one dancing set of dahlias to hover around a set of nearby daffodils. Purple and yellow wings, green and orange (green?) wings, pink and brown (brown?) wings, flittering, darting, fluttering, whiffling about the flowers. Where did the boy find such exotic creatures she wondered, astounded. How could he have known where to look for them? Not on his childhood farm? Surely not. His village? A nearby meadow perhaps? Even so, the calculating part of her mind began to cut through the sweet music that she suddenly realized was now dancing in her head. Lulling her. Softening her. Distracting her with its honeyed purity.
She shook her head, testily, trying to focus through the melody. How could he have led those butterflies here? With what pilot? A firefly? She had never taught him that.
Right?
Unaccountably, the horror of what she was seeing hit her with full force. He had altered their shape, using PiatsoNe – and their color, using TingeNeRe – without their permission. Or, she mercilessly corrected herself, with as much permission as he had given her when she had first altered his cock.
Nevertheless, something about this seemed so horrific, so ghastly, that she was frozen for a heartbeat with fear, then roused to rage.
Without being aware of what she was doing, she stood up, a strange shrieking echoing inside her skull, beating against her ears, thrombing through her heart, seeing her arms outstretched, her fingers extended to the limit, the blood-red of her nails flinging drops of Saint Genevieve knew what against the walls. With a roar, she threw Aluin against the wall with a tremendous bone-cracking smack! His tortured cry of alarm and terror barely registering before being abruptly cut off. Then, she heartlessly hurled his frame, senseless, out out the archway as far as she could, desiring to smash him into the tiniest pieces on the ground far below. She waited, barely taking the breath needed, waited for the sound of his body smacking into the muddy turf, then abruptly pulled back. For she could feel Tristen’s hazel eyes upon her, anger mixed with disappointment. God’s Tears! With her mind, she gently let the boy down. Then, softly, tenderly, she carried his frame with her thoughts into the stable archway and up through the floorways to deposit him on his bed in the Hummingbird Room.
She fell upon her own, her eyes stinging, burning with shame, disgust, bitter tears. And then she knew no more.
*****
Waking hours later, for she could see that it was in the middle of the night, she realized that she was losing Tristen. He had gone away from her. He had left her. She may have pledged, vowed never to let another woman – like that blonde bitch Phoebe – have him. She may have even warned the girl that day of the sack at Chateau Brionde, the first and only time she had dared speak through the cauldron to another. She didn’t remember. She didn’t remember much of anything during that conversation, just that she was shrieking at the girl, hating her blonde tresses, her matchless skin, so pure, so innocent, wanting to scratch out those gentle, soft green eyes that dared to look at her with impudence, even anger.
With a sudden panicked thought, Tempeste started up and looked at the floor, not remembering whether she had smacked the butterflies against the wall in her rage. Or whether she had set them free. Or maybe – the calmer, more reasoned part of her mind argued – they were set free once she had knocked Aluin out. In any case, there were no butterfly corpses lying on the floor, just flowers littered everywhere.
Perplexingly relieved, she laid back down and cried again. For how long, who could say? Just that the moon continued its solitary march across the sky, unattended by any save the stars who seemed to get out of the way.
Exhausted by dawn, the rising sun brought with it the twin realizations that mayhap Tristen was not good for her and that it was time to let him go. Certainly such intense longing was not beneficial. Or maybe it was the mindless passion that was ruining her. Destroying her...peace.
Regardless – and a reluctant smile ruefully teased her lips as she realized that Enchanteur would advise the same – such loss of inner calm was becoming a manifestation of outer turmoil. Best to let the knight go.
Saint Genevieve had brought her the boy. Aluin. A farm boy just like she had been a farm girl. For all she knew they came from the same village. Except she never did learn from which village she had sprung. That trip to the Great Market at Rennes – her first into the wider world – had been a blur of passing trees, lanes, singing birds and wafting clouds in a blue sky. She hadn’t thought back then to ask about place names and where they resided in relation to everything else. She wondered if Aluin knew from whence he came.
She made a move as if to get up and see to him, curious that she was so unmoved at her rough treatment of him. Well, she groused, he deserved it. One did not torture mindless things like that! She used to, an inner voice whispered, before she shushed it outright.
Regardless, for all she knew Tristen was dead, speared right through his vitals on some forgotten battlefield, during some raid, that would never make the annals of court poets or any other minstrel in the land. She tried to summon up the knight’s smell in the memory of her mind and, hardly surprised, realized that she couldn’t. It had faded with the cleansing of the room. The Top Room, she renamed it. No. Spotting an eagle circling in the dawn sky, preparing to pounce on its morning meal, she settled on the Eyrie instead.
The Eyrie. Site of many a knight’s death. Site of her growing – and now diminishing – love for that one knight.
Right?
Site of – she hurried her thoughts along – of her growing...she wouldn’t say love...for the boy. For Aluin.
Who clearly needed a great deal more guidance than she had been giving him now that his powers were demonstrably more impressive than ever. His muscular body, his playing with all the hues of a garden, his other nostrum magic that had no real practical use in the world. These were all very well, but the boy needed a direction. And fucking him all hours of the day and night – while gratifying – was probably not helping matters, she grumbled to herself. It was probably distracting him.
She sighed. Weary, spent. Drained. She closed her eyes and forced herself not to think of that one knight anymore. Not ever again.
Taking a deep breath, she vowed she wouldn’t to Saint Genevieve. It was time to move forward. It was time, once again, to reweave the fabric of the world as she moved through it. As Enchanteur had taught her.
Time to become worthy of her Master’s instruction. No, she chortled mirthlessly. Let’s not go all the way over the waterfall. At least not just yet.
She put her thoughts on Saint Genevieve and was startled to realize that she had no idea what the patron saint of Paris looked like. Just t
hat she prayed to her because...well...she had as a child. And that she loved the story of how the brave girl had saved Paris from Attila and his Huns. According to the legends, anyway. Enchanteur used to snort at the thought of a young girl’s prayers turning aside an entire army bent on conquest. Tempeste’s mind was wandering now. She recognized the ambling patterns of her endlessly curious mind reaching out, once more, to sleep.
So, as a robin sprang up in song, inviting all the world to listen, Tempeste focused on that. It was enough.
She wanted to know no more.
* 8 *
After two more duels, Tristen started to finally get it. That, and the fact that the Commander finally threw a tankard at his head last night in their favorite watering hole when Tristen had explained that he had to fight another duel the next morning.
This time it was the Count of Champagne. Before that, over the last weeks, he had dispatched the Count of Toulouse, and the selected champion of the Bishop Duke of Langres. All had come about after he had been lured to the beds of their ladies. In fairness, he had argued with du Guesclin, after wiping the ale from his hair, he had stayed away from any lady’s chambers. But, they kept coming to him. The Countess of Toulouse sucked like a bellows and loved, loved, loved! his tonguework. The Bishop’s mistress used to claim, “Your finger-tip love, mon cheri, drives me over the waterfall!”
(At which point, the Commander had simmered down long enough to ask, out of genuine interest, what she had meant. Tristen had explained that he tongued a lady until she was on the edge, then added his fingertip, just entering slightly, very tenderly, almost sweetly, to bring her to the satisfying end.)
The Countess of Champagne had loved cumming twice. The first came roaring out, brought on by Tristen’s tongue. Then, he had waited, kissing her heaving belly and trembling inner thighs for a bit then – shades of the witch – holding her until the waves had passed. And continued with just his fingertip, making light circles of the nub until she had a second, smaller, “sweeter” she had called it, orgasm. Which he would drag out by entering her very, very slowly, gently...
But du Guesclin’s attention had waned by then. Instead, he had gone on a long diatribe about the King’s Fee in knights annually and how Tristen, by allowing himself to be challenged to duels, was killing off the Dauphine’s allies right at the time when His Royal Highness the Prince was working on how to keep his father, the King Jean le Bon, safely imprisoned in the Tower of London way over in Angle-land. Tristen didn’t understand most of it. Palace politics bored him. Somebody was always in, someone else out. For every man in power, there were four or five of his lieutenants scheming to replace him somehow. Tristen didn’t know how anybody could live that way. If he couldn’t trust the Commander with his life...well...there was no point to hanging around, then, was there?
What he did understand from du Guesclin’s fiery speech last night was that he was being played. That all the ladies of the land saw how quickly, how painlessly, how adeptly the Duchess de Berry got her precious “home rule” after he had despatched her husband to a happier hunting ground. Amidst the hullaballo that had followed, engulfing the entire Il de la Cité – Tristen almost able to hear the clicking of the shifting tiles of palace politics – deciding who the new Duke de Berry would be, the Duchess had claimed that she was pregnant. (By whom, Tristen didn’t even want to ponder.) In any case, she had gotten the freedom that she wanted.
The Countess of Toulouse was a different matter entirely, or so he had told himself. Because he was resolutely staying away from the Brionde Viking, and about a week after he had started fucking the Countess, she had invited him to her chambers – to ask his advice on the training of her bodyguard she had said. Instead, she had taken his cock into her mouth and, next thing he knew, an absolutely red-faced and furious Count of Toulouse was shouting, the Countess was shrieking about rape and defending “the honor of Chateau Toulouse” and he was skipping for the door before he had to take down the Count’s men-at-arms. They had found him in a tavern later and announced that he must duel the Count at dawn.
It had been short work. The Count had been barely more than a boy. Tristen had honestly regretted watching the beardless wonder spear himself on his rapier. Not looking at the Commander’s eyes, Tristen had adjusted his point in time to give the boy a quick, merciful death straight through the heart. A sad business all around, he had felt, even if the Countess, declaring her pregnancy, had also gained home rule.
After that he stayed away from secular powers. The Church looked more fun. And the rollicking mistress of the Bishop Duke of Langres had certainly proven to be, even if her giggles were a bit annoying. Her tits, on the other hand, were the size of small mountains, their nipples a merry bright pink. He adored tickling them for great lengths of time with his tongue. Nevertheless, things had ended badly. In his defense, however, Tristen felt that he had been wrong-footed by the mistress. After fucking her a few times in his bed, he had gladly accepted her invitation to her chambers to “ride his noble steed.” After all, Tristen reasoned, priests don’t fight. He had forgotten that their champions do.
That duel had not been short work. It had gone on for several long moments. Maybe a third of a glass. The champion was a highly regarded – and paid, the Commander had griped – member of the King’s Guard. Tristen knew him well, had drunk several pots with him. Vidar was much like himself: calm, flexible, deadly as a whip snake when needed. Their duel had proven some of the most extraordinary swordwork Tristen had ever seen, certainly the most he had ever experienced. Only Phoebe’s beau Louis had proven better, long ago, during the sack. Vidar knew how to use the floor. He could circle, dodge, feint, charge, lunge, you name it. In the end, both had been streaming with sweat which had proven Vidar’s undoing. On a triangular parry – the most difficult of all the parries for him to execute Tristen had noticed, which was why he kept forcing Vidar into using it - the man’s grip on the umpteenth one had slipped. Just a fraction. Tristen had lunged for the Guard’s left hip, then right hip, then his chest. On the third spear, Vidar’s point wavered just enough for Tristen to slip past it, to enter the man’s chest just above the heart. That proved enough. Perhaps because the Guard was so surprised. Regardless, Tristen, panting with delirium, didn’t care. He followed it up with a searing slash across the man’s neck, splashing himself with Vidar’s dying blood. May hap fucking the Church wasn’t such a good idea after all, he thought with a grateful twinge, falling to his knees, then doing the best he could to honor his opponent by cradling him all the way to the brave fencer’s last gasps of breath. The Commander’s head above them also bent in homage to the fallen warrior.
That death had really bothered Tristen. He barely even noticed when the Bishop Duke fell from grace a few days later, professionally embarrassed by the loss, to be replaced by his private secretary. But by then the Countess of Champagne had roused Tristen to other delights.
And now, this morning, here he was, back in the Grand’Salle, near the Black Table, slipping into an en garde, du Guesclin’s glower wafting over him, the Commander’s bitter words from the previous evening about refusing to send Tristen away from the Il de la Cité still ringing in his ears.
“Oh, no! On this one matter and this one matter alone, I defy the Dauphine. That would be too good for you! You will learn how to fight palace battles. You will learn to keep that cock of yours in your breeches!”
The Count of Champagne looked to be easy work, short work. The Commander hadn’t even bothered to order Tristen to limit himself to pinking his opponent for the Countess had been shrieking “To the death! For the honor of Champagne!” since entering the Hall several moments ago. The boy opposite him was scared, yet defiant. His white cheeks had a twinge of blush on them, almost looking like makeup. It added a sense of purity to the moment and – infuriatingly – Tristen found himself thinking of the witch. God’s Tears! Of all the moments! He hadn’t thought of her in weeks. Hadn’t heard her chuckle in days. And now...?
&
nbsp; The Commander’s gloved hand was reaching up to that point in space between them, equidistant from the paired rapier points, signaling the last chance for either opponent to dip the sword in apology and survive. In shame and infamy, of course, but survive.
Neither would, naturally. But now her chuckle was rolling around in the back of his mind. Time was slowing down. He felt, rather than heard or saw, the Commander’s lips pucker into the first syllable of the command “Commence!” Tristen daren’t shake his head to clear his mind at this late juncture for it would compromise his sight. This boy may look cherubic, but in an age when duels had become rare entertainment, none could tell Tristen what the youth’s ability was. The seasoned warrior in Tristen, then, knew as a matter of course to expect the worst. So, no shaking of the head. Maybe a darting of the eyes? But they were already moving. They were exchanging a first, sharp parry to knock the other’s rapier off-line, clearing the way for a lunge, yet, both sensing at a pace faster than thought that both had settled on Tristen’s favorite first move. They were already circling. Tristen was the one charging. The youth, smoothly responding, turning, using the floor well. Tristen reflected that apparently, the Count had prepared. May hap it was true – as the Commander had drunkenly exclaimed just after the duel with Vidar – that the Duke of Normandy, the most powerful of all the titled nobles, was paying a master swordsman to instruct certain favorites in how to defeat “du Guesclin’s manticore.” Or may hap the Count of Champagne was well instructed from birth by a score of master swordsmen. Either way, he had certainly handled Tristen’s signature combination with aplomb. Just as the boy was handling this first drive with composure. Tristen wondered if he was settling into a rut. He always liked to start with a clearing parry/lunge because – while it was so well known as to be a cliche – few could match his speed in executing it. Besides, Gaspard had taught it to him.
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