In Anjou, she had assisted John with the recruiting as much as he would let her. She demanded however, that he rest in a chamber near her own, until a hut could be constructed on the edge of the new practice yard that he had cleared. Anjou, as Brionde did, rang with the sounds of rapier striking rapier every afternoon. She watched daily, her eye out for a new Master of the Guard of Anjou. John’s wounds were too severe and he needed to retire, she had decided. Or if that didn’t work, she resolved to promote him to the rank of Constable of Brionde-Anjou, with his primary focus being the security of her person and the young Count’s as they continually traveled between the chateaus. He could keep an eye on the twin Guards as she kept an eye on the chateaus.
Regardless, the hut’s construction proceeded slowly. The chateau’s carpenter was kept busy with a multitude of other tasks, such as turning Marcel’s chambers into a mausoleum, grand enough to honor the first Count of Brionde-Anjou. The bed alone promised to be a work of art – with its ornate ornamentation of hundreds of Angevin keys and lions – and would take him months. She was certain of that. And when that was finally finished, she was certain that the carpenter would find that he had another task that would claim priority. Perhaps rebuilding the chapel from the ground up. Or redoing the Great Hall in its entirety. All to honor the first Count while welcoming the second.
In any case, whenever John complained, she reassured him that his hut would be finished.
Soon.
READY FOR THE STORY TO CONTINUE?
Want more adventure in medieval France? Read on to find out what happens to the Knight, Sir Tristen. The witch Tempeste is obsessed with him, but is still trapped in her tower due to the curse. Will she ever find him? Can she lure him back to her tower? Meanwhile, Sir Tristen is oddly unsatisfied with the ladies of Paris…
PLEASE NOTE: Chateau of Passion is the third novella in the Chateau of Love series, although all books in the Chateau of Love series can be read as standalones.
CHAPTER ONE – Chateau of Passion
Tempeste shoved a bedraggled clump of hair out of her eyes to better see through her“window.” Without really paying attention, she wiped the grease from her fingertips on her soiled dress. Some part of the back of her mind wondered how long it had been since she had washed her hair, her dress.
She didn’t care.
Muttering to herself, she anxiously scanned the gaily fluttering flags over the home of the King, Palais de la Cité in the heart of Paris. She was looking for her love. She was looking for Sir Tristen. She swore, slapping the sides of her stone cauldron in a rage, making the tendrils of smoke wafting up into the air above the waters blow apart with her jets of anger as if a harsh storm had just torn into them.
Nowhere did she see du Guesclin’s flag flying over the castle. Nowhere did she see its famous black two-headed eagle with a long blood red sash. No sign at all of the bandit. His name, pronounced doo Gecklin, the Breton mercenary– or condottiere, in contemporary parlance– was considered a hero of Francia these days. With the King captured at the battle of Poitiers and imprisoned in the Tower of London, his military chief the Lord Constable killed in the carnage along with so many other leading nobles of the land, the Prince Dauphin was scrambling to pick up the pieces and hold on to power. In desperation, he had turned to the condottiere du Guesclin who had made his name into a legend, known for tormenting English invaders and any who would collaborate with them.
Tempeste knew all of this because of her portal– the waters in the stone cauldron which, with her magic, turned into a window enabling her to see and hear the outside world. So long as she could capture any gnat, fly, mite or butterfly she could see through her portal and force it with her mind to fly in any direction she wished. The hapless tiny beast became her eyes and ears into the wider world. Her late master Enchanteur had criticized her endlessly for being cruel in the way that she used one to utter exhaustion before moving on to the next pilot of her fantasies. Her dreams.
Her only experience of the wider world. For after she had used Enchanteur’s ancient asceticism and growing love for her against him– turning him into her sexual slave– he had fled, casting a spell that had imprisoned her in the Tower ever since.
For years, her spies used through her cauldron were the only way that she could learn of the outer world. The only way that she could search for Tristen. Her only love. To lure him back into her arms. And keep him there forever.
Through her spies, she had learned that her reputation as a witch had grown in the years since Enchanteur’s departure. That villagers, particularly men-at-arms, whispered of a dark Tower somewhere in the forests of Brittany where a witch lured knights in with spells, seducing them. And, they chuckled nervously, fucked them without mercy until they begged for her to stop. Finally to die of utter exhaustion, literally fucked to death by a woman. A witch.
Through her spies, she had learned that Enchanteur had fled as far from Brittany as he could go. Some said that, following in the footsteps of the great Venetian explorer Marco Polo, Enchanteur had traveled to the Court of the Great Khans in the Far East. She had snorted, hearing that gossip in the chambers of the Court Philosopher of the Palais. It would be so like Enchanteur. He was fascinated with books and learning. And so completely undone, unmanned entirely, by one Parisian Kiss, the queen of all blow jobs.
Her spies had shown her the dark corners of intrigue in the Palais. Had helped her learn that the Dauphin was frantic to hold onto power. That, while the first Prince of the Throne to bear the title Dauphin– and rule over the Dauphine lands in southeastern Francia– he might well be the last. That he found no consolation in the whispers that he was becoming known as Charles the Wise for the sagacity of his decisions. That he lay awake at night fearing for the security of his father’s throne, fighting with his own lust to occupy it himself, hating himself for his own treachery, yet furious with his father for wasting the good health of Francia in such a fruitless war with the English king.
In the end, he had resolved that he had needed time. Time to think. Time to plan. Time to scheme. And, in the aftermath of the carnage of Poitiers, when so many of the foremost nobles of the land were now pushing up grass, their successors all sucklings held to their wet nurses’ breasts, there was no one of a traditional stamp to give him time. Thus, he had made a non-traditional decision. To the clucks of dismay of the many, he forewent bestowing the most powerful office of the land, the Lord Constable, on a noble as had been the custom for ages immemorial. Instead, he gave it to a commoner. The Black Eagle of Brittany, the condottiere du Guesclin.
She had screamed with joy the afternoon she had learned that.
Finally!
For all the moons of the year since Sir Tristen, her one true love, had left her, she had hijacked flies, gnats, mites, whatever, staring through her portal forcing them to fly throughout all the lands of Francia trying to catch sight of him. She couldn’t simply just imagine him. For she didn’t know where he was. Or what he looked like now. The portal was limited. A witch, a warlock, had to begin with a place known so well that the sorcerer could almost build a landscape of it, complete with sounds and smells, in her mind. Then, the command Neshforatirgiven– uttered aloud for a novice, merely thought into being for a master– the waters within the cauldron would slowly swirl, mists of smoke rising from the waters until the water had taken on the very image of the landscape painted in the mind. Fair enough. But that was it, until the sorcerer had learned how to capture a pilot, to fly on its wings, changing the image in the cauldron waters to resemble a window that saw out into the wider world.
She had used her spies almost to the death. She could always tell when they were about to expire because their flying grew wobbly. At that point, she would ruthlessly spot another pilot, capture it while releasing the current one, and continue on. Hourglass after hourglass turned. Days passing into weeks into moons. Not really eating. Not washing. Feeding the livestock in the base of the Tower only when they complained so bitterly sh
e could no longer shut out their lowing, their clucking, their oinking. Then, using her mind to feed them all simultaneously and fleeing back to her cauldron, her window, hoping to catch a glimpse of Tristen. And if not that, then a word, a phrase, even the tiniest gossip.
She never had. Where he was on his travels with the Commander du Guesclin that he loved so much– that she had learned to hate so much– she had never learned. Oh, she would hear that“du Guesclin’s band had gone on down to Aquitaine.” So what?! Where was Aquitaine? It was not like she could ask her spies. She had never been there. And knowing that it was in the south of Francia did her no good. Even dead reckoning, using the sun’s passing overhead– keeping it on the left side of her spy until the afternoon, then keeping it on the right side until it set– was a poor substitute to just being able to go there. Once she had driven a fly for three days then smashed it into a tree in her rage.
Which had done her no good. She had had to start all over again.
In the place that she had gotten to know so well, the Palais, from all her hours staring at the beautiful ladies at Court, their lovely ladies-in-waiting in all the newest fashions, getting fucked up against a wall by the most handsome of knights. She had spent so many hourglasses staring through her portal at the Palais that she knew the corners, the hallways, the chambers of the palace almost as well as she knew the barn of her hated childhood farm, the starting point she had always utilized in her earliest days of using the cauldron.
And now she finally knew. She knew that Tristen’s beloved du Guesclin was being recalled to Paris to be named Lord Constable. It was unthinkable that Tristen, her only love, would not follow his Commander to the palace. Her Tristen– and only hers– would be in the one place in this world she loved most, the Palais.
So why was du Guesclin’s standard, his flag, notflying above the castle? It had been over a moon since she had heard the Dauphin issue the command for his favorite’s return. Where werethey? In an abrupt spike of rage, her mind effortlessly cast up the stone cauldron– large enough to easily crush a man– and dashed it to pieces against the wall with a thundering crash.
She collapsed sobbing on to the floor.
Where was he?
*****
The shards of the cauldron were easily gathered. The heavier ones, she picked up with her mind. Putting them back together, however...
After several days thinking the question over, she finally remembered a recipe for a slaked lime glue that Enchanteur had used on occasion. It involved some lime powder that he swore came from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius that had drowned the neighboring village of Pompeii completely in lava. It was always hard to know when to believe Enchanteur’s stories. In the early days, she had simply taken them at face value. As she had begun to master him, however, she had realized that a number of his claims had proven, over time, to be exaggerations.
In any case, looking up a glue recipe in one of his books was impossible, for he had taken them all with him when he left. The recipe that she remembered was used for simple projects around the Tower. Enchanteur had claimed that the adhesive had gone into the building of the famous Roman aqueducts as well as the Parthenon (whatever that was). It was, simply, lime water mixed with ash and sand. She had to wait for it to set. The heavier shards kept breaking off from their weight. Once, in sheer frustration, she had thrown the entire thing against the wall again.
Only to collapse in tears of vexation, once again.
And pick up the shards, once again.
*****
“Hello!”
Tempeste stopped fussing with the cauldron. She had it fixed, finally. The glue had set. But it was still leaking. Which created the additional problems of the lime ash dissolving as she added more to plug the holes. Why, she could not figure out. She had thrown the whole mess at the wall several more times in utter fury.
“Hello?”
She was blind. She thrust some greasy hair out of her eyes. Goddamit! She hated Enchanteur. She hated him and his cauldron! She wanted to smash him into the wall just as easily as she had his stone bowl.
She was blind. She couldn’t see outside of the Tower anymore. She had no window. No portal.
“Hello?!”
Swearing in a hellacious fury, she twirled down to the outside garden, ready to tear whomever was interrupting her search for Tristen to a bloody...
There was a boy.
“Help me!” His eyes were swollen shut. From bee stings, she wondered? Trails of blood were leaking down his cheeks.
He sobbed. He was helpless. He was blind.
Like her.
She took a step toward him, her foot grinding on the gravel in the grass.
He spun toward her, toward the sound.
“Who’s there?!” His arms stretched outward, reaching, his hands flailing.
“Who’s there?!! Please!! Help me!” he sobbed again.
He fell to his knees, crying,“What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I see?”
Her voice grated in her throat. She had not used it in months.
“Who are you?” she rumbled at him.
He looked up to her, his hands reaching out to her.“Aluin. I’m lost.”
*****
He was thin. And muddy. And stank of merde– dog shit, pig shit, donkey shit, horse shit, goose shit and who knew what else. His lank hair dribbled down around his eyes. He wore the simple smock and rough sandals of a farm worker. How he got out here was anyone’s guess.
She stared at him. His chest was heaving. Taking huge, panicked gasps of breath.
So different from the many heavily muscled knights that she had lured to the Tower over the years. She always used the same lure, a firefly. It never failed to work. Something about the simple psyche of a brawny, burly knight who could fuck until dawn was attracted to the gentle, fragile, beating gleam of a firefly. After Enchanteur had left taking the possibility of fucking him to death with him, she had flirted with the idea then tried it. It had turned out to be surprisingly easy. There were always knights on the roads not too far from the Tower. She only had to capture a firefly using the cauldron, then wait.
After sunset was best. In the dark.
Particularly when she had taught herself how to summon storm clouds, chill winds, freezing rains, and thrilling lightning bolts. Bored one day, she had experimented with capturing a lightning bolt. Somehow, it had captured her fancy. Mostly because it had seemed so far beyond anything Enchanteur would be able to do. It had taken her weeks. Many, many Sundays had passed before she had managed to capture just the tail of one. And this was only during a large, furious storm that had had a series of repeating lightning bolts, each one following the other in close succession. She did capture it, however. And directed it where she wished just before it disappeared.
Then an entire year had passed before the spring storms arrived to give her more chances to practice. And practice she did.
She learned to recognize the best clouds to practice on, because of their particularly dark gray, their humpy fluffs of blackened puffiness, with small blue jets of teeny bolts of lightning springing up, then failing. She lost many a pilot watching, learning. Not caring. They were only houseflies, mites, gnats.
Another year had passed before she could handle lightning with ease. One more before she taught herself to create her own.
Rain and wind had quickly followed, easy in comparison. Thunder appeared all by itself as she worked her magic. She had never figured out why.
Because she was too busy fucking her knights to death.
Luring them in, one by one. With a firefly each. Creating her own little thunderstorm to follow each one through the forest, chilling him to utter exhaustion, coaxing him with a song sung through the portal to him all the way to the Tower, enticing him up the stairs cut round the stone monolith, ascending one weary step after another upward, the archway door to the top floor thrown wide, the light of a cheery fire to warm their chilled bones spilling out into the night.
Each knight entered.
And never left.
For she fucked him to death. Keeping him weak, dazed with her own specially brewed honey mead, imprisoned within the eyrie– the top floor to which only the precarious steps cut into the outside curve of the Tower led– playing with the lust and staying power that seemed to come inbred into such a sexy, heavily muscled knight– ruthlessly slaking her incredible thirst for fucking, running her fingers over and over his brawny ridges– mercilessly ignoring the daily change of his sexual excitement into pleas of exhaustion to stop– almost like plucking the wings off a fly– watching him, as the days stretched into weeks, grow weaker, gaunter, terrorized, then, finally resigned at the thought of his own approaching death.
Saint Genevieve, she had loved such power!
Of course, Tristen had ruined it all for her. After tasting the one knight– the only one ever to escape– no one else could ever satisfy.
She had not even tried. She had stopped.
Any other knight would be just like this Aluin. A simple farm hand who stank of shit. There was nothing– absolutely nothing– to be gained from fucking him, much less fucking him to death. Looking at his pathetically starved cheeks, she chuffed that they weren’t even worth climbing on to. Nothing worth forcing him to lick her pussy, a power in which she usually delighted. Watching his plaintive cries, his muddy hands reach out to cover his swollen eyes, he struck her as like a dumb calf or a chicken whose throat she was slitting in preparation for dinner. No understanding there. Just confusion.
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 had been there. 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.
Chateau of Longing Page 14