She did not recognise the fruit. It burst on her tongue, sweet and tart at the same time, and she swallowed it. It was very good. She shivered, her nipples tightening. She wanted more, but pride made her reach for the next herself, not waiting for him. Amusement danced in Gaspard’s eyes. He took her outstretched hand in his own, raised it to his lips and kissed her palm. Annette gasped as the tip of his tongue slid out to caress the heart line, raking across it as if it were some other, more tender flesh …
There was the sound of footsteps beyond the bushes. Gaspard released her hand, dropped the remaining fruit into her lap and stood, unhurried. Annette lost his face, watched his dark nipples and his firm abdomen as they rose up in front of her instead. He lingered, making it clear that he did not fear his Lady’s return. The thick outline of his virile member was quite clear against his left thigh, through the rough cloth of his hose. He took three slow paces back, and Annette had to snatch her attention from him to the face of the woman behind him.
‘Here we are,’ said the Châtelaine Marguerite, glancing with amusement at her two companions. ‘My dear Annette, has Gaspard been teasing you? You have gone quite pink.’ She tutted gently and put down a broad basket at Annette’s feet. ‘I have here a little food for your journey. Gaspard, go about your work. I will dry our pilgrim’s hair; we do not want her catching her death, this night.’
Gaspard executed a short bow, the cruel smile never leaving his lips, before striding off. Annette’s head was spinning. She bowed her head in confusion, only dimly aware of the Châtelaine taking a white cloth from the basket and walking around behind her seat.
‘Now,’ said Marguerite softly, wrapping the cloth around Annette’s tangle of damp hair and beginning to squeeze and tousle it gently; ‘you have only a little way to go my dear, to reach the chapel. There is a gate at the far end of this garden; you take the path beyond it up the small valley as far as you can go, and there is the chapel of our St Veronique. Perhaps three miles, I think. You will be there before nightfall.’ Her soothing voice and the firm, caressing motion of her hands were sending waves of pleasure through Annette, who closed her eyes and dared almost to relax a little. ‘I have brought you a cloak, because it gets cool on the hillsides, even on summer nights,’ the murmuring voice continued, as the hands stroked the hair back from Annette’s forehead and throat, tickling a little. ‘There is a good stream by the shrine, and I will see that food is sent up to you. It is my duty to look after pilgrims, after all.’
The Châtelaine was now patting dry Annette’s throat and the nape of her neck, describing gentle curves under her chin with the soft cloth and her cool fingers. Annette gave a tiny, high moan through closed lips – the sensation was pleasant but it frightened her; it was too good, too stimulating. A frisson of longing tightened in her flesh, causing her to jerk gently on the damp seat. The Châtelaine’s hands were under the wet drawstring edge of her dress now, tracing her collarbones. Annette’s eyes flew open.
The Châtelaine tugged the cord at Annette’s throat, and pulled the gathered neck of the dress open. With gentle, soothing movements she reached down to touch the deep valley between Annette’s high, rounded breasts and expertly stroke their sensitive inner walls. The skin tightened across the young woman’s nipples and those questing fingers followed across her lightning-shot skin to the points of her breasts, the foci of tormenting pleasure and needful pains. Annette gave a helpless gasp low in her throat, trying to stifle the noise. The Châtelaine pressed up against her from behind, her own breasts cradling Annette’s head for a heartbeat, then pulled away so that she could lean forwards and brush the damp dress from either shoulder, down to her elbows, baring Annette to the waist.
Annette froze, every muscle in her body tensing up. That movement brought home to her the fact that the dampness between her thighs was not all from the cloth, that there was a hot aching hunger in her. But she did not move, not when her breasts were cupped by the Châtelaine and gently hefted, not even when her two rigid nipples were taken between cold bejewelled fingers and used to lift the whole weight of each rounded orb, sending knife-slashes of ecstasy through her body. This was unreal, unbelievable – even her certainty that Gaspard was only just out of sight behind a screen of leaves, watching his Lady play with her naked flesh, was not enough to penetrate the fortress of her helplessness. Her body did not belong to her. And so the Châtelaine could do as she liked, but Annette could not respond.
Marguerite gave a sigh that was almost a growl. ‘You are truly beautiful, my dear,’ she said, pinching the tender pink buds of Annette’s nipples into delirious frustration. ‘I am so glad you have come here to us.’ Then – reluctantly, it seemed – she released her prisoner and drew up the fallen garment of her modesty.
Annette stood up, her face white with two hectic points of colour in her cheeks, and turned to the Châtelaine, who drew herself upright, a hungry smile in her eyes the only sign of her misdoings. ‘You must be on your way,’ she commanded the merchant’s wife. Annette could not meet her blue eyes, but crossed her hands over her forsaken breasts in a confusion of longing and disappointment and shame. The discarded berries had left little pink stains on her robe as they had tumbled from her lap, a rosy Pleiades centred over her pubic mound.
‘You must take these,’ the Châtelaine warned, picking up the basket and proffering it to her. Annette accepted it numbly and left the garden by the way she was directed.
‘The blessed Saint guide you, my dear,’ were the Châtelaine’s last words to her.
* * *
Annette awoke on the cold stone floor of the shrine, stiff from the chill that had soaked into her bones. She rolled over and sat up as soon as she realised that her sleep was truly lost to her. Morning sunshine filtered into the chapel through a single tiny window. The doorless entrance, which faced south down the path from the Châtelaine’s house, was filled with pale light. Annette wrapped the cream-coloured cloak tighter around herself and tried to remember her arrival, with only partial success; details were fuzzy with fatigue. Her legs ached all the way from blistered feet to knotted thighs. She had walked from the Châtelaine’s garden up a steep little valley, past the grounds and the fields and up into the uncultivated hillside beyond, finding and then following a stream, while her clothes had dried in the last of the afternoon sun. Evening had come quickly to the valley; the rocky walls cut out the light early. She had eaten most of the food in the parcel she had been given on her way, feeling faint with hunger as she took the first bite; a cheese tart, a cold baked fish, a small loaf of fine white bread. Some of the bread was still left on the flagstones beside her, hard as wood now, along with a leather flask that had contained good red wine. Annette murkily remembered finding the chapel with its two candles glowing on the altar, stumbling through a prayer to St Veronique and then simply curling up on the floor to sleep the sleep of the exhausted. She felt ashamed now, as well as cold; she should have stayed up to pray through the night.
The shrine was almost completely bare, now that she could see it properly – little more than a stone room built between rocks and water. There were no seats or furnishings, nothing but a stone altar upon which stood a wooden cross and the stubs of two thick candles, their tiny flames wavering in deep pools of wax. The front of the altar was carved and painted with the design of a young woman holding out a cross, as if to ward off a man on horseback. An animal of some kind – it looked like a dog or wolf – was depicted crouching at the woman’s feet. On the east wall of the building, small wooden pegs had been driven into the mortar between many of the stones, and from these hung an assortment of crucifixes on chains or thongs. Most were plain wooden crosses like Annette’s own.
She got to her feet and went outside to relieve herself. The valley, it transpired, unlike the arid surrounding hills, was crammed with vegetation, mostly stunted trees and sprawling, thorny bushes, all jostling around the banks of the stream. The water here was clear and deep enough even to bathe in but, to Annette’s
fingers, felt bitterly cold. Annette wandered along the bank uphill for a little way. By the time she returned to the chapel, she was at least warmer.
There was someone in the shrine before her, standing at the altar. Annette’s heart jumped, but calmed again when the stranger turned round and revealed herself to be a young woman who grinned warmly at the sight of her.
‘A new pilgrim!’ she exclaimed without the slightest surprise. ‘Please excuse me, lady, I am replacing the candles. Don’t let me interrupt your prayers.’ She was young and very dark, with masses of curling black hair that was barely contained by a tattered scarf. Her clothing was rough, simple and, like the headcloth, not quite adequate to the task of concealing what lay beneath. She had warm, wicked eyes and, if possible, an even wickeder smile.
‘Is this your job?’ Annette asked, looking at her bare brown feet. It was not what she had expected the sacristan to look like.
‘Oh yes, lady,’ said the peasant girl, wrapping up the two quenched stumps of the old candles in a cloth. ‘Father Emil cannot get to the shrine every day because of his duties, so he has set me to sweep the floor and make sure the candles stay lit here. I’ll tell him that there is a pilgrim present; he’ll be sure to pay you a visit.’
‘That’s good,’ said Annette weakly. She found the dark girl almost alarming; the combination of firm, curvaceous body, robust confidence and conspiratorial smiles from that generous mouth was overtly sexual, which shocked Annette in the context of this holy place. Not so much that she wanted the girl to depart, however. ‘What is your name?’ she asked.
‘Claudette,’ the other replied with a suppressed giggle. She seemed full of delight at her lot on this summer day. ‘I work for the Châtelaine. I was told to bring you this food as well.’ She picked up a parcel from the floor and brought it over to unwrap it in front of Annette. ‘See: cheese, wine, olives and bread and a little pot of honey. Oh, she must like you; she is very careful with her honey.’ This was the occasion for another giggle, and when Annette visibly blushed, she went off into a low peal of laughter which drew a smile out of Annette too.
‘There you are,’ Claudette finished, dropping the package into Annette’s hands. ‘I’ll bring more tomorrow morning.’
‘Have you eaten yet?’ Annette asked.
‘Only a drink of milk,’ Claudette admitted.
‘Eat with me, then,’ the pale woman invited.
They could not indulge in anything so mundane inside the chapel, so they went outside and sat together on a warm rock to share the food. Claudette stretched out her bare feet to the sun and smiled contentedly at the world.
‘You don’t have much of an appetite,’ she observed.
‘No,’ Annette said softly, nibbling on a piece of salty cheese, ‘not today. I am supposed to be denying myself, for the Saint to listen to my prayers.’ She in fact preferred to watch Claudette eat, scooping honey out of the earthenware pot and smearing it on rough pieces of bread – such as she could get there and not drip on her breast or drizzle up her bare forearm instead – before licking her fingers clean. The glistening honey was the same dusky golden-brown as Claudette’s skin, Annette noted with pleasure.
‘I don’t see that your hunger will sharpen Veronique’s ears,’ Claudette said impiously, and rolled over on to her stomach. Her skirt bunched up, baring her hard calves. She is doing this deliberately, Annette thought; what is happening here?
‘What are you praying for, then, lady?’ Claudette enquired teasingly.
‘I’m ill,’ Annette said with caution. ‘I’m praying for healing.’
Claudette bit her lip, her eyes huge with secrets. ‘Oh, I’m sure you’ll find it,’ she said. ‘St Veronique is very kind.’
Annette gave a token smile, wondering meantime if the Châtelaine Marguerite’s aristocratic hands had ever cupped those large brown breasts. She did not doubt that Gaspard had hauled her into the hayloft and parted those rounded thighs many times. How could he resist? She looked away down the valley, her mental picture of Gaspard rooting blindly up Claudette’s wanton passage kindling a warmth in her that her husband had never evoked in three years. Her voice sounded strange to her as she asked, ‘What does the picture on the altar mean?’
‘Hmm? That is the saint herself,’ Claudette said, rolling a black olive over her lower lip and biting it neatly. ‘Have you not heard the legend? When she fled from the wicked lord who wanted to ravish her, the wolves of the hills came to her assistance and fed her.’
‘No, I hadn’t heard that.’
‘So you don’t know about the Miracle of the Wolves?’ asked Claudette, her eyes glinting. ‘No? Sometimes all the wolves come down off the hills and into the chapel to pray to St Veronique. Nobody knows when they will choose to come. It might be tonight. It might be when you are here.’
Annette stared at her, then at the chapel. There was no door to the doorway. ‘You’re fooling with me!’ she said quickly.
Claudette pursed her lips wickedly. ‘Are you afraid of the wolves, pilgrim?’ she asked, then burst into a throaty chuckle. ‘Don’t worry, lady – if they come, they won’t hurt you. They’re good Christian beasts, come to pray for their souls. They wouldn’t eat a pilgrim: not a pure, pious lady like yourself.’ She wriggled with delight at the thought, and Annette shook her head in disbelief.
‘If I were you,’ Claudette confided, getting up to her knees and leaning towards Annette so that her breath was warm on her cheek, ‘I would not worry about anything while I was in the chapel, so long as I knew my heart was pure.’ As she finished these words she stretched forwards just enough to allow her red lips to brush Annette’s left cheek, and then silently drew those lips in a feathery stroke over to her earlobe, which she took gently between her teeth.
Annette held very still. Claudette withdrew, smiling still, then rose gracefully to her feet, turned and tripped off down the path. The last glimpse of her as she disappeared was of her mane of hair flopping on her shoulders.
It was difficult to leave the sunny rock and return to the cramped gloom of the shrine. Annette shivered as she entered, but she went to the altar, folded her cloak as a cushion for her knees, and bent her will to prayer. She stayed on her knees for hours, right through the morning, until her soul was emptied of thought, desire and fear.
The light had turned while she prayed, wheeling round to cast a scorching lozenge of light into the dim interior through the doorway that could not be closed. Annette finally crossed herself, rolled from her knees and, when the blood-flow had returned to her feet, went out into the day. Prayer had left her so calm that tiredness had crept up on her once more, the legacy of unaccustomed toil and an uncomfortable night. Annette found a place where the sunlight was partially filtered by the shadow of a tree overhead and curled up in the dappled shade to doze.
She was awoken by something tickling her lips.
‘You should not sleep with your head in the sun, child,’ said a male voice. ‘It will give you painful dreams.’ She sat up hurriedly and the man who had been bending over her stepped back, discarding the grass-stalk with the heavy seed-head he had been deploying. Blinking, she realised that he was clad in black clerical garb and broad straw hat.
‘Father … Emil?’ she murmured confusedly. The shadow had moved while she slept, exposing her head which now felt very fuzzy.
He nodded, smiling, and held out a hand to help her up, which he accomplished without visible strain. His hand was rough and warm. ‘Claudette told me that you were here. What do you think of our little shrine?’
‘Uh … I have been praying all morning. It is very peaceful. But I am tired … I fell asleep. I wanted to stay awake last night, but I was too tired by the walk – forgive me, Father.’
‘No harm in that,’ said Father Emil, strolling into the shrine. ‘You need to rest as well as to pray. “Three nights at the shrine of St Veronique,” you were told, I suppose? Well, you can keep vigil tonight and tomorrow. Did Claudette bring you food?’
&nbs
p; ‘Yes, Father,’ said Annette, following him within. Newly awakened, she was more comfortable in the gloom. The priest took off his hat, bowed towards the shrine and crossed himself.
‘Ah, well, I have brought you these for tonight.’ He unslung a bag from his shoulder and passed it to her; inside, a flask nestled up against more indistinct packages.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Father, have you heard of the Miracle of the Wolves?’
The priest looked at her quizzically. He had a lined face under untidy black hair salted with white, but the lines defined a map of good humour and his movements were vigorous. ‘What has Claudette been telling you?’
‘That the wolves come here to pray, some nights,’ said she.
‘Hmm. So they say. Anything is possible with God, child. But Claudette is a peasant girl, full of stories – and, I must admit, mischief, upon occasion. I would not believe everything she says.’ He glanced at the altar. ‘Do you know the story of St Veronique the Virgin?’
‘Not properly, Father,’ Annette admitted.
‘The blessed Veronique lived in this area after Rome fell to the barbarians. She was a devout child and pledged herself to chastity, although she was held to be more beautiful than any other maiden within three days’ journey. Then one day news of her beauty came to the ears of her local lord – some say he was a king, although I suppose that means little more than a brigand chieftain in those days. Now, he was a godless pagan who vowed to have the girl to wife – it’s amazing how many of these fellows there are in history – and he came to take her by force. But Veronique prayed to the Virgin to make her so ugly that the chief would not want her any more, which is what happened; Veronique suddenly grew hair all over her face and body, so that everyone was terribly afraid and disgusted. She ran away into the hills and did not come back until the lord had gone home, by which time all the hair had fallen out and she was fair once more.’
Cruel Enchantment (Black Lace) Page 6