"I see that I am as I am. I cannot change." It was a cry from her heart, though her words were stony enough.
“You will learn change if you wish to remain here.” He paused, then added, “Of course, you could always become the wife of a yeoman. The marriage imposts I receive as Montlimoux’s Grand Seneschal would add something to its coffers. But I do not think you would adapt well to shouldering firewood like a pack mule, while your husband trods on ahead."
He paused, and a glint appeared in his eyes. “Then there is always the convent, is there not? I recall you advising a widow she would find the opportunity to wield broad authority within it walls, aye?”
“I would take the veil before I would submit my free will to a man.”
“Free will?” His smile was close to a smirk. “A woman's subjugation to man is the fruit of her sin.”
“Sin?”
“Are all Languedoc maidens slow of thought?”
She had never felt more like committing violence.
“Aye, sin,” he continued. “Did not woman succeed in seducing man where Satan had proved powerless in the Garden of Eden?”
“I might remind you that while woman was supposedly created from Adam's rib, man was created from mere dust!”
His grin was condescending, infuriating her even more. "And I shall remind you that woman is not the image of God, since she was created in the image of Adam, whereas man alone is the image of God!”
Her lips formed a caustic smile. "Your knowledge of the missals is enlightening.”
"I was tutored by an abbot.”
"A misogynistic monk, to be sure.”
"A monk who knows the truth in Scripture, mistress.” He turned on his heel and left her standing, astonished and outraged.
Chengke, an old Chinese sage who had once graced Montlimoux, would have said that her yin power was being challenged. But then Chengke, who had come to her parents’ court by way of Arabia, believed in a lot of things that the Catholic Church found heretical. In her experience, her yin power, that feminine and principal force of nature in Chinese cosmology, was not always something she could draw upon at will.
She thought of Chengke's teaching of finding the middle way between extremes.
But how would she achieve that when Paxton's way was that of the warrior?
She had no answer. All she had to guide her was Chengke's counsel and was that enough to withstand the brute force of the sinister Englishman?
CHAPTER III
She knew that a warrior was inclined to force and violence, and because of this violent nature, the violence had a chance to dominate and possess the soul.
But whose? His own or hers?
Chengke, who had claimed to have lived during the late Chou period, four hundred years before Christ, had neglected to tell Dominique that important piece of information. She only knew she felt out of balance, her mind disturbed, a tunnel’s vortex of slow darkness. Fear had numbed her.
She glanced up at the high table, where Paxton of Wychchester sat in her chair, dis-playing male avarice and its egotistical concept of ownership!
Beside his officers sat one of the village's burghers, the portly Guillaume de Sigors, who had made his wealth in cloth—and whom she had only recently knighted. How galling! The opportunistic Guillaume and his wife were the first vassals of the comté to curry favor with the foreigner in the six days since his arrival. How many more of her people would go over to the Englishman?
Where was Denys? Buying marble in Carrera? Contracting with a master glazier for the hospital’s stained glass? Had her missive yet reached him that within a fortnight's time she would publicly be forced to cede both her county and her chateau?
She and her household were virtual prisoners in the chateau. Her every thought was predicated on how to rid the county of the savage foreigners. Alas, she could only hope that Denys returned in time. A man of the people, he might be able to arouse Montlimoux’s inhabitants to action. Mayhap, some of the county’s foremost knights would attempt to raise an army in Montlimoux's defense.
She suspected the English lieutenant was prepared to counter any such rebellion. Late into the nights, he worked alongside his red-bearded captain in her Justice Room. Baldwyn had revealed to her that upon occasion the lieutenant had summoned him to consult about land routes, bridge crossings, and the nearer seaports.
Once, even she had been summoned from her bedchamber to identify the keeps of petty castellans on a local map he had procured from her document cupboard. When she had entered the Justice Room, the Englishman’s back had been to her as he poured over the map, spread out on the escritoire. A ring-tailed cat rubbed itself against his hose-encased calves.
Barely acknowledging her, the man had snapped questions, saying, "Here? And here?”
Distastefully, she had watched his large hands, shadowed with hair and scarred, splay across the map's scrolled edges. Inadvertently, she had blurted, "Your given name Paxton, it little befits your calling.”
He had glanced up from the map to her. At that moment, she had realized her dishevelment—her wrinkled tunic, her hair en negligée, her lids heavy from a restless sleep.
He had straightened to stare down at her. She loathed him so. She found it difficult to sustain his sardonic gaze. "No, I am not a man of peace but one of the sword. And your name Dominique, it little befits your station now, does it?”
If only he did not speak the language in such a caressing voice. “For the present.”
She could not bear to be in his presence and had turned to leave the room. "Not so quickly,” he had ordered.
She had half-turned, and he warned, "By your leave. Say it. ‘By your leave, my Lord Lieutenant.’ ”
Her teeth had gritted against each other. “By your leave, my Lord Lieutenant." The profound dislike in her voice had been unmistakable.
But it had mattered not one whit to him. He had already turned back to study the spread map.
Disgusted with her preoccupation with the man, she banished her recollections and re-turned her attention to the stewed mutton spread like paste on the thick trencher of bread. Aware of the sidewise glances spared her from the others at the low table, her fingers could only pluck at a soggy morsel. Jeanne had obviously gone lax in her culinary efforts.
This was the first appearance Dominique had made in the great hall at mealtimes since the arrival of the foreigners. Her presence had been ordered by the Englishman's wish or, at least, that was how the phrasing was delivered by a surprisingly respectful Captain Bedford.
While she had not actually been ordered to sit at the low table, she had so chosen. To break bread with Montlimoux’s enemy would have been to surrender, if only a part of herself.
Was this how one lost one's soul?
A traveling jester in checkered yellow-and-orange silks, soiled and frayed by the years, danced for the guests. The bells of his long-pointed shoes tinkled with his foolish capers. A silent groan welled inside her. Paxton of Wychchester! The English dolt's company lacked the animated conversation, a spirited mixture of wit and wisdom, that was to be found at Francis's board: poets, theologians, physicians all sharing their intriguing knowledge.
Now that Francis had taken up residence in Avignon, she sorely missed his rapier-swift sallies and intriguing stories. But then all the intellects and diplomats of the civilized world were making pilgrimages there now that it was the new seat of the papacy instead of profligate Rome.
As a child she had looked forward to Francis’s visits to the chateau. A full ten years older, he had never bored her and never looked upon her as merely an engaging child, but as a child wise for her years and gender.
Out of sorts, she rose abruptly from the lower table. To do so before the lord of the chateau rose, signifying the end of the repast, was a slight to formality and could bring unpleasant consequences. But then he had made it plain she was of no consequence, and she seriously doubted her presence would be missed.
Paxton of Wychchester’s offi
cers were growing steadily drunker on Iolande’s vintage red wine, and the burgher and his wife fared little better. The lieutenant—Grand Seneschal, she mentally corrected—paid not the slightest heed to the jester's antics nor the scantily clad professional dancing girls who next performed. She recognized that the rage in his energies burned even fiercer, though he appeared to content himself in conversing with his captain. Their wine flagons were virtually untouched.
Within her privy chamber, a fire burned warmly against the chill spring night. Like fireflies, sparks took flight from the cedar logs. Her falcon, perched on its tasseled pommel, flared its wings in recognition of her entry. "It's high time you were exercised, Reinette.”
Reinette pleased her greatly. Not only was the female falcon the fastest animal alive, but she was larger and more aggressive than the male tiercel.
Beatrix rapped on the antechamber door, seeking to help her mistress disrobe, but Dominique wished only to be left alone and dismissed her maid-in-waiting. Doubtlessly, the young woman was headed for a rendezvous with the English captain, John Bedford, in some darkened alcove of the chateau. Their dalliance had been remarked upon by Iolande, who let nothing escape her attention. For her part, Dominique cared not as long as the captain did not saddle Beatrix with child when the English soldiers finally left.
And if they did not?
Pensive, she stared into the fire's hypnotic blaze. Her emotional antennae vibrated in disorder. Her jaws hurt from the anger and frustration stored there. Her intuitiveness aided her not at all these days. Like the blaze's fireflies, it flickered in and out of her awareness so that she only knew of its presence after the fact.
The menacing Englishman had disrupted her whole way of life. Her county, her chateau, and now even her mind.
She heard her antechamber door open again, then the massive door to her privy chamber groaned with the thudding of a fist. She shrank from the violence of the sound, the trumpeter of its master of violence, surely. She went to the door and sheathed its iron bolt. As she had expected, Paxton of Wychchester loomed in the anteroom’s shadows. At his feet, purred the ring-tailed cat.
"You forget your place,” he told her. His face was as dark as his doublet.
His ire at so small a disregard for ritual amazed her. She held her ground, keeping the door's aperture no more than a forearm’s width. “The antechamber is an excellent place for cooling one's heels.”
The cat streaked past her to crouch beneath Reinette’s perch and hiss. The feline’s tail licked and curled in anticipation.
“Ca-ca-ca-ca-ca!” The high-strung falcon emitted a rapid staccato screech of perturbation. Its talons curved around its railed perch, as if already clutching its victim. Its wings beat the air wildly, then it flew off the perch as far as its tether permitted.
Paxton pushed the door open and crossed the room to peruse her agitated falcon. "I have always found the weaker female sex tends to be more rapacious,” he mused in his heavy-timbered voice. Bending, he collected his hissing cat with a broad sweep of his arm. “Arthur here seems to be of the same opinion. You realize, do you not, that your falcon and my cat cannot live in close quarters. Your falcon will have to be set free.”
"Free?” she demanded of his broad back. "What do you know of freedom? I am the prisoner here, sire, not you!”
He turned on her. "I can take care of that, mistress. Off Marseilles’ coast are moored Saracen galleys eager to take on white slaves as cargo, especially fair maidens.” His fingers boldly reached down to touch her cheek, and she forced herself not to flinch. "Though thy cheeks are not so fair, maiden.”
The confines of the room, and the fire's heat, stifled her. "No man has ever touched me without my permission,” she said with a quiet anger that left her trembling inside.
"I do not find that surprising.” His laugh was short and derisive.
"Do not touch my lady again,” a voice rumbled behind them. Baldwyn filled the open doorway. With the Englishman occupying a privy chamber at the other end of the solar, the aging giant was never far away these days. Strangely, his face, mottled by the disease, appeared almost timeless. His peaceful expression was unaltered. "I renounced the use of violence years ago, my Lord Lieutenant, but I would lay down my life in defense of my Lady Dominique.”
"I would dislike that, Templar. Your life is too valuable for such a foolish gesture.”
"Baldwyn, please,” she said. "Tis all right.”
"No, it is not,” Paxton countered. He released the cat to withdraw a folded sheet of parchment from his doublet and passed it to her. "Yours, mistress?”
She did not need to peruse its contents. The severed rose-colored ribbon and broken seal of her signet ring proclaimed the missive hers. How it had been intercepted, she did not know. Defiantly, she stared up into the Englishman’s flawed face.
"Such encouragement of rebellion is an act of treason against His Majesty King Edward III of England and Duke of Aquitaine.” She watched the indentation of his upper lip flatten into a harsh smile. "I do not imagine I need remind you of the penalty for treason, mistress.”
She couldn’t repress a shudder at the merciless glint in his eyes.
"Perhaps I can enliven your imagination,” he said. "Our Duke of Aquitaine's grandfather, King Edward I, shut a Scots countess in an open cage which he suspended from the city walls. Her humiliation was likely as horrible as her death, weeks later, when birds of prey began picking at the rotting flesh of the weakened woman.”
"You are a cold-blooded bastard!”
His face darkened, and his hand raised, as if to strike her, and it was perhaps only her missive he held that saved her that debasement. He cast the missive into the fire. "Who is this Denys Bontemps?” he demanded.
"Denys is innocent of any plot.”
"Who is he, I asked.”
"A friend from childhood. The son of a stonecutter.”
He leaned down to pick up Arthur again, twining in and out between his leather boots. Stroking its fur with gentle hands, he said, "I do not slay damosels, mistress, but be forewarned of the consequences. I shall take my reprisal on a male of your household one at a time for any further rebellious act of yours.”
Baldwyn waited until the soldier had taken his leave, then warned, “As the peasant says, my lady, ‘Let not the hen crow before the rooster.' I shall sleep outside your doorway from this time on.”
When he, too, had departed, she crossed to the polished silver mirror. She half expected to find a welt where the Englishman’s fingers had touched her cheek, as though the heat of his fury had branded her. She rubbed the back of her fingers across the spot, reflectively.
For the first time in years she thought of one of the manuscripts stored in her library. The precisely illuminated work was one of several that Baldwyn had fled with from the Templar Preceptory before King Philip the Fair had raided their commandery. Many of the works there were said to have been brought from the far lands of the East to the Kingdom of Jerusalem by the Arabs and from Jerusalem the Templars had then brought them to Paris.
This particular one spoke of a particular practice of Hinduism, called Tantrism, where enlightenment was sought through profound experience of sensual love "in which each was both.”
Even more than the concept, she had been intrigued by the Hindu goddess depicted not as a holy virgin but in a sensual embrace of stunning beauty. A remarkable contrast to the cult of the Virgin Mary, which the famed Abelard had claimed despised that part of a woman from which sons of men were born.
With a harshly indrawn breath, she admitted to her reflected image her deepest fear that she possessed a perilous connection with this English soldier who venerated such a cult. It was no accident that he, out of the dozens of the English king's military leaders, was ordered to take Montlimoux.
A large hand clamped on Iolande's stooped shoulder, and she cried out.
"’Tis only I, old woman,” Baldwyn said.
"Don’t sneak upon me like that, leper!” The cont
emptuous form of address was her longstanding way of keeping the Knight Templar at a distance.
Ah, but he had been such a handsome gallant when first he had ridden into Montlimoux's courtyard. And she had never been a beauty. Her hooded eyes appraised his ravaged face, mercifully shadowed because of the high, narrow windows in this part of the chateau. Here, outside the buttery, he was once again young and magnificent and handsome.
But daydreams had never been her weakness. Had she even been a beauty, Baldwyn de Rainbaut, best lance of the Templars, had foresworn marriage, at least, if not par armours. And had he even been interested in only an affair of the heart, she would never had been considered, as he was a gentile and she a Jewess.
Despite his disfigurement, he was still supremely male. Not for him the sexless leper’s castanets, gloves, and breadbasket. She turned her attention back to her ring of keys, discarding the pantry key for the right one. "What mischief do you seek now?” she asked rudely of him.
“I fear for my Lady Dominique.”
She straightened, her keys clinking back together on their ring, and frowned. "I know. I fret, also.”
"’Tis not just her way of life that’s in danger. Tis her very life, I fear."
“Has the English lieutenant said as such?”
The Templar shook his shaggy gray head. "No, but her missive to Denys was intercepted. I listen and watch. The Englishman, I am told, is ruthless, thorough, and unforgiving. I fear his reprisal is yet to come after she has formally yielded her title and county to him.”
"What can he do to her?” Unconsciously, she rubbed her age-knotted fingers that ached with the cold. "And on what pretext?”
"The missive to Denys was pretext enough, but the Englishman burnt it. Nevertheless, he could find a reason of one kind or another.”
"You come to me now because you finally need my help, do you not, leper?”
"You know what it is I seek.” It wasn’t a question but a statement.
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