His big paw reached for her withered hand. "No, 'tis not the years ... at Montlimoux of which ... I speak. Tis of St. Jean d’Acre.”
Iolande’s eyes knitted in perplexed wrinkles. "You are daft, old man.”
"I was there. I helped besiege the fortress . . . helped murder your father and brothers . . . helped. . . .”
The Jewess's face was strained to the point of breaking into a thousand cracks. Her outcry was of an animal in extreme pain. "No . . . no . . . no! It cannot be so! It cannot be!”
"I was not . . . one of the ones who raped you. But I looked away while the . . . others took their . . . did so. That I did not . . . participate was due to no knightly honor. Only that you stirred no desire in me. I was one of the knights set to guard you. I took . . . no pity on your pleas . . . your weeping. God help me . . . old woman, I need your forgiveness!”
Iolande laid her gnarled hand, trembling, across his sweat-beaded forehead. Tears dropped like spilled molten gold. “I would still tell you, leper, that those early years—at St. Jean d'Acre—are past and done with. But then you would selfishly depart, leaving me to spend the rest of my years on earth without your churlish gests to vex me. No, old man, you owe it to stay here with me. Do you hear me?!”
But it appeared he could not. He was fast slipping away. From the entrance of the tent, Paxton asked, "How does the Templar fare?”
Wordlessly, Dominique shook her head.
Paxton dropped the canvas flap and crossed to the cot. He took one glance at the scene. His mouth set in a hard line. He placed his hand on her shoulder. "Dominique . . . he is dead.”
Iolande covered her face with her hands and wept in great, agonizing gasps. Dominique stiffened. She would not give up, even though it was obvious Baldwyn Rainbaut of the Knight Templars was dead. She knew that when one changed energy, one changed reality.
She looked to Paxton. “Order a man to draw in the dirt a circle around the tent.”
He stared at her as if she were little better than a performing monkey. "What?”
"For defense and protection. Please, just have it done. Please.”
He gave into her, but not without rolling his eyes as he left the tent. Feverishly, her hands worked with her energy. Once more, she caressed and fondled the space bordering Baldwyn's body, but this time she did so with a determination that would not reckon with any outcome but life returning to this physical body.
Paxton reentered the tent and watched, horror and fascination warring for dominance in his expression.
In an altered state of consciousness, she transmuted her breathing, her body temperature, her heart rate so that the Light within her, that same Light within everyone, was allowed to move into her outer consciousness.
She was the first to detect the pulsating of Baldwyn’s life forces and knew that he was reentering this dimension. Paxton and, yes, even old Iolande, were astonished when the Templar's lids quivered. His foam-spittled lips barely moved. Only Dominique heard his ragged whisper, "Manifest what is good for the whole . . . not merely what is good for the individual . . . then, you will move permanently . . . back into the light, woman. Remember . . . only the heart that truly loves truly lives.”
The statement, the tone, the form of address all jolted her. When Baldwyn's lids at last opened, she saw within his rheumy eyes another factor, something that had been added. She realized then his spirit had seeped through the cracks of this world to meet with that Greater Spirit of which it was a part.
She turned away, shaking with exhaustion, and Iolande moved to take her place, to tend to her beloved Templar. Paxton put his arm around Dominique and guided her from the tent into one next to it that had been set up as his headquarters. "Come rest,” he said gently. He pressed her down upon his cot and covered her with a woolen blanket. With guarded eyes, he stared down at her.
"You mistrust me more than ever, do you not?” she asked so weakly she could barely lift her hand. "You think me a sorceress, for certain.” The last was not a question but a weary statement.
"I do not know what to think.” He plopped down onto a three-legged stool. "You confound me at every turn, Dominique. I know not what I shall do with you.”
Her eyes had closed but at this last they snapped open. "What do you mean by that?”
He rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Simply that I have never dealt with a woman—or man—like you. I do not know what action is wisest for everyone concerned.”
She was too exhausted to try and divine his words for deeper meaning. She sank into a restless sleep that was disturbed when Paxton shook her shoulder minutes—or was it hours?—later. "The Templar calls for you.” She roused herself enough to understand Paxton tell her he was making a round of the camp to check on his soldiers. His face was grim. "I have to tell you that this seeming miracle-heeding has alienated many. The people in the caravan might have considered you merely fey before, but now there is open talk of you being a sorceress.”
"Then they are fools,” she said with a shrug, but she was concerned more than she wanted Paxton to know. She splashed some water from a basin on her face, then made her way back to the other tent. Baldwyn was sitting up, while Iolande put a fresh dressing on his wound. He appeared as white as the strips of bandaging, and still looked as if he tottered on the brink of life and death.
"I told the leper to let you rest,” Iolande grumbled. Though her tone was waspish, Dominique sensed some kind of refined thread had been woven between the' Jewess and the Templar.
"I have something important to say,” he managed to get out. "Something to tell you should I still not . . . make it.”
She flashed him an encouraging smile. “You will make it. You are too knavish to leave this world yet.”
He did not return her attempt at joviality. “In my journey between here and to another life, I was told to return to you, that my time here wasn't finished.”
Her mouth opened in astonishment. "Who . . . What was said?”
"I think you are both out of your minds,” Iolande said, fussing with Baldwyn's bandaging.
He made a face. "I know I sound crazy.” He looked up at Dominique. "But I know you, if no one else, understands. It was only a warm, loving voice that coaxed me to return here. That’s all I know. Except one other thing.”
"Which is?” she asked, greatly interested in this phenomenon she had long believed to be possible.
Baldwyn fixed her with a hollowed gaze. "There is something else you should know, my Lady Dominique. There is another who, even before the runes were inscribed, has been orchestrating events through another close to you in order to gain your soul.”
"Do what was best for the whole” Baldwyn had said. The phrase lingered in Paxton’s mind.
Beside him, Dominique tossed in a restless sleep. He had more than Dominique to consider. He had the whole. Not just his own men, but the whole English army, the whole of England.
Then there was the whole of France. For which side did God lend His support?
On Francis de Beauvais’s side?
Was the bishop an agent provocateur? He had the Pope's ear, but he appeared not the type to be politically interested in mere feuds between countries. Something grander, something more personal beckoned Dominique’s confidant.
CHAPTER XVII
Though ramparts built centuries before by the Romans ringed Avignon, the city itself was dominated by a giant, fortress-like palace considered Europe's greatest building, the palace of Pope Benedict XII.
Construction on both the papal palace, which had been combined with an old bishop's castle, and on the city itself was continual. Night and day, stonecutters and carpenters, woodcarvers, and glassmakers labored to keep up with the demand for dwelling from the swelling numbers of people immigrating to the international capital and new papal capital.
How Denys would have loved to be a part of this creation, Dominique thought wistfully. Sawdust scented the air, and the sound of hammering throbbed in the ears and the blood. The sophistic
ated and lively Avignonese possessed an air of youthful joie de vivre.
Here, next to a licensed salt shop, a rich burgess's houses was going up; over there on the Place de L'Horloge a chapel to Saint Pierre was under way; and fronting the Rhone river was the remodeled countinghouse of the Lombard Companies. Of course, everywhere were palaces of prelates and princes, but new ones were being erected in the suburbs where vineyards had predominated.
Located near the Comtat Venaissin, a papal territory, Avignon was virtually neutral, neither French nor Italian but more Provencal. Because of its site near the confluence of the Rhone and Durance, the holy city was also a thriving commercial port. Foreigners from all over the world crowded its narrow streets.
When Paxton's party passed the forbidding commandery of the Hospitallers of Saint John of Jerusalem near Rue Rouge, Baldwyn spit from his perch on one of the equipment wagons. "Bah. Sons of Lucifer!"
Iolande, who watched the Templar like a falcon for any signs of relapse, found no humor in the remark, but Dominique had to chuckle. The Knights of Saint John had been bitter rivals of the Knights Templars during the Crusades, but when the order of the Templars was abolished, the Hospitallers took over almost all the order’s property and had since become rich and powerful.
Past the prostitutes’ quarters, a stone bridge, the Pont St-Bénézet spanned the Rhone. On its far side rose the imposing tower that garrisoned King Philip’s soldiers. It had been built to counterbalance the stronghold of the papacy.
With a raised hand, Paxton halted the procession at the bridge to stare broodingly across at the fort and its tower. For a fleeting second his expression was forbidding, so much so that she shivered and bumps raised on her flesh. Then the wind from the Rhone ruffled his hair and he appeared almost a boy.
So that was what Paxton of the village of Wychchester had looked like as a child, working the earth, plowing it and planting it and fertilizing it. Did he not realize this was a tremendous love they both shared? At that moment, she wanted to kiss his brow and hold him and love him with all the love that over-flowed her heart.
But the moment quickly passed, and he signaled for the procession to continue on to a bourg that was the residential quarter of the rich. Ancient patrician families had built rambling mansions reminiscent of the aristocratic towers of Italian cities. Here, the entourage had to move to the far side of the street for two red-hatted cardinals. Even though it was still daylight, torchbearers preceded them.
At last, they reached the abode Paxton had rented for their stay. The Hôtel de la Prefecture, built by a Florentine banker, was a squat mansion with a wrought iron gate opening onto its outer courtyard. Moss grew between the courtyard’s cobblestones, which were hard on the ankles. Statuary was artfully placed amidst the greenery where, incredibly, peacocks strolled in the peaceful coolness of the afternoon. Moss-sheathed blades of a water wheel creaked over a stream meandering through the grounds.
Inside, the mansion was a labyrinth of frescoed corridors, chambers, and halls, all furnished lavishly. The ornament over the fireplace was a chevron of gold, no less. For their arrival, the tiled floors had recently been covered with fresh grass and rosemary. So, Paxton had planned ahead for everything.
Like a boy, he grabbed Dominique's hand and pulled her along with him up the flight of marble stairs to inspect the rooms. She was delighted with the water from a well that was piped into the garderobes. No more need for chamber pots.
Paxton was pleased with the multitude of bedchambers on the upper floor. He threw open the triple doors to the main one. A bed canopied in red damask dominated the warmly paneled room. The bed was so enormous that a long stick had been provided for the maid to use in straightening the bed linens.
"Had I known that the post of Grand Seneschal included such benefits as this, I would have insisted on coming sooner.”
Recalling Baldwyn's warning, she felt uncomfortable both here at the hotel and in Avignon itself. She knew not what to guard against, but she trusted her inner signals. She tugged at Paxton's grip. "Do we have to stay here for the remainder of the year?”
He turned to give her an appraising stare. "I do not know yet just what turn events will take. Does it matter? We are together. Is that not enough?"
She held his gaze. "Enough would be for you to tell me you love me.”
His eyes released hers. He tunneled his fingers through his hair, growing longer now that he was not soldiering. “I do not know how to love you, Dominique. You are not like—like other women.”
Her laugh was short. "Like other women? Or like Elizabeth? Look at me.”
When he did not, she said, "Look at me! I have a womb for you to implant your children.” Her hand splayed across her stomach. "I have two breasts to nourish them.” She cupped her breasts then put her hand to her chest. "I have a heart with which to love them. And I have a mind to teach them what they will need to know.”
"’Tis your mind that I cannot grapple with.”
"Oh, since I have a mind, I cannot be a woman? Is that it?”
He threw up his hands, and his mouth pulled taut in a frustrated expression. "Why can you just not be—”
"Be what?”
"Like other women.”
With a provocative walk she crossed the room to stand before him. She laid her hand on his chest. "Would you want me as you do, Paxton, if I were like other women?”
He wrapped an arm about her waist and caught her tresses in one hand to draw her head back so that she was forced to meet his gaze. Anger blazed there, but it was directed at himself. "If you were like other women, I would have left you back at the chateau, Dominique.”
Her eyes sparked. "And doubtless girdled my loins with a chastity belt.”
"Like a knight on a crusade, I would have abandoned you without another thought.” Her lips parted, and she found herself hungry for his strong mouth loving hers. "But you could not. I tell you, Paxton, you will never rid your mind of me. Never!”
His mouth tightened. "I know that. If I could have, I would have. But I find a certain pleasure in trying to satiate myself with your love, though I have yet to succeed.” He bent his head over hers, murmuring, "Shall we try out our bed?”
Dominique had to admit to a measure of excitement about calling on the pope. Certainly not because she felt he was any divine source of guidance for the human spirit. Far from that, for amoral deeds of the popes had been the rule rather than the exception for centuries.
Nevertheless, the mental stimulation she anticipated encountering in that cosmopolitan court was as tempting an apple as lust was to self-gratification.
The palace itself bore witness to the fabulous wealth of the papacy. Its high, honey- colored walls were pierced by narrow windows but for the Indulgence Window from which the pope gave his blessing to the congregation in the courtyard below.
The Pope's Tower jutted out like a prow of a ship, dwarfing the city with its high, thick walls. Massive pointed arches rhythmically punctuated those walls, and huge machicolations made the castle practically unconquerable.
Dust from the pope’s ambitious construction project flurried in the air. Followed by their requisite retinue of servants, she and Paxton passed under scaffolding and through the Great Gateway, surmounted by Benedict XII’s coat of arms. A vaulted passage led them into a cloistered courtyard and the Pope's Tower, guarded by twelve sergeants at arms.
In that apostolic fortress-like palace, the Pope's Tower safeguarded the Holy See’s most valuable possessions—the sacred person of the pope himself, who had his bedchamber there, the Great Treasury, and his library, replete with manuscripts.
The hall was packed with theologians, princes, cardinals, clergymen, and eminences of the Sacred College, Italian and French artists, not to mention the courtesans. Judging by their tall, gilded cone-shaped headdress, from which diaphanous veils floated, Dominique realized her clothing was sadly dated. How on earth did these women avoid knocking off their headdresses when passing under low lintels?
The men wore clothing that was shorter and tighter than that of the women. Scandalously, the male hosiery conformed boldly to the most private parts. A law had recently been passed in France, prohibiting such flagrant flaunting of these sexual parts by those below the title of a knight's rank.
Even more scandalously, the monks combed their hair over their tonsures and openly dallied with the courtesans, according to gossip the most beautiful women in the world. Dominique had to agree.
She glanced about the milling crowd for sight of Francis, but he was not among the prelates, clerics, deacons, and novices.
After a Florentine ambassador was admitted into the presence of the pope, Paxton’s papers, bearing the royal stamp of King Edward of England, Duke of Aquitaine, gained them entry at once. The Salle du Consistoire was where the pope conferred with his cardinals and received with great pomp and circumstance distinguished visitors—sovereigns, ambassadors, and legates who had accomplished missions on his behalf.
The ceiling was covered with a blue fabric simulating the heavens, with stars of lapis lazuli. Four casement windows were placed just so in order to throw light on the Universal Shepherd. No one could possibly overlook the pope. Jacques Fournier, for all his humble origins—the frail Cistercian was the son of a baker from Foix—possessed a charisma that netted every eye in his presence. He was the Fisherman on earth.
Before being elected pope, he had been referred to as the White Cardinal because of the color of his habit. His habit was still white but was now embellished with sacerdotal jewels. The crook of the pope's crosier rested against his high-backed, pontifical platform chair, and his feet were propped on an embroidered stool. On his narrow head sat a tiara of three crowns. An emperor could wear a tiara of two crowns, and a mere king only one.
After a page announced them, the pope's wrinkled lids dropped halfway over eyes that regarded them closely. "Welcome, my children.''
Sweet Enchantress Page 19
