Sweet Enchantress

by Parris Afton Bonds

  With that in mind, she spent an entire afternoon in the hotel's lead bathtub. The tented bath was spiced with herbs and provided with sponges.

  Marte and Beatrix, who pined for her English captain, drew her bath and took great delight in the tub, because it was equipped with two gilt-bronzed keys in the shape of leopards for cold and hot water, no less! Perfume and body creams procured by Iolande scented and smoothed Dominique's body. Manon brushed her hair until it glowed with a fiery sheen. A lavender silk tunic that clung to her womanly curves was laid out by Jacotte.

  The young maid appeared to have gotten over her infatuation with Denys, because she had recently become betrothed to a saddler and within the year would be leaving Dominique's household.

  The wait for Paxton seemed eternal. When he at last returned to the hotel, dinnertime was well past. He looked distracted, scarcely noticing her. In the privacy of their bedchamber, he stretched and rubbed his beard- shadowed jaw. "By my oath, I am tired.”

  "Your day was busy?” she asked, taking the cape he shrugged off. Clad only in his hose and short tunic, his physique was so perfectly masculine that it was difficult to turn her gaze away.

  "Philip arrives on the morrow. That means a confrontation of wills. Wills disguised in the utmost diplomacy."

  He seemed distant, reserved. Forcing her uneasiness away, she drew him to the great bed. "Then you will need your rest for the meeting."

  Lovingly, her hands divested him of his tunic. When they reached for the points and laces of his hose, he eyed her curiously. His gaze finally absorbed her efforts at setting herself off to her best advantage. "You mean to seduce me, my lady?”

  She laughed at his directness. "No, I mean to instruct you in a much-neglected science, my Lord Lieutenant.”

  She commenced with a single-minded intent: pleasuring Paxton until no coherent thought remained in his mind. All her energy was concentrated into her hands, into caressing and fondling and stroking him.

  At one point, he groaned and said, "That is enough. I need you now. I need to pour my seed into you.”

  She smiled. "You will. I promise you will.” Her hands lovingly traced the scars on his back. She realized that it was Paxton’s unseen scars that had never healed properly—his bitterness; his lack of trust in the opposite sex; his feelings of inferiority, despite all that he had accomplished, toward the ranks above him.

  Then she did something that sent him sitting bolt upright. He grasped her hair and tugged at her head. "What is it you think you are doing?”

  She shook free his grasp and repressed her levity as she attempted to explain. "Your power is focused in the area between your legs, Paxton. When I place my forehead there, that power is transmitted to me. And when you empty your seed into my mouth—”

  "Enough!"

  "’Tis never enough,” she rejoined with light laughter.

  Before he could stop her, she knelt again and began to love him with her mouth.

  With a moan, he hauled her atop him. "I surrender, maiden. Give me surcease. Ease this pain.”

  She rode him then like the Amazon women of old rode their stallions. Exulting and always loving, loving. How she loved him, this man of hers.

  If she had felt Paxton’s neglect, he too must have sensed her own distancing or, at least, been curious about the increasing amount of time she spent with Francis, because one sunny afternoon as she and Francis sat deep in conversation in the seclusion of the garden east of the palace, Paxton came in search of her.

  "I was told I might find you here," he said with an easy charm that was more characteristic of Francis. Her husband dropped down in the grass beside the stone bench where she sat opposite Francis. "We have been invited to a feast tonight given in honor of the newly appointed Pisan ambassador."

  "Another one?”

  "No, the last was a Turkish—”

  "No, I mean another dinner. I am weary of them, Paxton.”

  "I confess I am, also," Francis said, his smile congenial. “The summer festivities become tedious, and one looks forward to the autumn court in Paris. A much more diverting city.”

  Paxton draped one arm over an upraised knee and said to Francis, “Tell me, why did you give up law practice to become a priest?” Her husband's question appeared totally sincere, and Francis surprised her by replying in a totally sincere manner. “The Inquisition, my good son. The Dominicans tortured my parents."

  "I would have thought that would have driven you away from the Church.”

  Francis's dark eyes glowed. "For a while it did. I was forced to watch first my mother subjected to the rack and then my father.” He paused, and a tic twitched in his cheek. "I cried. And cried. Hour upon hour. Their screams burst in my ears. But at some point in their terrible ordeal I began to perceive that their sacrifice was to a greater glory.”

  Dominique shook her head, and her veil fluttered around her shoulders. "I do not understand that line of reasoning, Francis.”

  He spread his well-formed hands. "My parents became wonderful symbols of the same glorious suffering and ultimate sacrifice as Jesus Christ made.”

  "That is what I am talking about,” she said, her brows knitting. She leaned forward and said earnestly, "Christ’s message was not about sacrifice but about unconditional love and the spiritual laws of transmutation—the very same as the physical laws of transmutation of iron to gold, Francis!”

  "Ah, but we can know no transmutation because we are impure. We must experience hell's fires. That is the purification, do you not see?”

  Paxton sprang to his feet with a grace unusual for a man his size. He took her hand and drew her up beside him. "I see that you both entertain ideas vastly different than the pope's spiritual ideology. I would rather expound on political ideology myself, Francis. What say you and I engage in a more worthy discussion in the near future?”

  Francis rose also, his hands tucked into the wide sleeves of his robe. "I will anticipate the encounter with great pleasure, my son.”

  Paxton tugged her along the tree-shaded path. "Your choice of friends, Dominique, may well land you in trouble.”

  She jerked on his hand and came to an abrupt halt. "What do you mean?”

  He caught her by her arms. His tight lips clearly expressed his vexation. "I mean that you would do well to curtail your visits with the priest.”

  "I might suggest that you curtail your visits to the various appartements you find so fascinating, my Lord Lieutenant,” she snapped back.

  Exasperation drew a sigh from him. He ran his fingers through his hair. "This is getting us nowhere. Come along, we have a dinner to attend.”

  She watched him stride away, his back a symbol of the wall between them.

  Dominique tried to avoid the obvious, the moments when she was at court and would catch Paxton and Martine deep in conversation or sharing an intimate moment of laughter. Then, when Jacotte came to her one afternoon, Dominique was forced to heed the whispers.

  Jacotte could not meet her gaze. With a trembling hand, she handed Dominique one of those scandalous broadsheets that circulated around Avignon. "My betroth found this.”

  Dominique glanced at the broadsheet. Her eye was caught by the script tucked away in one corner. "Higamous, hogamous, the Lady Dominique is monogamous. Hogamous, higamous, her husband is polygamous.”

  She wadded up the broadsheet. With a shrug, she said, "The work of gossip-mongers.”

  Her pain was more difficult to shrug off. Wherever she went, she felt as if people were talking about her and Paxton. Humiliation became her companion. She wanted to believe in Paxton and refused to discuss the subject with anyone.

  Then Manon approached her. The maid chewed her bottom lip in an effort to find the right words.

  "Yes?” Dominique asked, dreading what she suspected was coming.

  "I . . . er . . . Martine’s maid-in-waiting . . . ah, oh, my Lady Dominique, she says that my Lord Lieutenant has been—ah—that her mistress is his lover.”

  Pride, th
e millstone of the ego, lashed Dominique with anguish at this confirmation of his deception. She hardly heard, nor even cared, that a rumor was also circulating concerning his previous wife.

  Manon stared down at her pattens, as her words rushed on, "A French legate here at court knew Paxton's first wife, my Lady Dominique. He says stories abounded for years about Paxton murdering her in a fit of rage.”

  Tasting the nausea that welled inside her, Dominique turned from Manon and hurried to the garderobe to throw up. Trust, respect, honesty . . . these were the cornerstones of a solid marital foundation. Like a priceless Oriental vase, their relationship had been shattered and it would never be put back together in the same, flawless way it had been. The cracks would devalue its one-time perfection.

  Day after day her stomach wrenched in knots. A metallic taste coated her tongue. She could not eat. She lost weight. She paced, constantly walking the perimeters of her chamber, unconscious of her surroundings, forgetful of things she had said or done only moments before. Her sleep was restless. Unflattering shadows appeared beneath her eyes. Over the succeeding days, she could not bring herself to go out, even to see Francis, and the trellis work of iron over the hotel's windows became her prison bars.

  At last, even a preoccupied Paxton noticed her decline. Late one night, he raised on one elbow to stare down at her. “What is it, ma migonne? What ails you these last few days?”

  She could not meet his heavy-lidded gaze. She turned her head to stare at the darkness above. “Tis nothing. Merely the heat. I am used to the mountain coolness.”

  After a long moment, he turned on his side and went back to sleep. They were so close physically. She had only to move her hand and she could touch that muscle-striated back, yet so distant emotionally and spiritually.

  Was it possible that she was making more of this than was validated by mere rumor? After all, had anyone actually seen Paxton and Martine in bed with each other? There was no sin in being attracted to another.

  Why did she not just ask him if he were being unfaithful to her?

  Because he might confirm her worst nightmare?

  Was it better not to know? Was pain the unavoidable price of love?

  She was tempted to confront him with the information several times over the next few days. Instead, forcing herself to resume some of her former activities, she sought out the comforting solace of Francis's presence or walked alone to the wind-swept loneliness of the Rocher des Domes where she would scream her agony in an animalistic howl that raised goosebumps on the people who heard the howl carried by the wind.

  Why? she cried to herself. I only loved him. I never hurt anyone! Why did I deserve this? Why had I to fall in love with this man? Where, Divine Force, is the lesson to all this pain?

  And she wept, she who rarely wept, felt the hot sting of silent tears stealing down her face at the most unexpected times. She was an empty shell, so empty that if one could hold her to the ear, the sound of the sea would have been heard.

  Then one morning, as Paxton was being shaved, he suggested, almost too casually, that they hold a reception at the hotel for King Philip. “Tis said Martine was once the Frenchman’s favorite. I think it would be interesting to invite her, also.”

  She stared back at him, her eyes searching his soul, but she could not get beyond his eyes. Those dispassionate eyes were a wall as thick as the four-foot ones at the pope's palace. “I shall attend to the reception details,” she said tonelessly.

  They both looked at each other across a chasm that would forever be unbridgeable. She lowered her gaze and turned back to Manon, who was lacing her up. How could one’s heart cease to beat and yet beat so fast and hard that pain swamped the body?

  By rote, she oversaw the myriad details of the coming reception, a duty for which life as chatelaine had aptly prepared her. But she moved through the maze of the hotel's corridors like a legendary ghost.

  When both a king and a pope were to be one's guests, no expense or effort was to be spared. A host of servants and extra cooks were hired from Avignon and its suburbs. The day before the event, hunters were sent out to comb the forests for game and fishermen to trawl the ponds for pike. Iolande made several trips to the markets with Baldwyn in attendance, since as a Jewess she was forbidden to touch the produce. All the candles were bought from the city's chandlers. The mansion’s staff scoured the hotel to a pristine cleanness.

  Dominique immersed herself in this preparation with a feverish intensity that made the hotel’s inhabitants gape—all except Paxton, who seemed to be engrossed in his own projects. With a collective sigh of relief, the mansion’s staff welcomed the arrival of the evening’s reception and its first guests.

  The French king arrived late. Studying him, Dominique had to admit he was Edward's equal in handsomeness. Yet it was an effete handsomeness, with not even a modicum of Paxton’s virile masculinity. Throughout the elaborate dinner, the guests talked and joked without once politics entering the discussion. Paxton was affable without being obsequious, and midway through the dinner Philip appeared to relax his stiff manner.

  With the commencement of the carols and other dancing, the guests more readily mingled. At one point, Dominique found herself conversing with the king, and realized he had actually maneuvered through the press of his sycophants to reach her side. "You are the most lovely and charming of women to have ever graced Avignon, Comtessa.”.

  Despite his short beard and mustache, his jaw-long hair made him look surprisingly young for forty-five or so. "Your compliment is appreciated, your Majesty.” Around them, the guests listened with differential silence as she and Philip discoursed on everything from flying the hawk to the merits of Languedoc wine.

  She should have felt highly honored to have been singled out by His Majesty, but the entire time her eye was searching among the guests for Paxton. She found neither him nor Martine.

  Extracting herself from Philip’s attention, she went in search of her husband. Her hands were sweaty and her heart thudded. Her breathing was shallow and rapid. It was that moment when night meets the raging dawn, when the tides reach their zenith and with a mighty backwash reverse their direction. When one knows her world is about to change irrevocably.

  The hotel might have a maze of corridors and numerous antechambers, pantries, and alcoves but it was as if she were following an invisible cord which linked her to Paxton.

  Torchlight silhouetted him at the end of a short hall, his back to her. At first, she thought he was alone and strangely still. Then the noises of two people in the throes of passion, those raspy murmurings and short-breathed kisses, reached her. They were killing noises for the observer. She did not need to find out the identity of the woman Paxton pressed against the tapestried wall.

  She would have backed away, but from the staircase came the sound of people ascending. Pride would not countenance anyone seeing her with the tears streaming down her face.

  She was forced to take refuge in the nearest chamber, Paxton’s interim office.

  Her back pressed against the door, she waited for the voices to fade. The footsteps of the guests departed and then, even Paxton's and his mistress’s footsteps wandered off down the corridor. For long moments, Dominique stood there, quaffing deep breaths, feeling the door’s splintery wood piercing her palms.

  Moonlight from the trefoil window spilled over Paxton’s secretarial desk. She crossed to stand before it, and her tears splashed onto the moonlit-covered surface. How she detested the weakness of tears, she who had always thought she was strong. But she was the weakest of humans!

  Her fist thudded on the desk once, then again and again and again. “No . . . no . . . noooo!” The words were but soft, mewling cries of which she was totally unaware making.

  Eventually, the pain of injury reached through her dazed mind, and she realized she had hurt herself. A small slice on the side of her hand. Her gaze found the culprit, a tiny knife used for quill sharpening. Stoically, she watched the droplets of her blood mingle o
n a parchment with her tears. Something took her over. She seated herself and picked up the quill. Dipping it in her blood, she began to write on the sheet of parchment held in place on the writing board by a deerskin thong.

  "I truly believed that in you I would find my counterpart, that lock that would fit my key. As you would in me, the lock that would fit your key.”

  She refreshed the quill tip with her blood and continued in a rush of penned words:

  "I suppose I should feel humiliation that I surrendered myself to you. I feel none. The possibility of achieving something so perfect was worth the pain of the humiliation. Worth the chance. Worth your child that I bear. Good-bye ~ Dominique”

  Trembling, she folded the missive. She meant to leave it in the desk drawer where he would not discover it until long after she had fled Avignon, but she found in the drawer a document with a royal seal, that of the king of England. Swiftly and disbelievingly, her eyes perused the broadly stroked words. Among other things, the letter hinted that Paxton was involved in a plot to overthrow Philip.

  ". . . two kings. Both claim France. As my cat, you must corner the French mouse after he scurries to his tower.”

  The knowledge of the evidence she held in her hand took her breath away. Because Paxton was a vassal of the French king, this was treason and punishable by death.

  The door opened suddenly, shafting candle-light across the desk—and her. She whirled, and her own letter floated like a feather to the floor behind her. She recognized the massive shadow. Paxton set the candle in its wall sconce and crossed to her in what was almost a leisurely stride. His face chiseled of marble, he stared down at her. "You have been meddling, Dominique?''

  A fury ripped through her. "I saw the royal missive! Knowing what I do about you and Martine, it would give me great pleasure to expose you as a traitor and watch your execution.”

  He listened with a deadly calm as she continued in a furious whisper. "As it is, Paxton, I shall repay your kindness you once did me in letting me remain at Montlimoux. I give you forty-eight hours to leave France ahead of Philip's soldiers.”