Sweet Enchantress

by Parris Afton Bonds

After Iolande left with Chretien, Dominique bent over the second cradle and lifted out Rainbaut. He was a rainbow, with the fat, rosy cheeks and the endless blue eyes. They met hers so artlessly and acceptingly. She studied the tiny hand that curled around her finger and the fine wisps of hair that crowned his head.

  Such a tenderness, a total selfless love, would well inside her that she wondered how she had ever felt her life was complete. The villagers were distressed that she had chosen no nurse from among them to suckle her children, but the earth mother in her demanded this privilege for herself.

  Chretien and Rainbaut slept more hours than they were awake, and she was left with her memories of their father too much of that time. If it were not for Francis’s diverting visits, she suspected she would go crazy. Some said she already was, because she did not accept Church doctrine and believed in supernatural powers, benign though she believed they might be and available to anyone.

  The crazy chatelaine of Montlimoux.

  She was anticipating a visit from the bishop this very afternoon for the twins’ baptism on the morrow, so when she heard the noises in the corridor outside her chamber her face lit up. Her pleased expression faded when Esclarmonde opened the door first, with Francis behind her.

  Dominique could not control her resentment nor her tongue. "Your visit is unexpected, Esclarmonde. Doubtlessly, you have come to see Paxton’s children, but I—”

  Her words faltered when the bishop closed the door and lowered the hood of his cassock to reveal—not Francis—but Denys. “What are you doing here?” she demanded. But by the sudden icing of her veins, she knew exactly why he had come.

  He pushed past Esclarmonde and, before Dominique realized his intent, snatched Rainbaut from her arms. The infant cried out in protest at the separation from his mother.

  She started to scream for help, and he snarled, "Do so, and I will have Esclarmonde baptize the babe with my dagger.”

  She stared up into the face of her friend, not even recognizing it, so distorted was it by hate. "Denys, you cannot mean this!”

  Her expression gloating, Francis's sister reached to unsheathe the Italian dagger. "This should silence your scream, Dominique— and the howling cur Denys holds.”

  "No,” Denys ordered. "The babes come with us. Sooner or later, Paxton will have to come on bended knee to me—if he wants his infants alive and whole.”

  Overwhelming fear for her children hammered at Dominique’s heart. The fear swelled in her chest and burst upward through her head, blinding her and filling her throat so that it was like a dream where one tries to scream and cannot. "Please—oh, dear heaven, Denys—please, have mercy on my sons!”

  "Paxton’s sons.”

  "You cannot take my babies! What has happened to you, Denys, to destroy all the goodness within you?”

  “This!” He held up his stump, pitifully scarred and reddened. His cruel smile held the bitterness of one who has suffered greatly and not learned why from the experience. "But, mayhap, we can arrange an exchange. Do you think Paxton might lay down his life for those of his sons’?”

  The infant was crying lustily, and Dominique could only hope the cries would bring someone. “He cares naught for his children.” Or he would not have deserted her, her heart cried out, while another voice reminded her she was the one who had ordered him to leave.

  “He knows naught of his children,” Esclarmonde said. Her smile was as sharp-edged as the dagger she held near Rainbaut.

  "You are wrong, Esclarmonde. I penned him a missive about—"

  "My brother has the missive. You see, I found it after you and Paxton left the office that night of the reception.” Her mouth formed a spiteful curl. "From what I witnessed that evening, it would seem that you and I have something in common after all, Dominique—rejection by Paxton of Wychchester. Do you think Martine keeps his camp bed warm these days?”

  The demented gleam in Esclarmonde's eyes spurred Dominique into action. She sprang from her chair, screaming, "Give me my baby!”

  She would have wrenched Rainbaut from Denys, but Esclarmonde got there first. Her knife plunged downward, and she shrieked, "I baptize the bastard!”

  In that heartstopping moment, all seemed to slow down to Dominique: the knife plunging, Rainbaut crying, Denys's mouth angrily shouting something at Esclarmonde.

  Next Denys veered away, taking Rainbaut out of the knife’s reach. The knife continued its journey all the way to Denys heart. He staggered, and Dominique tried to support both him and her baby, between them. As she lowered them to the floor, Esclarmonde watched, transfixed by the scene. Then she whirled and ran from the room.

  "Denys!” Dominique begged. "Look at me.” His eyes were open but they would not meet hers. She had encountered that resistance often in the ill, especially the elderly, who were bent on dying. "Do not give up, Denys, my own. Fight the darkness!"

  At his side, Rainbaut wailed, but she ignored her baby and begin tearing away at Denys’s doublet and blood-wet shirt. Bubbles of blood pumped from the wound, a small one to inflict such a horrible result. She pressed her hand over it, feeling the blood seep between her fingers. She pressed and encanted and affirmed, knowing all the while that her efforts were useless.

  Her childhood friend did not want to remain in this form.

  CHAPTER XX

  Paris court life was said to be the most glittering pageant in years, with all of Avignon’s courtiers retreating to the royal city on the Seine.

  At the same time, tales were passed from tongue to tongue of wolves entering Paris to eat the corpses. For the French, unlike the English, the war between them was turning out to be a dreadful experience. The English were systematically plundering the French countryside.

  The late summer days that saw Rainbaut and Chretien taking their first steps also saw the county of Montlimoux in chaos. Thanks to the firepower of the English longbow, the English enjoyed a military superiority and the French soldiers were routed at every turn. Forests and fields were burned, corn and cattle destroyed, granaries raided, the innocent tortured and murdered. A pall of smoke hung constantly over the land, and everywhere peasants and noblemen alike were starving.

  Within the fortress walls of Montlimoux’s chateau crowded more than forty families, refugees from King Edward's mercilessly cruel chevauchee. Dominique moved among them, rationing food, administering aid and tending the wounded. Water, also, was in short supply since the chateau well could not sustain the increase of so many people on a continual basis.

  Beyond the ramparts bands of routiers, English troops, and French forces battled for control of the county. Peasant rebellions and civil wars had altered family sinecures, and Dominique’s was no longer as secure. Word of her seeming resurrection of Baldwyn Rainbaut the summer before had spread among the peasants, and she was now openly regarded as a sorceress. Her wisdom used in the Justice Room was interpreted as heretical dogma.

  Occasionally, a wayfarer would wander into the chateau with news of the outside world. One wayfarer, a Marseilles parchment maker, brought news of a dreaded death, much like the smallpox but worse. Dominique knew it was the inevitable pestilence that accompanies wars and death.

  Then one day, Francis and Esclarmonde arrived, along with their entourage, seeking asylum from the war as well as from the pestilence. Dominique met the two at the portcullis, and whatever joy she felt at beholding Francis was muted by the sight of his sister, dressed in a sequined royal-blue gown, as if she had just left a fete.

  Rage exploded inside Dominique, the rage for revenge for Denys's death, but she tried to blot it from her mind. Esclarmonde had unintentionally killed him—but she would have killed Rainbaut.

  "I cannot welcome your sister, Francis.” Ice crystalized her words. "I presume you know why.”

  He dismounted his horse and took her hands. His were cold, despite the summer heat. "As chatelaine, you have always offered hospitality even to the most beggarly. I ask you not to turn my sister away now. We need the haven and securit
y of Montlimoux.”

  Dominique remained resolute. "Nonetheless, I will give your sister alms and food, then she must be on her way. Where, I care not.”

  Esclarmonde spit on her. "I will not take your alms, I will take your county!” She whirled on Francis. "Destroy the woman!”

  Francis laid a brotherly hand on her shoulder. "You do not know what you say, Esclarmonde.” He glanced at Dominique. “She has been ill with fever since eve ‘tide.”

  Indeed, Esclarmonde's lovely face was flushed by more than rage or hate. She reached out a clinging hand to her brother’s robe. “Francis!” she breathed.

  "Twill be all right,” he reassured her. He looked to Dominique. "My sister needs your mercy.”

  "Mercy?” Dominique repeated, wiping the spittle from her cheek with the back of her hand. "Would your sister have shown my son mercy?”

  Francis laid a hand on her arm. "Do this for the sake of an old friendship, Dominique.”

  She sighed then, losing the strength of her anger. She had no recourse. "Come along then.” She installed them in separate chambers on the north wing of the chateau, a suite of rooms not much larger than the chateau larder.

  At the chamber door, she asked Francis, "What of your parishioners? Who will care for their souls and administer the Last Rites?”

  A peculiarly sad half-smile touched his beautiful mouth. "They are lost sheep, Dominique.”

  She had no time to dwell on his statement, nor the way he was keeping to his rooms, remaining aloof wheretofore he had been gregarious.

  Within hours, a pestilence invaded the chateau itself.

  She had never encountered its symptoms before: ugly black knots beneath the skin, most often at the neck and the base of the armpits.

  Esclarmonde showed the first signs. Her perfect skin gradually became marred with splotches. As the second night wore on, her swollen face turned into a grotesque mask. When Dominique tried to administer medicine, Esclarmonde shouted, "Do not touch me! Tis you who have cursed me so!”

  Her ravings continued throughout that night. At one point, she was lucid enough to demand a looking glass. "I would see this hideous thing you have made of me!”

  But Dominique denied her even so much as a glance. The sight of her face was enough to make any who had known the beauteous maiden wretch. Francis was horrified by the knots protruding from his sister’s malodorous body and kept a safe distance.

  Finally, Esclarmonde fell silent in a stupor in which she intermittently awoke over the following days to recognize her surroundings. Piteously, she cried out for Francis, but he would not come. She refused to eat, and by the end of the week she was little more than a skeleton on her bed. Dominique was with her childhood friend at the last.

  Esclarmonde clutched her hand tightly. A wild look glazed her eyes. "Dominique, I am so afraid! I see—oh, God, it is awful, the beast that awaits me!”

  With a shriek, she threw up bony hands to cover her face. And then it was over. The breath of life left her.

  Dominique did not have time to grieve. The pestilence was already fast at play within the chateau. Bodies were piling up in the outer ward, awaiting burial. Harried by the demands of the dying, she began to work ceaselessly in her laboratory.

  Various urine samples from the stricken were sniffed and studied for discoloration, as was the blood that oozed from those knots that had become open sores. But she could discover nothing of note in the variations of experiments she carried out.

  Discouraged, she went in search of the pestilence, confronting it at the bedsides of the dying. She resorted to a compress of boiled beetles and leeches for bloodletting. She tried Iolande’s suggestion of newly baked bread applied to the lips to soak up the poison, then fires that were made to smoke abundantly to purify the air. Sponges were drenched with opium, mandrake, dried, then soaked in hot water and inhaled but nothing seemed to defeat this unseen enemy.

  She feared naught for her own health. About her person, she knew, was an aura as protective as any knight's shield against the talons of death. But she worried incessantly for Chretien and Rainbaut and made sure they were kept away from the others. Daily, she saw to it that they received a concoction of milk of pulverized almonds, barley water mixed with honey, figs, and licorice.

  Meanwhile, the inhabitants of the chateau sang and danced frantically until they fainted or fell dead themselves.

  "They believe such acts will drive away demons and keep the dead from escaping their graves to infect the living,” Iolande said contemptuously one afternoon as she brought wine and cheeses on a tray for her mistress.

  The wine was among the last of the bottles left in the cellar, and the Brie cheese a portion Iolande had rescued from being distributed. The tray of food appeared incongruous among Dominique’s array of lancets, needles, scalpels, scissors, and speculum.

  Although she continued to try to save those afflicted with the plague, she was eyed with an increasing hostility that pained her. Whispers were rampant, some of which reached her. A witch, she was.

  Fewer and fewer among her people would submit to her ministrations. She was tired, drained of all her force-energy and without hope. Over the chateau hung the odor of death, a sickly sweet smell that made wretching an ever-present possibility.

  In the early hours of morning when she would seek out her bed at last, she would tell herself how foolish she was to work at concocting various elixirs or attempt to nurse her people through the plague. Not only was there little hope that any of them would survive, but there was that very great possibility she would pass the deadly disease on to Chretien or Rainbaut, who glowed with rosy health in the midst of death.

  Nevertheless, the stricken people were just that—her people. Just as her female forebears were committed to the county, so, too, was she. And so, there were more endless hours spent in her laboratory, although mostly she resorted to common sense in her remedies for this black death.

  As weary as she was, sleep would not come. It was not yet time to rise to nurse her sons, and sunrise was still another two hours away, so she lay there, remembering. Remembering Paxton and wanting, wanting, wanting. Wanting so badly the ache was worse than any wound. An endless ache. A hunger that would never go away.

  She knew that thoughts had more power than deeds, and it appeared this morning she was correct, because at dawn Baldwyn knocked at her door. The gentle giant appeared as exhausted as she, and his usual merry black eyes were troubled. "My Lady Dominique, the sunrise silhouettes Paxton of Wychchester's standards against the northern horizon.”

  She rushed Beatrix and Marte with her robing. Beatrix's heightened color betrayed her excitement at being reunited with her English captain.

  Dominique was not certain if excitement was what she herself was feeling. A part of her wanted to lash Paxton with her anger at his betrayal, another part of her wanted to withdraw so as to block any future pain, and still another part, a greater part—her heart— wanted to forget the past. People could change. Could she and Paxton change enough to rediscover that invisible, intangible cord that bound them as soul mates?

  By midmorning, astride his giant war horse, Paxton and his troops of Flemish pikemen and archers crossed the drawbridge and through the portcullis that she had ordered opened. Dressed in her best, she awaited him in the Justice Room, fittingly presiding from the justice chair. Her heart was pounding so forcefully she thought it would surely split asunder. She heard his heavy mailed tread before she saw his tall body darken the doorway.

  “Welcome, my Lord Lieutenant.”

  He advanced, taking off his metal gauntlets. His cloak was thrown over his shoulder to reveal a brigandine, that cheap, lighter leather jacket sewn with thin overlapping metal plates. When he was close enough, she could see that the lines in his face had hardened. He had not laughed nor found amusement for his soul during their separation. She supposed she should take pleasure in that, but his stringent expression told her that the reason for his return to Montlimoux did not bode well.


  "My men will be quartered within the chateau,” he said briskly without a trace of warmth or compassion, "so that they can sally out to protect nearby Aquitaine from French raids. To ensure your cooperation, Baldwyn Rainbaut has been taken hostage.”

  Her heart ceased its pumping. She sought out to strike back at this detested foreigner, this man she loved so bitterly. Into the dark silence of the chamber, she said, "Why not take your sons hostages as well, Paxton?”

  His tanned skin yielded to a pallor. The hand that held his gauntlets trembled, the other tightened on his sheathed sword. When he spoke, his voice was ragged. "You speak—”

  "The truth. Come with me, my Lord Lieutenant.” The last was laced with vinegar.

  As she led the way up the corkscrew staircase to the bedchambers, she could feel him so close behind her it was as if his breath stirred her veil. She reached their old chamber and opened the door. Iolande sat on a stool before the twins, who giggled at the tops with which they played.

  "The Lord Lieutenant wishes to see his sons," Dominique said tonelessly.

  Iolande nodded. Her hooded eyes flared then communicated a message of wary acquiescence. With her mouth pressed tightly in unspoken remonstrance, she passed the babies to Dominique but obstinately stayed close.

  “This is Chretien,” Dominique said, pressing one son forward, “and this is Rainbaut.” His laughter held the edge of iron. "Twins!”

  What did Paxton mean to do? She broke the strained silence, saying, "Rainbaut is the oldest by a few moments.”

  Paxton tossed his gauntlets on the bed and took Chretien, holding him up beneath the tiny armpits to stare at the face with round, unblinking pebble-brown eyes. They stared back at him with solemn, but fascinated, interest. Paxton cleared his throat. "Why did you not tell me?”

  “Pray tell, where would I find you to deliver news of the blessed event?”

  He spared her a piercing glance. “It was you who sent me away.”

  She forced a curl of utter contempt to her lips. “You would have gone away, regardless, once your deceitful and despicable deed was done.” Then she feigned a shudder of disgust at the sight of him.