Chateau of Passion

by Monica Bentley

  That mocking grin appeared again. “The Court of the Tartars from what I hear.”

  She paused at that. She needed to think. What was all this?

  And it hit her all at once.

  “You studied with him.”

  He chuckled, that taunting sunbeam of a smile almost dazzling her. Then his voice poured out all of his scorn.

  “Studied with him? Oh, yes. I studied with the old fool. As much as he would let me. During those few times he would stop weeping over his precious Jeanne!”

  His voice took on a harsh, grating mimicry of Enchanteur. “I failed her! I failed her! Poor, sweet, Jeanne. What a beautiful child! What an innocent! What tremendous talent! What extraordinarily powerful intellect! Oh, my precious Jeanne! Why did I not recognize the signs?”

  She was panting. She was heaving. Falling to her knees, she abruptly realized that she was gagging, retching, vomiting.

  He was laughing.

  The sun blew out.

  *****

  She was awake, but dared not open her eyes. What to think? What to do? Not talk to Aluin, that was certain. He would only enjoy the conversation. Enjoy taunting her. Enjoy confusing her with misdirecting information, details.

  So, he had studied with Enchanteur. That much was clear. The Court of the Tartars, of Genghis Khan, that was indicative. Or was it? Had she told Aluin that herself? What about her birth name? How could the boy have known that? Could she have told him? Why couldn’t she remember?! Saint Genevieve! She resisted the temptation to clench her fists in case her tormentor was watching. How much did he know?

  She had to think. An image of Tristen’s hazel eyes, this time more green than usual, flashed before her own, calming her. She kept breathing.

  After heartbeats beyond number, she ultimately came to a realization which convinced her and made her tear up. Weeping, she let the tears flow down her cheeks into the pillow. Enchanteur’s pain sounded all too real. It sounded all too much like him. He was genuinely sorry for what he felt he had done wrong. As was she.

  Sighing, both at the silence, and at the new conclusion, she sat up. There was no one there, at least not for now. The room was dark. It was night. She could see the moon through her window. It did not look any later in the year. She pulled her knees in close and forced herself to stop crying. And to fight back.

  God’s Teeth! Aluin, the boy, had studied with her master. Now what? What had he learned from Enchanteur? Clearly, the trapping spell. The weak version, SnaraVal, used for hunting. Most likely because the boy was responsible for preparing meals, just as she had been. Maybe her master had decided that making the boy responsible for killing other beings was an improvement in his teaching technique. Maybe he had hoped that the boy would learn compassion. She snorted at that thought. His innovation had clearly failed.

  Still, why hadn’t the boy stopped her heart? Clearly Enchanteur had not trusted him with the immobilizing FriosethNa. Just as she had continually held back from freely sharing her knowledge. Saint Genevieve! She said a prayer of thankfulness both for her master’s innate caution and the one he had evidently taught her.

  Then, too, why had he left the boy behind? Why not take him to the Far East? She would have leapt at the chance to go. Perhaps Enchanteur had recognized the same, silly, vapid inanity in the boy’s approach to the mysteries of life that she had.

  That stood.

  Then...

  Breathing softly, she watched all of the pieces fall into place, like a Grand Mosaic of the unfolding Universe itself. Thought followed thought followed inference followed conclusion followed comprehension followed illation followed deduction followed...dizziness.

  After hearing of Jeanne’s ability and all the sundry, even salacious, details of her apprenticeship with Enchanteur, when abandoned by his master, the boy had arrived at the most obvious answer. Having lost one teacher, go find the only other one he had heard of.

  Yes, it did not matter how his apprenticeship with Enchanteur had begun – obviously the same way, she snorted. Aluin had probably displayed an innate curiosity in all things of the world surrounding him, just as she had. And, for her teacher, that had been enough. Enchanteur was anything if not true to his routines.

  Then, too, how many years before Enchanteur had allowed himself, had trusted himself, to take on another apprentice mattered not. That he did, was clear. All those years that she was satiating her urges on her sexual prey – until Tristen had entered her life – her teacher had probably been moving from place to place throughout Europa, feeling lost, going hungry because he was too absent-minded to prepare himself a meal, utterly tormenting himself with impotent visions of what he had done to his Jeanne. When all he had had to do, she scoffed, was return to the Tower and talk it out with her. How predictable. Men were so bold when conquering women, she groused to herself. But when they found themselves conquered in turn by a single woman, Saint Denis! The end of the world was nigh! All the apocalyptic visions of the Book of Revelations in the Christian Bible stood pale in comparison with their nightmares of growing flaccid.

  Nevertheless, two questions remained. That Aluin had hidden his true intent was obvious. That he had pretended to be a farmhand to gain her immediate sympathy she had to admire, even if a bit ruefully. Why unveil himself now, however?

  Secondly, her mind carped at her, what did he want? From her? Ultimately?

  The first answer came slowly, reluctantly. It had been her fault. She was the one who had been a hairsbreadth from taking his life. All things considered, and their situations reversed, she had to admit that she would cheerfully have done the same.

  The second answer did not come.

  She pondered this question for days, slowly watching the water in the nightstand basin resolutely descend to the bottom. Aluin – or Malefique, she grumbled to herself – was oddly leaving her alone. Or, an inner voice cautioned, perhaps that was part of the plan. In any case, she wasn’t much good to him dying of thirst. She expected to see him soon.

  Sometimes she slept. How long who knew? How often who could say?

  When tiring of pondering the second answer, she silenced her hunger pangs, her thirst by prodding the edges of his trap, looking for weaknesses. Unsurprisingly, it was a solid spell. Enchanteur was, for all his flaws, an excellent teacher. Aluin might be clumsy, might lack the elegance of a more focused mind, nevertheless, she had to admit that the boy did get there in the end. As near as she could tell, this trap not only prevented her from leaving, it also prevented her from casting a spell outside its boundaries. Several attempts to move the goblet on the table even so much as a King’s Inch failed. Twirling out of the trap was beyond question.

  Even emptying the chamberpot ceased being a concern in time. She wasn’t peeing anymore anyway.

  She found herself withdrawing inward. Much as her old sexual prey did near the end. Their eyes, grown hollow, their minds adjusting to the reality that very soon they would experience no more of this world, they began waiting to see what the next one would bring. Now she was doing the same. She would have chortled at the irony, but she didn’t have the energy.

  Even crying seemed to take up so much of her vitality, her life spark.

  More and more she found herself giving way to another world. It was a world that she created for her and Tristen. They lived in a small hut. Having known so much happiness in his room, she knew that they didn’t need any more than that. They didn’t fuck. They held each other. Every night. Or maybe they spent the entire nightfall, illuminated by the sweet, soft blue of moonlight touching each other gently on the cheek. She reached out now to lightly caress the hard edges of his jaw for, somehow, she knew in her heart without ever being told, that it calmed him. They did not have children for she did not allow herself such joy after having taken so many lives so wantonly. He chided her for her self-condemnation, for he well knew from years of banditry just how many sins her prey must have committed. “Pest control,” he gleefully bussed her cheek. Regardless, she persisted
. Instead, thinking of the kitten, the calf, and how she had protected the robins from Aluin’s cruelty, she became a healer. Not a quack, selling false tinctures at the village market, but in the same spirit of Hippocrates, the ancient Greek. She might have hated studying his Corpus all those years past. Yet, she had learned a great deal about common ailments and how to assuage them. If they took on any children at all, they were orphans, like he had been. Like she had become when her father had sold her. Sometimes they went years in her dreams with a house empty of a child’s chortles. Other times, the house was full of them, wall to wall, driving Tristen outside to find some peace. They had chickens, real ones, not magical ones. And a milking cow. And geese. And a couple of pigs. And a dog accompanied everywhere by whining kittens. She almost never cast a spell. There was no reason to. She had Tristen.

  During one particularly lovely dream, when she was feeding Tristen blancmange even though he always found it too sweet, she saw a twirling at the edge of her vision. She turned away and spooned up another mound of the treat.

  “Oh, Jeanne! Jeanne!”

  Some annoying gnat was buzzing at her ear. She pushed it away. It kept buzzing. She pushed it away again.

  And then the world changed. Everything hurt. Or maybe her heart just hurt. Or maybe her heart had stopped. She could not breathe. She knew that. And then she could. She could breathe. Her heart had continued beating.

  Some dim part of her mind registered that the blue monster was back, that he had thrown her against the wall, and that he obviously had learned FriosethNa from Enchanteur after all. Silly man! To trust such an evil fiend with such a powerful spell. What was her teacher thinking? Clearly, he hadn’t been.

  Now she was being lifted and tossed bodily onto her bed, next to some stones. She blinked. Her face was wet. Wet! Water! She ran her hands along her face and licked them. Her tongue was so thick, it felt like a chunk of wood that she had chopped for the fireplace. When had that happened? When had she chopped wood? When had her tongue become a chunk of wood?

  She was choking. She was gasping. She was dying. Drowning. Oh. She could breathe again. Oh. Now, she was coughing. She rolled over, hitting her head on one of the large stones. Why did they look so familiar? She kept coughing, hacking. She was choking on something. Something gooey. She didn’t know what.

  Looking up, she spotted what looked like her nightstand basin. But it couldn’t be hers. It had water in it and hers had drained dry ages ago. Water! She crawled over to it. Reaching her hands out to it. Only to see it move. Away. From her hands. She mewled a low whine. She tried again to reach it. Again it moved, dancing just beyond her reach. She sobbed. Or tried to. She was too dry to.

  “Fix the cauldron, Jeanne. Find Enchanteur.”

  And then the basin moved to her hands.

  She heard slurping.

  * 10 *

  Tristen’s stomach grumbled, so Phoebe nudged him. He was sitting with her and the Viking on a bench along the wall of Sainte Chapelle, the palace chapel. The witch had told him that the building was one of the wonders of their age. If so, he thought, the speeches inside it were certainly long and boring.

  Emma, held and nursed by Katya, was slurping noisily on those mounds of teats that he kept thinking about. Nevertheless, sitting among the Brionde-Anjou party, or part of it, was about as close as he was comfortable getting to the people whose lives he had threatened just a year and a half ago. The fact that Phoebe was holding little Lela in her arms was not something he cared to think about. It scared him.

  Looking up he could just see the stars in the bright blue vaulted ceiling. Phoebe had mentioned that the lower level, used by residents of the Palais for mass each Sunday, had fleur-de-lis painted in their ceiling instead. Something about reminding the kings that Heaven was higher than royalty. Typical of the Church to slip in a jibe whenever possible, he had grunted, much to her nervous giggle. Regardless, he could care less what the ceiling looked like downstairs since he was typically sleeping off the Commander’s night of revelry on Sunday mornings. Or waking in some girl’s arms. Well, not since Phoebe had arrived at any rate.

  He refocused on the bench opposite them. Across the tiled floor, sat a mixed group of spell-bound spectators, some servants, some more illustrious commoners from Il de la Cité. Above them was a colossal statue of one of the Apostles, mounted on a pedestal part way up the wall. Tristen had wondered which one at first, maybe Mark, but then shrugged since there were eleven more to choose from ringing the chapel. He did know that it was Peter and Paul flanking the altar at the end of the nave since Phoebe had pointed them out. But he couldn’t tell which was which. The statues stood all around the brick-shaped hall, just below the soaring stained glass windows that sparkled his knees, everyone’s knees and tunics and gowns with splotches of light: ruby, sapphire, peridot, coral, amber, you name it. He didn’t like looking at the windows that much, however. Usually he liked looking at glass art. But these dizzied him with their incredible height. Well, not really. Mostly it was because they were pictures of the old stories of the Bible. Which always made him wonder if those saints were looking down at him, clucking at his years as a condottiere. In any case, they rained down streams of light which also made him think uneasily of God and Heaven, even as they lit up all too earthly dust motes floating in the air above the floor. Down at his feet, the tan and green tiles showed a pair of hunting dogs wrapped around some strange bush. Odd. What kind of dog it was, he couldn’t figure out, leaning forward to get a better look.

  Phoebe nudged him again. He sat back, repressing a growl and struggled to pay attention. It was the Duke of Normandy. Again. He wasn’t fat, Tristen would give him that much. Just plump. Yet the resplendent lilac gown showed the hint of muscles that were still hard, even if the waist showed a substantial ring of fat encircling it. Tristen wondered how handy he was with a broadsword and whether he truly did take the field to renown at Poitiers. Apparently, his bag was something like five or six English knights killed. Truly. Not by his men-at-arms, but by his own sword. Saint Denis, he was pompous, though.

  Over his substantial double chin, he was intoning something about the hereditary rights of the Duchy of Normandy, regarded as the most powerful, since the days of the great Viking Rollo, centuries ago. Which made Tristen wonder again whether he was being too circumspect about Katya. To mount such a brawny frame. Hmmmmm...

  “Your Royal Majesty!” The Commander’s brusque tones filled the hall. That got Tristen’s attention. du Guesclin was standing near the altar, addressing Charles the Wise, the uncrowned King, Dauphine of Francia. Last night, the Commander had confided that it was getting time to start addressing the Prince as “Majesty” instead of the customary “Highness.” His power was growing. It might well prove that his father King Jean le Bon would rot to death in London’s Tower. His son was certainly doing everything in his power to make it so. In particular, making sure that every noble possible was taking his side in the line of succession struggle.

  Hence today’s gathering. Held in the upper level of the Sainte Chapelle – typically reserved only for the use of the royal family – to honor the Duke of Normandy as he addressed the Court about his grievances.

  But the Commander was droning on about annual Knight’s Fees offered by m’Lady, Countess of Brionde-Anjou, so Tristen’s mind wandered to the golden canopy built above the altar. It was stunning, he gave it that. It looked like a highly decorated version of a wayside prayer chapel that he had seen hundreds of alongside roads scattered throughout Francia. Not merely constructed of plain, unfinished wood, however, this one was either made of or embossed with gold. It had the typical four slender pillars and a peaked roof that sported three ornate steeples, the middle the tallest. All of them decorated with countless embellishments, all sparkling in the dazzling light of the stained glass windows surrounding them. There were even a pair of circular steps built on each side of the altar by which the King and his most senior bishops could ascend to the canopy. Squinting, Tristen could j
ust make out the edges of the Grande Chasse, the silver chest housed inside the canopy that contained the relics for which the entire chapel had been built a hundred years previously. Only the King, or the Dauphine these days, was allowed to open the Grand Chasse. Tristen didn’t mind. He wasn’t interested in the slightest in peering at a chunk of wood said to be from the True Cross, or gazing at the blood-drenched Crown of Thorns. He did have a small fascination for the Holy Lance, however, that had been used to pierce the Son of God. Knowing how metal could degrade over time when left alone, he had always wondered who, if anyone, sharpened it.

  Without warning, Phoebe slid Lela into his arms. She did that now. In the days after he had finally climbed out of bed, they had taken long walks along the walls of the Palais. He had even boosted her and Lela over the walls, late one night, of the King’s private garden, so they could walk among the trees. Such an adventure could easily have ended in a pointless sword battle to the death with the Palais Guard. But it wasn’t like he had much else to offer her. Or maybe he was showing off. He was never really quite certain. Besides, it was much easier to find a bench, sit and hold her hand while he cried. Again. And he didn’t have to worry about one of his lovers walking by and raking his childhood friend over the coals with her eyes and whispers to her attendants.

  His tears really bothered him. Or they did until one day, about a week after he had gotten up, she had passed Lela into his arms, making him gasp, then reached up to take both of his shoulders in her hands. Firmly.

  “Remi, mon cheri, I have found you again. We have years now. We don’t have to say everything in the first few days.”

  His tears had magically stopped after that.

  Phoebe didn’t even renew her request that he help m’Lady with the Duke of Normandy. When he asked about the problem, she had merely hushed him with a sweet kiss on the cheek, saying, “Another time, Remi.” And then had changed the subject to the old Brionde days or his travels as a condottiere. She didn’t even renew her suggestion that he kill Tempeste.