Sweet Enchantress (4 page)

For Dominique, Montlimoux held a beauty that was unsurpassed and from her maternal forbears, she had inherited a consuming love for it. As a child, she had reveled in old Iolande’s stories of Montlimoux’s past grandeur.

In short, the
Comté of Montlimoux stood for all that Dominique was, all that went before her, and, in her mind, all that was to come.

Until Paxton of Wychchester had ridden into her mountaintop principality. She should
have taken better heed of the beggar’s underlying appearance of brute force that first evening.

Her trea
d measured her chamber’s perimeters in one direction, then she would pivot to retrace her steps in the other. Her maids-in-waiting glanced at one another furtively. “This cannot be happening,” she muttered. “No warning. No declaration of war. The miscreant just appears with his entourage of soldiers and demands that the chateau and village quarter them.”

Marthe, one of her mai
ds-in-waiting, glanced up from the wall hanging she embroidered. "What does he mean to do, my lady?”

"He means to take full control,”
Iolande said, as she quietly entered the room. She sniffled in indignation. "His aide, Captain Bedford, has instructed me to bring the demesne’s ledger to his Lord Lieutenant. The man wants a full account of names and manors within your comital domain.”

So, even Montlimoux
’s revenues, such as they were, he meant to sequester! Palms rubbing together, Dominique resumed pacing, circumventing the stool on which another maid-in-waiting sat. The curly-locked Beatrix dropped her needlepoint in her lap and, pale, looked up at Dominique. "Does my Lord Lieutenant intend to evict us from the chateau?"

Abruptly, Dominique
halted. One eyebrow arched. “My lord?" Already the man had usurped her authority. But would he go that far? Put her and her household out into the streets? By her troth, how she loathed the oaf with his cursed abundant dignity!

She swung about. "Summon Bal
dwyn.” Within minutes, the Knight Templar lumbered to her chamber door. She shooed the others away and directed him toward one of the low stools. Sitting, he was still almost as tall as she.

Never had they consulted in her private chamber, but neither her
library nor the Justice Room were now to be considered reliable places for her to conduct private business. "What do you know about this man, Baldwyn? Our Lord Lieutenant?" The words on her tongue were as tart as vinegar.

He clasped his hands between his s
pread legs and emitted a heavy sigh. "It’s hard to decipher the man. You know he was at your court earlier this month?”

Her lips compressed. "I well remember.”

"He came then as a mendicant, now as a soldier. But he led me to believe he also follows the dictum of the Church.”

The Templar fairly spit out the last word. The pope, in league with the late Philip IV, had envied the Knights Templars
’ wealth and had had them suppressed. Many of the Templars had been burned at the stake. Baldwyn's antipathy for the Church was shared by Iolande, who, with the rest of the Jews, had been expelled from France about the same time. They were but two of the thousands who had learned it did not serve to thwart the power of the pope.

These two outcasts, the Jewess and the Tem
plar, had raised Dominique as their own from the time she was a toddler. Until she had reached her majority, the two had served as co-regents for the county. Despite their loving efforts, she could not shake the feeling of being abandoned, unwanted, so very alone. Perhaps it was because her parents, by electing to harbor the Jewess and the Templar, had chosen principle and death over her. So, there was a vacuum inside her despite Iolande's and Baldwyn's abiding love for her.

Often, she had wished them m
arried, imagined them as her parents, of whom she had but little recollection. But her nursemaid and the Templar were recalcitrantly independent and had no wish for such bondage. In fact, they seemed merely to tolerate each other. She sometimes imagined herself as they were now, old and lonely. It saddened her. Was there not more to this solitary journey through life?

‘
Tour true opinion, Baldwyn. What help can I expect from my vassals?”

"In truth,”
he mumbled at last, "little.”

She stared at the Goliath
’s visage. This warrior/monk, soldier/mystic had tutored her in geometry and astronomy as well as astrology, knowledge he had acquired while serving as a young knight in the Holy Land. There he had, also, acquired leprosy. "Surely, I have feudal service owed me.”

"You know yourself that the last few years, in the absence of wars, your tenants have paid scutage in place of military service.”

"Yes, but those shield taxes have gone to building a hospital and other improvements. On how many of our local knights can we depend?”

"Well,”
he said, ticking off on his thick fingertips, "Richard, son of Jacques holds fifteen knights' fees. Andre of Gaston, six knights'. Robert holds half a knight’s fee. All in all, mayhap thirty-five knights' fees and a half.”

"I see,”
she murmured. She wondered what Francis would advise.

The T
emplar looked up from his interlocked fingers. His eyes held the regret of a man reduced by the years. "Dominique, I have battled the fiercest warriors of the lot, the Muslims. I know whereof I speak. A thousand knights' fees would not save Montlimoux. Should we battle and defeat Paxton of Wychchester, we would still have his English king to deal with. At Edward Ill's hands . . . well, I can only dissuade you from the follies of such a rebellion.”

She saw
that he suffered as much as she at their predicament. She placed her hand on his stooped shoulder. "I know, I know, Baldwyn.”

"No, you cannot. For an old soldier, it's
much worse. Being helpless, being weak. It’s like being castrated. Like being an eunuch!”

She almost smiled. She wanted to gainsay him, to tell the old soldier that it was
far the worse for a woman. She attempted jocularity. "It was you who instructed me in Latin, impressing upon me that its word for ‘woman’ suggested her weakness, this one in faith – fe-minus.”

“
Well, as the peasant says, ‘life and death are in the power of the tongue.’ ”

She smiled wanly. "I need time alone to think, Baldwyn. Send me Martha, then see I am not disturbed, will you?”

In silence, a bewildered Marthe helped her change from her tight, tailored gown into a simple undergown of russet linsey-woolsey, then add the peasant’s loose surcoat. The maid-in-waiting knew better than to break into Dominique's agitated ruminations.

Sending Marthe away, Dominique made her way dow
n a back turret staircase. At its base, an English sentry stopped her, demanding her identity.

"I am the Comtessa de Bar,”
she said, barely controlling her temper at this latest impertinence. "Go tell that to your Lord Lieu-tenant.”

Abashed, he let her pas
s with a muttered, "My apologies, Comtessa.”

Miffed, she swept by him, heading toward her herbal garden, her greatest source of inner peace. She had acquired her knowledge
of plants from Iolande, who, like herself, was a member of a matrilineal society.

Over the years the old Jewess had instructed her in how to cup a plant in her palm and determine its
nature and distinctions. By observing the leaves, stems, and roots, she knew whether the plant could be used for healing or food; whether it needed a flood of sunlight; whether it grew harmoniously with other plants.

The fame of Montlimoux's vineyards was a tribute to both Iolande
’s skill with plant life and her reverence toward all living things. Having absorbed these lessons at her nursemaid’s knee, Dominique was loathe to kill even a spider, much less a garden snake.

For over an hour she worked furiously. The warming sunlight of March never reached the chill of her heart. She felt none of the inner attunement that usually came with gardening. Her hands car
essed the rich soil, but she received no corresponding comfort.

At the quivering of the lichen, she paused. Someone was coming. The alteration in the lichen affecte
d even her body’s vibrating emotions, reducing them to a slower tempo which indicated either fear or anger.

She knew when the man clad in chain mail stepped into the sunlight that it could only be anger that affected her so. She detested the attitude of superiority reflected in his face, nicked here and there with the scars his violence had wroug
ht.

Schooling her expression to impassivity, she rose and faced
the Englishman who had appeared in her Justice Room as a beggar. Then she had judged Paxton of Wychchester of being her age. Almost as tall as Baldwyn and nearly as brawny, he had presented an imposing figure, much as he did now. “I was expecting you. What plans have you made for me and my household?”

His exp
erienced eye examined her dirt-crusted hands, her dusty work dress, and her unbound hair. The dark sweep of his brows met over the high bridge of his nose. "Expecting me?”

"Are all the king
’s lieutenants so slow of thought?” she mimicked. The words had rolled off her tongue before she could halt their flow. Her natural instinct for command, whether by intimidation or by commendation, was a difficult one to subdue.

He hooked his thumbs in the leather belt of his scabbard, a stance that was now becoming familiar to
her. He looked disturbingly patient. "Are you planning to make trouble?”

"I am surprised you did not summon me to you like a tenant
.”

He waved his hand indifferently, its sunburnt skin also notched with scars. "Your feminine games are inconsequential to me.”

That pricked her pride. "Do you expect me to placidly accept my subjugation?”

"I will expect you pay homage to me as my vassal a
fortnight hence in the great hall.”

She gasped.

He continued calmly. "Heralds will be sent throughout the county of Montlimoux, summoning its inhabitants. A tourney, I think, will serve nicely as enticement. Aye, a tourney, guaranteeing safe conduct to knights and esquires alike. That should well set the stage for a ceremonial transition of authority.”

So that was what lay behind this visitation. As a woman she might be of inconsequence to him, but not the power she wielded. "I cannot renounce my heritage!
”

"Cannot or will not?”

"Either. Both!”

"Mistress, heed me. You cannot even care for your own
people. I found here no protection for them, no mercenaries, no army to guard the gates.”

"And you found here no violence! Non
-action means simply refraining from activity contrary to nature.”

He looked at her strangely. As if she were some unidentifiable species of plant life he had never encountered. "Mistress, do you not perceive
—”

"Chatelaine,”
she corrected. Her gaze swept over the soldier-warrior with unmistakable disdain.

"Mistress," he asserted with the patience of one speaking to the slow of wit. "Do you not perceive that
your foolish pride and stubbornness will only beget sorrow for you and those for whom you care?”

"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 mor
e. "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.”