Sweet Enchantress (27 page)

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 experien
ce. 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 sma
llpox 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 a
t 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 tr
ied 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 security of Montlimoux.”

Dominique remained resolute. "Nonetheless, I will give yo
ur 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 lai
d 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 h
er 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 t
o 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 littl
e 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, awa
iting 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 discove
r 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 f
rom 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 the
mselves.

"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, beca
use 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 Be
atrix 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 midmo
rning, 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 w
ill 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 tr
uth. 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 silenc
e, 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 peb
ble-brown eyes. They stared back at him with solemn, but fascinated, interest. Paxton cleared his throat. "Why did you not tell me?”