Sweet Enchantress (7 page)

Dominique loved the bird of prey she had trained. Reinette’s fierceness, her clean-lined beauty, her dazzling speed, her courage and daring élan on the wing, all personified independence.

If Dominique ever achieved that ability to escape her body at will, as Chengke had promised was possible, and take flight, it would have to be as a falcon. In fact, it had been Chengke who had instilled in her the love of f
alconry, a sport he claimed had been practiced in China two thousand years before Christ.

She watched as Reinette took sight of a prey somewhere in the forest below. The falcon passed high overhead at full speed, and it was like the n
oise of parchment tearing. Dominique could even hear the sound of her dive as she pulled out of descent, wings neatly folded. Towering sheer cliff walls of the nearby mountains echoed the impact of her hitting her quarry at full speed, a sharp cracking sound.

The falcon, Domini
que knew, would stoop, or dive, toward the quarry, her spurs laying open for the prey. Then her talons would squeeze the weakened prey until it ceased to struggle.

Baldwyn's leonine head canted. "Do you hear her bell, my lady?”

Dominique stilled, listening for the sound of the bell attached to Reinette’s tail. The bell monitored both the falcon’s activity and location and could be heard more than half a league away, depending on the weather. She heard not the bell's tinkle but the faintest crushing of leaves underfoot.

At the rustling of underbrush directly
behind them, both she and her retinue whirled. Paxton of Wychchester stepped into the leaf-shadowed glade. The guard John Bedford had saddled her with sheepishly sighed his relief. Baldwyn relaxed his vigilance. Her young cadger released his death grip on the cadge, her falcon's rectangular perch for field use.

She did not move. She knew neither she nor Paxton had forgotten the meeting of their wills and philosophies during the challenging conv
ersation in her library days before. His education was extensive for that of a mere soldier.

His predatory gaze locked on her. She felt as though the two of them stood in empty space, beyond middle ground and solid objects. She could see he was experiencin
g something unusual, also. His expression was that of a warrior who expected an attack— extreme alertness, registering everything that goes on around him without being distracted by it for an instant.

"You wi
shed something, my Lord Lieutenant?” she got out at last, her tone like lye.

"Merely t
o witness your expertise at falconry.”

Her lids narrowed. She was not certain if he ridiculed her. What was his purpose here? Her eye took note that the hunter's green of his tunic
countered well his monotone coloring. All brown. The brown of his sun-and-wind weathered skin; his straight, short hair; his darker eyes. Brown, like winter grass. Brown, the absence of life. No, only the dormancy of life. Black was the absence of life. Black was the center of his eyes, and at that moment she was caught in his stare like a bird in hunter’s lime.

Pushing aside the brush, he entered the glade, and she noticed only then that his captain and Hugh followed upon his heels. “
I have had little opportunity to learn the sport, mistress.”

Still, he addressed her by that common term! "Naturally, for I am told the knaves of England are permitted only the useless kestrel with which to hunt."

Baldwyn flashed her a warning glance. The usually smiling John Bedford shifted nervously. Her gaze darted back to the lieutenant. His face had darkened, and the aura of his wrath was almost tangible. The forest sounds were muted by the moment.

"As you hav
e quite clearly received an education, I would have imagined you have been taught Latin, mistress,” he said, his voice almost conversationally pleasant. "As such, you must be aware that in the Scriptures the word 'witch' is of the feminine gender, is it not?”

No idle observation but a warning, she knew.

The cacophony of the forest erupted again, with the falcon's bell tinkling wildly overall. She whirled and hurried in that direction— without asking permission to take her leave.

Twigs scratched her face, as she pushed deeper into the forest. The tinkling led her to a patch of dense sc
rub oak. Softly, she called, "Reinette,” and the bird of prey fluttered from the underbrush to regain her outstretched fist. Her critical eye examined Reinette's plumage, damaged by the thickets.

"My Lady C
ountess?” At her side, her cadger proffered from the falconry bag the jesses that secured the creature’s yellow-scaled gaiters.

Coming upon her, the others rejoined her as she def
tly slipped the hood over Reinette. "What have you bagged, my lady?” asked Baldwyn.

"I
’m not certain.” She passed Reinette to her cadger. "You saw how she had raked away.”

"Uh-huh, she lost all interest in the pigeon and begun to wander after activity below her. Dinner tonight may not be all that I had anticipated.”

Dominique was oblivious to the others until Paxton of Wychchester spoke in a drawl that was as smooth as spiced wine and carried as much potency. "Perhaps you will crawl into the underbrush, mistress, and display for us today's catch.”

"My Lord Lieutenant,”
John offered, "I'll retrieve the prey for—”

"No.”

Baldwyn spread his spade-sized palms. "But 'tis not seemly that—”

"No!”
Paxton folded his arms. “The hunter —huntress—will retrieve her own prey, as the common folk do.”

Everyone stood paralyzed. She glanced at the copse and swallowed hard. She had done it again, aroused his antipathy by for
getting her place as his vassal, and he was quite clearly reminding her. She had not crawled on her knees since childhood, but she could not give him reason to oust her from Montlimoux, not yet.

Resolutely, she trussed her cotton smock at her waist,
exposing the course, gray underskirt she used for hunting. There was a collective and not quite smothered gasp from her retinue as she went onto her knees and pushed forward into the brambles with the utmost caution. Falcons loved to prey upon snakes.

Her eyes h
ad to adjust to the diminished sunlight. The pungent odor of alluvial soil and decayed leaves, crushing under hand, rose to fill her nostrils. Just beyond, a salamander disturbed the leaves as it took flight from her. Further into the brush a thorn gouged her ungloved palm, and she yelped. She paused to extract the thorn and that was when she spotted the bloodied quarry. A ferret, a raccoon, she couldn’t tell which until she turned it over.

Her outcry echoed in the forest.

CHAPTER V

"Please,
leave me enter.”

“’
Tis unwise, my lady,” John Bedford said low, closing the privy chamber door behind him. “I have never seen Paxton in such a mood. I only wish he would vent his wrath at me. I could handle it.”

She smiled wanly. "You would have him kill y
ou instead of me?”

His mouth crimped in an attempt to return her smile. "Kill me, no. But vent his anger through fighting. We used to wrestle, and once I held my own with him.”

She placed her hand on his doublet sleeve. "What happened today—I am responsible. I had no idea the cat was anywh—”

"Ye don
’t understand, my lady. The cat was . . . well, Paxton was fond of Arthur.”

"Obviously,”
she said dryly.

"It was more than that.”
He half chuckled. "Paxton even carried that cat with him when he went to call upon a highborn lady with whom he was, shall I say,
enamoured
. ‘For courage,’ he told me.”

"Courag
e? Your lieutenant lacking courage? Compassion he may lack but not courage. Now leave me enter.”

She maneuvered around him and opened and closed th
e door before he could gainsay her. Only one candle lit the chamber, a room much like her own but smaller and used to quarter quests. Paxton sat before the fire. At his feet lay the dying cat. Blood pooled around the animal. It was obvious that death crouched only hours away at most.

At her entrance, the man glanced at her, then back to the fire. "I am sorry,”
she began.

“
My Lord Lieutenant,” he corrected in a low voice.

She sighe
d. "I am sorry, my Lord Lieutenant. Truly sorry.”

He raised a hand, and the fi
relight glinted on what he held. A knife. He twisted the blade this way and that, reflecting the fire's sheen eerily across his face. Her heart stopped.

He must
have noted her stricken expression. He laughed nastily. "No, not for you. My revenge will be much more subtle, mistress. The knife blade is for my cat. You see, I am trying to summon courage to end its suffering. As I heard John tell you, courage does not come easily for me."

She crimsoned. There was no retort she could make. She moved past his chai
r to kneel opposite him, the cat between them. She noted in the man’s presence she always felt a peculiar knotting in her stomach, as if an irksome cord united her with him by their navels. "Leave me with your cat for a few moments,” she said.

He laughed s
hortly. "Nay, mistress. I would as soon leave my soul with the devil.” He paused and stared emptily at her. "And mayhap I have.”

She lost patience. Time and space were flowing swiftly. "Do not be a buffoon. There is a chance I can heal your cat
—if 'tis not too late.”

He focused his gaze on her, reminding her sharply of
the
yarak
, the Turkish word for the fiery-eyed stance a falcon assumed when scanning or staring at potential prey. Perhaps it was his brows, sharply peaked at the outer corners, that reminded her of a falcon. "How? Mutter some demonical incantation? Use your powers of sorcery?”

She shivered, more from foreboding than from his contempt. Intuitively she knew that to proceed would be courting a dimension over which she had no po
wer. Nevertheless she was powerless to resist the force at work between her and this Englishman.

The last pulsations of color
—gray— emanated from the animal. The cat's eyes were open, but glazed. No breath, no movement issued from its inert body. Its spirit was already straining away. "Stay then. It matters little to me.''

For the moment, she ignored the deep slashes that ribboned the cat
’s back. Iolande's poultices would heal those. Instead, her fingers found the cat’s stomach, searched behind, gently pressing with precise touches until she located the sensations stored there. Then she began massaging the cat’s body, hoping to bring a balance to it. She picked up various vibrations, confusing to her and debilitating.

She once tried to describe to Iolande wh
at she was doing, that it was like knitting or crocheting, her fingers stitching a web of the life energy, that this creative strength she used slumbered inside her. Inside everyone.

"Do not speak of these things, not even to me,”
Iolande had warned. "The walls have ears, and others do not understand.”

Dominique concentrated on summoning a yellow glow behind her lids, the powerful sensory color she first perceived while playing as a child in a sunflower field. She had told neither Iol
ande nor Baldwyn of this experience, but she was rather certain they suspected.

Nauseated, she opened her eyes to look at the Englishman.
"Please, your hostility . . . 'tis interfering, blocking me.” A nerve in his unshaven cheek twitched, and she said, "Please, all I ask is that you allow me a few moments alone.”

His eyes probed her face. At last, he said, "Aye, for a few moments.”

After the door closed behind him, she returned her full attention to the animal. Her eyes closed again, and she sought that crystal bridge to her source, her soul. Once more she orchestrated her physical energies with her emotional, her spiritual with her mental, and felt as if she were spinning. Perspiration drenched the hair at her temples. How much time flowed by she knew not.

Then the cat
’s scratchy tongue stroked her palm. She heard its faint mewl. She opened her eyes and sat back on her heels as the animal stirred feebly in an attempt to resettle its blood-matted body in a more comfortable position.

"Whelp of a she-wolf!”
Paxton stared at her as if she were vaporizing before his eyes. She had not heard him re-enter the chamber. His jaws clenched and unclenched. He passed his hands over his face, as though to wash it.

"Your cat will
survive. At least, it will survive this round with the forces of nature. Now, it has only eight lives left.”

Her attempt at a neutralizing smile was met with a frown that made his rather plain face formidable. He crossed the room and dropped to his knees, opposite her, so that his
cat lay between them. It twitched its ears at its master's presence.

His stare went from his pet to her. "What did you do?”
he demanded.

She drew a fortifying breath. “
'Tis a spiritual sleight of hand, one might say. I simply used my hands to work energy.”

"What?”

She may as well have been speaking a foreign tongue. She tried again. "When one changes energy, one changes reality. I merely lay my hands on the ill—”

"I watche
d you,” he gritted, his eyes narrowed. "You did something more with your hands.”

"No, not to it
s physical body. Listen, 'tis like . . . like I feel my fingertips tingling, as though fire is warming them, streaming out, making contact with . . .”

Her words trailed away as, without taking his gaze off her, he rose to tower over her. "Leave!”

His expression unnerved her. His eyes had the power to do such. Slowly, she came to her feet and backed away. She reached the door, and he warned, "Stay out of my sight if you wish to remain at the chateau.”