Sweet Enchantress (24 page)

Why could Paxton not un
derstand this quest for the path of enlightenment?

Rocher des Domes, just beyond the juxtaposition of the pope's palace and a smaller palace that was Francis’s official headquarters of the Avignon episcopate, was the highest point of Avignon. A windswept crag, the Rocher placed a seemingly endless view of the landscape of the Rhone valley at his feet, which never failed to send a thrill through him that was equal to that lust that came with sexual completion.

The north mistral lashed Francis's hair across his face, but he did not present his back to the wind. The stinging was just another sensation that reminded him he was alive, as did the Rhone
’s murmur, echoing off the surrounding hills.

So l
ittle and yet so much was required for that feat of feeling alive. So much when one was bonded to the remnants of malignancy lasting thousands of years—and hundreds of lifetimes.

"Francis!”

He turned and smiled at the lovely woman hurrying toward him up the sloping path that passed the orchard and garden well with its built-in sundial. Dominique was lovely with innocence yet to be initiated. For her, there could be another path, one to degradation lower than that reached by ordinary physical activities.

He
took her outstretched hands, their flesh so alive with her extraordinary force-energy, force-energy generated by the soil and air and vegetation and water of Montlimoux, all of which she was a part. To possess both would be to possess life eternal and all its accompanying riches.

His smile contained centuries of calculation. "I was certain your scientific curiosity would get the best of you.”

She laughed joyously. "I have been stifled for months now. Come, show me the delights you promised.”

The wind whippe
d together his brocaded skirts with her silken ones, as, laughing, he led her back to the palace. He took her by way of the second-floor, a covered gallery to the vice legates’ private apartments, that because of their northern exposure were freezingly cold in the winter.

Only a few
stair steps and a gently sloping corridor separated those apartments from the bell tower. She hung back when he reached the barred door. "Tis all right,” he assured her. "People come and go constantly here, and nothing is thought of it.”

"Women come and go?”
she asked with a teasing smile that was familiar from their childhood. But at that time she had been a virgin.

“
Mais, oui
! Martine has paid me several visits.” He crossed to the trap door in the floor and lifted it to expose the dark cavern below. "Martine has an intense interest in the concoction of poisons and the casting of spells, among other things.” He took the torch from the wall socket to light the darkness. "One soon discovers that one can have many enemies at court.”

"Then I mu
st applaud your longevity here, Francis. Your survival instincts must be at a peak pitch.”

He held out his hand for her to kiss the cabochon of his ring. "Come with me,”
he said with a daring smile, "and I shall hear your confession.”

She looked
at him uncertainly, then, laughing again, kissed his ring.

The stairway descended three flights into a barrel-vaulted room that had once communicated with the lower gallery of the cloister. Just as he expected, Dominique
’s eyes lit like twin torches when she saw the array of alchemical apparatus in the room. "Come, I shall you show you more than you ever imagined.”

Her hands caressed appreciatively the
various flasks and vials and burners. "How fortunate you are, Francis. All this knowledge at your disposal.”

"Much of what I learned in the last few years has come from a manuscript by Simon Magus who was a magician and Jew and who eventually became sorcerer to Nero.”

She tilted her head. "Like what?”

"Like the mystical jugglery with numbers and letters, the
writing of amulets, and such. It was Simon who pointed out the close relation between gold and excrement, the importance of dew as a solvent of gold, the value of menstrum and virgin's milk.”

He detec
ted an uneasiness in her laugh. "Virgin’s milk? Francis, isn’t that a contradictory term?”

"Not at all.”
He clasped her upper arms, turning her toward him. "The more one studies and experiments, the more one perceives that all is the opposite of what it appears.”

Her eyes glistened with the opportunity of incre
asing her knowledge. "Will you teach me, Francis?”

"It would be very much my pleasure. Very much.”

Francis's knowledge of the hidden enthralled Dominique. Even his voice held that power to enthrall. "It has previously been thought that semen must rot in order to impregnate, for rotting is procreating. The corruption or breaking up of one form is the beginning of another. Can you understand this, Dominique?”

Chengke had taught her that death was not an end but a beginning. Francis
’s statement had a sensible point, yet the pull of life, not death, was too strong in her to accept fully his viewpoint. Not yet anyway.

Perceiving her confusion, he said, “
With further lessons, you will come to see what I am trying to teach you. Tell me, have you heard of the Basilisk?”

She shook her head.

“’Tis a monster that grows in the greatest impurity of woman, her menstrua, and from the seed of man, putrefied in horse's dung. Its glance is fatal, but one can protect oneself if clothed in mirrors. With the knowledge I teach you, Dominique, I shall clothe you in mirrors that will defeat the ignorant”

She accepted the hand
warming her shoulder and said, "I am forever indebted for your friendship, Francis.”

He smiled benignly. "Your love is enough, Dominique.
By the way, do you realize that
amor
spelled backwards is Roma, or the Roman Catholic Church?”

CHAPTER XVIII

The alchemical laboratory at the pope’s palace and Francis's friendship and guidance were the only two things that enabled Dominique to get through each day. Eagerly, she descended with the bishop to the laboratory, where she could immerse herself in scientific studies to which she had never been exposed.

But even this once-consuming interest was not enough to totally distract her fro
m the anguish she felt at Paxton’s emotional distancing from her. It was not only that Paxton seemed to have shut down his emotions since coming to Avignon, it was his disinterest in everything beyond his own amusement. He fluttered from fete to fete, from chateau to chateau. He neglected even Esclarmonde’s amorous advances in favor of the court beauties, of whom Martine was the acknowledged queen.

The few fetes Dominique attended found her with her choice of partners if she so desired. The ambassadors at t
he papal court, as soon as they had discharged their duties, sought her out. Her ardor for knowledge, her familiarity with myriad subjects, her growing fondness for the Italian
novellieri
, made her most sought after.

Yet her spirits lagged. At one such gal
a, dwarfs, and buffoons, and rope dancers entertained, while the ecclesiastical guests degenerated into a loud, rambunctious, and immoral lot. Noble pages handed round ewers and basins and were pouring water over the diners’ fingers, while noble knights stood behind diners’ chairs to catch inebriated guests who toppled out of their chairs.

In the midst of this revelry, death presided in the form of various poisons
—from food to incense, a result of any one of numerous monks’ plots. After these galas, an orgy of contrition usually ensued, with four hundred bishops singing
Verti Creator Spiritus
. It was fast becoming her opinion, the higher the birth, the lesser the piety.

The dross, the base desires, the dregs drained her. So, a
fter a while her attendance at the galas declined, and she focused on those afternoons spent at the laboratory with Francis.

Among other things, her friend claimed to have a formula that, once divined, would lead to the secret of transmutation: iron to gol
d. Gold, that metal sought after by mankind not merely for its rarity and glitter but for its wonderful malleability.

With limitless gold, she could buy Montlimoux from the king of England, from all the kings of all the countries for that matter! And she c
ould restore her cherished countryside to the splendid grandeur it knew in the days of her mother, the mistress of alchemists.

"You are putting yourself in peril,”
Baldwyn told her one morning after she had requested his accompanying her to the palace. "The bishop is alienated from nature.” When she looked askance at him, he added with an uncomfortable shrug, "A bit of spiritual knowledge I gained from my near-death experience.”

"I heed the warning,”
she sighed, "but my own force-energies have always been equal to those of others. Francis cannot harm me without my permission.”

Little by little all her force-energies were being directed toward preserving the tenuous relationship between herself and Paxton. And, too, there was the growing knowledge that more t
han ever she wanted his child. This time the conception would not be happenstance—although Chengke would have argued that nothing, not any single thing, was happenstance—but would be a planned event

With that in mind, she spent an entire afternoon in the h
otel's lead bathtub. The tented bath was spiced with herbs and provided with sponges.

Marte and Beatrix, who pined for her English captain, drew her bath and took great delight in the tub, because it was equipped with two gilt-bronzed keys in the shape of
leopards for cold and hot water, no less! Perfume and body creams procured by Iolande scented and smoothed Dominique's body. Manon brushed her hair until it glowed with a fiery sheen. A lavender silk tunic that clung to her womanly curves was laid out by Jacotte.

The young maid appeared to have gotten over her infatuation with Denys, because she had recently become betrothed to a saddler and within the year would be leaving Dominique's household.

The wait for Paxton seemed eternal. When he at last returned to the hotel, dinnertime was well past. He looked distracted, scarcely noticing her. In the privacy of their bedchamber, he stretched and rubbed his beard- shadowed jaw. "By my oath, I am tired.”

"Your day was busy?”
she asked, taking the cape he shrugged off. Clad only in his hose and short tunic, his physique was so perfectly masculine that it was difficult to turn her gaze away.

"Philip arrives on the morrow. That means a confrontation of wills. Wills disguised in the utmost diplomacy."

He seemed distant, reserved. Forcing her uneasiness away, she drew him to the great bed. "Then you will need your rest for the meeting."

Lovingly, her hands divested him of his tunic. When they reached for the points and laces of his hose, he eyed her curiously. His gaze f
inally absorbed her efforts at setting herself off to her best advantage. "You mean to seduce me, my lady?”

She laughed at his directness. "No, I mean to instruct you in a much-neglected science, my Lord Lieutenant.”

She commenced with a single-minded intent: pleasuring Paxton until no coherent thought remained in his mind. All her energy was concentrated into her hands, into caressing and fondling and stroking him.

At one point, he groaned and said, "That is enough. I need you now. I need to pour my seed
into you.”

She smiled. "You will. I promise you will.”
Her hands lovingly traced the scars on his back. She realized that it was Paxton’s unseen scars that had never healed properly—his bitterness; his lack of trust in the opposite sex; his feelings of inferiority, despite all that he had accomplished, toward the ranks above him.

Then she
did something that sent him sitting bolt upright. He grasped her hair and tugged at her head. "What is it you think you are doing?”

She shook free his grasp and repressed
her levity as she attempted to explain. "Your power is focused in the area between your legs, Paxton. When I place my forehead there, that power is transmitted to me. And when you empty your seed into my mouth—”

"Enough!"

"’Tis never enough,” she rejoined with light laughter.

Before he could stop her, she knelt again and began to love him with her mouth.

With a moan, he hauled her atop him. "I surrender, maiden. Give me surcease. Ease this pain.”

She rode him then like the Amazon women of old rode their st
allions. Exulting and always loving, loving. How she loved him, this man of hers.

If she had felt Paxton’s neglect, he too must have sensed her own distancing or, at least, been curious about the increasing amount of time she spent with Francis, because one sunny afternoon as she and Francis sat deep in conversation in the seclusion of the garden east of the palace, Paxton came in search of her.

"I was told I might find you here," he said with an eas
y charm that was more characteristic of Francis. Her husband dropped down in the grass beside the stone bench where she sat opposite Francis. "We have been invited to a feast tonight given in honor of the newly appointed Pisan ambassador."

"Another one?”

"No, the last was a Turkish—”

"No, I mean anoth
er dinner. I am weary of them, Paxton.”

"I confess I am, also," Francis said, his smile congen
ial. “The summer festivities become tedious, and one looks forward to the autumn court in Paris. A much more diverting city.”

Paxton draped one arm over an uprais
ed knee and said to Francis, “Tell me, why did you give up law practice to become a priest?” Her husband's question appeared totally sincere, and Francis surprised her by replying in a totally sincere manner. “The Inquisition, my good son. The Dominicans tortured my parents."

"I would have thought that would have driven you away from the Church.”

Francis's dark eyes glowed. "For a while it did. I was forced to watch first my mother subjected to the rack and then my father.” He paused, and a tic twitched in his cheek. "I cried. And cried. Hour upon hour. Their screams burst in my ears. But at some point in their terrible ordeal I began to perceive that their sacrifice was to a greater glory.”

Dominique shook her head, and her veil fluttered around her shoulde
rs. "I do not understand that line of reasoning, Francis.”

He spread
his well-formed hands. "My parents became wonderful symbols of the same glorious suffering and ultimate sacrifice as Jesus Christ made.”

"That is what I am talking about,”
she said, her brows knitting. She leaned forward and said earnestly, "Christ’s message was not about sacrifice but about unconditional love and the spiritual laws of transmutation—the very same as the physical laws of transmutation of iron to gold, Francis!”

"Ah, but we
can know no transmutation because we are impure. We must experience hell's fires. That is the purification, do you not see?”

Paxton sprang to his feet with a grace unusual for a man his size. He took her hand and drew her up beside him. "I see that you bot
h entertain ideas vastly different than the pope's spiritual ideology. I would rather expound on political ideology myself, Francis. What say you and I engage in a more worthy discussion in the near future?”

Francis rose also, his hands tucked into the wid
e sleeves of his robe. "I will anticipate the encounter with great pleasure, my son.”

Paxton tugged her along the tree-shaded path. "Your choice of friends, Dominique, may well land you in trouble.”

She jerked on his hand and came to an abrupt halt. "What do you mean?”

He caught her by her arms. His tight lips clearly expressed his vexation. "I mean that you would do well to curtail your visits with the priest.”

"I might suggest that you curtail your visits to the various
appartements
you find so fascinating, my Lord Lieutenant,” she snapped back.

Exasperation drew a sigh from him. He ran his fingers through his hair. "This is getting us nowhere. Come along, we have a dinner to attend.”

She watched him stride away, his back a symbol of the wall between them.