“There’s something going on in the stables.”
The bishop’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Of course there is something going on in the stables! There’s an entire fraternity of monks living in them, with horses.”
“Nah, more than that. There’s something strange going on.”
“Strange … I see. Are these monks running a bordello in there?”
“They might be. They might even be fornicating with the horses. You couldn’t tell by me. I couldn’t get close enough to see what was going on, although I got closer than anyone else could. They’re a peculiar lot, those fellows. Only the actual monks live in the stables. The ones they call sergeants live in barracks built right in front of the entrance to the stables. And the two don’t mix much.
The sergeants and the monks, I mean. Mind you, they’re all monks, it seems to me, and from what I know, all monks are equal. These ones aren’t.”
“You know next to nothing, and most of what you think you know is wrong. They are knights and sergeants, for one thing—noblemen and commoners—and then as monks, they are brothers and lay brothers. Two excellent reasons for segregation. Now tell me, if it pleases you, exactly what you suspect is going on in there.”
“I told you I don’t know, but it’s something strange.
It looked to me as though there’s a door in there that no The Temptress
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one who is not one of the nine knights ever gets to enter.
And I heard noises coming from there, too, as though they were chiseling into stone.”
“Chiseling into stone. Are you aware that those stables are built right on top of—and in places carved right out of—the Temple Mount? So let us imagine, for a moment, that these knights are desirous of improving their living space. Their only means of doing that might be to enlarge the premises by digging into the rock. Would you agree with that?”
“Aye, perhaps, but—”
“I know, I know.
But
you suspect that something strange is going on in there. Tell me, then, what it is.
This door, for example, the one that no one but the knights is ever allowed to enter, where is it?”
“It’s inside … in the darkest part of their living quarters, away at the back.”
“Where the
knights
live, you mean?”
“Aye. The place is split into two areas, one for the horses and the other for the monks.”
“And the sergeants, you say they live outside?”
“Aye. Some of them work inside the stables, but they don’t live in there. They’ve built a barracks building close against the wall.”
“So the only people who live inside the stables are the knights. Why, then, is it strange that only the knights use one particular door, or any other door, if they are the only people in there? Has it occurred to you it might be their latrine?”
“It’s not, my lord Bishop. The latrines are over on the 400
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other side. The place is a stable, and the sergeants are coming and going, in and out, all the time. But there is always a knight close by that door. He’s not obviously on guard duty there, but the truth remains that every time one of the sergeants goes within a certain distance of that door, someone comes out of nowhere and turns him away. Always with great charm and goodwill, but
always
, without fail. Who would set guards on a latrine?
I’ve been watching for weeks now, and I’ve seen it happen nigh on a score of times. And in the same time, I have never seen one sergeant go in through that door.”
“And so you grew suspicious, based upon that, or is there more, something you have not told me?”
The little man shook his head. “No, there’s no more.”
“I see. Well, you may not care to hear this, but I have no interest in your suspicions, Gregorio, and I do not pay you to be suspicious. I myself can generate all the suspicions I require, about anything and everyone, including you. What I require of you, my small functionary, in due return for the stipend I pay you, is tangible fact, backed with proof. Do you understand me?”
The little man nodded, and the bishop grunted in response, then bent forward and picked up his pen again.
“Go, then, and don’t come back until you can do so without wasting my time.”
Odo was immersed in his work again before Gregorio even turned away, but as soon as the door closed behind the spy, the bishop threw his pen down on the tabletop and rose to his feet. He stalked to the arched window, from which he could look down into one of the lesser The Temptress
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courtyards of the King’s palace, where a marble fountain splashed pleasantly, surrounded by dense growths of pal-mettos. He was angry, and he was jealous, and while anger was not a new experience for him, jealousy certainly was, and Odo was having trouble coping with it.
He had no illusions about what he was feeling. He liked to think that it was all the fault of Princess Alice, and had he had anyone to whom he could demonstrate that, he could have laid out details, chapter and verse, of every incident and every occasion that she had used to ensnare him. But, of course, it was not something that he could discuss with anyone, and besides, he knew the real truth. It was not Alice’s fault at all. She had not forced him to lie with her, not on the first occasion and not at any other time. He was the one who had allowed himself to become besotted with her, despite his knowing that whenever and wherever she so chose, the princess would spread her legs for anyone who caught her eye. She appeared to be insatiable, she was beautiful, and she was breathtakingly young—eighteen to Odo’s forty-two. And therein lay the roots of his jealousy. He was no longer young enough to keep Alice satisfied. He never had been, from the outset, almost four years earlier.
He had known from the start of his involvement with her, too, exactly why she had blessed him with her favors. He had been her confessor for years, and as she grew older he had found himself growing thrilled, and erotically charged, by her increasingly lurid confessions as she began to experiment with herself physically and with her sexuality in general. She related in great detail, 402
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and over the course of several months, the attraction she was feeling to one of the younger men in her father’s court, and the fantasies she indulged in regarding the fellow. And from there, warming to her task as she progressed, she regaled her confessor with the most intimate and lurid details of her seduction of the hapless man. Of course, once he himself had succumbed to her charms, Odo had discovered that Alice had taken great and perverse delight in the entire exercise, knowing exactly what effect she was having upon the man behind the confessional’s screen, and lingering over every sala-cious element of her adventures. By the time she was ready to seduce him, then, she had already laid all the foundations for his downfall.
And, of course, there was a
quid pro quo
. Alice did nothing, gave nothing, without a
quid pro quo
. In return for the privilege of enjoying her magnificent young body, Odo provided the princess with information, confidential and extremely sensitive information on everything that took place within the King’s Council Chamber. That Alice had been merely fourteen years old when the arrangement was set into place was insignificant. In her soul and in her mind, Alice le Bourcq, reared as the spoiled favorite of a father preeminent among men of power and influence, had never really been a child. Old beyond her years, she was already a woman of great subtlety, possessing the kind of mind that exulted in intrigue, and her own ambitions had been molded and set while her friends and siblings were still playing as children.
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Odo had known that, and had known that she would attempt to suborn him for her own designs, and to a great extent he had resented that she should, but when it had come time to weigh his scruples against his lusts, to measure the value of his principles against the yielding pressure of her soft, bare thigh in the palm of his hand, his decision made nonsense of all the high-minded ideals of which he had been so proud.
His current distemper arose from the discovery, made almost two months earlier by one of his many spies, that Alice had become fascinated by the young knight monk, St. Clair. The spy in question was a menial female servant who was close enough to Alice most of the time to have become invisible, her constant presence taken for granted, and so her evidence was trustworthy. She it was who had overheard the instructions Alice gave to her majordomo, a eunuch by the name of Ishtar, to set up a watch on Brother Stephen, as he called himself, and keep her informed about who his lovers were and what he did with them.
Of course they had found no lovers, and no evidence of St. Clair’s doing anything amiss, but that had only inspired Alice to dig deeper, and despite his knowing that St. Clair was innocent of any wrongdoing, as he saw her obsession with this knight monk growing, Odo himself had set his spies to watching hers, hoping to find something that he could use to discredit the monk and make him
persona
non grata
to everyone, including Alice. Now, staring down into the courtyard and thinking about what Gregorio had 404
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said—his conviction that something “strange” was going on in the stables—Odo recognized the first faint glimmerings of an idea that he could use against Alice, to stir her up, at least, and make her aware again of him and of his desire for her. As the outlines of a plan began to form in his mind, he made his way back to his worktable, whistling tunelessly under his breath, a sure sign to all who knew him that the bishop was deep in thought.
FIVE
“Really, Odo, you are being thoroughly tiresome today. I sent for you in the
hope that you would entertain me and
divert me this afternoon, but you have done nothing but mope like an old dotard.”
“Nonsense, my dear princess, let us tell the truth and put the devil to shame. You sent for me in the hope that you could pump me for information, on whatever topic holds most interest for you at this time. When was it ever otherwise? But I have not been able to tell you anything this time, much as I love you and wish to please you, because I do
not
know what you
want
. If you insist on playing games and not asking me directly about whatever it is you wish to know, then you can hardly hold me responsible for being incapable at times of deciphering your true intent.”
405
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Alice le Bourcq remained silent for a count of ten, staring at him through narrowed eyes. “I am very glad you were smiling when you said that, my lord Bishop,”
she said then, precisely when he knew she would. “Otherwise I might have thought you were being insolent. As it is, you have succeeded in amusing me for the first time since you arrived, so come over here and sit close to me.
I wish to whisper secrets in your ear.”
Marveling for perhaps the thousandth time how anyone so young could sound so worldly, Bishop Odo rose slowly to his feet and crossed silently and obediently to where she reclined on a couch, watching him, her feet tucked modestly up beneath her long skirts. For all her surprising sophistication, he thought, her lack of years and experience could not be completely concealed all the time. Although she may have been schooled to astonishing depths in the ways of men and women, in some respects her youthfulness was yet as transparent as fine glass, and this wheedling, teasing eagerness to have her own way was one of those.
He had played his own part to perfection this afternoon, he thought as he approached her, achieving an air so faultlessly poised between distraction and preoccupation that it had piqued the princess’s interest while annoying her intensely at the same time. And once her interest had been attracted, it had been merely a matter of time until, notwithstanding her annoyance, she had been compelled to act upon her curiosity. Now she was visibly intrigued, knowing that he was thinking about something for which he was prepared to risk her anger, The Temptress
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and Odo knew she would stop at nothing now until she was satisfied that she had drained him of every drop of information he possessed, despite the possibility that it might hold no interest at all for her.
He stood directly in front of her, towering over her so that she had to tilt back her head to look up at him, exposing the snowy perfection of her long neck and a swooping expanse of smooth skin that ended in the first swelling of her breasts, and he felt his loins stir in response to her nearness. She raised a hand languidly, wiggling her fingers until he took them in his own, at which point she closed her hand and pulled him down towards her.
“Come, sit with me.”
She tightened her grip and pulled him closer, arching her back and pushing her buttocks against the rear of her couch to make enough room for him to sit close against her, in the curled crescent of her body. As he lowered himself to sit, he felt her body pressing against his lower back, and she laid her right hand flat against his belly, just above his pubic bone, pressing him closer until he relaxed and leaned back against her, his right arm resting on the curve of her hip where it swept down to her waist, his left elbow on her thigh, the back of his fingers aware of the warmth of the soft skin behind her knee, beneath the diaphanous robe.
“There! Are you comfortable?”
He dipped his head, allowing his hand to settle on the curve of her waist, flexing his fingers gently in a caress.
She made a contented little sound, and he pressed harder, kneading the pliant flesh more firmly as the fingers of his 408
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other hand spread and grasped the back of her leg above the knee.
“Aah, you beast,” she murmured, smiling at him as she slowly raised her leg high, bracing her heel against the couch’s back and permitting his questing fingers to slide down along the length of her thigh to the join of her body while her own hand moved with the ease of long practice to penetrate his episcopal robes.