Chapter One

“It’s not working, I tell you,” Prince Igor screamed. “You said it would work and it hasn’t!”

Bick, his advisor, cringed before the prince’s fury. He was a small man with a sharp nose, reputed the most devious and cunning in the court. “We must have patience, sire,” he said. He had a high-pitched voice, whiny and pleading.

“Patience?” Prince Igor roared. “I’ll show you bloody patience.” He picked up a chair and threw it at Bick. But his aim was spoiled by his rage, and the chair clattered harmlessly across the stone floor.

“If you will not wait, sire, I can only suggest that you use force.”

“You stupid man!” the prince snapped. “Haven’t I explained over and over again that force would defeat the whole object? Of course I can rape her if I choose. Any man could do that. But that would prove only that I am a brute, and it would be an admission that I have failed to persuade her. Just for once, I want a girl to like me before I ravish her.”

“Perhaps you should go and see her again and reason with her. Or threaten force, even if you don’t intend to carry it out.”

“She’s not a fool,” the prince retorted. “She’ll soon see through that.”

Bick shrugged. What else could he suggest? The prince was obstinate. The prince was a pain in the ass. As far as Bick was concerned, one wench was much like another. True, some were fair and some were ugly. But did they not all have a hole? More than one, in fact. Wasn’t the pleasure much the same, no matter which holes you used, or whose? Why make such a fuss about this one girl in particular? Just because she was pretty?

“Very well,” said the prince. “I’ll go and see her.”

Princess Yolande stood at the open window of her cell, at the top of the highest tower of Castle Bodor, feeling the cool breeze on her naked body. She could smell the hay which they were mowing in the valley below, and she could hear birds singing. One was a blackbird, unless she was mistaken. She thought she had been here over two months now, though she had rather lost track of time. But the injustice of her imprisonment still rankled as bitterly as ever. Never, never would she give in. She had not seen this prince face to face, but she had been told by more than one authority that he was the ugliest man in the two kingdoms. Even if he had been the prettiest, she would not have married him after what he had done to her. Indeed, she had no intention of ever marrying anyone.

She shook her hands, rattling their manacles. The heavy iron cuffs which secured her wrists together were linked to a chain that was padlocked round her waist, so that she could not raise her hands above the level of her breasts. Her head was encased in a leather hood, locked at the neck, leaving only small holes for her nostrils and ears, and a gap for her mouth. She had not seen the sun once since her incarceration. It was true that the chain allowed her hands to reach as far as her groin, but this was no consolation to the princess. Chaste and virtuous as the driven snow, she had never once indulged in the sin of self-abuse. And no man had penetrated her orifices. It was said by some that no man ever would, that the princess was devoid of all sexual feelings and intended to die a virgin, though in fact she had never said so.

She heard a key in the lock. Surely it was too early for the visit of the two maidens who attended her after sunset, temporarily removing her mask in order to wash her, combing her hair, seeing to all the aspects of her toilet proper to a princess. She welcomed their visits; it relieved the boredom somewhat, though the maidens were not supposed to talk to her.

But the footsteps she heard crossing towards her were not those of women. Prince Igor stood close to her. He inhaled the scent of her body and almost swooned at its sweetness. His eyes roamed up and down, taking in the beauty of her full breasts and their dark brown nipples, her flat stomach, the length and sleekness of her thighs, the tuft of hair between them, blonde to match the hair that fell straight from under her hood to her waist. He shifted position slightly; the better to catch a brief glimpse of her bottom, peerless in its softly swelling, sculpted shape. Then he sighed. It was all he could do to stop himself reaching out to touch. But that might risk inflaming his desire to an uncontrollable pitch; and he was very doubtful of the response he would get.

The princess recognised him by his odour. After two months without sight, her sense of smell was acute. She didn’t like the prince’s smell; she suspected he did not wash every day. She remained motionless, facing the open window. She knew he was ogling her naked body, looking at it closely, slavering over its beauty. She hated the thought but there was nothing she could do about it. She could speak though the hood, after a fashion, but she had nothing to say. Protest was useless.

“I can keep you here for ever if I wish,” said Prince Igor. “Your people can never rescue you. This castle is impregnable. In any case, your kingdom has not the resources. You are all weak, as any land ruled by women will always be weak. So why not recognise the inevitable? If you consent to marry me, you can have everything your heart could desire.”

“My heart desires only that I shall never be touched by you,” the princess said. “You can force me, like the coarse and cruel man you are. But you will never get my consent. Never!”

“I’m beginning to lose patience,” the prince replied. “I prefer not to force you, but I may have to if this pointless resistance continues. Perhaps once I have compelled your surrender you will realise that you have lost. Perhaps then you will see sense.”

“I would sooner kill myself,” the princess said. She spoke with a chilling venom. The prince thought that she probably meant what she said; she was that sort of woman. The unfortunate fact was that the more she asserted her virtue, the more he longed to penetrate that temple of purity. He could feel his cock stirring.

The princess caught a faint odour of this. She was a virgin, but she had been around men in heat. She knew the signs. She still thought it likely that the prince would eventually rape her, since surely by now he must have accepted that she would never consent to his advances. Yet he had not done so, even though there was nothing to stop him. Nothing but his own reluctance. The princess thought she understood him. His pride would not allow him to take her by force, if he could persuade her to accept him, and his vanity convinced him that she must surely give way in the end. At what point would he realise he was mistaken?

The prince went away, full of inner fury that this beautiful but cold woman should continue to frustrate his intentions. He brooded for days, unable to think of a way forward. He had calculated that by now the resistance of even the bravest and most obdurate would have crumbled, and yet it had not. Bick, meanwhile, had also been pondering what to do next. His position as the prince’s advisor, perhaps even his head, depended on a solution. At last he hit on one. Or at least the possibility of one.

“Sire,” he said, “I have been told of the existence of a witch whose talent with love potions is peerless.”

“Love potions?” The prince was sceptical of magic in any shape or form. “What nonsense is this?”

“I have it on good authority, sire,” Bick insisted. “She is reputed to have charmed a young girl to fall in love with a toad.”

Too late, Bick realised this was the wrong thing to say. “A toad!” Igor roared. “Is that what you think I am?”

“Of course not, your highness,” Bick said in his whiney voice. “I mean only that she has succeeded with the impossible, thus surely she will be able to do the trick in which must be a far easier case to solve.”

Igor was doubtful. But what other solutions were there? “Bring her to me. If she’s a fraud I’ll have her head. And yours.”

Bick exited, trembling. He had an open mind about witches and such, though, being a deceitful man himself, he thought that cunning and deceit worked more miracles than magic. A day later he ushered into the prince’s presence an aged crone with a hooked nose and warts on her face. She said her name was Ensor. She certainly looks like a witch, Bick thought. Perhaps she knows something.

Prince Igor outlined the problem. The witch listened intently. When he had finished she began to ask questions.

“Is the girl chaste? Has she known a man?”

Igor had had Yolande examined when she was first brought to the castle. Two midwives had pronounced her virgo intacta. Since then, no men except himself had been allowed in her cell.

“She has never been used,” he said.

“Has she been kissed?”

“As to that, I could not say. But judging from her conduct, I would doubt it.”

“Have you tried her? Have you made advances, put your hand on her?”

“I have not,” Igor said. “I wish her to give herself of her free will, pure and untouched.”

The witch looked at him shrewdly. “Is she intelligent, would you say? Or is she a simple country girl?”

“She is a high-born princess,” Igor said. “Well-educated. And I believe of above-average intelligence.”

“She’s too smart for you, then,” the witch said.

Igor bristled at the remark. “Watch your tongue, you old hag.”

“I can make a potion which has the necessary power,” the witch said. “The problem is persuading her to drink it.”

“That’s your problem, isn’t it?”

The witch looked at him sharply. “It will be yours if she suspects what is afoot. Let me give this some thought.”

The witch went away, promising to return in two days. Igor had settled into a state of unrelieved glumness. He no longer expected miracles. His plan, which had once seemed so brilliant, now seemed difficult to enact. True, when first presented with the girl he had no plan at all. She was brought to him by a party of brigands, who said that they had captured her in the Deep, Dark Wood, a place where few but those bent upon mischief chose to go. No one really knew how far it spread, but in the middle was a river, or rather a raging torrent, almost impossible to cross, which marked the boundary between Breconia, the realm which Prince Igor now ruled, and Parvania, a kingdom ruled by an ageing queen whose husband had died in mysterious circumstances. The girl had been brought in bruised, scruffy and dirty, naked, on a horse, with her hands tied behind her back and a sack on her head. The brigands explained that she was blindfolded because they did not wish to be recognised in case of any future reprisals.

Igor had no idea who she was, but it was clear from her demeanour that she was high-born. His first thought was that she might fetch a ransom. Accordingly, he paid the brigands off with a couple of gold pieces, since they seemed in a hurry to be gone, perhaps aware of Igor’s reputation for double-crossing. He had the girl washed and tidied up, but ordered that she be kept blindfolded and naked; she was good-looking, and Igor derived much pleasure from looking at good-looking naked girls. Perhaps he might enjoy her later, depending on what he decided to do with her eventually. When the girl was brought to him, her hands still bound and a white scarf tied around her eyes, he inspected her closely, walking around her, appreciating the beauty of her form, her firm and well-shaped breasts, her flat belly, her long, sleek thighs, her nicely rounded posterior. He ran his fingers through her long, blonde hair. She shrank from his touch and moved away.

“So,” he said, “and who are you, pray?”

To his surprise she made no secret of it. “I am the princess Yolande, heiress to the throne of Parvania, and I demand that you set me free. Who are you, by the way?”

She spoke in a loud, clear voice, as if she was used to being obeyed. That won’t work here, my girl, he thought. I’m the one in charge. But the information she had supplied made him revise his plans. Ransom was all very well, but perhaps he could do better than that.

“I am Prince Igor,” he said, “Lord of Breconia.”

“Then you will know that my mother, the queen, requires that you return me home with all possible despatch.”

“She’s not queen here,” Igor said. He looked her over again. His cock was stirring. He wondered what the brigands had done with her. “Were you treated well by the men who brought you here?”

Yolande drew herself up to her full height. “I am not used to being manhandled by such ruffians,” she said. “They pushed me around, tied me up, even slapped my face when I refused their orders. And the food they gave me was disgusting.”

“Yes, yes,” Igor said impatiently. “You must expect a little rough treatment if you allow yourself to be captured by such people. What I want to know is, did they fuck you?”

Yolande coloured slightly. She was not accustomed to questions of that nature. “No,” she said. “That at least they did not do.”

No doubt they thought they’d get a better price if they sold you unmolested, Igor said to himself. “Has anyone else fucked you? I believe, from what I’ve heard, that neither princess of your realm is yet married.”

“I am not married,” Yolande said. “And from that you may deduce that I am still a virgin.”

“I don’t know what things are like over there,” Igor said coarsely. “But over here no such deductions can be made. Whores are everywhere.”

He omitted to say that many of them had been made so by the actions of Igor himself. Each family in the kingdom was required to send him as tribute their first-born girl when she reached the age of maturity. These girls were held in the capacious dungeons of Igor’s castle until such time as he could get around to indulging himself with them. After each had been used they were offered in marriage to members of his palace guard. If none of them wished to take a girl, she was returned to her home town. But many of them subsequently failed to find a husband, since they were deemed damaged goods after having satisfied the prince’s lust, and a recourse to whoredom was then the only option.

Yolande was silent. She didn’t care to converse longer with such an uncouth man. Igor had discovered all he wanted to know for the time being, and sent her to be imprisoned in a cell at the top of the castle keep, still blindfolded. The news of Yolande’s initial disappearance, though not the precise circumstances, had been conveyed to her mother, Queen Ingeborg, the same day. Yolande had been out hunting with some companions. She had chased off after a hart, outstripping the others. Suddenly she found herself deep in a wood, and surrounded by six men. She struggled but was quickly overpowered. Later, her companions found no trace of her except a torn piece of her dress. Scouts were sent out to locate Yolande, but there was no sign. On hearing the news of her disappearance, the queen fell into a rage, and then into a deep depression; her mental stability was always fragile. No one seemed to know what to do, and as a result there was no organised attempt to find her daughter. The fact that she had become a prisoner of Prince Igor of Breconia did not become known in Parvania until some weeks later.

Once the princess was safely locked up, Igor began to think. Perhaps there was an opportunity here. He was, now that his father was incapacitated by age and his brother safely imprisoned, securely master of his realm. But Breconia was a small country, surrounded by larger ones. Such a situation made for insecurity. There had been a constant search for alliances, but such as Breconia had were unstable, in part because few of the neighbouring countries trusted Igor. However, if he were to marry this beautiful young girl who had just dropped, like a ripe plum, into his lap, then an alliance with the neighbouring kingdom of Parvania would ensure a more secure future. And of course as ruler not only of Breconia but of Parvania too he would have access to an increased supply of virgins.

The only difficulty was that whereas the virgins offered in tribute could be taken in any way he pleased (and Igor preferred them to struggle, it was more exciting), marriage required more finesse. It would need, there was no doubt about it, consent. He could not simply drag a bound girl to the altar and compel the priest to marry them. Consent had always been a problem for him. That he was physically hideous he well knew, and women were invariably repelled by him at first sight. Such responses, repeated down the years, had embittered his already coarse view of women, so that his manner now was invariably brusque, surly, even hostile. He no longer bothered to try and ingratiate himself. Force was his recourse, unless a woman was persuaded by huge amounts of alcohol or generous helpings of money. His first impressions of Yolande suggested that she would not be likely to respond to either. So what was to be done?

Bick, his advisor, had counselled patience. He argued that if the girl was locked up for long enough, she would come around. You don’t need to force her, he said, just make things a bit uncomfortable, and extremely boring. At Bick’s suggestion Yolande was locked into a leather hood. If she could not see the prince, she would not prematurely reject him on the grounds of his ill-looks, Bick reasoned. He did not explain this reasoning to the prince, who was sensitive about his appearance, arguing merely that the hood would cut her off from the world and force her thoughts inward, onto her predicament. It was also at Bick’s suggestion that she be manacled, which he said would serve to reinforce her sense of imprisonment. Bick got considerable pleasure from supervising the making and fitting both of the hood and the manacles. He took advantage to feast his eyes on the naked princess, since he derived special pleasure from the sight of girls under such restraints.

But Bick did not know Yolande. In defence of her chastity she would endure any amount of discomfort and boredom, and even worse. Those who knew Yolande best thought they understood her. She had no sexual feelings, they agreed; her purity was absolute, unblemished by the slightest taint of desire, and fiercely guarded, though in this they were eventually proved mistaken. It was true that Yolande gave every impression of chastity, of a mind that was above all carnal pleasures, devoted only to the service of her country. When appointed she was the youngest general in the army, and though there were those quick to say that her royal blood had secured the position, none of the soldiers were of that opinion. Her promotion was, in their view, richly deserved by virtue of her bravery, her self-discipline and qualities of leadership.

Her seeming lack of interest in sexual matters was grounded in strong feelings about such things, about the propriety of a royal princess indulging in impure pursuits. She felt very firmly that such things were below her dignity. There is no doubt that her views and conduct were much influenced by the activities of her sister. Perhaps if Thalyssa had not been a slave to her appetites (and if her appetites had not been so depraved), then Yolande might have felt less obliged to assert her own virtue. Perhaps; and yet her purity of conduct apparently went in tandem with an equal purity of mind. Yolande did not want to pursue the pleasures of the flesh; she had no interest.

Or so her companions thought. So too thought the princess herself, as she grew to womanhood. She had never acquired the habit of masturbation, which so many young girls engage in regularly. She thought self-abuse degrading, nor had she any desire to practise it. Instead, she threw her youthful energies into other physical activities, in particular those most suited to a military career: horse-riding, archery, wrestling, sword-play. Her physical activities so tired her out that even if she had been inclined towards erotic pursuits it is unlikely she would have had the energy to indulge them.