Chapter 1

“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?”