by Evie North
Simon glared at him but Yolanda shook her head when he would have berated the little man.
“Please, no. He is right. There is nothing to be done. Sir Edward planned this. He wanted no other man to touch me, and if he died in the Holy Land he wanted me to die too.”
Ulfred shrugged regretfully. “You must find the man who fashioned it, my lady. Find this man and beg him to set you free.” And then he left them alone.
Simon sat down on the stool by the fire and bowed his head. “I thought . . . I hoped . . .”
“I know, my love. It is not your fault.”
“Perhaps I chose the wrong man,” he looked up, suddenly hopeful. “He was supposed to be the best, everyone said he was, but perhaps he wasn’t. I must look further. There must be someone—”
Yolanda shook her head.
She came and knelt beside him, wincing at the scrape of the metal girdle. “You have done everything you can, Simon.”
“No, I haven’t! There is still Taskill. The blacksmith said he was in Scotland. I will go there,” he said with certainty. “I will find Taskill.”
“Sing me a song on your lute,” she said softly. “Soothe me with your tales of perfect love, Simon.”
So he did, and she closed her eyes and listened to him, and he pretended not to see her tears.
***
Taskill was not in Scotland but it was close enough.
It took Simon so long to find him that he almost gave up, and then someone in an alehouse made mention of him, and the next thing Simon was standing in an upstairs room in Taskill’s narrow house.
The room was dark despite the candles flickering in the draft from the door. Simon edged closer but didn’t feel he could speak until the tall, thin man in his long tunic actually looked up at him.
He was stooped over some parchments, and his lips were moving silently as he read, straggly grey hair falling forward around his narrow, lined face.
So this was Taskill, the warlock, the man who had made Yolanda’s girdle. Simon eyed him suspiciously, wondering what sort of man would do such a thing to a woman. He didn’t have long to wait.
Taskill sat back and looked up, turning his head slowly until his gaze was fixed on Simon. His eyes were so dark they looked like holes in his head and even the candlelight did not reflect in them.
“You are here to ask me about Sir Edward Arbuthnot,” he said, his voice oddly light for such an intimidating man.
“I am here on behalf of his wife, Lady Yolanda—Sir.”
The man smiled faintly, not really a smile at all.
Simon straightened his back and lifted his chin. “Now that her husband is dead she wants to be free. She asks you for your help, Taskill. She asks you for the key.”
Taskill shook his head, as if Simon was a naughty child to be scolded. “There is only one key and Sir Edward kept it. There is only ever one key.”
“But surely . . . you must make provision for the woman if the husband dies?”
“Why?” Taskill said, and now he sounded bored. “I am paid for my work. I am no one’s conscience. What happens afterwards is not my business.”
Simon had known men like this before but somehow Taskill seemed worse. That he would care so little for the plight of the women he helped to imprison. For beautiful Yolanda.
Taskill must have seen the hatred in his eyes and it only made his smile grow. “You want her for yourself,” he said, and it wasn’t a question.
“I love her. I want to help her. What she decides afterwards, that is for her.”
Taskill laughed, a low mocking sound. “Very brave of you, very knightly. Very noble. I imagine it was a man exactly like you who Sir Edward hoped to thwart.”
Simon took a step nearer, although the man made him feel sick. There was an evil miasma about him that contaminated everything it touched.
“But there must be something you can do. A man like you, so clever, must have some solution,” he said, trying flattery.
“There is a spell I know . . .” He tapped his fingers on the parchments before him and Simon noticed his nails were long and curved. Talons rather than human nails. “You wish to copulate with the lady?” he said it with distaste, as if he could not imagine anything more unpleasant.
“I love her. I wish to lay with her and give her the pleasure her husband never gave her.”
Taskill waved a hand at him, dismissing his fine words. “You wish to copulate with her,” he repeated. “I may be able to help you there. But there are conditions.”
“What conditions?”
The black eyes fixed on him, and Simon could see that after all they were eyes not holes. He could see the gleam of them as Taskill leaned forward, licking his lips.
“The act will take place in a different cosmos from this one. A celestial, magical world. You will not be touching each other’s flesh, but your minds will be copulating, and it will seem real to you.”
Simon frowned. “So Yolanda will not be free? She will still be locked up in the belt? It will not be real?”
Taskill did that wave of his hand again. “I cannot undo what has been done with the belt. I cannot remove it without the key, and Sir Edward took the key. Each belt I make is unique, there is no other like it. That is the beauty of my work. I give my client something that is unlike anything else in the entire world.”
Simon wondered if the man wanted applause. He would rather have run him through with his sword.
“You want the woman?” Taskill insisted coldly. “Then this may be the one and only chance you both have to quench that fleshy thirst.” He coughed, but then Simon realised he was laughing.
“What is this spell?” he demanded, thinking he would listen but he would not say yea to anything without Yolanda’s agreement. He did not trust this man, if he was a man.
Taskill explained it to him, watching him all the while, and then he reached up to a shelf above his desk and pulled down an opaque glass bottle. He opened the stopper and poured some crushed herbage into his palm, sniffed it, nodded, and wrapped whatever it was into a torn portion of parchment. He took up his pen and drew some strange symbols on it, reminding Simon of the symbols on Yolanda’s belt.
“But . . .” Simon held the twist of paper in his hand, feeling as if it was burning his skin. “What do you want for this spell? What is your fee?”
Taskill rubbed his hands together and suddenly he seemed almost genial. “There is no fee. Sir Edward paid me enough for the belt, and you have put your case well, young man. Take it and lay with your lady, enjoy her this first and final time.”
But Simon did not trust him, and he was disappointed that what he’d been given was so far less than what he’d hoped for. One time with Yolanda? How could it be enough for either of them? And yet if it was all they would ever have . . . ?
He would let Yolanda decide, he told himself, as he left Taskill and set off on the long journey back to Arbuthnot Castle. It would be up to her if they ever used this spell.
***
Yolanda turned the paper over in her hand distastefully. When she opened it she sniffed the crushed dried leaves and wrinkled her nose. “There is nothing I can smell that is familiar. Perhaps a little rue . . .”
“Can rue harm us?”
“I don’t think so.” Her eyes rose to Simon’s doubtfully. “It would only happen once?” she asked. “And it would be magic, not real. We would think it was real but it would not be real.”
“That is what he said.”
Of course it could not be real, Yolanda thought sadly, not with the belt still imprisoning her. And with no key then what hope had she of ever being freed? If this was all she and Simon would ever have together, this one moment, then surely whatever risks they took were worth it?
“Did you trust Taskill?”
Simon held her hand in his, looking down at their clasped fingers. “I did not like him. I do not think he is a good man.”
“What if this spell harms us in some way—I don’t mean the herbs
, I mean whatever magic he has laced it with—what then?”
“We will not risk it,” he said firmly and reached to take the packet from her other hand.
Yolanda’s fingers closed tightly over it. She took a breath. “Simon, I want to do it. I want to be with you, and if this is our only chance, our one chance, then I am willing to take it.”
“Are you certain?” he whispered, gazing into her eyes.
She nodded. “Yes, I am certain. I love you, Simon, and I want you.”
He kissed her gently, and she clung to him.
“Tonight,” she whispered in his ear.
When the castle was still and quiet, Yolanda opened the door to Simon. They held each other a moment, and she felt excited but frightened, too. Simon seemed calm, but there was a gleam in his eye when he looked at her, as if he was already imagining their bodies melding together.
They had both waited so long.
Surely, Yolanda thought, nothing could go wrong?
Simon heated wine over the coals in the fire and then he tipped the herbs into it, stirring them around and around, murmuring words at the same time. The smell of the herbs in the wine was making her head spin a little and his words echoed in her head so that she couldn’t understand them properly.
“Yolanda . . . bodies joined . . . let us be one . . .”
There were other things he said, too, but when he held the wine to her lips and she sipped she was so dizzy she no longer cared. Then he sipped too. And her again, and him again, until the wine was all gone.
Outside the wind roared past the castle, and she felt as if the entire room shook with the force of it. There was a scent in the air, not just from the wine and the herbs, but something else, something oversweet and rotten. Yolanda stretched out among the cushions on the rugs on the floor, her body suddenly very sensitive to the warm air, the press of the fabrics, the blood beneath her skin.
She tugged off her robe, and cupped her own breasts, feeling the nipples tightening. Her hair was plaited and she reached up, dragging her fingers through it until it fell about her like a dark cloak.
“Simon,” she moaned, and ran her hands over her body, down over her belly to her hips, and there was nothing but bare flesh.
The chastity belt was gone!
Gasping, wide-eyed, she half sat up to see and it was true. The belt was gone, just her own skin in its place. Fingers shaking she pressed them to herself, running them up and down her thighs, her hips, over her womanly parts.
Yolanda looked up and saw that Simon was gazing at her open-mouthed. He gave a wild sort of laugh, and then he was touching her, his callused hands rough against her skin and feeling so wonderful. He laughed again, his fingers pushing inside her, again rougher than she liked, and startled she looked into his face.
There was so much lust in him, it frightened her, but only for a moment, because suddenly the same lust took hold of her, and they were grappling like animals on the floor, and she could feel the hard length of his cock nudging at her. She opened her thighs, fingernails digging into his buttocks as he drove deep inside her.
Desire, lust, it was like a hunger that drove them. She could feel him, could taste his mouth against hers, and when he bit her lip and she bled, it only fed the wildness inside her.
And yet there was something wrong. Far back in her mind something was struggling to be heard.
He thrust again, deep and rough, fingers forcing her thighs further apart. And then, as the climax roared toward them, he cleared his throat.
Yolanda froze. Her eyes opened.
It could not be, it could not be. But the man above her, the man enjoying her body with so much selfish lust, wasn’t Simon. It was Sir Edward Arbuthnot.
Yolanda cried out, striking at his face, trying to free herself.
Rage filled his fleshy features and he grabbed at her hands, forcing them up above her head and holding them there. “Bitch,” he hissed. “When will you learn you are mine.”
Yolanda twisted her body, arching her back and throwing him off her. He rolled to the side, cursing her, and then reared up, his hand clenched into a fist ready to strike her.
“Simon!” The word was wrung from her, a cry from her heart. She covered her head, folding herself into a ball, knowing well the pain that always came when her husband was thwarted.
Silence. Stillness. After a while she heard the fire crackle. Slowly she removed her protective arms enough so that she could see with one eye.
Simon was sitting with his back to her and she could see his shoulders shaking. He was crying.
With a gasp, Yolanda jumped up, and at the same time she felt the metal clinging to her hips, the rough scrape upon her flesh. The belt was back—it had never left her.
“Simon,” she whispered, sliding her arms about him and resting her cheek against his bent head. “Oh Simon.”
“Taskill tricked us,” he said, his voice low and husky. He sounded furious. “The spell was for Sir Edward, not us. He planned this. He wanted you even from beyond death.”
Yolanda shuddered. “Yes, he used our love to make us suffer even more. I suppose he thought that there might be someone I would risk everything for, to spend just one night with him, and he wanted to stop that from happening. He wanted to take your place, Simon.”
Simon turned into her arms, and she could see the ravages pain had made to his handsome face and loved him all the more for caring so much. He stroked her cheek, where he would have violently struck her if she hadn’t fought him and brought him back to himself.
“I could feel him inside me,” he murmured now, blue eyes shocked as they met hers. “Full of thoughts that were not mine. Could never be mine.”
Yolanda kissed his lips, gently, with love.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I should never have trusted Taskill.”
She brushed his fair hair back from his brow. “We wanted to believe. I so wanted to believe we could have one night together. But I see now that we never will.”
“Yolanda . . .”
“I want you to go.”
He stared at her mutely, not pretending not to understand what she meant. Yolanda was telling him to leave forever.
“Because I love you, I am letting you go. I will not keep you here with a woman who cannot be a full lover to you. Who may well die if we try.”
“Marry me, Yolanda. I will spend my days loving you.”
“No. Go and find a proper wife, my love.”
“I will not leave you,” he whispered.
“But you will. You must. I order you to go.”
They argued into the dawn light, but she was firm. She would not have him here, not when she would never be free of the metal belt, and nothing he could say would persuade her. Love, for Yolanda, was sacrifice, and she was sacrificing her own happiness for his.
So Simon sang her a song accompanied by his lute, the tears rolling down his cheeks, and she wept with him, and then she kissed him gently and sent him on his way.
***
It was the most difficult thing she had ever done, sending Simon away, but Yolanda knew it was the right thing. He would never have given up. He would have made himself ill with trying to find a solution, and Yolanda knew that Sir Edward and Taskill had created this belt to withstand every effort to release her.
She was trapped, just as she had been when she was married to him. She would never marry again and never have children; she would never be loved as she wished to be. So she tried to find happiness in simple things, in ordering her castle and her estate, in seeing that her servants and tenants were fed and well treated, in travelling about her lands in her litter.
Yolanda knew she was loved by all her people and she was glad of that, but at night she still dreamed of Simon and his warm skin and his kisses. And she tried very hard to hope he had found someone else, as he deserved, and not to feel jealous at the thought of him holding another in his arms.
She understood at last that she had found that perfect love she so crave
d, but for the sake of love she had had to give him up.
***
The sun was burning hot as the ship reached the island of Cyprus. Simon trudged about the streets, weak from sea sickness and the illness that had overcome him on the road in France and lingered ever since. He had met many pilgrims heading toward Jerusalem, but few knights. The Crusade had ended in a truce with Saladin, and as for Cyprus itself, King Richard had given it to the Knights Templar who had promptly lost it to the Lisignan family from France.
Some of the Knights Templar had stayed on, but the fortress outside which Simon stood had been ruined when the Cypriot people took up arms against their rule. The church which sat at a distance from the crumbling fortress was intact at least, and with its thick stone walls and squat square shape it looked as if it had also been built to withstand a siege.
Standing before it, Simon could hardly believe this was the place he’d travelled so long to find. But all the surviving knights who remembered Sir Edward, had assured him that this was where the man’s mortal remains lay.
Inside the dim interior, where the air was blessedly cool, he could see the murals on the walls and the dark shape of the bell hanging in the circular belltower above him. There was a small chapel in the aisle, just as he’d been told, and when he stepped inside he could see, by the wooden carvings reminiscent of English churches, that someone of importance lay here.
There was a stone effigy upon the lid of the tomb and his name was written at the base, and another line in Latin, which he more or less interpreted.
Sir Edward Arbuthnot.
Brave Crusader.
The effigy was wearing full Crusader’s armour and holding a sword. Simon thought his face looked smug, as if he knew what he’d done to his wife and it pleased him to think of her, his captive until her own death. He probably thought he’d take her soul as well, but Simon was determined more than ever not to let him.
A priest was hovering in the background. “You knew the man?” he said, his eyes curious.
“Yes. I have come to pay my respects.”
