Yvan awoke with an aching yawn. Hours had passed, though how many he could not say. He had arrived at the massive, stone manor in the latter hours of the morning, when pangs of hunger hounded his heft in desperate desire for a morning meal. That gnawing hunger now nagged far more noisily when he at last rose from the state of somniferous nothingness to which he knuckled under. Yvan clocked the current time, waning twilight, by the extra chill in the cold wind and the crepuscular light coming in from the unglazed windows of the cachot where he was being kept. The knight took note of his surroundings: a cold cell in the castle’s crypt, closed by a gate of heavy iron bars, furnished with only a small stool, a chamber pot, and a bed of hay upon which his head was rest upon.

The knight then noticed there was no trace, nary a piece, of his plate or mail left upon his person. All his armour, even his coif and aketon. Supine Yvan was stripped and left in only the soft fabric of his undergarments. The cold cut through the thin cloth of his stocking and linen tunic with ease and crept into his bones. He ardently bemoaned the absence of his aketon, the added warmth of which he now ached for, and he chastised himself for having ever carped about its added bulk and heat any time when he had been bestride his courser under the scorching summer sun. Yvan now yearned for such calefaction.

He then beheld that his hands and feet were held by heavy chains, their weight was such that in his weary state, he could scarcely make them work as he wished. Yvan felt an immense and unnatural fatigue in his flesh. And his mind, though recently rested, could not wrangle a clear thought. Through this menacing malaise, however, it came to mind to inspect his wound. The knight manned himself up to face the damage to his flesh pole, fearful though he was of what he would find. With some struggle, he sluggishly reached for the spot where the foul seductress had supped from him and found it still without feeling. Fecund no longer, his phallus was atrophied and all the more meagre. Ireful and impotent, Yvan inveighed against the ignoble Countess who had made useless the meat of his manhood.

His weeping and wailing, however, was interrupted by the sound of a familiar voice, reciting some verse aloud to herself:

par mi le cuer d'un amoreus talent,                                               a longing for love into my heart;

oncore i est li cous que j'en reçui.                                                 the wound I received there is still fresh.

Hearing Rothilde’s voice, Yvan strains his still weak eyes, and though his vision remains blurred and hazy, he realises that Rothilde has been residing nearby, just outside his cell, in observation. He calls out to her in desperation.

“Aha, awake at last, are we?” the duplicitous woman asked as she approached.

As she entered the oubliette, Yvan spied that in her palm she possessed a pocket-sized volume of poetry. Rothilde was wrapped in neither the rough servant’s robes she had been wearing when Yvan reached the castle nor the bright plate and brawny mail that had bedecked her body before she had departed from Arelat those many months ago. She was, at present, accoutered in an array of the finest apparel and raiments, subtly flaunting her flowing robe, finished with fine-furred ermine, that reached to the floor. It was a sumptuous, hooded houppelande of the verdant green as her eyes, which hid not her physique. Her well-honed muscles had melted away, revealing the soft and feminine form beneath. It was an uncanny state in which to see the once valiant knight, but Yvan could not deny her beauty. Her head went unhooded and exposed her hyacinthine hair arranged in florid braids. Heavenly gems were entwined in her tresses. She wore nothing on her face; her neck was naked, and her shoulders were bare to both back and breast. She was a strange and stunning sight to behold.

“Rothilde, ma soeur, what in heaven’s name is happening in this horrid place? What do you want with me and …” he paused, “and, Dear God, are you wearing?”

His questions, however, fell on deaf ears.

“Do you not just adore this darling ode, Yvan?” she asked before continuing her recitation:

Li cous fu granz, il ne fet qu'enpoirier,                                           The wound was great and can only get worse,

ne nus mires ne m'en porroit saner,                                               nor can any doctor cure me

se cele non qui le dart fist lancier.                                                  except her who shot the arrow.

Se de sa main i daignoit adeser,                                                     If she deigns to touch it with her hand,

bien en porroit le coup mortel oster a tout le fust,                       she would take away that mortal woun, at least the shaft,

dont j'ai grant desirrier;                                                                   which I greatly want.

mès la pointe du fer n'en puet sachier,                                          But she cannot draw out the iron point,

qu'ele bruisa dedenz au cop doner.                                               for that broke off inside my heart when the arrow struck.

 

Dame, vers vous n'ai autre messagier                                            Lady, I have no other messenger to you

par cui vous os mon corage envoier                                              with whom I dare send you my heart

fors ma chançon, se la volez chanter.                                            except my song, if you consent to sing it.

Yvan was dumbstruck by the chevalier’s cavalier comportment. He could scarcely conceive of what could be occurring in her corrupt mind as she stood before the half-corpse of her old childhood companion.

Again, she spoke: “This chanson bespeaks the love I feel for my incomparable and bewitching Countess, Yvan—if you were curious as to why I was reciting it to you just now.”

“I care not to hear your celebrations for the malevolent maiden who has molested your mind.” Yvan roused himself as best he could. “She has made you anathema to mankind, indoctrinating you into her sinful and indecent ways. What you feel is not love; it is perversion. Would be better were you the consort of demons; at least they would not be of your own sex.”

Alas, as soon as the last word passed from his lips, Yvan was dealt a stinging strike across the face with the small bound book. “You should be mindful of your situation, and of your manners, Yvan.”

Yvan scoffed and spoke, “Beat me as be your wish, but I will still bear my tongue at your base and blasphemous behaviour. And I shall continue to curse the bitch that has befouled you.”

"By all means, Yvan, oblige yourself, make your words bite, because I shall beat you all the same. Let your barbs be your only solace.” Rothilde replied as she wrenched him forward by the robust chain, wrangling his wrists.

Yvan stumbled forward, his knees slammed on the flagstone. He was utterly unable to recover his footing before Rothilde dragged him roughly from his cell. The knight tried to resist and wrestle against Rothilde, but there was still no fight in his body.

“Why are you doing this? I suppose you have some sick sensation of love for her, but need my flesh to pay the price? What have I done to deserve it? I can determine no deeds. If it is merely to please your Mistress, it is an unnecessary cruelty that you should assert yourself against. My condemnation of your Countess can surely not account for cruelty such as this?” Yvan pleaded in protestation.

“It is not for her pleasure,” she corrected, without deigning to look back at the writhing form trailing behind her, “The pleasure I’ll partake in portioning out pain upon you is mine and mine alone, pompous boy.”

“Pray God, a reason at least!”

“You need not beg, Yvan, though beggary befits you. I will tell all in time.”

She brought Yvan before a broad oak door at the end of the corridor, and, kicking it open, she tossed him thoughtlessly to the floor with a thud. Yvan gulped at the grim sight before him. The gruesome room was replete with all manner of ghastly gadgets and brutal contraptions, and riggings born to bind and break the body. Still, he nearly sighed in relief seeing that no Countess was waiting for him in this hellish chamber. That there was a fire roaring in the hearth was another fleeting blessing. Yvan savoured its heat while he was able.

“May I ask where your Mistress is now? Out prowling about on the hunt for more prey, perhaps. I pray God, she has not found my steed. Or has the foul beast draining him dry as well?”

“Of course not,” Rothilde smirked, as she snatched the large meathook that clung to a dangling from the ceiling. “Ma demoiselle does not drink from livestock like some common flea; her feedings are a gift to those from whom she sups.”  She yanked down the hook and used it to snag the snivelling Yvan’s shackles. “As for your fine and sweet gelding—an all too fitting horse for you, I should say—he is safe in the stables, lovingly attended to.”

“By whom? Has that monster manipulated more feeble-minded maidens into service?”

Yet Yvan’s inquiry was interrupted when he was heaved up from his home on the floor, with a few strong wrenches of a wheel. The knight was hoisted until his toes could scarcely trace the stone below him. His arms strained painfully in their sockets.

She left him hanging aloft as she made to the far side of the room, where she began to strip.

Even in agony, Yvan could only stare in awe at the form before him. Removing her robes, she revealed a chiffon chemise with puffed sleeves that sat low on her shoulders, and a strip of emerald silk that slightly cinched at her waist.

Rothilde had always been beautiful; she had, however, hewn herself rough. One could no longer say that this was the case. She was still statuesque in stature, but she had lost her breadth. The overall effect of her was not of a gallant, as it had once been, but of some Grecian dryad or demigoddess. Her arms had sluiced their muscles and had become slender and sylphlike, though, as Yvan had learned from her strikes, there was still such strength stored within them. There was also now a pleasant curve to her breasts, her belly, and her hips; it was on display through the delicate fabric adorning her body. She looked positively pampered. And were they to see now, she should put all the shapely and seductive ladies of Arles to shame. Rolthide had always been as one of the boys, although Yvan had prided himself on seeing the feminine loveliness beneath her brawn. Yvan had never seen the woman he had so long desired look so beautiful. And yet she repulsed the knight, for she, like Eve in Eden, had revealed her fickle and duplicitous nature.

Yvan shuddered when, after Rothilde had set aside her gorgeous gown, she returned to him gripping a linked length of metal chain. The tyrannical woman twirled it, testing its weight. She flicked it, and Yvan felt the ferrous loops lick against his skin.

“If you desire to know why I do what I am about to do, I’ll tell you now,” she spoke, while she made Yvan taste the chain more thoroughly upon his back. “You see, Yvan, I have always abhorred men. If I have acquitted myself in a mannish fashion, it was not out of admiration of your repugnant sex, it was because I was made to feel ashamed of my feminine qualities. I feared the fate that is forced upon the fairer sex.” A hasher hit. “Though this is not to say I was always aware of the motives behind my behaviour. As a child, like any other, I acted without understanding. And it is for this reason that instead of hating that bloated, belligerent bastard who beat my mother on the merest of whims, I reacted with revulsion at my mother’s wretched and piteous state.” She struck harsher still. “I resented my sisters in turn, for they were simple and frivolous, and who thought only of the day in which they’d be sold into bondage under that sorry sacrament called marriage. They were sows lined up, smiling, for slaughter.” Harsher still again. “My brothers, by contrast, were crude and cruel, but they were at least not fools. They would never consent to be stripped of their name and sold off to some strutting ass to be slave to sexual advances, so would I?”

The knight gnashed his teeth against the pain as Rothilde’s pace quickened.

“My only choice was to man myself up. I renounced my title and denounced my sex.” Rothilde said bitterly.

She swung higher and sharply stabbed the knight’s shoulder. A small scream sprang from his lips.

“But this brought few boons. The levy for spurning a life of servitude was living one of solitude. Living in the lonely land between the sexes left me loathed and lonesome, utterly isolated—you’ll soon know how such isolation feels.”

Yvan spoke with a strained voice: “But did I not try to ease your isolation? Was I not eager to earn your friendship?”

“Ah, yes, sensitive Yvan, such a sweet, shy boy you were. Yes, you were always there, but you sickened me most of all. Like all meek-mannered men, your arrogance astounds.”

Yvan tried to speak in his defence, but Rothilde gave him her worst.

“Fuck your falsehoods about friendships. Do you think I couldn’t ascertain your amorous intent? I tried to make myself undesirable in the eyes of men and yet somehow that made you desire me all the more, as if I was presenting you a challenge where I myself was the prize.”

She whipped wildly, covering the full breadth of his back from shoulder to shin.

“You had the gall to believe you could make a good woman and wife out of me.”

Three quick strikes stung across his ass.

“A knave like you could never. My comely Countess could, though. I am only for women to win,” she said. “My Mistress has made me know the merriments of womanhood as never before. It does me glad to be girlish and gay for my great Lady, for her love is liberating!”

Rothilde rested her whipping arm a moment in reverie. “Mayhap I had some secret motive unknown to myself even, when I set out in search of Countess Kalina. I had heard tell of her predilections to be sure. Or maybe it was merely fate that brought me to her embrace.”

Breath ragged, body shaking in its bondage, Yvan watched blood dripping down from his wounds. As he did, though, he thought of Christ on the cross and the suffering he sustained.

In God’s name, he declared, “Do not delude yourself that this is your destiny, dearest Rothilde! Do not turn your back on the Lord. This temptress was placed in your path to test your piety. She promises only your eternal damnation. But the Almighty is infinitely merciful!”

Livid and like a torrent of lightning, Rothilde lashed Yvan. “Don’t you dare speak of my duties to the Lord, Yvan. I decry the destiny He has ordained for me. And I denounce the Father in Heaven and he in the home—and so shall you soon enough.”

Yvan’s cries of pain changed to choked sobs. “I will never surrender my faith in the Lord; I shall endure any travail He shows me.”

“Even now, your arrogance still amazes. But note well that your arrogance is also the primary cause of your present wretched position.”

She traced round to the front of him to meet his tear-streaked face. Staring into his eyes, she spat in his face.

“You are here because you did not follow my warning. You could have fled when I told you, but you failed to listen. This punishment is the price you must pay.”

“How could you expect me to abandon you? I care for you dearly, Rothilde, how could I leave,” Yvan countered.

“Of course, you had to remain. How else could you have brought me back home to make me your bride and broodmare? So, you stubbornly stayed.”

Yvan lifted his head weakly: “Would it have mattered? Had I not already fallen for your trap? It is not as though that monster would have allowed me to make off?”

Rothilde gripped the snivelling Sieur by the chin: “Yes, she would have. Had you heeded a woman’s wisdom and warning, you would be free now. You would have been spared my spurns. But you failed.” She flogged him across the torso. Searing pain tore through the knight’s tender flesh. “You did not heed my words. You did not trust that I would perhaps have a better idea of what was at work within these walls. Although I had succumbed to the ‘monster’, surely you would not. You believe yourself superior to me! Despite my years more experience! Despite my deeds which outnumber yours sixfold!” She stamped each statement with a strong strike from her chain. “You even had the temerity to doubt and mock my Mistress!” Another triad of torturous blows.

Flaps of flayed flesh hung from his form, and ribbons of blood ran forth from the rough lacerations. The pain proved too much for the poor knight. Suffering snuffed out all other senses. His body no longer responded to his commands. His fingers would not flex, and his head could only hang. Pride was pried out of his flesh.

“Please, oh Lord, have pity on me! I do not have the resolve of the Redeemer; I possess not his capacity for pain. If this be your means of purgation, please let this be purgation enough,” Yvan wept.

“You still do not get it! Do not beg Him. If it is mercy you want,” her whip wracked at his ribs, “Beg me.”

“Mercy, mercy, I beg you! I am sorry, ma soeur! You have been aggrieved, and I am sorry. Your wrath and redress are just, but please, I pray you, take pity.”

“Now that is a sound that strikes my ear more sweetly,” she said. “Has this whelp been whipped well enough?”

“I say to you wholly humble, he has,” Yvan whimpered. “Does this mean that you shall release me, Rothilde. I promise I shall leave this château fully chastened, if it does.”

“It certainly does not,” Rothilde replied coldly. “I said you shall never leave while you still live, and that is still true.” She turned her back to the boy.

“Rothilde, surely you can’t hate me so much as to kill me or to keep me cast down in some accursed cachot for the rest of my days.”

“I only obey my mistress. What will become of you rests on her whims.”

“But Rothilde, I beg you, do not entrust my fate to the blood-drinking Whore of Babylon!”

At that affront, the woman reared around, with fire in her eyes, and flogged the knight a final time.

“Lest you wish for another lashing, I’d caution you to keep quiet about the Lady Kalina.” As she spoke, Rothilde returned to the far corner of the room to redress herself. Draping her dress back over her chemise, which was now dappled with drops of blood. “It may interest you, Yvan, that this bitter lashing was not one of my loving Mistress’s intentions. It was an indulgence she graciously allowed me. My lady is not keen on such cruelty.”

During this, Yvan simply dangled, doddering limply in his shackles. His body was drenched in blood and sweat. His face was flushed from a deluge of tears. His mouth hung open; a long string of drool dribbled its way to the floor, where his precious fluids pooled. For the second time in God knew how many hours, blackness began to encroach on the borders of Yvan’s vision.

He had nearly slipped into unconsciousness when suddenly he was bowled back by a bucketful of water. It doused the heat that radiated from his wounded bod and washed away some of the wet mess that covered his form.

“No rest yet, I’m afraid.” Rothilde tossed the bucket aside. “Though, if you would like to know more about your new Mistress, now is the time to inquire.”

“Is there that much more to know?” Yvan attempted to rouse himself. His breath was slow and stertorous.

“So much. Though I shall only speak what is mine to share,” she said.

“Is she not simply one of Satan’s servants, a deathless demon—a witch or lamia, maybe, if the woman is mortal.”
        “Our Lady is no vassal and serves none but herself,” Rothilde swore. “Neither is she living lamia or immortal fiend. She is une revenante. La morte-vivante. She is a vampyre.”

“I know nothing of such horrors,” Yvan acknowledged.

“The Umayyad who hold the Holy Land say that it is the fate of the Giaour, or they who sin most foully against their Lord and His followers, to become a vampire. They curse the Giaour, saying: “Thy corpse shall from its tomb be rent: Then ghastly haunt they native place and suck the blood of all thy race.”* Though the Countess does consider her condition a curse. For her, it was a blessing and a boon to become a vampyre, for in becoming so, she was bailed out of the cursed life to which she was born. In death, she has blossomed like a butterfly, bursting forth from her chrysaline crypt as the most beautiful of creatures.

“But mark me, while I say she is no mere witch, nor she is some brainless, bloodthirsty beast— she is practised in the most powerful sorcery and pharmakeia. Nevertheless, she is not the one within these walls whom you need fear, Yvan.” Rothilde returned the ragged Yvan’s body to the earth and releasing him from the chain which held him aloft, he crumpled on the cold stone. Rothilde crouched in front of him, wearing a cocky grin, before she continued. “No, our Mistress is cute and caring. Never has there been one who spoke more sweetly or touched more tenderly. Her greatest cruelties are a kind of kindness, in their own way.

“I doubt you believe me, though I do desire to assuage your dubitation, so I will tell you the tale of how I came to love our Lady.”

* Thibaut de Champagne, “Tuit mes desire” (“All my desires”), a 13th-century courtly love song, or chanson, composed in the Old French dialect of langue d’oïl.

* Lord Byron, “The Giaour,” 756-8.