Belts and Cages

For R

The story is set during the Second Crusade. However this should be taken as a reference, I have no pretense of historical accuracy.

A castle in Brittany (Modern day France)

April 1147

The brilliant light of the mid-afternoon penetrated, with a yellow glow, through the windows of the castle's donjon, caressing the barely decorated stone walls.

At the centre of the room, Romaine de Chariton laid, completely naked, on her belly. Her sculptured buttocks stood firm and menacing like alpine mountains against a a topaz-tinged sky. in front a window, his resting elongated penis peeking in between the sides of the a dark bear fur which covered his shoulders, Jordan de Vieuxchateau was looking pensively outside.

"By tomorrow, at this time, I will be on my way to Jerusalem...", he whispered, without looking at her.

"Do you regret it?", she asked, looking at him with curiosity.

He returned her glance, and answered, with an ironic smile.

"I don't...after all, my departure was the condition set for this meeting, isn't it?"

"Yes...", it was her turn to smile.

She wore her nudity like a cloak, aware that her innermost core remained untouchable and unseen.

"Will you be faithful to me?", he asked, unable to conceal his anxiety.

"If you think I am a slut ready to open my legs to any man, you can leave now!", she replied, angrily.

"What about you? Are you going to be faithful to me in the Orient?"

"I will never betray you for another woman, whatever temptation the devil might set!"

"Is that so? I should trust your words?"

"I will promise on anything that is sacred to me!"

"And do you think that a similar promise should be enough for me, that I will be faithful to you?"

"Yes! Why do you ask?"

"Because it looks you have taken your precautions!"

Saying so, Romaine raised from the bed, opened a drawer in a wooden, and extracted some metal objects.

"Were you going to ask me to wear one of this?"

"How did you get that?", Jordan asked, unable to hide his surprise, and blushing.

"The village is small, and one of my maidservants is the sister of the iron smith", replied Romaine.

He had immediately regretted having followed his stupid, insecure friends, who had boasted that, before leaving for the Crusade, they were going to make sure that their wives, fiancées, and lovers were going to remain chaste in their absence.

"Yes, it was a bad idea...", Jordan agreed, sheepishly.

"Not at all! Actually, I made one for you too!" she answered triumphantly, extracting another set of metallic parts, loosely connected one to the other.

"Why don't you try it?" Romaine asked, mischievously "I'll try your present!"

Saying so, she took her chastity belt, slipped it from her feet, and after adjusting it, closed the little padlock that kept it in place.

"It fits perfectly! It's your turn now!"

Half-heartedly he picked his own harness.

Looking more carefully, it was made of a ring with a pin on top, and a thick pipe that served as a cock cage, on top of which there was a hook through which the pin could slip. A padlock could then be passed through the space left in the hook.

Jordan had known before the feeling of iron penetrating his flesh when in battle his enemies had wounded or hit him. That could happen when he sparred with other knights in training too. And he wore armors, of course. Was this designed to protect him, or to wound him, constantly, day and night?

"Let's roll a die! - suggested Romaine - whoever gets the higher score wins, and will keep the key of both padlocks."

What kind of game was this? He looked at Romaine's enigmatic eyes, as often, elusive.

He accepted to play and lost.

Port of Adalya (modern-day Turkey)

February 1148

During the last days, he had often thought of his reckless statement: " I will resist any temptation the devil will bring!"

Would he have really resisted, if his cock wasn't locked as it was and if its keys were not in Romaine's hands?

The devil had truly taken any possible shape during his trip to Palestine.

He had seen in these months the bewildering variety of forms Satan was able to summon: in Constantinople, he had seen women as white as marble, through which blood flew through the translucence of the skin, their eyes the palest tinge of blue, their hair the deep yellow of a wheat field. Going more to the East, he had seen veiled women whose large, black eyes were like cannon's balls, darting lightnings of fire.

The priests were fast to forgive the Christian princes who had undertaken the holy mission to rescue the sacred sites, so, supported by Saint Augustine's tolerance for prostitution, they had blessed their creation of harems, where they collected the most exotic specimens of female slaves. Here Jordan saw women so tiny that they could be held in the palm of a hand, their oblique eyes so mysterious that it was impossible to guess their thoughts, their black, silky hair shiny like precious stones, able to distract picas greedy for loot. Or bodies dark as the night, moving with the gravity of planets, their red lips inviting as a mature fruit.

He had felt his penis rebelling painfully against its constraints, and he had felt grateful that Romaine had imposed them on him.

Bruises had appeared on his limbs, where the iron rubbed his skin; luckily he could keep himself clean by moving a cloth between skin and iron.

He felt he was much closer to the true purpose of the pilgrimage: while his comrades seemed to happily hide under the cloak of the holiness of their goal and allow themselves any pleasure, he, like a hermit, was mortifying the flesh, fighting temptations like Christ himself or Saint Jerome.

For him, this observation was little more than a joke, but for Guibert, the chaplain who accompanied his party of Normandy's knights was a source of respect and admiration.

There are friendships that are borne, at least for one of the two parties, from a misunderstanding.

Guibert had grown fond of Jordan because he misunderstood the reason for his severity.

On his part, the knight tolerated the priest's company because of the ascendant he had on the other aristocrats.

It was a mix of cowardice and vanity.

He felt that there was violence in the abstractness of the priest's faith, in his deliberate ignorance of the reality of life, in his way of submitting it to the grand scheme of religion.

Jordan had seen the light leaving the eyes of the infidels forever, and it didn't seem so different from what had happened to his dead comrades. But for Guibert, the firsts were heading to Hell, and the others to Heaven.

The tall figure of Guibert projected a large shadow in his tent.

He came at night, venting his anger about the crude attitude of the others, for whom being blessed by God meant to be forgiven for any sin.

"They could pray to the Christ and the Holy Mother for a whole day, but their hearts would remain dry to true faith, like marble stones!", complained bitterly.

"Why can't they be like you? Why they don't understand the true purpose of their coming? "

Jordan, after a long day spent fortifying the camp, had washed and was wearing a silk robe.

"What is your secret? How's it you never forget your mission?"

The knight felt it was time to challenge the certainties of the priest.

He too, like the others, wasn't here to serve a God. In his case, he was here for a pact he shared with a Duchess in far away Brittany.

He slightly opened his robe, and the iron cage gleamed under the fire's lights.

"Are you wearing a harness on your ...sex?", asked Guibert in shock.

"...that's ....remarkable! You knew from the beginning how devious are the ways of temptation! Saint Origen castrated himself, but I felt it was too extreme, and if I may say, that it violates the sanctity of the body that God gave us but you, you found the way to mortify the body and keep your soul uncorrupted! You are a saint!"

Jordan looked silently at Guibert, the hint of a smile on his lips.

"...though this is not a vow to God, it's a pact I exchanged with the Lady I am devoted before I left..."

The knight felt a perverse joy in seeing the chaplain open his mouth in shock, unable to reply.

What he knew, of what moves an aristocrat, like him? Did he truly imagine he would share the stolid faith of the little people?

"So...this is not...for God...a woman had the pride to harness your manhood, to castrate you like an ox..."

"There's no castration, and this is a pact that we exchanged, her chastity too is protected by an iron gate.."

"But that is how it should be! Women left alone, fickle to search the comfort of religion, would abandon themselves to the sweet words of singers and buffoons..."

Guibert stopped as if he had a change of mind. It was his turn to smile.

"And who is the lucky lady?"

"As you know, our codes command utmost secrecy to protect the object of our worship. I am sure you understand it."

The priest nodded. "Indeed I know."

A servant was called to fill their cups of wine. They drank slowly, and they moved from that conversation to others, the usual gossiping about the enemy's strength, the quality of the different leaders of the Crusaders' field.

An hour later, Guibert returned to his own tent, and Jordan fell asleep soon after.

The Crusaders' camp at the siege of Damascus (Modern day Syria)

July 1148

There is nothing sadder for a warrior than dying before reaching the battlefield.

Yet this is what has happened to many of Jordan's comrades.

He regrets coming, there is nothing noble or holy in this enterprise. Romaine's faith had inspired him to a sterile endeavor, and now her letters too have dried up, for reasons he can't explain, but can imagine.

She is the jailer of his maleness, but how precious she considers her prisoner? Maybe she slowly forgets him.

He continues to write though, in the stillness of his tent, at night, trying to avoid listening to the raucous noises coming from outside, mixed to the moans of the sick.

He is happy that, after the night at Adalya, the priest Guibert has stopped coming. Lies become a heavy burden to carry over time.

So, he is surprised when he shows up. Maybe he came to wish him well before tomorrow's fight. Of course, he knows he will lead a small charge to test the Damascene resolution; he knows everybody's secrets.

There is something strange though in his triumphant expression: he comes in and then throws something on the table: it's the key of his cock cage.

Guibert looks at him, smiling:" We have found her and freed you from her sorcery. The witch has been burned almost a week ago."

There are moments that last an eternity, or better, that contain an eternity of details.

So just a moment passed from the priest's last word, and his severed head rolling, like a ball made of rags, on the carpeted floor.

Jordan could spend hours recalling that moment, how he had found the heavy sword in his hand, almost magically, how he had aimed thoughtlessly, a lightning of rage having stroked him. Guibert had been motionless, it seemed forever, like a wooden statue, when the sword crossed though his neck, as if his body was made of butter.

All objects in the tent - cups, knives, parchments, weapons, carpets, seemed to belong to a strange, silent chorus.

Jordan folded the head and the body in a worn out piece of cloth, pulled it out and threw it at the limit of the camp, where dogs and birds of prey would accelerate their corruption.Nobody paid attention to his shadow.

He returned to the tent, took the key, and removed the cage that constrained his sex.

He looked at his pelvis in the mirror, the grayish skin marked by small wounds and bruises. His penis too had marks. He tried to wake him up with lewd thoughts and memories, but remained limp in his hand.

He called the young maid who served him and ask to get ready to clean him.

She too was to a woman unlike any she had seen in his life. She had thick, curly hair, lips slightly curved, red as ruby, and eyes yellow like that of a wolf. Below the light, woolen tunic she betrayed a lean body, of a chaste femininity. She thought in a language he ignored.

He dropped the silk robe he wore and remain naked at the center of the tent.

She cleaned him with Aleppo soap, and then rinsed him with a wet a piece of cloth.

Her small, white hands were trained to ignore modesty, so she soaped his penis too and removed any stain, with fastidious care.

Finally, his cock woke up, and an erection blossomed between the girl's hands. She finished rinsing it, and then remained on her knees, her mouth almost brushing the gleaming tip of his glans.

"Should I suck it, Sir?"

Jordan took her hands and made her raise.

"No, you can go now. Return tomorrow, after the battle."

Tomorrow, he would be a corpse in the battlefield, and if he won't find death there, then she would know the depths of his evil.