An execution in Arelate

An execution in Arelate

Part I: The trial

When Marcus Severian heard Lucullus’ story he turned to his second centurion. “Better send a squad to check there’s a tree trunk free on the north road, and a hurt-beam to fit it. One way or the other, I reckon someone’s going to climb the tree over this.”

When Lucius Murena, agent for the coadjutor Agrippa, heard the story he called in agents from the docks and put them to new duties, to watch the house of Livia Cuxena, note who went in and out, and follow anyone who left.

Livia Cuxena, in the room that served as her business place, laid down the sheet she was studying and flicked a final bead on the abacus. She breathed in deeply through narrowed nostrils, the white line round her tightened lips showing her anger. Lucullus had syphoned nearly two talents from her businesses. Well, so much the worse for that oily Greek. When he returned he would suffer until he told her where to recover every denarius, and then she would have him crucified in the courtyard for every one of her staff to see. Lucullus might have bought his freedom and been a prosperous man, as many of her slaves had done, but instead he had tried to snivel a fortune from her and was going to squeal his life out on a cross as an example to anyone who thought she was an easy mark.

Strange, she thought. She had done many hard things in her time, but never had she crucified a slave. But now she would. She would. And before he was nailed, Lucullus would tell where every denarius had gone.

This was why Lucullus had fled to the mansion of the governor’s legate in Arelate, and he had not gone empty handed. When he told the first centurion what he had learned in his furtive night time skulkings, Severian’s face had hardened and the steward had been escorted straight to Murena. This was his business. Unfinished business.

It was Murena who, four years before, had brought to an end the wave of brigandage that was racking this part of Transalpine Gaul. The road between Arelate and Arausio, thirty miles to the north, had been struck time and again: messengers, travellers, even convoyed groups of merchants butchered, purses with thousands of sestertii stolen, whole wagonloads of precious goods had vanished. Perhaps worst of all, bills sealed with the rings of knights and even a senator had been delivered to banks in Rome before the news of their owners’ deaths arrived, and the amounts syphoned out of their accounts had been enormous.

For two months after Murena’s arrival nothing had changed. Then, suddenly, a troop of Gallic horse had swept down as brigands were plundering a wagon train. Six of them had died, and another three were crucified outside Arelate’s gates. Six weeks later Murena’s police had repeated their coup. This time five were nailed up outside Arausio. That had ended it. The road had again become safe.

Murena knew, though, that he had only stamped on the fingers of the trouble. It was very clear that somewhere in Arelate someone had assessed the traffic, someone knew which messenger, traveller, group or wagon train would be worth seizing, knew when it would leave and how fast it would travel. And someone in Arelate had arranged the disposal of money and jewels, of many wagonloads of valuables. Someone had sent riders to Rome with sealed bills and organised massive frauds. The brigandage had stopped, but the brain in Arelate that had planned it all was still there, still flourishing no doubt on the garnered wealth. And that was Murena’s business, which sooner or later he would complete.

That day the keen antennae that had alerted Livia Cuxena to every change in Arelate’s wind failed her entirely. Her responses were swift and decisive as ever. Learning that Lucullus was gone, she summoned not one but three investigators to hunt him down. She wrote to the prefect of the customs imperiously, requiring him to ensure that a Greek – five foot six inches high, grey haired (but might dye it), paunchy and with a strawberry mark on his cheek – should be instantly apprehended and returned to her custody if he set his greasy face in the docks attempting to take passage. She could well afford to take that tone; her influence with the governor and the local politicians was amply sufficient to ensure that if the prefect crossed her his career would swiftly wither. The investigators and their agents would scour the roads leading from Arelate by land. Sooner or later she would have Lucullus. Eager for the hunt, she did not feel the breath of apprehension, did not consider that this might be her last day of power and freedom, her last day before arrest, flogging, crucifixion.

For that evening was the apogee of ten years rope-dancing, risk-taking, building her fortune. That evening the four chiefs of the consortium that ran Arelate’s grain trade, whose contacts ran from Spain to the Black Sea, from provincial governors to Roman proconsulars, were to dine with her as token that she was one of them. No longer merely a power in Transalpine Gaul but a player in the trade of the Empire itself. A token that Livia Cuxena had made it to the top.

With her plans for the destruction of the wretched Lucullus well in hand and several hours of other work concluded, Livia Cuxena was bathed in warm, scented water and massaged luxuriously by a skilled Syrian girl she had bought two years before. She had her tonsatrix arrange her hennaed hair in coiling rings that fell around her creamy shoulders. She was dressed in a gown of pale green silk that clung to her ripe body, with necklaces of gold and emerald that sparkled like her eyes.

It would have been unthinkable in Rome for a woman to occupy the head couch at a dinner party, and even in Arelate no one but Cuxena might have dared to so presume. But to the four of the consortium, it was entirely natural that this shrewdest, hardest of dealers would meet them as an equal now. Each of them had at one time or another tried to do her down, supposing that a 40-year-old widow would be unable to defend what her husband, ten years dead, had left her. Each had lost, but being practical men had realised that here was not an enemy to be revenged on but a force to be joined with.

And each had also found that Livia Cuxena had a voluptuous warmth of body that could give as much delight as the most practised courtesan in the most expensive brothel not just of Arelate but of Antioch or Alexandria. And this evening Livia Cuxena, at the height of her powers, was to move from being a force in Arelate to a power in the world.

It was early the next morning that Livia Cuxena felt the first tremor that signalled the collapse of her world. She had breakfasted frugally as was her habit – fresh bread and honey, fish and fruit – and was dealing briskly with her clients. As with the dinner, it would not have been imagined in Rome that a woman could receive clients, but Livia Cuxena did. Freedmen, tradesmen with obligations, civil servants who owed their positions to her intervention, potentially useful bankrupts saved by her aid, all these and others attended every morning like the clients of any Roman patron to offer their services or ask her aid. And Livia Cuxena dealt with them as efficiently as any man, giving a purse of money here with a graciousness that bound the recipient to enthusiastic service, a word of admonition there that could chill the offender to the bone, arranging tasks and combinations, all dealt with swiftly and efficiently, all done in under an hour.

As the last of her clients was leaving the doorkeeper came up, bowing, to tell her that the prefect of the customs was at the door. Her smile was vicious as she ordered the man to admit him. How punily ineffective Lucullus’ attempts at escape had been.

Her satisfaction turned to anger as she saw that the prefect had brought lictors with him. Insolent, jumped-up nothing. Bringing lictors into her house, their hob-nailed sandals on her mosaic floors. How dare he? She turned a glare on him that showed that his career was beginning to shrivel.

The prefect himself was utterly lost. Murena had summoned him, ordered him to bring Livia Cuxena to the legate’s mansion accompanied by four lictors – to arrest her if necessary, but bring her at once. If it were a choice between defying the coadjutor’s agent and offending Livia Cuxena, better the latter than the former, but it was a desperate choice.

“Livia Cuxena,” his voice quavered despite his best efforts. “I am required to bring you to the legate at once.”

Her eyes raked him like Greek fire. “Required by whom?”

“By Lucius Murena,” he squeaked.

“And you have brought lictors, to march me through the streets like a criminal, to visit the legate. I do not know what this is about, but this piece of mannerless insolence by a balding nothing will not be forgotten by me or by the people who matter in Arelate. I will go to the legate, and when this is done you had better get out of Arelate, get out of the Imperial service, crawl into the deepest crack you can find. Now get out. I will join you in the street where you belong. And get rid of those lictors you oaf.”

Lucius Murena was laying the evidence before Julius Placinus. The legate was frowning. He was not naturally quick on the uptake, and the idea that the wealthy and well-connected Livia Cuxena was a dangerous criminal was difficult to grasp. He should not be blamed. It was after all his first important post, and he had only held it for a matter of weeks. Governor’s nephew or not, to blunder in a matter like this could see him sent back to Rome with his tail between his legs and his rise up the greasy pole of the cursus honorum permanently blighted. These days membership of even the most ancient families no longer guaranteed one position and influence. Whereas Murena was Agrippa’s confidante, and Agrippa was coadjutor with the Augustus in ruling the Roman state. Murena’s network ran through all Arelate and the country round, and it was said that not a mouse built a nest without him learning of it.

The agent was tired, but he dismissed the tiredness as an irrelevance. Like Agrippa – like the Augustus himself – he could work for days on end and ignore the throbbing of headaches and the cramp of fingers or legs to present a front of crisp efficiency or diplomatic charm to those he was dealing with. That was what it took to rule, and that was what he did.

He had ridden back some hours before from Livia Cuxena’s villa three miles to the north. Armed with what Lucullus had told him, he had found all the evidence he needed: account books, letters, and most damning of all, five rings. Also, he had the testimony of Livia Cuxena’s slaves, of night-time meetings and of wagons brought to the villa. Lucullus’ story had been proved to the hilt.

Seated on his platform in the atrium, Julius Placinus looked every inch the Roman magistrate, whatever his inner qualms. Left leg thrust back and right leg out, immaculately togate, he waited as Livia Cuxena was brought before him. But impassive as he seemed, he was shaken by the glare in her eyes that was far more imperious than his own.

When she heard the charges laid, Livia Cuxena felt her stomach turn over. This was no matter of harbour dues or unpaid taxes. Not even a matter of neglected bribes. The long-forgotten plots confronted her. Utter and total ruin confronted her. As she was preparing to step onto the highest pinnacle of all, the ground had fallen from beneath her feet.

And nothing of this showed in her face. Only Murena, long skilled in interrogation and judgement, observed the flicker of horror in her eyes as she reared her head up in fury and began to fight. Who had dared make such an accusation? Information laid by your steward Lucullus. Lucullus! A thieving slave? How dare the legate charge her on such grounds? The rings. Planted by Lucullus of course!

For Julius Placinus it was like being caught in a tempest, but if he was to rise up the cursus honorum he could not fail this test. Face to face with Livia Cuxena he realised why she was a power in Arelate, for she was formidable, almost horrifying in her anger. But Rome’s rulers had not become masters of the world by showing doubt, and Julius Plancinus held his magisterial pose, kept his face stern, repressed the quiver of his lips. Calmly he produced fact after fact, and as the weight of evidence piled up Livia Cuxena’s defiance began to wilt a little.

Finally Murena rose. It was hardly proper, he suggested, that the accused should answer such charges alone and unassisted. Should not the legate suspend this session until she could arrange for someone to speak for her. Angrily she answered that before leaving her house she had sent for Aulus Satirius. Satirius was famous through all Transalpine Gaul as an advocate, had won desperate cases on a dozen occasions. And, although so eminent a man could hardly be a client to Livia Cuxena, he was deeply in her debt for the aid she had given him.

They gave her a well-appointed room to wait in, with wax tablets and a stylus to make any notes she might need, and watered wine, olives and fruit. She did not eat. She made no notes. She paced up and down the room, sometimes counting off points on her fingers, sometimes grinding one long-fingered hand into a palm, sometimes rubbing a hand on her cheek as she waited for Satirius to come.

When he finally arrived at the legate’s mansion, Satirius was taken to Murena’s office, and by the time he left he knew that Livia Cuxena’s case was hopeless. All he could do was persuade her to admit the charges, hoping that instead of a barren island she might be sent to some decent place of exile. For there was no chance whatever of acquittal. Murena had made it plain that there would be no bribery allowed here. He would have this matter ended once and for all today.

Of all the meetings Satirius had ever had, the one with Livia Cuxena was the worst. Yet, in the end, Murena’s will prevailed. When she was brought before the legate again, she admitted to the charges.

Julius Placinus gazed at her impassively. She acknowledged that she had instigated bandit raids? Yes, she answered harshly. The murder of Junius Sulpicius, a Roman knight? Yes. Of Lucius Placidus, Marcus Salonius, Iulius Mamercus? Yes. Of the senator Gaius Rufius? Yes. That she had forged bills with their rings and embezzled money from their estates? Yes. On and on it went.

At last he announced judgment. Her property was forfeit to the state. Her businesses in Arelate, her house, her villas, the funds on deposit with her bankers. It was when he detailed those accounts that Livia Cuxena realised she was lost. Somehow he knew of the deposits in Syria, Attica and Spain. With those she could have lived well in exile, rebuilt her fortune, but if they were taken she would have nothing in the world.

“I have admitted my crimes,” she said with surprising, arrogant calm. “But Julius Placinus, for my dignity and your own, leave me something to live on in my exile.”

The legate blinked, then raised one eyebrow in surprise. “Call it exile if you wish, Livia Cuxena. Certainly after today your feet will not touch the soil of Transalpine Gaul again. You have admitted to murder of many citizens of this town, murder of four Roman knights and a senator of Rome, to robbery, banditry, fraud and extortion. Exile is for citizens of Rome, and you are not a citizen. In the name of the senate and people, I sentence you to be crucified.”

For the rest of his life Julius Placinus would remember that moment as the one when he first felt the quintessence of power. It was not just the blood that drained from the woman’s face but the intelligence, personality, vitality that gave the features meaning. All that was left was the growing horror and terror in those enormous eyes. Her legs gave way under her and she sagged like a rag doll to her knees, held up only by the grip the soldiers kept on her arms. With her robe drooping forwards he could see deep into the cleft between her breasts. Her mouth was open. He could see her white teeth, and her pink tongue wandering like a stranger.

“Nooo!” The word was neither spoken nor gasped. It whispered from her larynx, unshaped, unformed. “Nooo ... not ... Mater Dea not ...”

“Take her away.”

The soldiers turned, and each crooked an elbow under one of Livia Cuxena’s armpits. Straightening, they strode off, dragging her backwards behind them, the silk robe clinging to her rounded belly and spread-eagled thighs. As they took her down the corridor, the legate and tribunal heard her begin to scream.

An execution in Arelate

Part II: The road to crucifixion

They were in a courtyard leading to the barracks. Two soldiers had Livia Cuxena by the upper arms, half forcing and half carrying her forward. Suddenly the senior assistant to the legate was in front of them.

“Stop!”

For a moment the procession froze, then Livia Cuxena tore herself from the soldiers’ arms and threw herself at the man’s feet, wailing in relief, wailing thanks and blessings on him and the legate.

She felt his hands at her neck parting her hair. Were they going to kill her here? Was a sword about to be drawn to hack her head from her shoulders? She whimpered in fear as she felt the necklace slither from her neck, the clasp unfastened. She felt his fingers at her ears, roughly pulling the earrings away.

“Her property is confiscated. That robe, that too. Get it off her.”

The silk of her dress was worth a fortune, and it was fringed with gold. Her property was confiscated, necklace and silken robe and all.

The soldiers gripped the hem of her robe and dragged it forward, tugged it from under her knees and pulled it over her head and off. She was naked underneath, and the official stood with the robe draped over his arm and the glittering necklace dangling.

Livia Cuxena clasped her arms frantically across her breasts and crotch in the instinctive gesture of a woman stripped naked before men who hate her.

Not that the soldiers – or indeed the official – hated her. Their eyes were full of admiring lust, for at forty years of age Livia Cuxena was at a peak of erotic beauty. She was strong boned and healthy, with white, creamy skin that had been bathed and massaged and treated with scented oils every day of her life. Her waist was slender but her belly curved with promise, and her hips flared below it and her chest above it. Her bottom was full and rounded, swelling and magnificent, and her breasts were full and rounded, swelling and magnificent. At the base of her belly was a flame-coloured swatch of silky hair, razored trimly to a tapered invitation.

“Right,” barked Severian. “Get moving.”

The soldiers hauled the naked woman to her feet and hustled her along to the side-port that gave entry to the barracks.

Murena moved swiftly to dispel any rumours or confusion in the city. He had dictated a text after speaking to the legate, and as soon as Livia Cuxena was convicted lictors were going out to affix the posters in all public places:

“The bosses of the bandit gangs who terrorised the road to Arausio in the years 743 and 744 have now been found. The chief conspirator was the merchant’s widow Livia Cuxena. Confronted with the evidence against her, she has confessed her crimes, and will be crucified an hour before noon beside the Arausio road. Her confederates have been arrested and will also be dealt with.”

“Dealt with.” The words had been carefully chosen. Lucius Murena disliked extreme measures; in the four years he had been here in Arelate there had been, apart from the executions of the bandits themselves, only five official crucifixions, and all for extremes of violence that would have had the citizens up in arms if the severest punishments had not been imposed. The memory of the measures he had had to deal out to two of the slaves at Livia Cuxena’s country villa brought bile to his throat. He was profoundly relieved that the example had worked and that the information had flowed without further brutality. Besides, two of Cuxena’s confederates held the Roman citizenship and could not be put to death. To execute some and not others would not lance this boil. The sudden and inexorable death of Livia Cuxena would make a far greater impact than an execution followed by partial and scrappy penalties. No, the citizens would go into exile, the non-citizens would go to the mines in Spain, and Livia Cuxena would go on the cross alone. That was cleaner and more appalling to anyone who thought of going outside the law.

A half-century was paraded at the barracks under the second centurion, with a squad in light marching order in front of them when Livia Cuxena was frog-marched naked onto the parade ground and thrust on her knees.

Marcus Severian cast a quick look at the beam that lay on the dusty ground. It was weathered and grey, with dark stains near either end. Several square patches in those bloodied parts showed where wedges of wood had been hammered into nail holes to fill them, so that the engineers did not have to bugger about finding a solid point to fix a criminal’s wrists. That way, the beam could be used almost indefinitely, and this one had obviously served a number of times. It was a matter of four feet long, eight inches high and six inches thick. In the middle a rectangular hole, some eight inches long and two inches wide, had been chiselled through. Severian did not bother to ask if it was the right size for the trunk they would be using; he knew Antonius would have made sure of that.

The kneeling woman looked up at him with horrified eyes, her mouth moving wordlessly, uttering moaning gasps. The sight was erotic and incongruous: creamy flesh, the barbered russet tuft at her groin, the full breasts with wide aureolae and fleshy nipples, she was kneeling terrified in the dust with her hair still pinned in an elaborate coiffure.

Livia Cuxena had been driven into a tiny corner of her mind by the horror of what was happening. She had never for a moment imagined that she … she … could be crucified … stripped naked in public, dragged to a horrifying execution … to the most hideous pain stretched out for days, to a servile agony. They were going to crucify her like a slave … hang her naked on a cross by the road in full view of anyone. She was going to be killed in the worst way ever devised. These people, these garlic-stinking soldiers, were going to take her to the execution site and drive nails through her wrists and feet and crucify her. It was happening. That weathered block of wood was a hurt beam ... her hurt beam. Those were bloodstains on it ... where people had been nailed to it. They were going to nail her to it. She was naked in the dust, being taken to crucifixion. In the tiny cell of her mind to which she had fled, Livia Cuxena screamed in terror, but from that tiny cell her screams did not reach her body. Her mouth moved wordlessly, uttering moaning gasps.

“Fetch a loincloth,” Severian said to the second centurion. “I’ll not have her marched through the streets stark naked.”

One of the light-order squad brought a cloth and cord, and Severian had the soldiers pull the woman to her feet. He folded the cloth in two and passed the cord through it. He put the cord around her waist so that the cloth hung down behind her, then reached between her trembling thighs – smooth, soft thighs, his arm brushing against the folds of her cunt – pulled the cloth forward and up against her belly, and tied the cord tightly round her waist, pulling it into the yielding flesh. The overlap of the white strip of cloth hung down to her groin.

He moved behind her, and pulled the pins out of her hair, letting it fall about her shoulders, then gathered and bound it with a strip of leather cord. She stood there, held by the soldiers, seeming stunned and mindless, shaking in every limb.

A soldier came through the side gate and marched up to Severian. In his hand was a wooden plaque strung on a cord, bearing the words “Livia Cuxena, murderess and thief”. Severian hung it round the woman’s neck.

He motioned the soldiers to put her on her knees again. They pressed her down, but she seemed not to understand what was wanted.

Severian moved behind her, and his heavy sandal crashed into her ankle. As her feet went out from under her, her trace-state suddenly broke and a howl burst from her. With soldiers gripping her she flailed desperately as the beam was placed on her shoulders and her arms dragged up behind it to be bound with turn after turn of heavy rope.

Nothing meant greater terror in the Roman world than to have the cross roped to one’s shoulders. It was so horrifying as to be unthinkable, the mind blacking out the bare possibility – and here and now the slab of harsh-edged wood was being tied on her shoulders with thick manila ropes whose sharp prickles stabbed the skin of her arms. The vivid hurts drove home the fact that it was actually happening. Sweat-stinking soldiers were putting the cross on her; she was naked and helpless in their grasp. They were roping a hurt beam on her shoulders. It was happening, here and now, in this hot drab yard it was happening. She was sentenced, it would not be revoked. She could not change it. She was going to be crucified. She struggled wildly, screaming and twisting in their grip, as they knotted another rope around her neck and two of the soldiers grasped its ends – roped her like a slave to be dragged to execution.

They hoisted the beam upwards, dragging her to her feet, but as soon as they released her she leapt away, only to tumble heavily as the rope around her neck stopped her. She lay winded in the dust, gasping and roiling, helpless with her arms twisted back over the heavy beam, her breasts jolting.

Two of the soldiers seized the beam again and hauled her up, almost twisting her arms from her shoulders. She was heaving great gasps of breath as they held her upright, her legs loose below her. Severian nodded to a soldier who stood nearby holding a cart-whip. Moving behind her, the soldier cast his arm back so that the long lash snaked out on the dusty ground. He brought his arm round in a swinging loop and the leather leapt through the air and slammed into Livia Cuxena’s back. As her scream crescendoed the whip snaked back again and then again slashed forward, coiling around her ribs and striking up under her breast.

She howled for mercy as the third stroke lashed into her. Severian stood before her, grim faced. Shaking in terror she tried to be silent and listen, but could barely hear him above her blubbering sobs. What she heard was enough. She was to walk with her beam, and if it took the whip to make her do it then the whip it would be. Did she need to feel it again?

The frantic shaking of her head told she did not. She was blubbering “Please don’t, please don’t ...” Perhaps she was begging not to be whipped; perhaps she was begging not to be taken out and crucified. It didn’t matter.

He signalled to the centurion to march the first squad out. As the column passed through the gate, the soldiers holding the rope tugged Livia Cuxena forward. Bowed under the beam, for a moment she didn’t respond, and again the whip cracked across her – not a full-blooded stroke like the ones that had raised huge furrows on her back, just a welting smack across her arse to get her moving. With a gasping cry she stumbled forward in the wake of the procession.

As she passed through the gate into the piazza she could sense the crowd of watchers, and tried to lift her head despite the heavy beam pressing its sharp edge into her neck. Her vision was blurred, her eyes stinging with tears she could not wipe away, but a crowd it was, a crowd of Areletans, and they knew her. Her clients were there, and slaves and petty dealers, and the prefect of the port. She could smell the sweaty odour of the lower orders. They were looking at her nakedness, her breasts dangling and swinging, her groin covered only by a rag. They would see her bottom roiling as she passed. See her, Livia Cuxena, dragged in terror, carrying a hurt-beam like some filthy slave to … to … She tried to pull back into the barracks, but the whip seared her back and she staggered forward to avoid it, yelping in pain.

A voice from the crowd yelled out “Whip the bitch!”

Severian walked slowly over. “Did I hear someone giving me an order, Thadius Lysander?” he enquired.

Lysander licked his lips nervously. It was alarming that Marcus Severian knew his name, that authority had its eye on him. Severian knew it would shake him. People felt safe in crowds, that was what made crowds dangerous, so Severian learned names so that no one could hide and be part of a mob. Once they were named, people tended to take care of what they did.

“If anyone thinks my lads don’t know what to do, they are welcome to come up to the barracks and let us have some practice. So do any of you think I need advice?”

He waited a moment, then turned on his heel and walked to where his horse was waiting. He swung into the saddle and rode to the front of the column, past the second half-century that was now filing out of the barracks, past the wretched woman stumbling under her load, jerking in terror as the whip cracked the air behind her, blubbering in fear of what would happen when the procession reached its end. As she passed out of the piazza it seemed her legs would give way under her, and the whip landed fiercely and sent her staggering onwards.

The crowd flowed out and followed. Severian would not allow them close to the road, but they spread out into the heathland and little paths that ran nearby. There were children shouting with glee as Livia Cuxena fell upon the road and was hauled sobbing to her feet and thrashed upon her way again, shrieking with wonder at the gyrations of her breasts and bottom. There were youths – and not a few young men – whose hands were moving at their groins as they watched her staggering onwards, howling for pity with all her feminine fullness shaking. Every few hundred yards her legs gave way and she crashed down, unable to protect herself with her hands lashed up behind the heavy beam. She would twist desperately to one side or the other as she fell, trying not to smash her face and breasts directly on the paving of the road, but that could not save her from her falls against the stones. And every time she fell the soldiers pulled her up and the whip lashed in again. Older men strode forward, watching with grim approval the process of justice demonstrating that brigandage would never pay in the new order. Young wives and matrons walked on with eager comments to watch with deep, smug pleasure as the proud Livia Cuxena was taken to her just desserts.

A mile to the north of Arelate rose a little ridge a matter of eight feet high to the left of the road. In the middle was a dip, leaving two hummocks either side that had given it the name of “the tits”. On each was a crucifixion trunk, a square, foot-thick post of wood some seven foot high, fixed solidly in the ground. The one on the further hummock was bare, but the nearer one carried a cross-beam and a blackened thing, eyeless and torn, strips of half-flayed skin peeling down, shrivelled and beak-pecked intestines falling from its opened belly. Unburied. Never to be buried. The spirit never to cross the river but to wander the earth, windblown, wailing.

On either side of the further trunk two blocks of wood had been set to serve as steps, drums a foot or so high cut through the trunk of a large tree. Behind it, a non-combatant auxiliary was laying out tools on a square of sacking (the mule that had carried them was tethered at the edge of the coppice behind). The legionary engineer assigned to the detail, a ten-year veteran named Antonius, walked over to him and surveyed the material: a couple of coils of rope, a bucket, water skins of various sizes, cloths and sponges, wooden wedges and plaques, hammers and tools. And nails from the stores, ugly things some six inches long, square in cross section and tapering – unevenly for they had been hammered by hand – from sharp points to rather over half an inch at the end. The final half inch flared sharply to be an inch or more across at the top. They were dark and still greasy with the oil used to protect them against the salty coastal air. Antonius nodded dourly in satisfaction.

The trunk on which Livia Cuxena would be crucified was not cut straight across the top. The construction is not easy to explain in words. For about a foot from the top of the weathered post, the front six inches of the wood had been chiselled out. Or, to put it another way, there was a horizontal cut across the post a foot below the top, six inches deep, and from there up the post was only six inches thick. It was on that flat, six-inch ledge that the hurt-beam (itself six inches thick) would lie.

That shelf was not a simple flat surface however. It had been chiselled out, not just sawn, and in the middle a tenon of solid wood jutted up, a tenon two inches thick so that it was two inches in front of the final block behind it and two inches away from the front of the trunk, and about eight inches wide, so that to left and right there were a couple of inches of flat shelf between it and the edge of the trunk. The slot in the hurt-beam, two inches deep and eight inches long would fit on that tenon, so that the back of the beam lay snugly against the back of the trunk and the front ran level with its forward edge.

The soldier waiting at the turn of the road waved his arm and began to walk towards the mound. The crucifixion procession was on its way. The soldiers put away their dice and got to their feet as the leading squad appeared past the trees to the right, followed by the woman to be put up the tree. She was in a bad way, bent under the weight of the hurt-beam, reeling from side to side as she staggered. It seemed that her legs would collapse under her but the whipman walking behind her swung the lash in to spur her on. Even from where he stood Antonius could hear the crack of the stroke and the squeal of the woman as she leapt forward.

For a moment he felt a spasm of horror in his guts, just as every time when he first saw some wretch who’d been brought to crucifixion. The woman was terrified, and with good reason in view of what was to be done to her. Nothing but the savage and remorseless whip could have driven her here to be killed. What utter horror it must be for her to be lashed on, scalded by the whip before the mocking populace, to be crucified for her crimes. Right here on this trunk she was going to be subjected to the ultimate punishment, to die in atrocious agony nailed to the cross. He cleared his throat and spat upon the grass. That was, though he did not realise, a ritual he always followed, and as always the spasm in his belly eased. His voice was calm as he called his men to their feet.

“Right lads, let’s get ready.”

The four men of his squad took up position in a line just by the edge of the eight-foot-high mound, about a dozen feet from the trunk. The squad came level with them. Antonius could see that a couple of the newer recruits were sweating in their full armour under the hot, nearly noonday sun. The woman was drenched, sobbing, breasts swinging wildly from side to side as she staggered under the beam.

The squad leader barked an order, and the right hand file halted and right turned to form a line in the centre of the road. The other files continued forward, each in turn halting and facing right to form a line of men fronting the site. The rear squad did the same, so that its leading file was aligned shoulder to shoulder with the left-hand man of the first squad.

The light order squad seized Livia Cuxena’s hurt-beam and ran her up the slope and into the waiting hands of the execution detail.

An execution in Arelate

Part III: Livia Cuxena’s crucifixion

Severian turned to where Livia was lying on the ground, clutching at the grass as if to cling to the earth for life itself, deep sobs shaking her shoulders.

“Get the hyssop, Minnius.”

The soldier picked up a leather cup and filled it from a goatskin flask, then brought it over to Severian.

“Right,” the centurion ordered, “sit her up.”

Minnius with his left-hand man went over to the sobbing woman. “Come on,” he said, not roughly. “Up you get.” They took her by the upper arms and pulled her body off the earth then, with the ease of practised athletes, swung her over so that her full bottom landed on the ground.

As the earth was pulled away from her and the sky swung round her, Livia thought they were about to put her on the beam and she screamed in terror. Minnius knelt on one knee behind her and pulled her shoulders back against his raised knee, gripping her arms to hold her upright. The spiced scent of her hair, rich woman’s scent, filled his nostrils. Her soft hair, tied back in the leather thong, flowed down her shoulders like a fox’s brush. He felt his ball sack tighten and his cock begin to stiffen as he gripped the soft flesh of her arms.

Mouth shuddering in terror, Livia looked up into the centurion’s face.

“Here,” he said, lowering the cup to her. “Drink this.”

Her mouth and throat were dry, raw with screaming and dust. She stared at the greasy leather mug. There was drink in it, liquid, cooling, vital, merciful drink. She gulped desperately as he tilted the cup and poured the fluid into her mouth. Once she choked, the precious liquid spewing out, but he paused and put the cup to her lips again.

The stuff was bitter. Foul tasting. She knew what it was now – hyssop, the herb given to prisoners before crucifixion. To lessen the pain they said. Once, lying on a dining couch, she had wondered idly why they would wish to lessen the pain. The young legate beside her had laughed. Not for mercy, he said. It was simply that the pain of nailing was so great that criminals often fainted when they were put on the cross, and many of them never revived. With the hyssop almost all would survive those critical early minutes, and then they would live to suffer for hours or days – which was what crucifixion was all about. Of course, he had added, the effects of the herb didn’t last long, but it seemed that the body could handle the crescendo of pain as the hyssop’s effect wore off far more effectively than the first sudden atrocity of the nailing.

She shut her mouth, turning her head aside, but hands gripped her and turned her back and Severian calmly shut her nose with his forefinger and thumb. As she gasped for air, he told Minnius to squeeze her cheeks to keep her mouth open and slowly emptied the cup down her mouth, stroking her throat to make sure she swallowed.

The dry bitterness filled her mouth and throat. After the delirious nightmare of the last hour, of Julius Plancinus’s judgement, her stripping, frog-marched naked into the courtyard of leering soldiers, the beam being roped to her shoulders, the scalding whip thrashing her on the road stumbling and falling, the mockery of the crowd and the agony and terror, the vile taste suddenly sobered her. She was being forced to drink hyssop to prepare her for her crucifixion. She was at the execution site. A hairy-legged soldier was standing with hammer and nails. They were going to crucify her. Here! … now! She saw her arms, her wrists. That brutal hammer was about to drive those nails through her wrists to the hurt beam. They were going to hang her by her wrists on those nails to die in agony.

Severian looked over at Antonius. The engineer was standing ready, a heavy hammer in his right hand, the nails in his left.

When he nodded to the execution squad, Livia Cuxena was seized and dragged back to the beam. Minnius pressed her shoulders down on it as a soldier gripped each lower arm and hand and forced them into place. The fourth soldier straddled her belly, feeling her softness and warmth beneath him, adding his weight to Minnius’ hands.

Antonius knelt and placed the point of the nail at the heel of her hand, just below what the fortune tellers called the life line. The hand looked delicate and soft, but he knew that the lateral muscle at the heel of the hand was strong – the nail would not tear through as a nail in the palm would. That joint was also a nest of intermeshed bones and two separate nerves. Placing the sharp nail carefully, Antonius pushed it down.

That hurt. It was shocking how it hurt. There, at that place where the point was pushing, were nerves Livia Cuxena never knew she had and the iron forcing between them was the most horrifying thing she had ever felt in her life. She yelled in terror, feet scrabbling at the earth. His hammer rose and crashed down upon the nail’s head, driving the jagged point between the bones and into the wood beneath. And the pain she had just felt was merely a wave crashing against a rock compared with the tidal wave of boiling lava that swept across her now. Again and again it fell, the clang of iron and the woman’s screams shattering the air.

A last measured blow drove the nail home a final quarter inch, the head tight and dug into the flesh so that the wrist could not move, gripping it tightly to limit the effect of any later struggles so that the hole would not widen too quickly, not tear a gap so she would suddenly bleed to death. It was a bizarre incongruity – the woman’s rounded arm with its delicate blue veins, nailed by a black-headed, oily nail to a grey-dried wooden beam. Soft flesh, made for kissing, nailed to a wooden beam. Livia Cuxena, screaming and convulsing, was being crucified for her crimes as Julius Placinus had decreed.

Ignoring the screams, the wild kicking of her legs, Antonius moved to the other arm, pinned down between the soldier’s hands. Again he placed the nail and hammered down, stroke after stroke to nail her to the beam.

Again the crazy screams intensified, and Livia Cuxena was threshing about the ground, still pinned by the solder sitting on her belly. For a moment she reared up, the beam jerking upwards with her, then crashed upon the ground again and twisted from side to side. She panted frantically for air, her eyes rolling up in their sockets, and then slumped unconscious.

Slowly they brought her round, pulling at her ears, slapping her face from side to side. Wave by agonized wave she came back to the appalling throbbing of her arms. As the pain boiled over she moaned in bewildered agony, and then her eyes suddenly focused towards her wrist, the black nail head, the trickling of blood down her arm and over to pool in her palm. She was catapulted from the red blaze of unconsciousness to the appalling realisation of what was happening. Her moans suddenly erupted into screams of terrified horror.

Marcus Severian knelt beside her. Good, he thought, she’s back with us. Her eyes were open again, her mouth wide and lips drawn back from those incongruously gleaming teeth. There were no more of the flailing struggles that had sent the hurt-beam shuddering across the dirt – she knew better now than to jerk at those nails. Her head slumped and slipped below the beam and she forced it down, chin raised as if to try to hoist her shoulders to the same height as her nailed arms, the cords on her neck starting out as if they would snap, her shoulders arched off the ground and her breasts, slumped either side of her chest, heaving and roiling like blancmange as she panted in short, hysterical breaths.

But still she would need a little time before she went up on the trunk he reckoned. Taking a moist cloth he knelt beside her and wiped the sweat from her forehead and temples. Her face was bruised from her falls upon the road, for she had crashed down unable to do anything to lessen the impact; blood was running from an ugly cut on her cheekbone. Her wild, horrified eyes fixed on his face, her mouth shuddered from a stretched circle to a slot of pain, her shoulders slowly sagged upon the ground and suddenly she was crying like a child. Three or four times he rinsed the cloth and cleansed her face, her neck, her shaking shoulders. He wiped the blood and vomit from her generous breasts. Even as she blubbered he could sense that she was struggling to keep the shaking of her sobs from travelling up the arms, struggling to keep her wrists motionless. Yes Livia Cuxena, you’re back with us. If you didn’t escape us on that one, you’re not going to escape us now. I reckon it’s about time you climbed the tree.

He stood up, a little stiff in his scarred right thigh.

“Right,” he said, “let’s get her up. Johannes, Crixus, you take the beam, the rest of you stand by to help. Get her on her feet first, then wait for the word.”

The two soldiers knelt and seized the end of the beam, lifting it a little to get their fingers under it to get a grip. Feeling it shift, the woman nailed to it howled in agony and terror, bulging eyes shifting from one to the other, then to Severian. “No,” she screamed. “For pity’s sake Nooooo!”

“Lift,” he said.

The kneeling soldiers heaved themselves to their feet, dragging Livia Cuxena upward. As they stood upright, the beam at the level of their waists, her arms were pulled straight and her weight fell on the nails in her wrists. It was as if her arms had been forced into boiling oil, unspeakable, unimaginable pain galvanising her body. She struggled desperately to get her legs up under her, howling dementedly.

At Severian’s command the soldiers hoisted the beam to shoulder height, dragging her almost upright. She tried to force herself to stand, to take the weight off those nails, but the strength had gone out of her legs and they kept collapsing as she tried to put weight on them, and every time the lava of pain boiled through her, shattering, barbarous. The sudden tearing pain was unendurable … surely she must faint or go out of her mind. But she did not. With terrifying clarity she knew what was happening. She had been nailed on a hurt beam and now they were putting her up on the cross. She was being crucified, and the pain was appalling. Through the flaring torture she heard the laughter and catcalls of the mob, mocking the way she had spread her legs apart to try to stand, the way her legs buckled as if she were drunk, the way her breasts thumped painfully as she struggled for breath.

She screamed hyaterically for mercy, horrified and terrified at the appalling pain that falling on the nails produced – falling on the nails as she would be when they had finished crucifying her. And the mob was laughing as she howled for mercy, screamed that she could not stand the pain, begged him not to crucify her, to stop, to stop.

Severian was in no hurry. A crucifixion was in one sense a practical thing – like a gamekeeper’s board where the vermin were hung up to scare predators away. But it was also a show for the crowd, a pantomime where the villain was punished, a comedy horror. The criminal’s pleas for it to stop, for the punishment to end because it hurt too much to bear, these were rich entertainment for the crowd, as now their raucous shouting testified. And a criminal such as Livia Cuxena … well, watching her dance the roadside polka would be a once in a lifetime experience.

The screams turned to a hoarse howl of humiliation. A rank stench cutting through the smells of sweat and pine told him that the woman had lost control of her bowels, publicly, before the mocking citizens. That was no surprise – few of those being put up the tree retained control of their bodily functions. But it was a moment of utter degradation. The difference between slave and free was that the free still owned control of their bodies; in that moment Livia Cuxena had become less than a slave, a helpless thing nailed to a beam to be crucified like a rat on a gamekeeper’s board

There was one undone task still to complete her utter shaming. He took a little curved knife from his pouch and thrust his hand inside the cord of the loincloth. There were cheers from the crowd as the cloth fell away leaving Livia Cuxena naked. Her head was slumped, blubbering and wailing – she saw the soiled rag tumble away, saw she was stripped naked in front of the mob. She was going to be nailed to a cross, naked like a slave, with not a rag to hide her from their gaze. And they had no pity for her agony and shame. They were enjoying seeing her humiliated, naked, crucified. Her head lurched up, twisted and horrified, and she howled her misery to the sky.

With a jerk of his thumb he signalled Johannes and Crixus to take her the few steps to the trunk. The woman, he knew, would not struggle; they would not even have to bear her weight. It was yet another of the terrifying aspects of crucifixion, Severian realised, that the criminal nailed to the beam would inevitably assist the executioners in that way, desperate to avoid any jerk on the nails. And sure enough, as they moved towards the trunk Livia Cuxena, after one hideous shriek, did everything she could to bear her own weight and move in coordination with them.

Which of course was impossible. Those few lurching steps were an endless succession of catastrophic bolts of pain and by the time they got her to the trunk Livia Cuxena could not even scream. As they lifted the beam to rest for a moment on the shelf in front of the tenon a foot or so above her head, she was leaning back against the trunk, her legs thrust forward and straddled to take her weight. She had burst into sweat, wet as if she had stepped out of a bath. She was breathing in short, rapid, desperate pants, her breasts bouncing wildly as if they had lives of their own.

Severian held the moment, aware of what the watchers at the foot of the mound were seeing. They were witnessing the utter exposure and humiliation of the once powerful and arrogant Livia Cuxena. In her agony she could not even close her legs. They were staring right up at her naked crotch, and the sweat-beaded tuft above it.

Antonius had stepped up on the block behind the trunk, ready to guide the beam over the tenon when Johannes and Crixus raised it, and other soldiers were on the blocks either side, ready to help him. Severian gave the word, and up went the beam. As it lurched towards the top of the tenon Livia Cuxena’s feet left the ground and her arms were jerked straight as if they would be wrenched from their sockets. Her eyes bulged and her face twisted as demented screams jetted out. Her feet flailed in the air, frantically kicking in search of the ground, of some support to take the weight. And even the gleeful yelling from the crowd could not drown her howling as she twisted and kicked in her frenzy.

As the beam rose almost into place, its base within an inch or two of the top of the tenon, it tilted backwards, putting intolerable strain on her wrists.

“Careful there,” Severian shouted. “Keep it straight you two!

As Johannes and Crixus paused the other soldiers strained to force the beam upright. A final shove and it reached the top of the tenon and jerked back to the main shaft of the trunk behind it. But still it was tilted slightly and so the slot in the hurt beam was not properly aligned.

“Lift it and get it straight,” Severian shouted, and the beam rose an inch higher, and the combined efforts of the team forced it firmly back against the trunk, properly vertical at last. No easy task with the whole weight of the woman upon it and the twisting and shuddering of her appalling reactions. Livia Cuxena was entirely out of control, her body twisting, her legs going every which way but loose, now scrabbling against the trunk, now flailing the air.

Out of control? No, she might have lost all control of herself, but there was nothing here that Antonius and the squad could not deal with. It was what they had done many times before. She was nailed on the hurt-beam, being put up on the cross. They were crucifying her. She could convulse and scream and kick every way, but nothing she did would impede them. They were crucifying her and their control of her was absolute.

Looking up from below, Severian could see that the slot was now poised above the tenon. “Down,” he ordered, and the beam was lowered. For a moment it tottered, not quite aligned, and then it thumped down to sit perfectly aligned on its shelf. And Livia Cuxena’s feet touched the ground for the last time in her life. She struggled to stand, her shoulders leaning forward away from the trunk, head dangling, heaving deep, sobbing breaths.

Antonius took four wooden wedges from his pouch and thrust them into place, one in front of the tenon, one behind and one to each side. He pulled the hammer from his belt and began to drive the wedges home, one measured tap to each in turn until all were driven home and the hurt-beam fixed like granite into place. Livia Cuxena shrieked at each blow as the blows set the hurt beam quivering and the motion triggered the nails against the nerves of her arms.

Livia Cuxena raised her head and looked in desperation at Severian. It had been only half a minute that she had been dangling from the nails but it seemed to have been a lifetime. A lifetime in another world of hell. And it was as if all that had gone before had been nothing. Only when she was hanging there had the real, real pain begun – the atrocious pain of the crucified.

“Noooo! For all the gods, stooooopppp … Doon’t you know how it hurts, it huuuurrrts … I can’t stand the pain … pleeeaase…”

Yesterday she had been rich, powerful, seemingly secure in her arrogant place at the top of Arelate’s social pyramid; now, naked, nailed to a beam, howling for mercy she would not receive, Livia Cuxena was being crucified at Julius Placinus’ decree. The lesson was unmistakable.

Crixus picked the plaque from the grass and handed it up to Antonius, along with two small nails. The engineer held it in place a few inches above the hurt-beam and with a few swift smacks of his hammer fixed it there. “Livia Cuxena, murderess and thief.” His job was almost done. He stepped down and bent to pick a nail.

The crowd had quietened. Perhaps it was the ritual of nailing the plaque above the cross that had driven home the understanding that this was a judicial execution of a murderess, a dreadful example of the power of Roman law. Perhaps it was because the climax of the crucifixion was at hand, that in a few moments Livia Cuxena’s feet would be nailed to the trunk and she would be convulsing, screaming … crucified. Whatever the reason, for a moment the crowd was seized with the horror of it all, and the only sound was the frantic screeching of the woman being crucified.

Ignoring Livia Cuxena’s frantic howls for mercy, two soldiers gripped each calf and held her pinioned, their calloused grips holding despite the pouring sweat that slicked her skin.

Antonius walked round to the front of the cross, knelt, and placed the point of the nail a little over halfway up her slender right foot. A pretty foot with silvered toenails. Grimy and bruised, the big toe split, but beautifully shaped and neatly arched, the skin white and tender below the grime. Not many people had feet like that. Certainly not a legionary engineer who had marched his nailed sandals through Syria and Dacia and up and down the Rhine to here. A trickle of blood was running down from her knee, mingling with flooding sweat to spread a pink transparent film on her pale skin.

With one pile-driving blow he drove the nail clean through into the earth beneath. Nailing the feet was often the hardest part of a crucifixion. Not only was it awkward to drive a nail horizontally at knee height but the criminal would be spasming and jerking with frenzied wildness as the weight fell on the nails. It was easy to get it wrong. There’d been one clumsy lummox in Syria who’d missed the nail altogether and smashed the man’s ankle to a pulp. The oaf had never lived it down. For sure the task presented no difficulties to Antonius. He’d been ten years an engineer, and compared with patching up a ballista frame while the Dacians were cutting up the escort twenty feet away, or securing a hut’s bottom plank in a howling gale, this was a piece of cake. Even so, it was more efficient to drive the nail through the foot while it was on the ground and you could swing the hammer vertically.

There had been only the clang of the hammer, Antonius noted. The nail had slammed in but the foot was flexible; the bones had been forced apart, not splintered. That was good. Broken foot bones hurt more, but so much that they weakened the criminal and shortened the time on the cross.

The soldiers jerked the foot to knee height and gripped it there and at once Antonius swung the hammer in a horizontal arc onto the head of the nail. There was a clang of metal and a solid thunk as the nail bit deep into the solid wood of the trunk.

Livia Cuxena convulsed hysterically, toppling sideways, her wrist jerking on the nail, screaming a mindless string of blasphemies and obscenities. Mithras, what a gutter slut! Who’d have thought it? If he could only swear like that, he’d be a senior centurion by now.

Two … three … four more blows drove it in deep, the head tight on the bone.

He drove the last nail into her left foot – this time he heard the splintering crunch of breaking bones but that was always likely to happen. Again the soldiers raised it and forced it against the trunk. Livia Cuxena’s body fell with all her weight upon her arms, and as her arm were dragged downwards her wrists twisted on the square-cut nails, forcing her bones apart.

As he hammered the nail home, the stench told him that the woman had shat herself again. He looked up. Not far. Her crutch was almost at a level with his face, open to view as the soldiers held her, twisting and bucking as she screamed. The full belly was churning; her breasts shook and she let out a blubbering wail of abject despair as foul diarrhoea spattered the trunk under her arse.

No point crying, girlie. You’re not the first who’s dropped a load when the nails went in.

One final blow and the last nail was in. Livia Cuxena, murderess and thief, was crucified.

An execution in Arelate

Part IV: The roadside polka

For a moment it seemed Livia Cuxena’s eyes would burst out of her face as her face contorted in agony. Suddenly she arched out on the cross until only the back of her head and her feet were touching the trunk and it seemed as if her spine must snap. Screaming all the time she hung for some moments like that, then her body slammed back against the cross, falling to hang by her arms again. Again and again she reared up and out, her screams never ending, as if she did not need to stop to breathe. Livia Cuxena, freshly crucified, presented an astonishing spectacle.

For some moments the crucified woman’s movements repeated that convulsive arching out, a snapping desperation like a poisoned cockroach. Every time she spasmed out in agony, knees splaying out to thrust upwards, she offered the watchers on the road below a view straight up her crotch. Memmius Aulenus, staring in hot fascination at the puffed sex lips that thrust between her legs, was astonished to hear his wife murmur, “That’s been a well-used cunt.”

Then Livia Cuxena suddenly stiffened there, body thrust out like an archer’s bow with the arrow ready to launch. She shook from head to toe, forcing that awful posture higher and higher, chest thrust up so that her full breasts pointed at the sky. Her screaming had ceased, and now her breath hissed in jerks from her chest, louder and louder, until suddenly:

“Noooooo...” she howled, and twisted sideways on the cross, slamming her weight again and again against the nail in her left wrist, flailing and twisting to tear it out, screaming in agony but lurching again and again to tear free.

Julia was gripping Memmius Aulenus’ arm with both her hands, staring towards the flailing woman with her lips parted and her slightly bulbous eyes bulging. “She’s going to bounce those tits right off her chest so she is,” she whispered.

Severian glanced at the sun. It was an hour or so before mid-day. There was much he had to do, but nothing so urgent that he must get back at once. It would be better to wait till Livia Cuxena’s frenzy quietened. It seldom lasted long, this craziness of the crucified when they were first nailed on the cross, and once it was over he’d have a better idea of how long she was likely to last. If she tore her arms out of her shoulders or dislocated an elbow, it would probably all be over by evening. She might even burst her lungs or heart; he’d seen that happen more than once. If not, then he’d need to keep a detail on duty through the night, maybe for several days.

Besides, that gorgeous body flailing on the cross was not a thing one would see every day.

Hysterical, crucified, Livia Cuxena realised that she could not tear her arms free, could not pull her arms out of her body to escape the cross. She had to hang there, nailed, with the red-hot agony of her arms and her stretched armpit tendons. Hang on nails that scraped the boiling nerves of her arms. Had to hang. Eyes glaring against the sun, she struggled to find some balance of the pain, pressing on broken bones in her feet to ease a little of the torment in her arms, struggling to remain centred on those nails so as not to topple sideways and lurch against a wrist nail, struggling to find how to live when nailed on the cross.

Again and again she failed. Again and again she fell to one side or another, and the nails in her wrists jerked and her arms exploded in boiling pain. Again and again she screamed as she fell, not just in pain but in a mindless anger. Again and again she slumped, her weight falling unbearably on the nails, the agony spurting. Again and again she summoned the desperate courage to push down on her splintered feet, exchanging that appalling agony for a tiny diminution in the pain in her arms. Again and again her back and buttocks scraped up against the trunk, sometimes only an inch or two, sometimes until her legs were almost straight and her head up higher than the beam. Sometimes she jerked her knees straight, and then her legs arched forward off the cross and only her nailed wrists and feet were against the wood, her body arched forward and up, or forward with her torso hanging down and breasts dangling. But her breasts were heaving with effort, her head jerking in pain, and time and again she lost her balance and fell sideways or her legs gave out and she collapsed, scraping down the trunk. And only very slowly did her screams rattle to hoarseness in her throat. Only very slowly did she learn how to exist on the cross.

And even in those moments when she managed to hold herself in an agonised balance, every muscle straining to hold her from toppling and keep a little of the weight from those terrible nails in her wrists, even then the horror increased. For she learned that every part of the body is conjoined. Every twitch of her arms on those nails sent boiling spasms of pain not just into her wrists and down her arms, but into her chest and the twisting muscles of her belly, down her spine and back muscles. That long-pampered body had been an unconsidered, unmapped pleasure, but now Livia Cuxena learned the map of nerves that she had never considered, a web joining every point, a flaring web of interconnected pain, where a twist at one point, even a gasp for breath, ripped through the whole. She was aware of a complex of nerves and muscles and bones that she had never dreamed existed. The price of her illumination was unbearable pain, for the body on the cross was a miraculous engine of torture. And the pain of her flayed-open body was unbearable but inescapable. She was nailed on her cross and the pain was unceasing.

Again and again the horror and terror drove her again to hysterical panic, sent her into frenzy on her cross, tugging and jerking while screams jetted out. And each time she desperately tried to get control again, for the pain of that jerking was not to be borne. There came to be longer spaces between the frenzies, longer periods when she froze in agony, trying to hold a balance on the cross, recover when she toppled sideways or her muscles gave way and she scraped down on the trunk to hang again.

Then the cramps began. She was fighting desperately to remain balanced, keep her legs locked and her arms stiffened to relieve a little of the weight. Her head was slumped down and she was gasping in agony. Then a new dimension of her hell attacked her. The skin around her racked left bicep began to twitch and shake, then the muscles beneath to bunch and swell and distort. As her muscles spasmed, they hardened into a fierce, racking pain, a pain intense as if funnelled into that point, then swelling and invading neighbouring tissues. The muscle seemed to be tearing itself out of her arm. As the right arm too began to cramp and convulse she jerked her head up twice, gasping. The movement was transmitted to the nails and she twisted, screaming, her hips jerking frantically and she lost her balance and toppled down. Convulsively she straightened her legs, scraping up the cross again, the muscles of her arms bulging like twisted ropes, and with horror she felt the agony of cramps in her legs also.

That would go on for a long time, Severian reckoned, with the spaces between the frenzies lengthening, the times of clinging on lengthening, cramps racking her muscles, every movement tugging the net of pain. Intriguingly, he could see that she was suffering shame as well as pain, for she tried constantly to bring her thighs together to conceal her nakedness. Yet to struggle up the cross and ease her arms she straddled her thighs apart to push herself up, opening her once-secret parts to the watchers below her. Sometimes, as she held herself erect, her breath came in grinding gasps, sometimes she cried and there was abject shame as well as pain and desperation in her blubbering. Only last night she had been wealthy and beautiful and powerful; now she was suffering the most shameful and hideous death, crucified as a slave. Sometimes she yelled abuse and curses; not, curiously, at the soldiers who had crucified her, but at the watchers below. Her breasts were in constant motion, heaving with her gasps and sobs, their outline changing as she alternately dragged herself up and slipped down again. And when she toppled to hang on the nails, the wave of pain that resulted was evident in her screams and pain convulsions.

He ordered Memmius to soak a sponge in the bucket and put it on a spear for her. It was never wise to put a hand near a crucified criminal – they had nothing to lose any more by crazy viciousness. She sucked greedily at the sponge, which Memmius refilled and offered her again and again.

“Have her watered every couple of hours,” Severian said before he turned to go back to his other duties.

The bees were buzzing in the meadowland, thrusting into the pollen of the thyme, and lizards flickered among the dry rocks by the road. Forty yards or so down the road the pine trees came down, cutting off his sight of the execution site and muffling the wretched woman’s grating sobs and sudden, shattering howls.

How terrifying crucifixion was, he ruminated, and how efficient. A few minutes work by Antonius and his team, a couple of wooden beams and four nails was all it took to torture a criminal to death over hours or days. To achieve the same effect by any other means would call for several teams of expert torturers working day and night. And though that might have the same effect on the criminal, it would surely not give so stark and implacable an image to the watchers as the sight of a naked criminal writhing and screaming on a cross, beyond all hope of reprieve, legally dead but struggling in agony for days. What genius of ancient times had been the first to crucify, he wondered.

Julia was tugging at Memmius Aulenus’ arm. She jerked her head to the narrow field behind, where several couples were moving towards the wood. “Come on,” she said urgently. “Come on!”

It was a little before sunset that Severian returned. From his seat on the horse he could look directly across at the woman on the cross. She was struggling to hold herself upright, her legs nearly straight. The pain of it was evident in the way her arms and leg muscles stood out starkly, bunched and quivering. She would be raked with cramps by now, in addition to her other agonies. Her mouth gaped open, as if she were unaware of the flies crawling round it.

As he swung out of the saddle he saw her begin to fall – and heard her too, for she wailed as her muscles collapsed under the strain, and she went down to hang on outstretched arms. Not straight down on the cross, though. Her body twisted to the side as she went down, her hips thrusting to the side of the trunk. As he strode up, he could see why she instinctively hung thus. The tender skin of Livia Cuxena’s backside had been rubbed away as she had dragged herself up and down on the wood. Huge blisters bulged on her flesh, and where others had burst the skin hung ragged and dirty over raw flesh. Even the cleft between her cheeks was raw. He guessed that at some time she had tried to ease the strain on arms and feet by ramming her crack against the corner of the trunk. The skin between her thighs was red raw too, caked with her filth. Insects that had sought to feast there had been caught between her thighs as they writhed together as she slithered down the trunk, and fragments of their chitinous bodies were caught there. The flies were burrowing around her crotch and arse, busy at her belly around her sweat-beaded navel .

The nails the wrists were holding firm, Severian saw, with no sign of working loose. The feet too, despite all her frantic tugging and twisting. The raw holes had been torn a little wider by her struggles, but the nail heads were too big for her ever to escape them. Flies were swarming around the wounds too, even into the gaping holes that her struggles had torn wider. Some blood oozed down. Not much. The flesh was swollen and bruised, and a faint stink of gangrene came from it.

One utterly incongruous thing about this gasping, tortured body was the fingernails. On fingers that clawed down into her palms, the manicured, silvered nails glowed like pearls.

There were still a couple of dozen people watching from the road, but most of the crowd had gone. Julia leaned towards her husband sitting beside her, and put her arm around his shoulder. “I bet Livia Cuxena never thought she’d die with flies in her cunt,” she whispered. “Just imagine what they must feel like feeding there.” Then suddenly she giggled. “Still, they don’t look as if they mind it, do they?” She put her tongue in his ear.

Severian dismissed the half century, keeping only a detachment of eight men for a night watch. There was bread and pease porridge with bacon in the pack that the mule had brought, and ample dry wood in the coppice for a fire.

He spent a few minutes with the file leader, making sure he knew his duties and had all he needed. “Keep alert in the small hours; that’s when the body loses its vitality. Keep a couple of thick branches of green wood in the fire so they’re glowing. If she starts to faint, you use those brands to get her back. Armpits, tits, between her legs, whatever. I want her kept alert and alive for tomorrow.”

It was not until mid-afternoon the next day that Marcus Severian could make time to ride out to the crucifixion site. Maybe a half-dozen or so people were standing along the road, watching the wretched woman die. A gentle breeze was blowing towards the road, and it bore a stink of rotting flesh, stale sweat and excrement. His mare, not battle trained, shied away, and he called one of the squad to hold the reins before he swung out of the saddle and strode up the slope between the hummocks.

Closer up the smell was sickening, but Marcus Severian had worked over the detritus of battlefields and his stomach was hardened. Blood was trickling down the woman’s thighs and the grey wood of the trunk. She must have scoured the skin right off her buttocks during the night as she twisted and struggled against the hard, striated wood.

She was hanging at the limit of her arms, angled forwards as if pulled out by the weight of her sagging breasts. Her breath came in short, harsh rasps,

Her wrists had swollen and purpled. The puffy, gangrened flesh was swelling against the nails. Gaping flesh was open where her convulsions had torn the wounds wider, but it was not clean, red flesh. It was greenish in hue, and little maggots, barely larger than hairs, were crawling in the cloven holes. A yellowish pus that was thicker than cream oozed from the wounds and trickled down her arms. Livia Cuxena was rotting alive.

Slowly her head lifted, to gaze at him with reddened eyes from a face that had shrunk to a skull. Slowly, her breaths rasping with fiercer intensity, her legs knotted and contorted as she thrust against them, and the muscles of her arms that were standing out so vividly twisted and convulsed to drag her body up on the cross. The skin between her thighs had rubbed away, and was merely a mass of sores.

Her cracked lips moved. “e ... e... ell ee. ’ant ... o die.”

“Kill me, I want to die.” Well, Livia Cuxena would get her wish. But if she was still strong enough to raise herself and speak, it would take an hour or two yet.

“When was she last watered?” he asked the squad leader.

“About an hour ago, sir.”

“Well, no more water now. There’s no point dragging this out. I reckon she’ll be dead by evening.”

The skull-head had dragged itself up, red eyes lusting. “Aaa-err,” she croaked, “aaa-eer.”

Besides, Severian thought, giving her water now could even reverse the balance of her body and have her dead in minutes. He’d seen it happen,

He made his way down to where the soldier was holding his horse, swung himself into the saddle and set off back to Arelate.

He was working in his office some four hours later when one of the watch detail reported.

“Quintillus Junior sent me sir. From the crucifixion detail. The woman’s ... finished.”

“Finished?” It was extraordinary that a soldier, a man whose job was to kill, should be so queasy in his words. “You mean she’s dead?”

“Yes, sir.”

He nodded curtly.

“Tell Quintillus Junior to march the squad back to barracks. Then tell him they’re excused duty for the next two days.”

It might seem a cushy number to be sitting out in the sun waiting for a crucified criminal to die. But it wasn’t. Those intermittent, terrible breaths, those awful twitches and convulsions of the dying victim, they could rasp the nerves to shreds. He knew. He had served on such details.

“Tell them to get well drunk and then go down to Mamma Lara’s and get laid,” he said. “Off you go.”