The Witch

Three - The Threat

The bar was lifted, the heavy key turned in its lock, and the door swung open, but Solana did not stir as light splashed across her grubby face. H er eyes, though partly open, saw nothing, her lips parted for the wisps of frost that illustrated slow breath.

The two guards entered cautiously. “Is she awake?”

“I believe so.”

The cell stank. A river of old urine ran from between Solana's legs to cracks in the flagstones. H er black mane was grimy, lank about her drawn face. H er skin shone with old sweat and grease. H er hands drooped from the fetters.

Sixteen days had passed, and Solana had not been freed for even a moment, the iron shackles fast about her wrists, in her cell. Anger had become self-pity, despair, and finally numbness. Solana barely stirred as one guard fitted a key into her fetters, unlocked each in turn. H er bruised wrist s w ere lifted out, and she was rolled onto her belly, her hands instead bound behind her back.

“Come, Princess. Your time has arrived.”

“Where are you taking me?” Solana's voice wa s w eak, husky with lack of use. H er leg s w ould scarcely move as the guards hauled her to her feet, and she staggered with them. Far from being a relief, her release from the false security of her cell was an unwelcome disturbance.

“We have someone who wants to meet you,” the second guard said.

At the end of a long passage, a heavy door swung open, yet another guard holding it while the trio entered a room of gothi c d imensions. Torches threw orange light onto stone walls that glistened with slime, trickling water. Stone pillars support ed a vaulted ceiling. The chamber felt huge, its depths foreboding. Solana could make out shapes: huge frames, odd-looking tables, devices of which she had only heard tale.

H er fear grew. “What is this place?”

From the darkness, a woman's voice. “Bring her.”

Solana stumbled forward, to an open well in the chamber, a winch and pail astride its black maw. From the shadows beyond, a figure stepped.

The woman was Solana's height, in her forties: powerful, beautiful. An oval face, blue eyes, a mass of black hair tumbling loose about her broad shoulders. H igh cheekbones, a slim nose, dark lips. H er arms strong with worked muscle, her legs long and powerful. She wore a simple grey tunic that ended at her thighs, belted at the waist.

H er voice was rich, deep. “Welcome to the Torture Chamber. I am Maria Luisa Consuela.”

“Why am I here?” Imagination had given Solana answers enough, and fear tainted her voice. Luisa gave a slow smile.

“You know why. You are accused of witchcraft. It is my task to extract the truth.”

Extract? The beautiful torturer turned away, but paused to glance over her own muscled shoulder at Solana, eyebrows pitched in disapproval. “The girl is filthy.”

The guards thrust Solana towards the well, then made her kneel, hands bound behind her back, while they retrieved a pail-full of water. It was flung full over Solana's body, icy rivulets coiling down her thighs. She shrieked with the shock of cold.

The pail was filled twice more, the filth sloughed from Solana's skin. When it was over, she crouched low, arms twisted behind her, shivering violently. Water dripped from her bedraggled hair. Gooseflesh peppered her bare skin, her nipple s w ere stones, her muscled belly heaved.

A hand closed in her hair, twisting her head back, until she was looking up into the glacial eyes of Luisa Consuela. The woman spoke coldly: “Confess that you are a witch, and save yourself a lot of pain.”

It was the first direct reference to torture, and it prompted Solana to twist her hands in the ropes. She was afraid, but gave her reply regardless: “I am not a witch, and nothing you can do will change that.”

Luisa Consuela gave a thin smile. “ H ow naive.” She released Solana's hair. “Pain alone will soon reveal the truth.”

“If it the truth you must hear,” Solana spat, “then do your worst!”

“My worst is something you do not wish to experience.” To the guards: “bring her!”

Solana was led through the chamber. It was a madman's labyrinth: pits and alcoves, narrow stairways through the rock, passageways, rooms. There were places it was so dark, Solana could barely see to walk. Their first stop was a shallow fireplace, dead embers piled within. Immediately alongside were stocks, so that a prisoner's feet could be locked in place above the flames to roast.

Solana regarded it grimly, before Luisa led on. In a low alcove, a wooden bench to which a victim might be tied, her arms stretched to a thumb screw: tightened, the studded vice would crack and shatter her finger-bones. Deeper, a broad oak table, shackles at each corner, alongside which were irons, pokers, pincers, the Spider: a clawed instrument for the tearing and twisting and burning of female flesh. A brazier shimmered nearby, ready to heat the cruel instruments. A ‘pear' was shown to Solana: a bulb-shaped device, which, once inserted into the vagina or anus, would be opened by means of a screw-handle. Its expansion would cause, first, unimaginable pain, then irreparable damage. Luisa cranked the device open, slowly, to demonstrate.

Nearby, Solana saw, a girl hung from shackles against the wall, her toes twelve inches above the floor. Alive or dead, Solana could not discern.

Through a low passageway, to a small, rough-hewn cell, central to which was a huge object, a vile machine that Solana recognised from tales in the local taverns: like a bed, with a massive wooden winch at its head, around which thick rope s w ere wound.

“Ah. My favourite.” Luisa caressed the worn wooden surface tenderly. “On this bed, I have broken many.” H er hand closed around a well-used handle. “You see, the pain begin s w ithin just a few small turns. But it grows and grows, sometimes over the course of a day or longer. The rack will surely and slowly dislocate every joint in a woman's body, tear her belly and rip her back-bone into parts like a dismembered fowl.” Luisa focused on her prisoner. “And you challenge me to do my worst?”

Solana almost faltered, then straightened, her bound hands closing into fists behind her back. “I am innocent of witchcraft -”

A groan, so desperate it barely seemed human, echoed from somewhere not too distant. Luisa Consuela gestured towards the sound. “Indulge me.”

Borne by the guards, Solana stumbled from the rack, her eyes discovering the source of the sound. A pregnant woman, perhaps in her thirties, naked, was bowed backwards over the broad rim of a huge, six-foot wheel. H er ankles, widely-spread, were secured by ropes to rings in the floor: while her wrist s w ere fastened to the wheel itself. Simply by ratcheting the wheel, she had been stretched to her body's limit. Every muscle was stark, the skin drawn harshly across her ribcage, her entire body shining with sweat.

H er head was secured by means of a broad leather strap across her brow. About the lower half of her face, a brank had been fitted: by way of its calipers, her mouth had been levered widely open, her jaws evidently dislocated by the force. An iron funnel had been forced part-way down her open throat, which Solana realised with horror was for the introduction of liquid. The woman was not pregnant after all: her belly was distended by gallons of water.

“In a few hours, I will listen to what Rosita, here, has to say,” Luisa explained. She bent to a ceramic urn beside the torture wheel, lifted out a pint-tankard of foul water. Coolly, the torturer poured the liquid into the open funnel. Rosita was stretched so tightly that she could not struggle, but her swollen belly heaved, and her eyes bulged at the ceiling as the water sank down her throat with slow, evil glugs. A long, low groan reverberated through the funnel protruding from Rosita's mouth.

“She will confess soon enough,” Luisa promised.

“You are evil,” Solana hissed, stricken by what she saw.

“This is nothing! Guard? Tighten the wheel, it is loose.”

Though she was unable to speak, Rosita began making terrified shrieks as a guard went to the geared lever that would turn the wheel. Firmly, he cranked it over, and the huge wheel rolled around another inch. Solana had never before heard a human body stretch; but as Rosita' s w rist s w ere pulled further from her ankles, a terrible creaking came from her limbs and torso, and a horrible scream of pain boomed up through the funnel. Luisa laughed at the poor woman's agony.

“She will break soon! Let us move on!”

A wide-open space, a pit in the floor, a twenty-foot ceiling. There, a woman hung by her wrists. The rope from which she was suspended ran through a high pulley, and down to a simple winch and brake. H er slim ankle s w ere weighted with iron anvils, perhaps a hundred pounds at a glance, barely an inch off the ground. She must have been in terrible pain: her whole, naked brown body shone with sweat.

“Ah, Esmerelda. Do you wish to confess yet?” Luisa asked as she crossed to the winch.

The hanging woman slowly lifted her head: dark brown eyes, a beautiful face, white teeth clenched against the pain.

“I am not a witch,” she hissed.

Luisa began to crank the winch: slowly, the rope wa s w ound in. Solana watched as, by her wrists, Esmerelda was lifted higher and higher, until her toe s w ere some twelve feet above the floor. “This,” Luisa told Solana proudly, “is the strappado.”

She released the brake. Dragged down by the weights at her feet, Esmerelda plunged ten feet, the rope howling through the overhead pulley - and then Luisa snapped on the brake. There was a tremendous BANG! as Esmerelda was jarred to a terrible halt, both her shoulders ripping out of joint, dust flying from the rope. Esmerelda gave a terrible scream, pee spraying from between her thighs, twisting and swaying like a sack of grain on the end of the rope, the weights swinging from her ankles.

“And that,” Luisa said, “hurt.”

Solana's knees felt weak. To her disbelief, Luisa turned the winch again, began to crank Esmerelda again towards the ceiling. Esmerelda's screams became high-pitched, as she implored Luisa for mercy. But when Esmerelda reached the vaulted ceiling, Luisa again let her drop. BANG! H er dislocated arm s w ere all but ripped from her body by the savage halt, and Esmerelda let out another awful scream of pain. This time, Luisa let Esmerelda hang, roaring in agony, and walked from the winch.

“Let us move on,” Luisa said. “We'll leave her like that for a day, and she'll think again about confessing to me!”

They walked deeper into the bowels of the torture chamber, the ongoing screams of Esmerelda becoming oddly hollow and distant. By now, Solana was shaking, and not just with the cold that invaded every inch of her naked body. She was terrified. H er hands, roped securely behind her back, were fisted with anxiety, her stomach tight.