The Witch

Eleven - The Room

Solana was returned to her cell, and there slumped, chained, for another week.

A guard came with her daily rations: Solana said nothing to him, though he seemed kind. There was no hope at all in her eyes. More than four months since she had seen daylight, or worn clothing, or breathed fresh air. More than four months since she had known even a vestige of dignity. Despite the imprisonment, the humiliation and degradation of being constantly chained or bound, and despite the torture to which she had been subjected time and again, she had never lost hope. But now, with Maria's death, her spirit had broken. There seemed nothing left, no reason to fight.

When guards came and unlocked the fetters that had become almost part of Solana's own body, solid about her wrists for week upon endles s w eek, she made no protest, placed her own hands behind her back as they bound her. She walked calmly at their bidding, head down.

This time, they descended a tight, spiral staircase beyond the torture chamber. The cave into which they walked was almost pitch black, cold and wet. Insects clung to the slimy walls, water dripped constantly like rain from the ceiling. Solana barely felt the icy drops on her naked body. At the end of the passageway, a heavy iron door stood open. Solana was thrust through by the guards. She stumbled, heard the door close.

“Welcome, my sweet. Welcome to the Room.”

Luisa locked and barred the door, then strode forward into the vague light of torches, shedding the cloak she had been wearing against the cold. H er tunic was grey, ragged, its brief skirt skewed across her thighs, her arms and shoulders bare. She offered the dungeon's key to her sole assistant, a guard who moved to stand behind Solana. “Bring her.”

The guard grasped Solana's bound arms, led her into an abbatoir of horror. Chains dangled like vines from the ceiling. Central to the Room was a rack, huge and dark. There were blunt spikes on its surface to tear Solana's flesh as she stretched. On a long table nearby were the other devices of Luisa's craft. A heavy brank, with calipers to lever the jaw into dislocation, and screw s w hich, when turned, would slowly skewer Solana's eyes. Thumbscrews, a Pear, a studded mallet for breaking bones. Branding irons and long iron nails heated in a brazier. There was a rough iron file for flaying skin, hooked pincers for tearing flesh, a barbed whip. In the shadows, Solana glimpsed an Iron Maiden poised open, spikes ready to skewer the unfortunate victim: and, worse still, the ‘rail' - a sloping beam bristling with barbs and spikes, which she would be made to straddle, weights at her ankles, and slowly descend - tearing away her most sensitive flesh.

H orror and dread stole the blood from Solana's face. H er leg s w ent weak, and she collapsed to her knees, rocking forward with arms bound. “Mercy, please, have mercy on me.”

“Confess your sins, and you will be spared.”

“Then I confess!”

“What?”

Solana wept openly in fear. “I confess to the accusations made against me, My Lady. Just tell me what to say, where to put my name. I will admit to it all -”

Luisa looked aghast. “You cannot!”

“Please, My Lady, I do! I will confess to anything!”

Luisa looked to her guard. “But ...” A look of despair. H ow could thi s w oman defeat her so many times? Solana had withheld confession long enough for Luisa to relent and ask that she be set free. Then she had toyed with Luisa's affection and dignity, rejected her advances. And now, with revenge at Luisa's fingertips, Solana had offered confession. Luisa's ice-blue eyes grew hard. “That means nothing to me.” To her guard: “Put her upon the rack. I shall do as I wish, regardless.”

“No!” Already broken, Solana let out a wail of misery. But the guard wrenched her to her feet, propelled her towards the evil rack. Solana screamed, hysterical with fear. With arms bound behind her, she tried to turn to Luisa. “Please, I beg you, I beg you, have mercy on my body! I am sorry for denying you! Please, I will do anything!”

“You will suffer, that is all.”

“Please, no!” Solana was truly frantic. H er leg s w ere weak, her eyes fixed on the awful rack before her. The guard was untying her hands. “Oh, My Lady, no!!”

“Thi s w ill be my pleasure, whore.”

Nothing to lose.

Upon this moment, everything pivoted. Even suicide was preferable to this. Driven by her panic, Solana exploded into motion, swinging her elbow up-and-back with all her strength. She hit the guard full in the face, his nose shattering with a sound like breaking eggs, his helmet flying off. H e gave an awful scream, clutching his face. Solana spun, driving her knee up into his un-armoured groin. She felt the resistance of his testicles, heard the distinct pop of one splitting as it was crushed. At once, he fell to his knees, eyes bulging, the air driven from his lungs. Solana grabbed the guard's head, twisted it violently. H er reward was the nauseating crunch of his neck breaking, and his corpse flopped to the floor.

“Stay away, you black witch!” Luisa had drawn a red-hot iron from the brazier, and held it before herself as Solana turned her attention to the torturer. Solana's eyes narrowed. In the dungeon, she looked like a savage beast: dark, grubby skin and a ragged mane of hair, naked with only her hands and feet a s w eapons, bared teeth and eyes gleaming white. She stalked towards Luisa, who waved the smoking iron in the air. “I warn you!”

Solana charged.

With an angry shout, Luisa slashed down with the iron: but Solana ducked beneath the weapon's arc, grabbing Luisa's arm, wrenching it downwards, twisting hard. Luisa barked in pain, and doubled over, straight into the flying knee that smacked hard into the muscled wall of her midriff. The air exploded from Luisa's lungs.

Solana seized Luisa's hair, wrenched her up. As strong as she was, Luisa could not loosen Solana's Amazonian grip, and was unable to stop the knee that slammed twice into her face. Blood blossomed at her lips and nose. A third blow, and her jaw cracked. Given strength by rage, Solana slammed her clenched fist again and again into Luisa's unprotected face, until Luisa's resistance weakened and she finally slumped to the floor.

Luisa lay, dazed and beaten, as Solana retrieved the rope that had been her own bondage, and used it, instead, to bind Luisa's hands behind her back. The bond s w ere tight, Luisa's hands at once turning purple. Next, Solana tore away Luisa's clothing, stripping her bare.

“Please,” Luisa gurgled through the blood in her mouth. “Kill me swiftly.”

“As you killed Maria?” Solana hissed. “As you would have killed me? You ask for mercy, you who have hurt so many innocent women!”

“Forgive me!”

“Forgive you?” Solana's dark eyes blazed rage. She stepped back, pushing her hair from her face, shining sweat. She glared down at the helpless, bound woman at her feet, then looked about the room. If she chose, she could torture Luisa horribly to death. But that was not in her nature. When her anger subsided, she would feel remorse. And Luisa did not deserve that.

She had a plan, but there was one thing yet to be done. Seizing Luisa's thick black hair, Solana dragged the bound torturer over to the brazier. There, she drew from the searing coals a shimmering, red-hot iron. Luisa's eye s w idened in abject dread.

“No! No-o!”

But Solana's hand clamped about Luisa's face, squeezing her jaw hard till Luisa's mouth was forced open. There was a brief moment in which realisation appeared in Luisa's eyes, an expression of sheer horror.

Solana thrust the red hot iron into Luisa's mouth.

Luisa screamed horribly as steam billowed in a huge cloud from her searing tongue. There was a hissing, squealing sizzling; and the smell of burning flesh. H er muscular body convulsed on the floor in agony, her hands straining at the ropes that bound them behind her back, sweat beading all over her bare skin, her eye s w ide as the iron ravaged her tongue.

Finally, Solana withdrew the iron. Luisa fell to the floor, steam and smoke still curling up from her half-open mouth. Never more would Luisa Consuela utter words; in a moment, she had become one of the beasts, capable only of sounds.

 

W

 

When the cell door creaked open, the torch in Solana's hand lit a ghastly sight. A naked woman dangled from shackles in the centre of the tiny cell, her petite body oiled with old sweat, her head drooping forward. As if torture had not been enough, she had spent almost two months hanging by her wrist s w ithout relief.

Esmerelda did not stir as the cell door closed again, and Solana dumped the dazed Luisa to the floor. In moments, Solana loosened the winch, and lowered Esmerelda gently to the floor. The woman groaned, but could not move.

“There is a key here, somewhere,” Solana muttered, lifting Esmerelda's cuffed wrists, sorting through keys on a heavy ring. At length, she unlocked the weighty shackles, dragged the confessed witch to the wall. “Lie still, Esmerelda.”

Luisa, now, groaned as Solana forced her to the middle of the cell, locking her in fetters still warm from Esmerelda' s w rists. In seconds, the chains clanked again, and Luisa wa s w renched off the floor. When she had been hoisted high enough, Solana locked the brake. Luisa's beaten face was framed by her tautly upstretched arms. H er nakedbreasts shone with perspiration in the chill air. The chain from which she hung creaked slowly.

Solana returned to Esmerelda. “Can you stand?”

Esmerelda nodded weakly, her blue eyes searching Solana's face. “... Tell me why?”

Solana smiled. “Justice is finally being done.” She drew the hood of Luisa's captured robe over her face, her features concealed in its shadow, and helped Esmerelda stand. “I will have to tie your hands, but it is only until we are outside the city.”

Esmerelda nodded, and held her hands behind her back for the rope. She looked up at Luisa Consuela, who hung motionless by the wrists from heavy shackles, her nude body drawn and gleaming. “ H ow did you do it?”

“It was she who did it,” Solana replied softly. “She craved her own indulgence too much.”

The cell door slammed shut on the dangling Luisa.

Alone, Luisa now began to struggle, trying to free her wrists, trying to twist her body about: but without leverage, it was futile. Sweat glossed her naked breasts and belly. The terrible pain of her burned tongue was now joined by the growing torment of the fetters about her wrists, the slow ache in the pits of her shoulders, the gradual torment of her own body' s w eight on her arms.

Slow sweat crept over Luisa's body, her bare skin greasy with a sheen of wet. H er lip s w ere dry, all her strength gone. She moaned, briefly, in the hope that the guards might come and lower her: but there was no response. She knew already that even if they did come, they would not recognise her beaten face, nor could she ever tell them her identity, now that her tongue was burned away.

Slowly, her head sank forward onto her aching chest. She hung.