Sorry.Disciplin Andy! I dont know, what is story, what is comment. TBC helps.
Not a revolution; rather the watch belatedly carrying through the Tribune's policy and restoring order in the town with a brutal but necessary example.A most intense nailing scene, but significantly enhanced by the Sergeant's thoughts, we are not in the mechanical Roman justice system, where the rich (mostly) wield the power and the poor suffer, but almost a people's revolution, justice for all, and life for the bright young things never the same again.
... no solidarity among victims or comfort for each other...And on her cross the skivvy exulted... she saw the rich bitch forced to kneel, saw her degraded
... no martyrs or innocent victims... passivity, in continuing a criminal racket begun by others is no excuse... a kind of white-collar criminal who ignores the reality of what she's been doing... until it catches up with her“You say ‘she’? Why not someone in the companies, a crooked manager or book keeper? Can we prove it’s her.”
“There’s a strongbox in her study out at her villa... "
Gabriella had played her part. Played her part as if she were an actor on a stage reciting lines and performing actions that someone else had written for her.
... no room for noble gestures, no wishing oneself away into fantasies...Pain that swelled down her arm. Raging onward like the fire that had ravaged the hills last summer, tearing through village after village as the men tried and failed to quench it, as women and children fled screaming from it....
she knew before, as everyone does, but didn't care too much... it didn't have anything to do with her... not until today...And crucifixion was horrible
She don't go nowhere from here.
Yikes! I think it's better that she's a high-born girl fallen from grace. I think the horror of the situation is sharper.
The last two chapters were really good.
"TBC", eh? Where do you go from here?
Thanks Phlebas.. I wish I could really envisage and find words for the arms stretched and tortured on the cross. The stresses, the hurt in muscles, nerves, bones. How that travels through the whole of the body. Still trying to do that, and know I never will; but the attempt is so exhilarating.Powerful stuff. And nice details
"The tendons of her armpit showed starkly, the white hollows between stretched dreadfully."
And the "hurt beam" has a touch of Old English (Anglo Saxon) poetry about it.
Thanks Phlebas.. I wish I could really envisage and find words for the arms stretched and tortured on the cross. The stresses, the hurt in muscles, nerves, bones. How that travels through the whole of the body. Still trying to do that, and know I never will; but the attempt is so exhilarating.
Gabriella, next part:
But now Gabriella was doing the dance of the freshly crucified, singing the song of the freshly crucified.
The song was almost wordless, raging wildly in tone from guttural choking and desperate howls to screeches that could shatter glass. Incoherent fragments of words it had, screaming to be let down, that she could not bear it, that it hurt too much. The words melted in the wild music of the song.
The dance was spectacular. The graceful body reared and bucked on the cross. It tore to left and right, striving to rip the nails out of her flesh like an animal trying to rip its leg out of a trap. The cropped head roiled and jerked. The song rose to screeching horror.
But the nails were absolute.
The demented frenzy went on for ever, five minutes, ten, fifteen. Her sweet breasts hurt with their wild flinging. Dry air ripped in her throat.
Then suddenly she stiffened, her body arching out from the cross, groin thrust like an offering. Her voice lowered to a howl.
Thus she hung there, arms stretched like the strings of an over-tuned lyre.
Slowly her body curled back to embrace the cross. The much abused bottom slumped against the beam. She hung from the nails.
Crucified.
TBC
Gabriella, next part:
Eliaza grasped the shorn hair, pulled her head up against the post.
The girl was in shock, mouth hanging slack, cheeks twitching.
She was breathing in rapid gasps.
Her placed his finger in the hollow below her eye, pulled down. The eye was bloodshot, the pupil swollen to almost eclipse the hazel iris.
Her sweat was pouring, wet as if they had thrown water over her. The blood running down to her distended elbows was pinkened with sweat, half dissolving as it trickled down.
Her skin was clammy. Tremors ran up and down her arms.
He passed a finger under the softness of her breast. He sniffed at the odour of her sweat. It was tinged with the spices of last night’s dainties.
The hammer of her heart was weak but rapid. Her thighs smelt of urine but she was not pissing now. Her urethra had closed off the flow.
She was conscious, Eliaza thought, but barely so. Nauseous and dizzy, but her mind closed down in shock.
No matter. She was nailed at her feet and her wrists … and her mind. The nails allowed no escape, they would grip her. The almost merciful shock would pass, blood would flow back to her brain, she would soon regain full consciousness. And what an awakening that would be.
Meanwhile the skivvy was struggling to straighten her knees to take weight off her arms. Tough little bitch that one. She hadn’t fainted like the poor little rich girl. She snarled curses as he examined her, her scrawny breasts with their pointy little nipples jolting on her skinny chest.
They both needed watering. Where by Chronos’ balls was Dirennius? He’d sent him to get a sponge an aeon ago.
At last the fool returned, hastening under the sergeant’s glare.
“The old hag wanted three drachma for it,” he whined. “Said she’d have to get another one.”
He proffered the much-used thing. “I made her rinse it out,” he said placatingly.
TBC