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9. Christmas Again

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Ingar paused and asked us how we both felt. Miri wiped a snuffle from her nose and I sort of nodded, I think I did anyway. She asked us if we had had enough or if we wanted her to continue to tell the young girl’s story and we both muttered that we did and she was a good storyteller. Then she said she wanted us to feel, just a very little, something of the girl’s suffering, although it would not be even a tenth of a hundredth of her pain and it would be over very quickly, while she carried on in her suffering. We looked at each other and of course I said yes straight away but I could tell Miri was nervous so I held her hand and stroked her cheek and then she said yes too. So Ingar gave us each two little metal things and a length of twine, the sort you use to tie up parcels, and she asked us to tie the ends of the twine to the holes in the clips. They were small bulldog clips, the sort you use to hold documents together.

She asked us to keep them beside us for now, and that if we were ready she’d carry on with the story. I think we muttered that we were ready and she went to the window and pulled the heavy curtain open just a little and the dim morning light slanted weakly into our room.

The young girl was as ready as she could ever be. She breathed in deeply as the executioner’s assistant bound her wrists tightly behind her back. He had a cruel grin, she noticed, and he pulled the rough cords tighter than he needed to do, letting them cut into her slightly and making her wince. The Justice and the old woman had left the cell and returned to the upper floor using the spiral staircase, but the executioner and his assistant, followed by the priest, now led the girl along the passageway in the other direction and through a heavily-barred wooden door, which led via a flight of stone steps directly into the courtyard of the town hall, separated from the street beyond by a high stone wall. The cobbles were crusted in snow and the tiny flakes fell from the grey sky, dusting the girl’s hair and shift. She shivered in the cold and asked the executioner if she could have something to keep her warm as she didn’t want to seem frightened with her trembling, but he shook his head and said no, that it didn’t matter and that the journey would not be so long. The assistant helped her up onto the waiting tumbril and sat her facing backwards on a timber cross-piece, fixing her already-tied hands to the bar, then, with more rope, tied the fetters on her ankles to two hoops on the floor of the cart. She looked around, lost. The priest mounted and sat himself as best he could on the edge of the cart, looking at the girl, and muttered prayers quietly, then the assistant jumped up and seated himself opposite the priest. A guard next lifted a few tools to the driver, who placed them behind the girl, towards the front of the cart, and then a small iron brazier with charcoals, already hot, inside it. The girl looked around and thought that this was a small kindness to keep her warm on the journey, and that was why she didn’t need an extra covering. Finally the executioner, pulling his black mask over his face, climbed up and joined the driver at the front and signaled that they were ready. A group of guards wearing the red tower crest of the City on their tabards formed before and behind the cart and at a call, the great gate of the courtyard was pulled open and the little procession made its way into the street.
 
Ingar stood up and went to the window, opening the sash. A cold, bitter wind blew in; we felt the goose-bumps on our naked bodies as we sat in our tight circle. She smiled and said that was better. It would have been better still, she said, if some light snow had been falling, but we couldn’t have everything. But light snow was still falling, she said, as the cart began its journey.

The girl blinked, the dull morning light a shock to her eyes after her days and nights in the confines of the cell beneath the town hall. She looked around at the buildings covered in snow, at the cobbles coated with discoloured mush and the dirt of the city, at the crowd who stood by the great gate, the crowd that had come just to see her! She looked at them, poor people in rough winter garb, rich merchants in their furs. A huge crowd and she was not even in the square yet! And they were shouting, and their faces were full of anger, and their cries hurt her as they called out ‘murderer’ and ‘devil’ and ‘suffer in Hell’, and she saw a man selling cheap pamphlets with a wood engraved image of a girl, which she knew must be her, and some terrible torment taking place and she shook with fear, and looked at the priest who whispered to her and placed his hand on her leg, and she trembled less and sniffed back her tear.

The procession carried on along the street, away from the town hall, and the crowd thinned, but as they passed ordinary folk going about their business at this early hour looked up and cursed or spat on the girl in the cart, and her eyes darted this way and that trying to make sense of where they were going. She could not understand, for it seemed that they were travelling away from the town hall square where she knew her scaffold had been built. They seemed to be heading towards the street that led to the City gate. Perhaps, she thought, they were taking her from the City and would just banish her and let her live. But she quickly realised that this was a silly dream and let her vain hope dissipate. She let her mind wander and looked up into the sky and let the fine flakes fall into her blue eyes and watched a rook fly this way and that in circles above her. Then the cart made a sharp turn to the right, down a narrow lane that led to the small square in front of the merchant’s house where she had lived and she suddenly understood where she was being taken.
 
The square, surrounded by tall, brick-built mansions, with their carved stone mullions and pediments, was filled with a crowd. She looked about in all directions, recognising some of the people as neighbours and as servants from the other merchant families. She looked up at her old house, where a window stood unshutered, and saw, in the frame, her mistress, dressed finely in furs and jewels, and with her a handsome young man who she recalled having seen before. Once early in the morning when she took hot water to her mistress. Once on that fateful night only just a week ago. She looked up and let her eyes meet those of her mistress and she smiled.

With a jolt, the cart came to a stop and the guards in their tabards with the red castle of the City made a half-circle between the walls of the house and the crowd, who were pushing in, shouting and shaking fists. The executioner and his assistant jumped down and lifted the tools and the brazier from the tumbril, placing the still-glowing coals on the snowy ground and, out of sight of the girl, pushing an iron pincer into the flame, turning it and letting sparks fly from the charcoal. The executioner nodded to his assistant who clambered back up, behind the girl, who looked around anxiously, not knowing what to expect. He put his hands to her neck and pinched her cheek and tweaked her earlobe and pulled on her short-trimmed golden hair and then, with a stern rebuke from his master, untied the knot in the cord around her neck and pushed the grey shift down over her shoulders and over her breasts, exposing her still-bruised back to the wintry chill; pushing it further down until her upper body was fully naked, and the shift was held up only by the string around her waist. She smiled to herself, that, she realised, was what the old woman had fixed it for.

The executioner jumped up now and raised a hand to silence the crowd, and an officer, also in a City tabard, who had been with the procession but who had remained un-noticed until that point, moved to the front of the little group. He coughed, as if unused to speaking, then announced the name of the girl and her crime and that she was to be executed this day in the square by the Lesser Alster, but that first she would pay three penances for the sins she had committed.

In a faltering voice, for he had a young daughter of a similar age, who he had left at home at her spinning wheel, he proclaimed that as it was an abomination to the Lord that a murderess should have or suckle children that her teats would be torn, and then that, in accordance with ancient practice, here, and at the scene of the crime, and at the parish church, she would be cut and her flesh torn from her and that the Lord should have mercy upon her.

The girl suddenly looked terrified and, unable to cover herself, or to look away, twisted this way and that in her bonds and gazed out at the crowd silently imploring someone to help her. At this moment the executioner came to her and quietly whispered that she should be calm, because nothing could be done and what must be done would be done, and that she should remember what he had said, that she should do exactly what he said, and should not struggle, because that would not make things easier, but rather harder. And she nodded and stifled a sob.
 
And now Ingar said we should play our part and put the clips on our own breasts, just to feel in a tiny way togetherness with the young girl in Hamburg. I went to clip the first one to my own nipple, squeezing it ready, but Ingar stopped me and said we should do it to each other, because otherwise we would be too gentle (she didn’t know everything about me), so I said I would do hers, and she could do Miri’s and Miri could do mine. But it had to be right, so I started by licking her and then gently teezing her with my teeth, so that she became hard and excited; then I held her nipple, first the left one, between my thumb and forefinger and gently rolled it, then extended my hold and began to lift her breast towards me and then, just when she didn’t quite expect it, I slipped the clip over and let it close suddenly. Ingar made the sweetest little howl, then gasped and smiled and kissed me and I knew I had done a good job. So I carried on with the right, and she made another, slow noise, the sort I know that means it’s really painful and you’re trying to breathe over it. I smiled and asked her if I’d done it right and she said yes, I had, better than she could have hoped. And then she reached over to Miri and after that Miri put the clips onto me, and she did it beautifully cruelly.

But now it was time for Ingar to continue with the story.

The executioner bent towards the girl and sensed her fear, for he had been here many times before. He asked her quietly if she was ready and she turned quickly to him and nodded that she was and before she could even think he had taken the pincers, glowing red from the charcoal, and with a quick movement closed them over the point of her right breast, twisted and with a rapid tug, tore her nipple and a circle of flesh about the size of a Thaler away from her breast. Immediately the girl let out a terrible howl and, as far as her bounds would allow, fell backwards into the cart, where the assistant caught her and lifted her upright again, just as the executioner was ready to repeat his action on her other breast, which he did before she could gather her thoughts, and with another scream her body twisted this way and that and the crowd cheered and she fell back and gasped and retched and vomited over herself. In the same instant the shift that fell below her waist was stained dark as her bladder involuntarily opened. Her head fell between her legs, her torn breasts on her thighs as she gasped for air, panting wildly. Again the crowd cheered.

Slowly she regained some semblance of composure, her bound hands writhing, desperately trying to free themselves and to reach to the source of her agony. The assistant, behind her, smiled, looking forward to his part in the performance, but that was yet to come.

Ingar, calmly, stopped her story and told us to be ready and to take the strings in our hands and, first left, then right, to rip the clips away. They had been there a good ten minutes and the shock and pain as we pulled them from our breasts was terrible, and we all sank to our knees and held ourselves, trying to make the hurt go away. Of course, slowly, it did. She looked at each of us in turn and smiled. And told us that the young girl’s hurt was just beginning.
 
That is what he said to her, when she stopped retching and rocking forward and backward and stopped straining to breathe. He told her that she should be calm and should understand that this was the beginning and not the end, and that he was sorry, but he had to conduct things as he was instructed, and he did not want her to suffer, but she must. She looked at him with widening eyes, and he took a part of the grey shift that had fallen to her waist and wiped her mouth and her neck clean. She tried to speak to him but it was hard, so he placed his ear near to her mouth and she said she was sorry that she had cried so loudly. He told her that it was normal, and that everyone did it, even the men. She asked why they would tear the breasts of men as they could never suckle children and he explained that she was part of a performance and the crowd expected to see him work the victim with the hot pincers and that she had borne the pain well. He told her to prepare, and to bend forward at her waist, because they now had to perform the second part of the penance in front of her master’s house, and that his assistant would do this. He said he would tell her when to be ready.

But he didn’t, because he knew that would frighten her, and it was better that it started before she knew. He nodded to his assistant, who raised his knife to the crowd with a wide grin. He had not done this before, although he had seen his master perform the cutting and had practiced on dead pigs, but this was his first time and he wanted to be seen to be doing the job correctly.

She gasped as if all her breath had been taken as he made the cut, just below her shoulder, about the width of a small finger, deep enough to slice the skin completely and allow blood to flow over her back and down into her shift and dripping through the planks of the cart onto the snow beneath. He cut at the sides, then working his knife tore a strip of flesh down to the tie on her shift. The executioner was holding her shoulders down, looking into her widening eyes, watching her horror unfold, a dull croak taking the place of the scream he anticipated. He smiled, very slightly, and told her it was over and that she had been good, but the pain just grew and grew as the cold bit into her opened back and the blood trickled around her.
 
Ingar asked us if we had had enough for now, as it was getting on and she thought it would be better to stop for a while, and that this was a good point in the story to stop. She said she had a lecture to go to and while it would be lovely to stay and talk and maybe do other things, this wasn’t a good day and it would be better to wait until the night. The girl’s execution had been in the morning, she knew this, but perhaps she thought it would be nicer if they could all meet up after college and have some drinks somewhere and then maybe stay in Miri’s room and talk and sleep, and then she could continue the story early the next day, at just about the time that the cart would be arriving at its next stop, at the place where they found the murdered body of the young girl’s master. I was sure I wanted her to continue, but I could tell that Ingar was tired and, I think, I was as well. And I wanted to really listen deeply to her story, and, after all, tomorrow there would be no lectures or classes, so I said I agreed and so did Miri. We kissed each other deeply and touched each other on our bruised breasts and Miri said she would get some food in for the evening and we could get together again then.
 
pkindenhaag said:
Ingar asked us if we had had enough for now, as it was getting on and she thought it would be better to stop for a while, and that this was a good point in the story to stop. She said she had a lecture to go to and while it would be lovely to stay and talk and maybe do other things, this wasn’t a good day and it would be better to wait until the night. The girl’s execution had been in the morning, she knew this, but perhaps she thought it would be nicer if they could all meet up after college and have some drinks somewhere and then maybe stay in Miri’s room and talk and sleep, and then she could continue the story early the next day, at just about the time that the cart would be arriving at its next stop, at the place where they found the murdered body of the young girl’s master. I was sure I wanted her to continue, but I could tell that Ingar was tired and, I think, I was as well. And I wanted to really listen deeply to her story, and, after all, tomorrow there would be no lectures or classes, so I said I agreed and so did Miri. We kissed each other deeply and touched each other on our bruised breasts and Miri said she would get some food in for the evening and we could get together again then.
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A nice little interlude...teasing us ... Wondering what next?
 
We met in the pub, along the street from our house. Romy and me I mean. We each had a glass of red wine. It wasn’t quite empty, but it wasn’t that full. A lot of people had gone back to work, I suppose, so we were the lucky ones, enjoying the last few days of the holiday before we headed back to uni. It had been another dull, rainy, windy day and I just longed for some proper winter, like the winter Ingar had been describing in Hamburg. She’d texted me and it was just the same as here in Bremen. But the forecast is for some snow, they say. Probably we’ll get that back up north, the ideal thing after all the floods. Still, it was nice to be by the fire in The George with Romy, enjoying ourselves. We talked about the term to come and what plans we had for things, concerts and stuff. And about exams, like you do. Not that either of us were worried. I might have spent a lot of time in the evenings with Miri and Ingar and storytelling, but I’d not been wasting my time with too many games or experiments or wasted relationships this year, so I knew I’d be fine, because Romy was my bestie and that was enough really, and I was her’s too. We talked about our evenings together and about the needles and the fun we’d had with them and as there weren’t many people around I pulled down my t-shirt and she gave my little nipple-jewel a quick kiss. I love doing things like that in places where you’re not supposed to. The guy working the bar, who I think I knew from school, maybe he was in the year below, saw us I think, and I really liked that.

Romy asked me a lot about my two special friends at Ridingham and I described them to her. And I told her about our storytelling and the things we did and she said she thought I was lucky to have housemates like that. I knew I was. Romy was still in halls at her place, and I think she was a bit lonely there, even though her floor shared a kitchen and things. It was just a mix-up of boys and girls and they didn’t really have much in common, so she sort of stuck mainly to herself. So I thought it might be a nice idea if she came over one weekend in the new term and stay with me and my two special friends and she could join in our story-telling. I’d told her about that as well, and about the story I told (which she knew) and about Ingar’s. It had been hard trying to retell Ingar’s story, because I think of the way she could add little embelishments to it and because of her lovely soft accent that made it feel so real. But I’d tried and I think I had done it reasonably well. Sometimes Romy would curl up next to me on a sofa, like the sofa in the George, and I’d tell her a little part of the story. Sometimes we’d be in bed together and we’d cling onto each other and I’d whisper the story into her ear. Sometimes we’d be walking in the forest and holding hands and letting the rain fall on us and we’d imagine ourselves in that dark, flickeringly-lit cell beneath the town hall, and we’d wonder again what was going through the young girl’s mind as she waited, silently.

I’d got up to the point in the story where the young girl had been taken in the tumbril or cart or whatever you’d call it to the door of her master’s house, the one who’d been murdered. They’d stripped her to the waist and the executioner had torn her poor, young breasts and the assistant, who seemed like a horrible youth to me, who had no idea of kindness at all and just relished causing pain, well, he’d done the first part of his job and our poor girl was bent over her own knees gasping and her back had a long vertical bloody stripe where the strip of her skin had been torn away. The priest was saying a prayer. And as she looked up and through her tears and coughed on her vomit she saw her mistress and her lover slipping away from the window, and a flake of snow lodged in her eye and she blinked and looked again and she was gone.
 
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The snow seemed to fall more heavily now, in desperate flurries, whipping around the corners of buildings and driving down the narrow streets. The girls shook and trembled, her teeth chattering as she rocked to and fro, trying to distract her mind from the terrible pain across her back, a pain that seemed to have eclipsed the agonies of her tortured breasts. The assistant had replaced the brazier, which he had extinguished with snow from the cobbles, and the bundle of instruments, at the front of the cart and the priest and executioner once again climbed up and seated themselves, the priest all the while trying to talk to the girl who was clearly quite beside herself now. He touched her on her leg, feeling the soaked cloth of the shift that clung to her thigh, and tried as best he could to soothe her. Very slowly, still gasping and shivering, she looked up at him and asked him if it would soon be over, her brow furrowed by fear. Taking his rosary he began to mutter words in Latin that she half-understood, and then, suddenly, he slipped backwards, grabbing out for the rail on which he sat as the cart jolted forward, his beads dropping to the slush-covered cobbles as the cart began to move.
 
The journey to the next stop was a short one, for her master had been found just two streets from his house, at a place where the parish pump stood against an ancient stone wall, and the cobbled way widened just a little. The sky had darkened and the snow was falling in large, heavy flakes that soon covered every surface of the cart in a thickening white coat, and, immobilised as she was by the bonds on her wrists and the shackles on her ankles, stuck to her bare back, rapidly becoming red with the blood from her wound. She shook her head but could not free her cropped golden hair from the clinging snow that sat upon her.

A smaller crowd waited here, by the pump. They sheltered under doorways as best they could from the blizzard, hoping it would pass before the performance started, not wanting to be cheated of the spectacle they had waited patiently to see. Some were shopkeepers, some old maids who would be selling fish later at the market, some rich ladies in fine winter clothes, some vagabonds who would kill as fast as they could cut a purse from a noble’s side, some children on their way to grammar school, some urchins who would never learn to read. All had heard about the execution of the young girl, hardly more than a child it had been said. A beautiful maiden others said, who had tried to steal the heart of the merchant and had killed him in a fit of jealousy. The prettiest maid in all Hamburg others said, but with a heart of ice, who had killed not just once but many times. And now they would see her pay her dues, stripped half-naked, chained and bloody. They would see her body torn as the City received its redress. For some this was justice being done, and a lesson that they wished their children to see, and to remember. For others it was no more than a morning at the fair, to enjoy the company and the sellers of sweet sticky apples. Or to take pleasure in the torments of the flesh of the girl, to relish her twists and cries, to grin as the executioners did their grim work. But for one, who stood nervously behind a stone pillar, a shawl over her head against the snow but maybe to hide her face, it was for a different reason. She looked at the cart as it arrived with the poor trembling girl, half-covered with blood stained snow, her face a mask of resignation, and she wished she was that girl and she decided that one day, somehow, she would be.
 
Romy asked me if the girl behind the pillar was Ingar. I sipped my wine, just a little, and said I thought that it might have been. And I asked Romy if she could have been that girl too, and after a pause she said that she would have liked to have been that girl and perhaps, she thought, I would too. I knew, of course I knew, that I wanted to be there, sitting in that tumbril, my body already tortured. I knew and I knew and I knew. And it was probably then that the idea that I had came into my mind. But that’s for later, for another time I think.
 
Because the next thing that Romy did was to give me a (playful, I think) cuff around the head and told me to stop being that Vivien-girl all again because she’d had enough of that in the summer and she got up and ordered two more glasses of Tempranillo and the bar guy gave us another odd look.

The executioner gave a shout of annoyance at his assistant who, ever keen to do his new job, had already taken the knife to the girl’s back for the second cut. He was too fast and had to wait the announcement to the crowd, but his hand had slipped and a new stream of blood was tricking through the girl’s snow-covered back. The tabarded officer slipped as he tried to stand in the cart and made his proclamation, that here, at the site of her crime, her back would be torn for the second time, and the crowd made their jeers and cheers and now it was time for the assistant to try again. At the executioner’s bidding he wiped the snow from her back as she tried to turn her neck to see what was happening, for she thought the cutting had already been done. The executioner turned her face to the back of the cart and told her to behave as she had the last time and to hold her screams for the moment when the pain came, because that was part of the show and was expected by the crowd, whose only idea of the suffering she was enduring was through her cries. She tried to stifle back the tears, knowing now what was coming, and clenched her teeth. The assistant, over-dramatically, raised his knife to the crowd, eliciting another cheer, and made his cut, just below the nape of her neck, and as wide as the last one, then sliced down on each side, just a little and easing in his knife with his fingers, tore the strip of flesh down to her waist band.

The howl she made caused the rooks on the snow-covered roofs to rise in a black cloud and the little baby in a swaddling band to cry out loud. Her body thrashed to and fro, steadied at last by the firm, gloved hand of the executioner, and then fell to her legs, her breathing rushed. He looked at her back. The cut was deep, deeper than it should have been. His assistant was smiling, but soon realised that he was being admonished, not praised. He would get it right on the third one.
The cart soon headed off again, on its journey to the final stopping point before the square. The church rose dark and gloomy against the sky. At last the snow had stopped falling but it seemed that dawn was struggling to breach the clouds this miserable morning. Two hefty braziers had been set, either side of the church doors, to keep the priest and his attendants warm, and in the small square other fires had been set against the cold. More people were gathered here, and as the tumbril drew to a halt, the hour bell was tolled in the tower above. The girl looked up, almost inured now to the constant pain that drove across her back. It seemed a full service was to take place, priests in their robes, acolytes swinging incense, banners, young choir boys taken from their lessons. But it lasted only a few minutes and, in a routine she now understood, she was made ready and the officer made his little speech and the crowd shouted obscenities or, very occasionally, urges to be strong and brave. She was ready, her hands grew tense on the bar to which they were roped, she pushed her feet hard onto the bed of the cart, and, this time, did not look around, but stared straight ahead, at the open door of the church, at the priest and the executioner and at the brass cross held high on a pole and she waited for the agony she knew was coming. And it did, but this time quickly. A cut, two short slices and then the horror of the tearing as the strip of her flesh was torn down to her waist and the blood flowed and the raw flesh was exposed to the freezing air. She held back a cry, her eyes swiveled, her head hung backwards towards the assistant, her mutilated breasts pointing skywards, her mouth gaping wide, sucking in air. And so she hung, in her bonds, gasping, but refusing to shout out her pain. The executioner smiled, lifted her upright with great care and whispered into her ear. The first part was over. The second part would soon be about to begin. Her end was coming nearer. She looked left and right at crowd, knowing that no-one could understand what was happening to her. She cried a little, but she was not crying for her pain or her fate. She was crying because there was nothing left to do but cry.
 
Every cobble on the street seemed to jolt her body into new spasms of pain. For the first time, as they now took the long road by the side of the Alster, she became aware of the people staring at her, she became aware of her nakedness. There she was, a girl, old enough to be a good daughter or a worker in the market stalls, tied hand and feet into a tumbril, sitting with a black-clad executioner and a priest and a young headstrong assistant and an officer in a tabard with the red tower of the city on his chest. A half-naked girl, with strips of flesh hanging from her back and blood coagulating in the freezing cold air, her breasts swinging with each turn of the wheel, her torn, mutilated breasts. A girl young enough to be at home with a spinning wheel; instead keeping the strangest company. A body to be devoured by the City as a warning to others. Barely a girl at all anymore. Just a body to be eaten. She hung her head as the cart turned one last corner and entered the square. To the right stood the town hall with its tower and its clock, the same town hall she had left some two hours ago. And now she was at her journey’s end, and what a crowd had come to see her this time! She gazed this way and that, for a moment forgetting the terrible pain that burned her back and her breasts, bouncing on the wooden rail that had been her seat, anxious, somehow, to see the scaffold on which she knew she her life would end.

They pushed through the crowd. She looked up at the banners of the City and the aldermen and the guild masters and the justices in their robes seated on the town hall steps, the better to view the coming spectacle. She looked left over the frozen Lesser Alster where children played on skates, oblivious of the event that would soon take place, more interested in their puck and their goals. She looked at the little stalls selling food and drinks and the pamphlet men with their wooden sticks held high, papers hanging from little notches, like trees in the snow, calling out their wares. Calling out to townsfolk who might want a printed memento of the day they executed the girl murderer in the town hall square.
And the scaffold approached. She was surprised at its size and height, surprised that they would do so much just for her. It stood as tall as a man, maybe as tall as two. She could see some of the things on it that were waiting for her, but wasn’t really sure yet what they might be. She could see the ladder that led to the platform and it looked so high and so steep, that she wondered how she would ever get to the top. Although she thought that they would find a way. And so many eyes were looking at her and so many mouths shouting. Young and old, rich and poor. Pushing together to get closer, to see the young girl who was about to die.

The cart stopped. She heard nothing but silence in the din of the crowd. The priest and the officer jumped down and started up the ladder and were soon on the platform, waiting. She sat their still, not knowing what was to happen. The last flakes of the snow drifted in the air and settled on her hair. Her back hurt her more and more now they were no longer moving. At a nodded instruction the assistant busied himself releasing the fetters on her ankles, then cut the rope that bound her wrists. Immediately she pulled her arms over her torn breasts, as if to protect them, then rubbed her hands to restore the circulation, which burned as warmth came back into her broken fingers. She gazed down, to where the executioner stood. She didn’t quite know what to do, but she understood that to be part of the performance she had to get down from the tumbril and up onto the scaffold and she looked around wondering how she could do it, for she knew that if she tried to stand on her own she would simply fall down into the snow and in doing so might break her own neck and that this was not part of the plan. She knew she needed to be careful and that she needed help. And that came from the assistant who put his arms around her waist and slowly lifted her from the rail she sat upon. Her legs felt useless, quite unable to support her bodyweight. She looked at him with wide eyes, imploring him to help her, but silently pleading that he would not touch her back or her breasts. He didn’t think about her pain for a single moment, and pulled her body back into his arms, her bloody back against the leather of his tunic. She let out a whimper and a gasp as, with his arms under hers, his hands beneath her wrecked breasts, he lifted and pushed her towards the back of the cart and lowered her to the executioner, who waited with open arms to receive her body. The snowy ground felt bitterly cold on her feet. She was surprised how it felt, how her toes moved in the soft white flakes.

He asked if she was alright, which she thought was a strange question, to which it seemed silly to reply. She hung in his arms, like a helpless puppet, she thought. Her eyes wanted to shut, but she wanted to keep them open. And at the same time she wanted it all to end, all her terrible pain to stop.

‘Are you going to kill me now’ she asked him, looking imploringly into his face.

He looked back down at her tiny bloody body. He knew the answer, but he dared not tell her the truth. He knew what she was asking, whether they were going to take her up onto the scaffold and in one moment it would be over, all her suffering. That was what she meant, for of course he was going to kill her. But it would not be now. It would take much longer than the moment of brief agony followed by nothingness that her body and her mind hoped for. He as not going to kill her now. He was going to start killing her. Slowly. He knew that, but he knew he could never tell her.

So he answered ‘yes’.

And she smiled at him and said ‘thank you’.
 
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