Art by Riodoro

[Riodoro]

13​

‘Oh, but you know what I ask, my lady. Your signature.’
‘Under a confession full of vile lies,’ Theresa groaned between clenched teeth. Her face was bathed in sweat and her stretched body was still wracked by the intense waves of pain that made her twitch and tremble as if in a seizure.
Cardinal Pelletier stared into the flames for a moment.
‘We are both intelligent enough,’ he began, ’not to have to play this charade any longer. I will well believe that you are innocent.’ He smiled as he saw the glimmer of hope flash across Theresa's pain-stricken face, ‘Oh, don't get your hopes up, my lady. You will be condemned. Whether you had anything to do with the matter or not. It is a political necessity. The unexpected death of the king has raised many questions. Quite a few in the kingdom suspect foul play and most think the Queen Mother is behind it. Your confession will clear her of any suspicion.’
He pulled a parchment from his robe. ‘As you can see, your confession is already prepared. In it, you admit to being the main culprit and name two co-conspirators: One is the lady-in-waiting, Lady Ellenor. The Queen Mother has been told that the Lady was careless enough to make fun of her in public. She therefore insisted that Lady Ellenor be put on the list. The other is the cook who prepared the King's last meal. She is being interrogated under torture as we speak and will confess soon if she hasn't already.’
‘No one will believe that,’ Theresa croaked, although she was by no means convinced.
‘Oh, I should like to think they will. It will be a conspiracy of disgruntled women. Poison, a shadowy motive… People always believe such things. The Crown Council will also be satisfied. There was considerable opposition from some members to your arrest, but your confession will satisfy them completely, especially as it was made in a perfectly legal way. Great importance was placed on this and Master Berold here will be able to confirm to everyone that he has adhered exactly to the prescribed degrees. So, will you sign, my lady?’
Theresa nodded silently. Although her mind was overwhelmed with dark despair, she felt immense relief when she saw Master Berold put down the branding iron and extinguish the fire in front of her.
‘Why he does this I know,’ she said with a bitter look at the cardinal, ’but you Master Berold?’
The executioner just grinned as he lowered her down, catching her trembling body in his strong arms as her legs could no longer support her, clearly enjoying digging his hands into the flesh of her firm breasts.
The cardinal replied in his place. ‘Master Berold will be given another task in addition to his duties as executioner. As you know, I have taken charge of this prison, but my new duties will keep me at court most of the time, so he will act as my deputy.’
‘There's a nice extra salary and other perks too,’ said the executioner as he threw Theresa's naked body like a sack of flour onto a stone bench.
Cardinal Pelletier placed the prepared document with Theresa's confession next to her and watched with a satisfied smile as she wrote her name under it with trembling hands.



‘It should perhaps grieve me more as a man of God that I feel compelled to resort to such dishonest methods,’ he said, ’but I am at peace with my conscience. The Queen Mother will lead her realm into a new age of decency and godliness. And as for you, my lady, I know you are innocent in this case, but you have no doubt incurred enough guilt in your short but sinful life to deserve what you face.’
Theresa wanted to negotiate, wanted to point out other ways, but she knew that the cardinal's plan was cunning and would work. Finally she asked in a dull and brittle voice:
‘What is it that I am about to face?’
Cardinal Pelletier took the document back. ‘First, I will return to court with this. You will remain here in the prison under Master Berold's care until the regent has decided your fate.’
He pulled the executioner aside so that they were out of earshot of Theresa. ‘I am beholden to you, Master Berold.'
‘I should think so,’ Berold grumbled, ‘A neat little interrogation, by the book. I normally charge three pieces of silver for something like this, but I think you'll pay me better, Your Excellency. Have I fulfilled my part of our bargain?’
‘You have. And now I will fulfil mine. You are hereby appointed chief warden. I intend to change a few things here in the prison, and I think I've found the right man for the job in you.’
Master Berold, smirking with satisfaction, bowed, which looked funny on the hulking henchman. Then he pointed to Theresa, who was slumped on the stone bench, weeping quietly. ‘And what about her, Your Excellency?’
Cardinal Pelletier shrugged. ‘Fuck her, torture her, I don't care as long as you don't make it too pleasant for her. I doubt she will leave this building again, and if she does, it will only be for her public execution.’

 

[Riodoro]

Oh my. This is beyond magnificent, and a true masterpiece of torture art. Just lovely and thanks for sharing.

Thank you for the high praise, wulf! This one was the very first one I started working on and I finished it just today. It is kind of the centerpiece of this sequence of pics and it took me a very long time to get it right, but now it works quite well, I think. Good to know that others feel that way as well

 

[wulf]

Thank you for the high praise, wulf! This one was the very first one I started working on and I finished it just today. It is kind of the centerpiece of this sequence of pics and it took me a very long time to get it right, but now it works quite well, I think. Good to know that others feel that way as well

I, and probably many others, do appreciate the time and effort it takes to produce something of this quality, and are very grateful that you're willing to share it.

 

[mster]

Congratulations! You are a great artist and also a great writer. I hope that for you this is really the beginning of a new life as a protagonist in the torture chamber

 

[extr200]

her pose is stunning
naked, humiliated, broken, but still covering shameful place between legs,
her perky tits are shaking with her own sobs...
I hope her torture is just beginning... and that she ends up being publicly executed.

Thank you Riodoro!

 

[Riodoro]

Here comes the next part. After that, there are three more pictures left, but I'm not done writing yet, so those will be posted sometime over Christmas along with the conclusion of this first chapter of Theresa's story.

14 ​

The cardinal didn't even glance at the hunched figure cowering in the corner of the torture chamber as he left, the valuable confession safely tucked away in the inside pocket of his robe. Theresa didn't notice his departure either. She was completely caught up in her own world of pain, fear and self-contempt. Even though the immediate agony of the torture was over, every part of her body ached. She had once sprained an ankle as a child and the dull burning pain deep in bones and tissue that remained from the torture reminded her of it, only now it raged in her shoulders, hips, elbows, knees and ankles. She suspected that it would get worse in the coming days. Then there was the stinging pain of the burn on her thigh. Theresa couldn't bring herself to look at it again. In her mind, the two-inch wound was a huge, disfiguring monstrosity of black flesh and pulsing pus. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, buried her face between her knees and gave herself over to her despair.
Suddenly, a gush of ice-cold water hit her like a slap in the face and she was back in the dreadful torture chamber. Master Berold stood in front of her. He carelessly tossed the now empty bucket aside.
‘You'll soon have had your cry, I hope,’ he said pitilessly, ‘’You're officially a prisoner here now, my lady. Let's find you a cell. Come with me!’
Theresa stared at the executioner, snivelling.
‘I... I can't walk. My feet...’
‘That little thing?’ Berold asked, pointing to her reddened toes covered in blisters. ‘That's nothing. Let's go, and don't make such a fuss!’
‘You don't understand,’ Theresa moaned, ’I need a doctor.’
Berold huffed dismissively.
‘There's only old Gunther here, my lady. He was a journeyman butcher as a young man and later worked as a barber before becoming a prison guard. When one of the prisoners is too ill to get up on her own, they send him to her and sometimes he can actually help. Knows a few home remedies, I guess, and he can set joints and splint broken bones, that sort of thing. But I can hardly imagine you wanting Gunther, my lady. He gets paid in amorous services, at least by the prettier women, and that's a truly high price to pay the way he looks. He really is an ugly old toad.’
He laughed. ‘Or are you thinking of Brother Rudolph, the old philanderer? I'm sure he'd love to look after you, but I reckon he's busy in his cell at the moment.’
‘My shoulders are dislocated,’ Theresa whimpered.
‘Nonsense! You wouldn't be lying there so still if that was the case. The muscles are a little overstretched, maybe a ligament is torn, a few bruises... Your burn there, yes, it hurts, I'll take your word for it. But why shouldn't you be able to walk with it?’
The executioner grabbed Theresa roughly by the upper arm and pulled her up from the bench and as she slumped to her knees, whimpering, he grabbed her right nipple and held it firmly pinched between his thumb and forefinger. ‘You can walk or I can pull you into your cell by your pretty tits. Which shall it be?’
So he led her out of the chamber and Theresa actually managed to follow him. Whenever she stumbled, she felt Master Berold's strong fingers painfully on her nipples or her bottom and so she quickly learned to walk. When they reached the door, she looked back, startled.
‘My shirt...’ the mistress stammered.
Berold just laughed, ‘Why would you need it?’

He led Theresa to another part of the huge prison complex. They came through a long underground corridor and down a flight of stairs to a corridor lined on both sides with barred holding cells. Some were occupied. Naked women crouched on the floor of the tiny cells or standing when there wasn't enough room to sit. Some of them stared at Berold and Theresa with fearful or indifferent expressions, others seemed to be completely numb and broken, just waiting to be picked up for torture, apathetic and resigned to their fate.
A protracted, horrible, agonised moaning could be clearly heard down here and was a constant, creepy background noise. It got louder the closer they got to a large wooden door. Berold stopped in front of it. ‘I want to show you something, my lady,’ he announced and pushed her through into the room beyond.



It was a torture chamber. A real one this time, not like the spacious tribunal chamber with the pretty mural and the windows that let in daylight, but a claustrophobically narrow, gloomy vault crammed with horrible instruments of torture. Theresa saw a ladder with winches at either end, a rack and a wooden chair whose seat was covered with iron spikes. Whips, pincers, rods, metal chains, branding irons and many other instruments hung on the walls. Theresa couldn't even imagine how some of them worked.
At the opposite end of the chamber, three men had sat down at a table for their evening meal. They jumped up, nervous and a little bit guilty when they recognised their new head overseer.
Berold waved them off, ‘Don't mind me, boys!’
He pushed Theresa further into the corner of the chamber, towards the source of the animalistic moans she had heard in the corridor outside. There Theresa saw a naked woman with her arms tied behind her back and her legs tied wide apart. At first it seemed to her that the slender body with the milky white skin, soaked in sweat and glistening unnaturally in the glow of the braziers, was floating like a ghost or perhaps an angel several feet above the filthy floor of the torture chamber, but then she realised that the woman was sitting with her full body weight on the pyramid-shaped top of a wooden pole. Theresa did not know that this device was called, with subtle irony, the Judas cradle by the inquisitors, but its workings were all too obvious to her. In horror, she saw that the tip of the pyramid had penetrated several inches into the woman's rectum, stretching this sensitive orifice wide. The woman had been bound with cunning cruelty so that she could move quite a lot and so her body swayed back and forth to the rhythm of the waves of pain that were pulsing through it, each movement causing her new agony.
Master Berold's expert gaze told him that the woman had already experienced severe torture, even though her body was still largely unscathed. Only on closer inspection did he recognise the welts on her stomach and buttocks, which showed that she had been beaten, not with a bullwhip or a cane, which would have left deep, bloody welts, but with a broad and flat instrument. Water torture, he concluded. It left hardly any marks on a tortured woman's body, which is why it was often used when a public execution was planned for the delinquent. Looking around, Berold spotted a torture rack, stool, funnel and two large barrels in the other corner of the torture chamber. There was a large puddle of water on the floor. At least four gallons, he estimated, first forcibly poured in with the help of the funnel and then forced out again with blows to the bloated belly. The wide and heavy leather whips that the men had used for this were also lying on the floor next to the rack.
Theresa, who had had no reason to learn anything about instruments of torture in her sheltered life so far, was completely unaware of all this evidence, but just as Berold had suspected, she was shocked and scared to death anyway.
‘Just take a good look at her, my lady,’ he said, pushing Theresa even closer until she was standing right in front of the tortured woman. ‘It's time you realised that much worse things can happen to you than a few roasted toes.’
The tortured woman slowly turned her head towards them as she became aware of Theresa and Berold, her consciousness half paralysed with pain. She was quite pretty, the executioner realised. Not a beauty like Theresa, but young, slim, with fair skin and freckles, long, dark blonde hair that now clung to her tortured body in wet strands, and expressive green eyes.
‘Do you recognise her?’
Theresa shook her head. ‘No, I've never seen this poor woman before, why is this terrible punishment being inflicted on her?’
Berold grinned. ‘Oh, I'm sure you've seen her before, just never noticed her. She's one of the cooks from the palace, the one you instigated to poison the king.’

 

[Riodoro]

15​

‘That is a lie, as you know only too well!’ hissed Theresa.
‘You must begin to believe it, my lady, or you will soon find yourselves back in the torture chamber. The wench here,’ he pointed to the softly moaning tortured woman in front of them, ’will soon confess that it was you who gave her the poison with which she murdered our beloved king. Besides, I think we will make her confess something else. Perhaps that she and you were an unnatural pair of lovers?’
‘What's this new fable story’ gasped Theresa.
‘That was the cardinal's idea,’ Berold chuckled. He was careful to speak quietly enough that the torturers could not hear his words as he continued. ‘You and Lady Ellenor had an affair, the king got hold of it, you seduced the poor kitchen maid and had the king poisoned. A good motive, isn't it? Apparently the common people are only too willing to believe that you are capable of all kinds of perversions. Did you know that there are rumours that you let a trained donkey mate with you every evening?’ Amused, he watched as Lady Theresa turned red and began to tremble with horror and indignation. He beckoned to one of the torturers. The man threw the chicken leg he had been gnawing on onto his plate and hurried over.
‘Our lady doesn't like to see her lover like this,’ Berold exclaimed.
‘I'd like to think so,’ replied the torturer with a grin. He examined the naked Theresa and seemed to quite like what he saw.
‘She's not as pretty to look at on the Judas cradle as she was in your bed, my lady,’ the executioner continued. ‘Well, the poor girl is now paying for letting you seduce her into sinful dalliances. Did Lady Ellenor have her way with her too?’
This lie was no bigger than the lie about the poisoning, and yet Theresa found it even more outrageous. She knew there was no point in denying everything, so she remained silent, but the executioner didn't expect an answer anyway and the torturers readily believed him, as most of the common people would do.
‘Has the harlot confessed by now?’ The executioner asked.
The man shook his head, ashamed that three seasoned torturers had not yet succeeded in breaking the young woman. ‘Not yet, sire. She's stubborn, that little thing.’
‘Well, she knows it's her head on the line and isn't an indulgent crybaby like this one,’ Berold replied. ‘The punishment for regicide is no easy ride. I've never seen a woman being broken on the wheel before, so I'll have to read up on it when the time comes. In addition, there will probably be a couple of her body parts that will fall victim to the red-hot tongs first. Her tits for sure, and maybe a few fingers or her ears too... If that were to come my way, I wouldn't want to confess either.’
It was only at this moment that Theresa began to think of the terrible public punishment that awaited kingslayers and the thought of the wheel nestled deep in her consciousness, becoming a constant gnawing worry like a thorn that had pierced the sole of her foot. As a noblewoman she was actually protected from such a dishonourable punishment, the worst thing that could happen to her under the law was beheading, but who knew what the queen-mother was capable of in her hatred? In any case, the poor kitchen maid had to expect this or some other agonising execution, if not being broken on the wheel, then she would be burned at the stake or impaled or otherwise slowly tortured to death in front of a jeering crowd in the square in front of the palace. And she was already damned no matter how steadfast she remained, for Theresa had named her as an accomplice in her confession, a fact the executioner knew all too well.

‘You there,’ Berold said to the torturer. ‘Show m'lady how we deal with criminals here, particularly with the perverse ones.’
‘At once, sire!’ The man wiped his greasy fingers and took a branding iron from the flames of a small brazier. It was a short rod with a ball of copper attached to the tip. This ball had been in the flames, but it was not glowing, only shimmering in a dark cherry-red colour. He dipped it in an oil bath and wiped off the excess oil with an old cloth. The kitchen maid was obviously already familiar with this implement, because as soon as the torturer approached her, she began to twitch and buck desperately and to plead softly in a hoarse voice. A closer look confirmed Master Berold's suspicions. He recognised the characteristic bright red welts and swollen spots all over her trembling body. Unlike the cross he had used on Theresa, the copper-headed iron was less hot and therefore did not cause deep burns, but it was hardly less painful and could be dragged across the flesh as often as one liked.
‘Where does she fear it most?’ he asked the torturer.
‘Her cunt, sire.’
That was no great surprise. The men had already taken full advantage of it, Berold saw. The kitchen maid's cunt cleft, labia and Venus mound were already swollen like an overripe fruit. He nodded his approval.
When the hot tip of the branding iron hit the girl's skin just above the knee, there was a hissing sound like meat frying in a pan. The torturer now slowly pulled it along the inside of the thigh. The higher he went, the more urgent and desperate the cries of pain became until they finally turned into a frenzied roar as the iron reached the genitals and sizzled against the labia. The torturer let his victim squirm in agony for a long time, then repeated the same action on the opposite thigh.



‘Yeah,’ Berold said, ’they're all sensitive down there. That was well done. But don't neglect her love bud.’
He realised with amusement that Lady Theresa turned away in horror just as the iron plunged between the girl’s labia with an ugly hiss. Nevertheless she was unable to escape the horrific scream of anguish that echoed through the torture chamber.
‘Don't look away, my lady. There you see a true artist at work. He only briefly touched her bud, you know. That way you can repeat it many times before all the sensation down there is burnt away. I see you know your business,' he complimented the torturer.
‘Continue with the iron when you have finished your meal. She shows a good strong reaction to it. I'll keep you company right after I've taken the bitch here to her cell.’

 

[wulf]

Oh my.... no words. Just beautiful, and thank you for sharing.

 

[gssreds]

Very nice! Appreciate the updates!!!

 

[MICHELE PATRI]

This one is a masterpiece!