Thanks for the comments, and thanks to Barb for engaging with the story. She brings those things, like the element of friend jealousy and suspicion, that I just didn't think of.
Now, the hammer meets the nail.
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The shame and discomfort of her judicial rape was soon pushed to one side as Barb was confronted with the next stage of her sentence. She was forced to lie on the wood of her cross, her arms were spread and wrists placed against the patibulum. The moment of her wedding had arrived, the wooden bridegroom would embrace her and take her from this life. A hush spread over the nearer part of the crowd as the first nail was positioned and the hammer raised. They always loved this bit, the sound of iron on flesh and bone, the cry of the victim as she is pierced and fixed inexorably to the wood. Barb looked at the nail against her wrist, she couldn't help herself, she kept looking and only closed her eyes at the last moment . . . .
CLUNK went the hammer.
"aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahh" went Barb, unable to hold in the sheer crushing agony of that nail forcing itself through her wrist. Her back arched, her body jerked but the nail was part way through and she was securely held down by strong hands. Another two strikes and one wrist was done, immovable, pain signaling that something was VERY VERY wrong!
She hardly had time to draw breath before the other wrist was also nailed, twin foci of indescribable agony that marked a new state of normal for the unfortunate woman.
Could things get worse? Bone gave way and blood flowed as her feet were brought together and nailed flat against the upright, pain of a different yet equally unbearable type, one heaped upon another. The young woman had begun to sweat from the trauma, her head swimming and dizzy, but she was brought back to awareness the moment her cross was raised and thuded into its slot, the moment her full body weight dragged on the wounds around those heartless nails. Barb howled then, gulped for breath, and confronted the reality that there were indeed many successive levels of unbearable pain.
Barbria Moria was crucified.
Stripped of rank and dignity, a crude titulus identified her by a single name, like a slave.
Barb was facing out, towards the crowd. She imagined that Nubia must have been crucified similarly, each with her back to the other, unable to comfort of even see each other! The bastards, even this small thing must be denied them. To know that the other woman suffered, but that each was utterly alone. So cruel it made her angry even as her body and soul struggled to hold together against the ordeal of the cross.
As she raised her head she could see, in the place of honour right there in front of her in the stand, her husband and torturer Caius Crucius Punito.
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