11.
Marga and I stood chained to the pole, back to back.
“Hi, Lox!?”
“Hi Marga!? Are you all right!?”
“Fairly well, Lox, these nuns took good care of me during my stay there! And you!?”
“The same, I was in monastery. It surprised me how efficient their treatments were!”
“Ready for it, Lox!?”
“Don’t know, to be honest! And you!?!”
‘It is what it is, I am afraid!”
“Sorry, Marga, I could have saved you from this?”
“I don’t think so!”
“What do you mean!?”
“They had already interrogated me in the torture room. The torture you have witnesses, was my second time! I assume they did not tell you that?”
“No??”
“It was not so harsh as the second time! More intimidating! I had to strip, and that bloody nun, that was supposed to guard over my modesty, threatened me with gang rape by the guards and the interrogators, and even encouraged them to do so if I would not cooperate! They made me the deal of a whipping, a branding and a lifelong lock up in a convent if I would denounce you as a heretic!”
“Well damn!”
“The eternal trick of justice, Lox, to get its own right, by playing suspects against each other! Hoping that one will betray the others! By the way, what should I do in a convent? The rest of my life getting up in the middle of the night to go praying in a cold church, go to bed, and having to do the same again in the early hours of the morning? Not for me! I like to sleep long, and I already got cold feet in that castle over there!”
“Gaining yourself time for an ultimate recovery with the time machine?”
“Perhaps! But I don’t count on that anymore! So don’t bother about the convent!”
“If you say so, Marga!”
“But as far as I recall, you secretly did admire my body while I was given a harsh deal, mhh!?”
“That wasn’t me, that was the devil that possessed me!”
“Good reply, Lox! Don’t bother either! After all, you gave a good show too, in there!”
“I could not give up just like that, after what they had done to you! It would not have been fair”
“Yeah! I appreciate that! After all the purpose of torture is to break you, but nevertheless don’t break immediately! But I have a little confession to make : in all the terror I had to go through in the torture room, it thrilled me by moments, being so helpless, exposed and vulnerable! And then, you being so too, while I watched you, it was some special experience!”
“Come on, Marga!”
“Yes, it sounds weird, but… did you know I ever wrote a Ph D thesis?”
“I did not know you had a doctor’s degree?”
“I don’t! My manuscript was refused! It was about Medieval torture. The faculty dean said, I should rather have made it a novel, or submit it in the Faculty of Psychology. But for the science of history, it was not according to the protocols of scientific methodology, it was too subjective. Well, indeed, I had approached it from the viewpoint of the torture victim, and I admit, I allegedly had imagined myself too much in that position! One of the members of the reading committee told me that I did not need a doctor’s degree, but a doctor for therapy!”
“What happened with your dissertation?”
“I needed to rework it, but soon thereafter, I found a job where I did not need the degree, and meanwhile I had started a family, so, I lacked time…”
“Well, Marga, this optimist would like to read the manuscript when we are back home!”
“You will then find out how historically accurate it is!”
Meanwhile, the crowd on the square became larger. Monks from the monastery that has taken care of me after the torture. Also the nuns who had recovered Marga. Officials, probably the mayor and the town council. The bishop and the canons of the chapter,..
There was murmur of talking around, but no jeering or mocking. Apparently, the execution of heretics was a serious matter!
“They all come to see us!” I said. “Damn it ends like that for us!”
“We knew the risks, didn’t we!? There could always be problems with the reentry! We have signed papers about that, remember!?”
“Yes, but the greatest fear was disintegration during time transport, or getting lost somewhere in an unknown time and place!”
“Or stuck in the era we went to! Just don’t regret it, these time travels I have made were exciting stuff, and I am glad I have lived in an era and in a world that made it possible! Curiously, we got either stuck now in the topic we were to investigate itself! Strange experience!”
“Once a historian, always a historian, Marga?”
There were trumpet sounds and rolling of drums. The court official that had guided us to the stake, unrolled a parchment and started reading the verdict for each of us. For both, our crimes were :
“…heresy, envoys of the devil and intercourse with the devil…!” A wave of indignation went through the crowd.
“… both are condemned to death by the purifying ordeal of the pyre…” (sounds of approval by the crowd).
“May God Almighty have mercy on their souls! Start the preparations!”, the official ordered as a closure of his speech.
(to be continued)
