THE DELIGHTS OF THE “WOODEN HORSE”
Laya practically didn't sleep that night, full of bruises and sores that the whippings had left all over her body. Then she, exhausted, dozed off. The next morning, very early, she was awakened by Rosa's large and rough hands shaking her. "Come girl, another hard day begins for you..." she told her. Laya was again taken to the torture room of the Palace of the Inquisition. This time, with a little more light streaming in from the tall windows, she saw to her horror that the place was full of horrible instruments, instruments made specifically to inflict pain…. Rosa, who was very fast although physically imposing, tied her hands behind her back. She takes off her tunic, no longer white but stained with blood, and with one of her ropes Rosa lifts her off the ground. That position was called "strappado" and was itself a torture because she could dislocate the shoulders of those who underwent it, but in Laya's case it was only the preamble to the torture that awaited her: the "wooden horse". It was a wooden support generally surmounted by a sharp or serrated metal strip, on which the condemned woman was made to "ride". The atrocious position of her arms and the metal strip (in this case serrated) entering her pussy alone could have driven her mad with pain, but weights were also applied to Laya's ankles and she was whipped again. Between one scream and another, between one plea and another, however, that day Laya did not admit to being a witch. Rosa was amazed by the girl's resistance to torture, but she knew many, many ways to hurt her, to make her talk about herself...