My name means: an offering
Gilda slowly approached the crowd gathered in the temple plaza, where curiosity and fear had gathered hundreds of Antium's inhabitants that day - the day of the Great Purification Ceremony.
Every five years, the high priest sacrificed one man to the city's guardian deities. Usually it was one of the prisoners. The priest drew the name of the unlucky person who was to be nailed to the cross and to die as atonement for the sins of the entire city.
However, this year something unusual happened: a week ago, a plague broke out in the prison and the building was quarantined, cutting off the prisoners and those guards who were inside. They were only provided with food and water, which was lowered from the top of the wall into the courtyard, but no one was allowed to leave. The bodies of the dead were burned in the courtyard at night. And it was supposed to be like this until the plague ended, that is, for two weeks, no one else would die.
This is why a particularly large crowd gathered today. The gods had to receive their sacrifice. Due to the lack of convicts, the priests decided that the name of one of the townspeople would be drawn.
Many, who had predicted that the drawing would logically include only those who would be present since the sacrifice was to be offered immediately, had left town the previous day on any pretext. But most remained, and of those who remained within the walls of Antium, many gathered in the square. Besides, the risk that their name would be chosen was slim: several thousand Romans lived in Antium, not counting the almost equally numerous representatives of other nations: Celts, Greeks, Germans and Iberians.
Gilda, having nothing better to do that morning, came to the square out of curiosity. She rarely took part in Great Purification Ceremonies. She did not like bloody spectacles, and criminals sentenced to crucifixion aroused her disgust and contempt. She knew that the soul of someone who died on the cross was annihilated, just like his body was, or condemned to eternal torment, and she considered it very fair and praiseworthy.
In the square in front of the temple of the patrons, located on a rugged hillside overlooking the city, there stood the high priest with younger clerics and assistants, as well as several temple servants and sacred musicians who were to announce the beginning of the ceremony by sounding trumpets and gongs. In the center of the square, incense was burning on a huge tripod filled with hot coals. In the chest standing in front of the high priest, which was brought from the town hall, there were rows of rolls with the results of the last census of residents, arranged according to year of birth. The priest was getting ready to pull out one of them and choose from it the name of the one who would be punished for everyone's sins, including hers. And she had some of these sins on her conscience, although they were well hidden.
Gilda, lost in thought, only started when she heard the scribe's voice.
"Seven hundred-fourteen!"
So this will be her contemporary! She was born in the year 714 from the founding of Rome!
"Well, I wonder who the gods will choose: do they prefer someone pure and innocent? Or just someone evil to the core but unpunished to show their justice? In both cases, they probably wouldn't choose me!", she laughed to herself at the thought of such an absurd possibility.
Meanwhile the priest, with his eyes closed, scrolled through the scroll and, placing his finger on one of the lines, opened his eyes. He showed the scribe the name of the one whom the gods had chosen as a sacrifice, put the scroll aside, turned to Gilda and looked piercingly at her.
The woman felt a bit embarrassed, because one of her hidden sins was paying the temple tax for years in a skillfully counterfeited coin. But no one could find out about this as long as the weight of the coins was the same. And stupid priests wouldn't have thought to check, in addition to the weight, the volume of the coins she used to pay. Only then would they realize that there was gold only on the outside, but on the inside, more than half of each coin was made of lead! This clever guy from Syracuse once came up with this method, how was it for him? Archimedes? Some Greek sage, anyway.
And at that moment the scribe's loud voice rang out again.
"Gilda of Longfall Mere, daughter of Arturus, of German origin, living in Antium!", he cried and everyone who was standing close enough to her to notice where she was standing turned their heads and looked at her.
"No...", the woman whispered, feeling her heart sink in her chest.
She heard the sigh of relief from her neighbor, who was standing just behind her, and the cry of surprise from a young girl who had arrived on the square just after her, and who seemed terrified that the lot had fallen on someone standing so close to her, missing her, as it were, by a hair's breadth. And she heard the young man with whom that girl came say, I don't know whether speaking to himself or to his companion, or perhaps to Gilda herself:
"Well, well... There will be something to see...!"
"Noooo!!!", she shrieked, running up to the priest and grabbing his arms.
"It is impossible! Impossible! After all... you don't draw women, do you? Do... you...?
Her voice broke.
"There's always a first time", the priest muttered, winking at the scribe. "The gods will be delighted, I assure you!"
"But... but...", Gilda tried to say something else, but her voice caught in her throat. Shivering with fear, she reached into her coat and pulled out a purse heavy with gold.
"Please...have...mercy on me!", she whispered.
The priest took the bag of money from her, tossed it once and twice in his hand, weighing its contents, and handed it to one of the assistants.
"Thanks. But I want you to know that everything you have with you will be offered to the gods anyway. And what you wear will be burned in a bowl of incense. ", he said. "And your house will be burned and destroyed. Your name will be erased from the census. No trace of you can remain on this Earth".
"Speak nothing!", he added before she could find an answer. "Drink the herbs!", he added, handing her a pot full of bad smelling liquid.
"The painkilling herbs? Thank you, thank you master!", she sobbed and drank one and a half liters of the brew to the bottom.
The high priest laughed when she gave him the empty pot.
"On the contrary - there were herbs that increase sensitivity to pain many times over. Soon you will be dying of pain, my dear Gilda! Their effect lasts for a long time - up to ten hours. And they also have a second effect: they sexually arouse. A special blend for you. You will climax dozens of times on that cross in pain, you shameless woman, each time until you faint, and each time you regain consciousness afterwards, you will die of shame - until another attack of pain takes away your ability to think."
"No...", weeped Gilda,
"Are you ready?", he asked her and the two assistants came to her from behind, but she was too crushed to answer.
"Remove your earrings and a necklace", told the high priest to the trembling woman. Obediently, she reached into her right ear and then into her left, taking out gold hoops and then a string of beads with a cameo hanging around her neck. Shocked, she did not resist as two temple attendants removed her cloak, gown and sandals at the same time.
"Kneel down!", ordered the priest and, when she kneeled covering her face with palms, stretching his arms above her head, he began to say in a high voice prayers that sounded like curses.
"Be cursed among all people! May the gods place on you the guilt of all of us and may all the punishment for our sins fall on you!
"Behold, in the name of the gods, I deprive you of your human dignity! May you be erased from human memory! May your death be most painful, your shame infinite and your torment in hell after death eternal!
"May you fear be bigger than the Etna mountain, your shame deeper than the Thyrrenian sea, your despair darker than the starless night and your pain crueler than the Scythians! May you be dying thousand deaths, day and night!
"Let the ravens peck out your eyes, let the flies be hatching in your mouth and the worms in your womb, let the lions tear your buttocks with their claws, let the vultures drag out your entrails through your anus, let your breasts be crushed by the teeth of stray dogs!
"Let everyone rejoice and dance, clapping their hands and singing, at the sight of your shameless, lousy, disgusting body rotting on the tree of shame, between heaven and earth, from where there is no way to nowhere for your damned soul, and in return may the gods bless us grace, prosperity, health, success and happiness that have been taken away from you forever!"
The crowd applauded and shouted with joy. They were freed from their sins and from the punishment! Someone else would be punished on their behalf and instead of them! This woman, now degraded and deprived of citizenship, property, clothes and human dignity, this slut not worthy spitting on her face - it's a waste of good nails for such a whore! - was burdened with their sins, which meant: she was now really guilty their sins. Anyone who had some sins of any kind, hidden or not, since the moment of this prayer could blame this slut for his own sins and demand that she would be punished for the evil he himself had committed. She was guilty of the crimes of the whole world - and she had to be killed for them in the most cruel way ever invented!
"Stand up!", orderd the priest, holding a small pot with oil with which sacrificial animals were anointed. Gilda, bent to the very ground by the mental awareness of the weight of all the crimes that had been placed on her feminine shoulders, she barely managed to get to her feet, hunched and trembling.
The priest put some oil on her hair and forehead, spread it on her temples and cheeks, ran his hands along her neck and shoulders to her palms, focusing on her wrists, then put drops of oil on her nipples and, placing both hands on her breasts, he rubbed the oil into their skin slowly and carefully, pressing her nipples, next he lubricated her hips and belly, generously massaging the oil into her crotch and buttocks, touching his slippery fingers into her anal opening and vagina, certainly not only to complete the sacred rite, but to humiliate her by touching her private parts in front of all the people, and maybe to satisfy his own lust. Finally, kneeling down, he anointed her thighs on both sides and, running his hands over her calves, applied the oil to her feet, where nails would soon be driven.
Then he straightened up and leaned into the condemned woman's ear and whispered to her quietly:
"This will stop you from paying the temple with counterfeit coin once and for all, you Barbaric slut!"
He knew...! The draw was rigged! But how..?!?
"Think: was it really worth it, eh?"
Paralysed with growing terror she didn't react at all. She was defenceless. No one would believe her anyway, as she was already considered cursed by the gods: the sins of the people rested on her shoulders. Moreover, who in their right mind would want to save her, knowing that in such a case the drawing would have to be repeated and perhaps he would have to replace her on the cross...!?
There was nothing she could do, nothing at all.
"So... reverence Gilda, let your offering begin!", smiled the high priest, fully aware of her fear and despair and delighted with it.
The priest took her chin almost caressingly with his left hand and, lifting her face towards his, as if he wanted to kiss her, he stroked her head like a little girl - and suddenly he spat on her face and hit her left cheek with his open hand and then the right one so hard that a clap was heard. He turned her to face the crowd and shouted loudly:
"She is guilty and she alone! Gods, punish her! Death to the sinner! Kill her body, her hearth and her soul!"
Everyone gathered in the square started shouting "Death! Death to the guilty!"
Then the high priest pushed the condemned woman's shoulders forcefully, pushing her to the center of the square, and shouting to her:
"There's your cross, bitch, to the right!"
Almost falling on the pavement, she ran a few steps. She suddenly felt as alone despite the crowd and as defenceless as never before. She awkwardly covered her breasts and crotch with her hands in a reflex of helplessness. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She sobbed like an unjustly wronged girl. She cried loudly and tearfully: "Pleeease, haaave meeercyyyy!"
However, it was too late. She could no longer count on any mercy, and no one wanted to be merciful to her. She was no longer a woman - she was a disgusting pile of thrash and sins and dirt, and rotting meat, and she was to be radically removed to make the city and its habitants pure and happy. No one was interested in rescuing her from what she deserved!
Several onlookers ran to meet her. Someone punched her in the face, cutting her lip, and another man hit her painfully on the nipple of her left breast. She felt someone's kicks on her buttocks and legs, palms pinching her vulva, fists beating her belly.
Suddenly someone grabbed her hand and pulled her back, forcing her to turn around. She turned back only to find a young girl who was standing next to her before the ceremony. Now she came up to Gilda and looked at her with a malicious smile, and then suddenly spat on her face, grabbed her nipples with both hands, armed with long fingernails, and pinched her with all her strength, laughing. A few drops of blood gushed out from under her fingernails. Gilda screamed in pain and then the girl kicked with a swing with her knee straight in the Gilda's lower abdomen, until some cartilage in the pubic symphysis cracked. At the same moment, her companion kicked Gilda from behind equally hard between the buttocks, breaking her tailbone.
Incredible pain shot through the condemned woman's hips. She fell to her knees, screaming, but was immediately grabbed by the arms and breasts and hair and under the crotch and pulled to her feet and dragged towards the cross, with her head tilted back, being continously spat on in the face by countless citizens, beaten and kicked in the back, legs and especially intimate places.
After a minute of this cruel show she fainted and fell on the pavement.
Then the temple servants and assistants took the condemned woman by the arms and legs, lifted her up in horizontal postion and placed her directly on the cross. Only then did the crowd calm down and retreat to the previous distance, allowing the executioners to begin the actual execution.
Lying on her back, Gilda, completely confused and in pain by what had just happened, felt one of the torturers press her left wrist against the beam of the cross with his hand curled into a fist, in which he held a large, thick nail. He raised a heavy hammer. The woman tried to break free one last time, but her right hand was held by the other torturer with similar hammer. She contorted her face in fear, waiting for the impact.
And at that moment the gong sounded and suddenly the trumpets rang out, filling the air with a metallic, clanging sound, and the crowd shouted loud and joyful, completely drowning out the impact of the hammers on the heads of the nails, the crunch of flesh and bones being pierced, and the terrible scream of her pain and despair.
Of the god-cursed, nameless lump of shit whose name was Gilda just fifteen minutes ago.