8. Slowly I spun around, hanging from my fettered ankles, blood rushing to my head, naked. Over on the other side of the torture chamber the Irish girl, Roisin Mac Donagh, was screaming her head off as they stretched her on the rack. The barrel-chested man stood over her, facing me, his hands on the ratchet mechanism that wound the ropes tied to the poor girl's bloody wrists around the large wooden roller above her head.
The ratchet made a loud clicking noise as he tugged on the handle bar that advanced it, and Roisin cried out, "Tù ag dul a English lobhadh I ifreann!" Then there was a pause during which she groaned, whimpered and sobbed pitifully, her sweat-sheened chest rising and falling in rapid belabored breaths.
Demands that she confess were made, literally shouted in her face ... to exactly what she was to confess was not clear to me. She shook her head in response to these demands, and then cursed at her tormentors in her odd-sounding native Celtic tongue. Sister Hilda and Ethelbert, backs to me, stood in silent witness to her sufferings.
As all this was going on, my mind was racing; question after question assaulting my consciousness. How much longer can the Irish girl endure the cruelties of being stretched on that rack? How much longer before it would be 'my turn' as the barrel-chested dungeon master referred to it? And what will they do to me? I remembered the Abbess telling Hilda and Ethelbert to do what they must. What did that mean? For what purpose would they torture me … presumably, to drive out the devil; to rid me of my so-called unnatural carnal impulses … but how? Will I be as strong as the Irish girl?
Yet, I remembered the Abbess also reminding them that I had to be ready to carry that cross by evening prayer. I could take solace in that. It meant they couldn't maim or kill me. I must simply suck it up and do as Sister Kathleen implied … take the fall for our indiscretion.
The ratchet mechanism sprang to life again, causing Roisin, who had been quietly sobbing to herself after refusing to confess, to begin screaming again … her shrieks echoed off the stone walls and vaulted ceiling, filling the chamber. This time, though, there was the terrible popping noise of tearing cartilage and ligaments. My God! What are they doing to her? They are going to tear her apart!
Then the screaming suddenly stopped. She had passed out. The barrel-chested dungeon master leaned over to shake her head from side to side and slap her cheeks. No response. He shrugged, and then looked up at me. "We'll take a break here," he announced to Hilda and Ethelbert, "and turn our attentions to your young charge over there. You say we need to drive the devil from her ... hmmm, so many ways, so many ways."
He came over to where I hung upside down, muttering to himself. I tried to ignore his presence. But crouching down so he could look me in the eye, he reached out and grabbed me by one of my nipples, stopping my spinning. Then he twisted my nipple so hard I yelped in pain. He had my full attention now.
"What we need to do with you, my friend, is wash the sin of unnatural lust from your soul," he growled, “yes, we shall wash the bad from within you, and bring just punishment down on your bodily home of lascivious pleasures."
Rising, he stepped over to where the end of the rope holding me aloft was moored to an iron stanchion on the wall, loosened it, and gave it a mighty heave, raising me higher. At the same time he swung the entire apparatus ... overhead beam and pulley ... from which I was hung around until I hovered over a large wooden vat filled with dirty foul-smelling water.
Quickly and eagerly stripping herself to the waist, with that by now all too familiar malevolent look in her eyes, Hilda took a position nearby, holding a long braided whip in her hand. Meanwhile, Ethelbert bound my wrists behind my back.
I waited for the inevitable, long brown hair hanging down into and gently stirring the surface of the water below my head. Several minutes passed in silence. I stared wide-eyed at my tormentors. They were giving me a little time to think about what was going to happen next.
Then the dungeon master lowered me, jerkily, a few inches at a time. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes as the top of my head broke the surface of the water, which was freezing cold. Then I went under, and continued to go down until the water swirled around my bare shoulders and breasts.
I was doing my best to hold my breath when Hilda suddenly brought the biting tip of her whip down between my thighs to strike at my crotch. I bucked. Then she did it again, causing me to open my mouth. Water rushed in, and continued to do so as lash after lash ripped away at the tender lips of my labia.
I began to choke and thrash helplessly. Then they pulled me out, sputtering, water running from my nose and mouth, a small trickle of blood meandering down my tummy from the whip marks covering my reddened mound.
"Out, out, oh evil one!" chanted Hilda, hands on hips, water and blood spattered all over her immense fleshy pale breasts.
Down I went a second time, no warning. I swallowed water, bucked and twisted. Hilda resumed her assault on my defenseless privates, loudly proclaiming that it would be some time before I might feel the desire to pleasure myself again.
Then, just as I was sure I was drowning, up I went again. Ethelbert punched me in the stomach. Water gushed from my mouth and nose. I sputtered, coughed and choked.
Then down I went again and again... 10 times in all, before they finally stopped!
After the tenth, they let me hang for a while … only half-conscious, water still streaming from my mouth and nose and running through my hair back into the vat … until, apparently satisfied, they took me down, carried me over to an iron cage, unlatched its door and tossed me onto its filthy straw-covered floor.
A few minutes later Roisin was thrown, barely conscious, into the cage next to mine.
TO BE CONTINUED
