<Part 7>
Day 4 Thursday
The sun was already up when Jenna arose from her stupor. Her muscles felt like dirty rags, now. Hunger, thirst and pain flowed within her so strongly she wondered if any blood flowed in her.
'Sunday,' she thought. Carefully she tried to count out the days. After getting it wrong a few times, she concluded that today was Thursday. Monday they had been crucified. Tuesday the pirates left. Wednesday she had testified of her love for Hollye. Later that day they had stopped hearing from Hollye. She had fallen in love with Cheryll, too. That left today, Thursday, Friday and Saturday to get through. The church service would be on Sunday. They probably would not come looking until the afternoon, though.
The dirty rags that were now her muscles told her something. Sunday would be way too late. Sunday morning would be too late. Saturday would be too late. After a moment of thought, if the rains came tonight, she would not see a sun rise on Friday.
'Perhaps Cheryll's husband would come through,' she thought. 'Maybe he is here now.' She looked at the road. Something seemed to be on it. She couldn't make out what.
“Cheryll?” Jenna called.
Nothing.
“Beloved?” Jenna called.
Nothing.
“Dear One?” she called desperately.
Nothing.
“Cheryll!” she called again.
Nothing.
“No! Cheryll, No! Please answer!” Jenna's voice more desperate.
Nothing.
Jenna continued moving up and down, her dirty rag muscles aching constantly. The shaft inside her moved in and out, fucking her as it had for the past four days. Her ass burned. She was alone.
Panic moved into her. No! She demanded of it. Hollye had not allowed it.
A thought came to her mind. Hollye was inside her. Hollye really still was her mistress.
She called, “Hollye.” Of course there was no answer.
'What did she teach me?' Jenna wondered. 'Horizon' came to mind. She looked at the horizon.
The pain did not subside. She was beyond that. The panic did subside. The thought of Saturday and of Sunday went from her mind. Minute by minute she vowed to keep these thoughts away.
She trained her thoughts to other things. What would Hollye think had she been the last.
I think she would realize that she had been crucified between two beautiful women. She would think that she herself did not deserve any better than their fate.
She told herself this through the day. 'I came with beautiful women. I am a beautiful woman. I deserve no better than they have. Tonight I will die in the rain,' she repeated over and over.
All day shame and despair lurked near by like vultures. Suffering and the shaft in her bum were inside. She could not expel the suffering and shaft, but she could expel the shame and despair.
Over the day she hypnotized herself with the rotating chants, changing them sometimes. 'If this be justice on them, let it be justice on me.' She thought of reciting her testimony about Hollye to God.
She resolved to die without a sound, like her companions. Holding fast to this goal the hours ground on. When she saw movement on the road, she made no sound.
That night in her stupor sleep she dreamed herself as a bundle of filthy rags hanging from the cross. Hollye rode up naked on Mannie. In her pierced hands she held a sparkling gift. She raised the gift to her.
Panic from near asphyxiation woke her from the dream. Her brain having not had deep sleep for five days had tried to get it. Jared awake she once again stood on her nailed feet and gasped air.
As her eyes opened she saw stars. She knew that in the morning she would see the sun rise.
However, by afternoon, Friday afternoon, she would be dead. Neither Hollye nor Cheryll had made any sound. She would not either.
As she moved downward to hang from her nailed and tied wrists she immediately fell into another dream state, a nightmare. Awakened again by the need for air she stood on her nailed feet to gasp, then dropped into another nightmare, seeing Hollye, Cheryll and herself as flies splattered on the barn wall. On it went nightmare after nightmare. Shame and despair now no longer a possibility, physical suffering and nightmares remained. She dipped downward on her cross and a nightmare flashed, Hollye, Cheryll and she now boiled in their own sweat. A gasp and pain then followed. On the next downward dip Hollye, Cheryll and she were pegs being pounded in the ground. On it went the rest of the night, nightmare gasp pain nightmare gasp pain. The final dance with the cross had begun.
No longer did she want off the cross. No longer did she thirst. No longer did she want or think anything. Who she was meant almost nothing. Who she was now only defined the kinds of nightmares she had. No longer Jenna, she became annonymous tortured flesh, dancing the final dance of the cross, nightmare, gasp, pain, nightmare, gasp, pain, ....
Day X
Doctor Richard Mainwaring arose in the morning in the room he had at the back of his new practice. He breathed deeply the fragrances of the place. The many herbs and poultices he kept in stock in the apothecary flavored his new environment. He had started the practice just two months before. Already people came from many miles to seek help.
His parents did not think such work fitting for the son of a gentleman and lady. He had fallen under the teaching of a traveling minister who said God lived in everyone. Doctor Mainwaring decided that God should live in a good home, a healthy body.
Soon there will be time for a wife. His practice will grow. He dreamed of a hospital.
In the apothecary he kept one of his few guilty pleasures, tea from China. He stoked up the fire and put the pot on with a little water. Soon he had the flavorful brew, its tannic acid waking him.
Sipping from the cup he walked over to the front window. Surely no patients would yet be out there. He could see the town in the morning light before the busyness arrived.
Standing in front of his practice was something that could not be there. He turned away. 'Hallucination,' he thought. Facing away from the window he took a nice warm drink of the brew. 'Let's try for a leprechaun this time!' He though.
He turned around to face the window. Now the thing that should not be there was closer, its face almost touching the window, his mother's horse.
Tannic acid no longer necessary, he jumped to action. On a paper he scrawled, “Office closed, Family emergency.”
He grabbed some fruit for the road, saddled his own horse and then took Mannie's lead heading off as fast as he could. Mannie soon took the lead himself in full gallop. Richard dropped Mannie's lead entirely.
This only added to Richard's sense of urgency. He cut the two hour ride by almost a half hour.
He arrived to find his mother's house a jumble. He hid in the corner on arrival, concerned that whoever did this was still there. He then heard Mannie neighing in the back.
Only then did he find Cheryll, Jenna and his mother. One glance and he knew his mother was dead. The second told him Cheryll was dead. The third told him nothing about Jenna.
Finding a saw in the house he sawed down Jenna's cross. He felt up and down her body. No rigor-mortus, but no response, either.
Dashing back to the house he came back with a mixture of water, salt, sugar and an herbal pain killer that didn't really work; all soaked in a piece of cloth. All these items he found in the house. Upon his return he saw that Mannie stood in front of his mother's cross, rubbing her legs with his head, pitifully. Quickly he glanced away.
Dipping cloth in the mixture he placed it in Jenna's mouth. He checked for a pulse under the arm pit, he thought he may have felt something. Stimulant, he needed a stimulant.
A thought came to mind. He reached down for her womanly folds. Reaching between those folds he searched for her inner lips. With his middle finger he started rubbing her. At deaths door, Jenna still looked beautiful. He slender nude body would excite any man.
At first she didn't respond, but after a few moments he thought he could feel wetness, then an ever so small movement, then sucking on the cloth. Richard smiled. Jenna would survive.
He then sawed down his mother's cross down and then Cheryll's. He felt Cheryll's body up and down. No signs of Rigor-mortis. Had he only been a few ours earlier, he thought, she would have survived. He knew talking to the dead was foolish, but did it anyway, “So sorry Cheryll. It looks like I failed you again.” He thought for a moment about weeping, but decided against it.
He had more important things to do.
Going to Jenna, he said, “I am going to get something to pull the nails.”
He found nothing suitable. Using the same hammer the pirates had used, he hit the nails sideways with measured strokes, trying not to hurt her, but not succeeding. He cursed himself for leaving without pain killers.
His sideways strikes widened the holes of the nails. He said, “This is going to hurt,” as he pulled the nails from her. She said nothing as they came out.
Ripping his shirt he bound up her wounds and carried her into the house.
Soon Jenna started saying, “Pirates, Richard, Pirates.”
Once the survivor was stabilized, Richard covered the dead.
He cared for Jenna that day, Saturday, and the next. The minister held the church service at Hollye's house, so Jenna could attend. The news of the pirate attack spread rapidly.
The service that Sunday turned into a memorial for Hollye, whom the people of the village had known for decades. Hollye's husband's family all attended, as did two of her children. Those who remembered the day Captain Mainwaring brought his new bride from Bristol eagerly recalled how they were captivated by Hollye's beauty and charm. None mentioned about how she died. They just said, “pirate attack.”
Against her doctor's orders and wearing Hollye's clothes, Jenna stood on her nailed feet at the end of the memorial. In the soldier like tone Hollye had taught her she gave her report to all assembled. She gave her testimony of Hollye's character to them, not God.
On Tuesday Richard took Jenna back to his office where he made a cot in the back. His hospital, he thought. Slowly the peasant girl recovered. He grew to admire her patience. She never complained, not even when visitors mistook her for spastic. She would always walk with a limp and her left hand never worked quite right. Over time, the limp would abate.
Soon Jenna would get that fluttery feeling inside for her rescuer, Hollye's son.
Civil war came knocking on the the hospital door before the end of summer. Hollye's widower, the captain, had decided to side with Parliament. On his way out of his practice, as the siege started, Richard left his dreams on the shelf and took his mother's servant with him. Together they would draw a line of survival through the war. Before its end, almost everyone would have their own five-days-on-a-cross story.
Hollye and Cheryll lay buried together in the church yard. Jenna had asked that the plot next to Cheryll be reserved for her. The stone bore her name and date of birth throughout her life.
Cheryll's husband had returned, not Sunday the day of the memorial, but the following Wednesday. He paid the burial expenses and never returned.
Each year on the anniversary of the attack, Jenna would bring her girls, Hollye and Cheryll, to the graves. She taught them about leadership, servitude and the weeping horse.
The End
