Aelia watched night falling over the city. Her head hung limp. Her mouth sagged open. She was exhausted. She couldn’t remember what life was like without agony, constant, everywhere. They teased her with a sponge, holding it just out of reach and then thrusting it into her face, but she drank when she could. She knew it would prolong her suffering but the instinct was animalistic: she was thirsty so she drank. Flies crawled on her, feasting on her blood and her sweat. She was too tired to shake them off. Crows circled, waiting their time. She’d all but lost control of her muscles. They felt numb, indifferent to her brain’s instructions. Every now and again, cramps would overwhelm her and great shudders would pass through her. Still, at times, she forced herself up, using her legs mostly now, pushing against the nails in her feet, her arms as good as useless, but mostly she just sat, a nail digging in to her tenderest flesh.
Her strength had been her greatest asset. It had overcome soldiers and inspired her people. But now it was just prolonging the torture. She’d ever given death much thought. What was it? Whatever it was, it couldn’t be worse than this. They began building a fire near the base of the cross. Was this more torture? She’d almost welcome it if it ended her life sooner. But they were just building it to keep warm. Rustius rode up to her. When he stood in his stirrups, his head came level with her breasts. He reached out and weighed her right breast in his left hand, teasing the nipple with his thumb. He smiled at her. “They were lovely,” he said. “What a whore you’d have made.” She barely had the strength to lift her head. She wanted to spit at him, but her mouth was dry. She wanted to say something but her brain was empty and she wasn’t even sure she’d have had the strength even if she had thought of something clever. He rolled the nipple between thumb and forefinger. “If my men had had their way,” he said, “we’d have taken you down a couple of hours ago, tidied you up, let them all fuck you and then crucified you again in a month. That’s what you deserve.”
She gazed at him resentfully. He slapped her breast with a smirk. “Defeat carries a terrible price,” he said. “And by the way, we know your boy is in the crowd. We’ll have him followed and catch any survivors of your little rebellion. And they’ll be whipped and sold into slavery. Fucked if they’re pretty enough.”
Not Clemens. She wanted to warn him, but how could she even if she had the strength, even if she could get her mouth moist enough to speak, they would hear her and they would do something terrible to him. “You’ve lost, Aelia,” he said. “Your people are at the slave traders because of you. They’ve been whipped because of you. They’ve been raped because of you. Because you failed.”
It was true. She looked at him with blank eyes, but she felt despair. She wanted to cry, but she hadn’t the energy.
“Good night, your highness,” he said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
*
Mommius slept badly. He wanted a fuck but his wife had seemed plain and lumpen when compared with Aelia. He wanted again to feel the firmness of her breasts pushing back against his chest, to trace the wiry muscles of her thighs. It wasn’t an hour after dawn when he arrived back at the summit of Golgotha. Rustius was already there and so too was Caiaphas and his priests. She was still alive, that was the main thing, but she was weakened terribly. Smoke drifted from a dying fire nearby, where the soldiers had kept themselves warm overnight. Mommius drank in her nakedness, the smooth skin, the long legs, the beautiful round breasts, tendrils of her damp hair just playing across the tops of them. But her breathing was shallow and she seemed barely able to lift her head. The round cheeks that had once been such a part of her appeal now seemed sunken and grey. Flies gorged on the dried blood around the crown.
“Hail,” shouted Rustius. “Here to see our queen’s final hours.”
“Hail,” he replied. “Much longer?”
“A few hours, I’d say. She’s a tough one.”
There were only 30 or 40 spectators there on the hill-top, a handful who looked to have stayed overnight: friends, perhaps, or just those determined to witness every second of her execution, a few Mommius had seen on the road just after dawn, and a small party of merchants who looked as though they’d taken the long way round to catch a glimpse of the fabled Bandit Queen.
Rustius turned to the night guard, who were preparing to be relieved. “Give it a shake,” he said. “Wake her up for her friends.”
Two soldiers wandered slowly over to the cross. They looked tired and keen to get home. Mommius saw her eyes flick down. She was still aware, then, of what was happening to her. He fancied he saw a slight tightening of the curl of her fingers, a tremor of the legs as she prepared for this new assault. One soldier stood to her left, the other to her right. They set themselves against the stipes and shook, back and forth, back and forth. Her head rolled back, her eyes wide with pain. The flies that had settled on her rose up and buzzed around the top of the cross. She gave a low rasping moan that went on long after they’d stopped shaking.
“Good,” Rustius shouted. “You’re still awake and alert. Breakfast?”
The sponge was raised on the spear again, but the soldier this time decided there was more fun to be had. He poked first at her breasts and then between her legs, thrusting it into her blood-stained crotch. By the time he lifted the sponge, still dripping with water, one side was stained red with her blood. And yet she drank. The soldier pulled the sponge away, making her stretch for it. “See how she lusts for the juice of her own cunt,” he shouted, the rammed the sponge into her face, knocking her head back against the cross, driving the thorns into her scalp.
*
The sun was still a couple of hours from its zenith. Aelia felt its warmth but it couldn’t reach the chill inside. She hung still, too weak even to raise her head, which fell forward so her chin brushed her collar bone, the spikes of the crown pressing into her armpit. Her lips were dry and cracked, her eyes crusted. Flies crawled over her face and she lacked the will to shake them off. She waited for death, for an end to her suffering, but it remained cruelly distant.
She was vaguely aware of the sponge being soaked again and loaded on the spear. It was raised three or four inches from her face but she couldn’t move towards it. The soldier lowered it and shoved it against her cunt. She felt the pain as raw flesh was scraped on the sedile but she couldn’t react. It flicked her breasts and drew laughter from a crowd that now numbered perhaps a hundred again, and then was pushed into her face. Her head rolled back painfully but she sucked. She couldn’t swallow but at least it wet her parched mouth. She shuddered. A crow handed on the cross, just above her left elbow, squawked and flew off again. Soon she would be food for birds as she was already food for the flies.
Was the pain lessening? Had she grown used to its constant nag? Or was this death, taking her slowly, shutting down her systems? She pulled on her useless arms and pushed with her legs. Another breath, maybe, to ease the sickening pressure on her chest? There was pain, but in her agony she couldn’t calibrate it, and mainly there was weakness. She couldn’t move.
Rustius knew she didn’t have long left, not while she could still understand what was going on. Her body was almost motionless now, hanging limp. What, he wondered, would it be like to fuck her now, half-dead, shoulders dislocated? Would she still have the firmness, the vitality she had had before?
Clemens felt faint. At some point during the night, he’d been left alone. Even teenagers eventually tired of gawping at a naked woman. One man, wild-eyed and deranged, had kept up a barrage of constant abuse before he too had finally returned to the city. But Clemens had remained, silent in the moonlight. It had been a cool night and he’d thought a few times of joining the soldiers by the fire, but he knew that would have raised questions and he was conspicuous enough as it was. Eventually, exhausted, he’d fallen into a fitful sleep in the lea of a rock, his dreams haunted by ghostly images of crucified corpses. By dawn there’d been a new crowd, laughing, enjoying her nakedness and her shame. He’d hidden himself among them, but each word they uttered, each comment about her long legs or her beautiful breasts, cut through him. Couldn’t they see what they’d done?
He’d moved closer to her, away from the mob, and she’d seen him, he knew. He gazed up at her, trying to see the smooth cheeks, the fresh white teeth, the laughing eyes, the gloriously toned shoulders, the pure golden skin that had once characterised her, but seeing instead her exhausted grey face, eyes red-rimmed, naked body broken and bloodied. And her legs, those long muscular legs that once he’d gawped at as he followed them on long treks, now twisted cruelly beneath her, knotted by cramps.
So he’d stood in silent grief, waiting for the end.
*
Mommius wondered how much longer he should stay. It was noon and very hot. He wanted to see the end but this was dragging. She still responded when they pushed the sponge into her face, still moaned occasionally, but otherwise hung lifelessly. A couple of hundred people still lingered, but the viciousness had gone out of them. They were just watching now, waiting.
But then there came a commotion. He could see a party travelling up the road from the city. As they drew closer, he saw the temple guard and, surrounded by them, wrists bound behind them, linked by chains fastened around their necks, four young women, each clad in just a shift. A small crowd followed them. There was ribaldry and joking, the odd shout of fear from one of the prisoners. The temple guard dragged them before Caiaphas.
Rustius looked on in surprise. He had no idea what the priests had planned. The four he recognised as prisoners held sent to the slave market the previous morning. There was the feisty mixed race one with the rippling stomach muscles whom he’d fucked after they’d whipped her. And there was the slight one Sextus had chosen. Had Caiaphas bought them?
Clemens, of course, knew them instantly: Shena, Ruth, Rachel and Rebecca, all women of the community, although Rebecca was barely more than girl. The sense that this was about to get even worse sickened him. He avoided eye contact, but looked up at Aelia. She was near death, but he saw fresh horror on her face.
Caiaphas ordered the first of them brought before him: Shena, tough, a fighter, but weakened by her flogging. She was thrown at his feet, wrists still bound, and looked up, furiously. “Aelia,” Caiaphas called. “This woman is charged with blasphemy. Have you anything to say in her defence?”
Mommius stared. Would she say anything? Could she say anything? Aelia’s head moved. An inch, no more. She understood what was going on. Her lips twitched, but she could saying nothing. “A word form you, great queen, and I will pardon her.”
He waited. “Nothing?” he shouted. “Then I find her guilty.” He paused and smirked at the young woman at his feet. “39 lashes in public tomorrow and then service in the temple.”
As Shena was pulled up he looked her up and down with an obvious lasciviousness. “Your queen would not save you,” he said. “Perhaps the discipline of temple life can.
The other three followed. The same process. Ruth, pale, thin and terrified. Rachel, strong, tanned and bristling. Rebecca, young, dark and delicate. All thrown down before the cross. All offered mercy if Aelia could but speak. All sentenced to 39 lashes and a lifetime of serving in the temple, with the implicit promise of further indignities and beatings to come.
Mommius was stunned by the cruelty, but he knew he would go to witness the floggings. He saw Aelia’s head bob. He saw her lips flutter. Her eyes opened wide and her jaw thrust slightly forward, but then her head fell again and she gave an agonised groan.
“Strip the blasphemers,” Caiaphas ordered. To Rustius the relish in his voice was obvious. This was about his power, not about Rome’s. The temple guard ripped away their shifts and to hoots and jeers from the crowd the four were left naked. The lash marks on Shena’s back stood livid against the cinnamon skin as she glared furiously at those who leered at her. Rachel stood silent, hers a mother’s body hardened by the life she had lived, but the two younger women cowered in fear and humiliation. Virgins until the legion had got hold of them, Rustius suspected.
Caiaphas had his slaves coffled together again, then paraded them round the cross. He made them kneel before Aelia. “Bow before your queen,” he commanded. The temple guard forced even Shena comply, shoving her beaten body into a position of prostration, naked on the flinty earth. Eventually, when Caiaphas had had his fun, he sent them back down to the city.
Clemens blinked back the tears to look once again at Aelia’s tortured body, his throat aching with sorrow. How could they do this? How could they take one so young, so bright, so adorable and strip her naked and flog her and humiliate her like this? How could they torment four of his friends to hurt his love? How could the public watch with relish an agonising execution that lasted over a day? How could they do this to his Aelia, his beautiful Aelia?
Rustius, feeling he had to reassert himself, ordered the cross shaken again, but Caiaphas again took centre stage. “Your doing,” he said. “You Aelia, a whore like your mother, did this to them.”
But Aelia didn’t feel the pain or hear the taunt. Her head lolled on her chest. Death had taken her at last.
