22. I lifted my head to watch in terror as Ethelbert probed around with the point of a spike on my right wrist, searching for just the right spot.
On her X-cross just beyond, one of the Crosshageul monks was doing the same … although, unlike me, the novice Eulalia appeared ready and almost eager for it all to begin. Her eyes were open, staring up at the sky, trickles of blood from the barbs on her crown, pooling in her matted hair, her raised chest and splayed breasts rising and falling with short measured breaths of anticipation.
Over at the far wall, the monks continued to flog poor Emily.
I turned my head away to look up at Sister Kathleen, who knelt at my side, noticing for the first time that she was wearing a simple novice's shift rather than the full habit of a nun.
"What did they do to you? They busted you down to being a novice again, didn't they?" I croaked.
"Never mind that. You need to focus now Barbara ... This is really going to hurt!"
I gave her a sideways look, and shot a quick glance past her off to my left. A monk from Mont Saint-Michel knelt at the ready, a nail pressed against Messaline's slender right wrist, his hammer raised.
Thessela was obscured from my view by the bodies of the men crouched over her, but I could hear her telling herself over and over to be brave.
The moment had come. Four hammers swung down in unison, four ragged screams blended into one. A fountain of blood sprayed Ethelbert in the face as the point of the nail drove straight through my wrist and buried itself deep in the wood on the first blow. I arched my back, lifted my butt off the stipe, and held rigid for a few seconds, only to come crashing down with a tailbone crunching jolt.
Sister Kathleen squeezed the fingers of my left hand as Ethelbert hammered the nail deep into the cross beam with three powerful blows. The wood shook and my head jerked back and forth as I howled in agony.
Next to me, Messaline was unable to maintain her usual French stoicism, bucking and twisting, crying out desperately with each ringing clang of hammer against nail.
Thessela's handlers were dousing her with a bucket of cold water, the poor thing having fainted after the first hammer blow.
Ethelbert and Tuck hustled round my cross to the other side, rudely shoving Kathleen out of the way in their haste to keep pace with the other teams. She pushed back angrily, only to be slapped across the face by Ethelbert. Staggering back she fell into the hands of Tuck, who tossed her aside, ripping open the front of her thin shift as she stumbled backwards to land on the ground next to Messaline.
By this time I was frantic, tugging vainly at the cords that bound my left hand to the wood. I cringed and began to cry as the tip of the second nail pressed against the sinews and bones of my wrist, and my crying turned to shrieks as the hammer struck, once, twice, and then a third time.
A short pause followed as our executioners, having finished with our hands moved around to the foot of our respective crosses. Kathleen got up and tried to crawl close to me, but the Abbess intervened to stop her.
The nailing of feet began with Eulalia's. I turned to watch. Since she was spread eagled on the X-cross, two nails were necessary. Her knees were slightly bent, the soles of her feet strapped tightly to the wood as the nails were placed, high on the foot, just below the ankle. She raised her head to see what they were doing. The nails were driven simultaneously, with quick hard hammer blows, the ringing clang of hammer heads striking iron drowning out the snapping and crunching sounds of breaking bones and cartilage.
She howled and arched up high enough so I could briefly catch a glimpse of the two priests, through the space beneath the Scottish novice's raised back and ass and the wood below, of taking Emily down from the whipping post and supporting her under the arms while turning her around to face us.
I was next. My feet had been bound at the ankles to the stipe in such a way that my knees were both bent and forced apart, fully exposing my sex to view. Ethelbert and Tuck prepared to drive two nails, one through each of the inside arches of my feet. I raised my head, to look down the length of my naked body at them, shuddered and began to plead, "no nails, please, the ropes are enough, please don't."
Seconds later my feet were pierced and shattered. I had thought nothing could hurt more than nails driven through my wrists. I was wrong.
The nailing of Messaline's and Thessela's feet followed quickly, the French novice in the traditional manner using two nails, the Threepwood girl with one foot placed on top of the other before securing them to her stipe with a single spike.
It was over. All four novices had been nailed, the ringing sounds of pounding and the pitiful screams, shrieks and cries of the victims no longer echoed off the cloister walls, replaced by the softer sounds of moans and sobbing, and the commanding voice of the Cardinal ordering his men to crucify Emily.
The man who had fallen into the cloister earlier from his perch on the wall, was forced to carry her cross and lay it in the grass next to Eulalia's. I watched, blinking the tears from my eyes, as she was escorted naked ... an oddly mixed look of rapturous wonder and stark horror on her face ... to her waiting cross.
TO BE CONTINUED
- Racing Rodent
