andy01
Magistrate
Gabriella, next part
From the time of Alexander at least, the rack was among the most terrible of tortures (perhaps the most: the warrant for interrogation of Guy Fawkes – leader of the Gunpowder Plot to blow up Parliament – stipulated use of “the lesser tortures”, and only if these failed allowed the rack).
Used brutally it could dislocate joints irreparably, even tear limbs from the body (as could the cross if arms were nailed too far apart). But a skilled torturer eschewed such crudity; after all, he needed the prisoner able to scrawl a signature or mark, however shakily illegible, on a confession. A true rack-master would draw the process gradually out to inevitable confession and naming of names. Strain increasing very gradually for up to two hours until exhausted muscles could no longer resist. Only then did the real torture begin, the racking of the joints. A true rack-master did not aim to dislocate them suddenly but to increase by tiny increments the strain upon sinews and tissues that were designed to contract and pull, not to be stretched. The unnatural distortion inflamed them, balls of flames ever more intense in every joint, fury that raged between them though stretched muscles, fire piled on fire. And little by little the skilled rack-master at each crescendo of pain would ratchet the strain a little more, a little that meant so much.
And when confession had been babbled, only very slowly would a skilful man reduce the pressure, allowing the bones slowly to settle back in damaged joints, torn cartilage and lining.
A skilled rack-master was hugely valuable to any ruler who had secret enemies (which is to say any ruler). The names of men such as Torquemada[1] and Thomas Norton[2] snake through the histories.
And the greatest rack-masters of them all were the brothers Humilis, Sublimus, Tau and Capitata, and their family name was Crux.
TBC
[1] Motto: "Whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder" applies to the state of Holy Matrimony, not to the Inquisition.
[2]"Rackmaster-General of England" under Elizabeth I.
From the time of Alexander at least, the rack was among the most terrible of tortures (perhaps the most: the warrant for interrogation of Guy Fawkes – leader of the Gunpowder Plot to blow up Parliament – stipulated use of “the lesser tortures”, and only if these failed allowed the rack).
Used brutally it could dislocate joints irreparably, even tear limbs from the body (as could the cross if arms were nailed too far apart). But a skilled torturer eschewed such crudity; after all, he needed the prisoner able to scrawl a signature or mark, however shakily illegible, on a confession. A true rack-master would draw the process gradually out to inevitable confession and naming of names. Strain increasing very gradually for up to two hours until exhausted muscles could no longer resist. Only then did the real torture begin, the racking of the joints. A true rack-master did not aim to dislocate them suddenly but to increase by tiny increments the strain upon sinews and tissues that were designed to contract and pull, not to be stretched. The unnatural distortion inflamed them, balls of flames ever more intense in every joint, fury that raged between them though stretched muscles, fire piled on fire. And little by little the skilled rack-master at each crescendo of pain would ratchet the strain a little more, a little that meant so much.
And when confession had been babbled, only very slowly would a skilful man reduce the pressure, allowing the bones slowly to settle back in damaged joints, torn cartilage and lining.
A skilled rack-master was hugely valuable to any ruler who had secret enemies (which is to say any ruler). The names of men such as Torquemada[1] and Thomas Norton[2] snake through the histories.
And the greatest rack-masters of them all were the brothers Humilis, Sublimus, Tau and Capitata, and their family name was Crux.
TBC
[1] Motto: "Whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder" applies to the state of Holy Matrimony, not to the Inquisition.
[2]"Rackmaster-General of England" under Elizabeth I.