Chapter 1
INNOCENT WITCH
Griselda had come to know the opening of the door would never catch her unaware. The thudding of the bolts and the turning of the lock in the massive door were a prelude to its ponderous swing on its protesting hinges. In breathless hope, she turned from the heavily barred window to confront another of what she had come to think of as "faces."
It was a man she had not previously seen. His intelligent features belied the rough garb of Norman England. His appraisal of her semi-nudity was more than casual. The slender threat of a dagger hung from his belt. His hand idly swung the iron ring with its frightening keys-the keys of dungeon doors.
"Tis a fine view you have."
It was the pebble in the pool, sending out its exploring circles. They examined each other cautiously. He had broken his silence, but Griselda was chary of her own. In the past days she had flung the obvious at the faces too many times without profit. She knew not what to say.
"You'll be getting out of here." His statement was oddly tentative.
"Now?" She could not quench the sudden hope in the single word.
"Oh, aye, soon enough."
"And I can go home?"
His silence was negative, but she persisted. Lifting her chained hands, and kicking fretfully at the links joining her ankles, she asked, "Am I to be rid of these?"
"They're riveted on thee, lass. Yell wear 'em."
"But if I am to be released ...?"
"I said out of this tower chamber, lady, naught about release."
Griselda sighed, deflated. He was just another man, saying the same things. Her tears of disappointment had already been shed. She had no more. "Where, then, do I go?" she asked listlessly.
"To the stake."
Her mind flitted ridiculously in every direction save the true import of what he had said. Only the gravity of his regard finally brought the fatal word into focus. Her heart beat painfully. "Please don't joke," she pleaded breathlessly, "I'm frightened enough as it is. It's been awful, chained in here like this-four days!"
"'Tis the Bishop's ruling, girl. Thou art judged a witch."
The very enormity of the statement gave her the courage of anger. "Oh, stop it! Stop it! I've had enough. I was a fool ever to listen." Her voice broke slightly. "I want to go home."
"As do all condemned witches, lass."
"Oh, stop that 'lass' and all this silly talk and pretending. You're like a lot of silly kids playing a game." She again raised and fingered the metal circlets on her wrists. "And these horrible things too! I'm sick of them."
He grunted dourly. 'They'll confine thee to the end, woman. Nay doubt the smith will rake 'em from the ashes."
His prosaic thought evoked a terrible vision. Ashes! Her own! And the fire-blackened irons she now bore on wrist and ankle. Desperation lent credence to the impossible. "Bishop! What Bishop?" she demanded sullenly, "I haven't been tried or-or-Oh, this is all too absurd!"
"Ye'll be burned today, Griselda Greaves."
All the male "faces" were enemies. None were kind. None willing to help. What was the use of being sweetly reasonable or trying to play her part! They carried things too far...! "Don't you know when to stop!" she exclaimed passionately. "You spoil things. D'you want me in hysterics?"
"A few screams do no harm, lady."
"But it's so unfair! You hold all the cards. I'm a-a-a nothing! And if you think I'll swallow this nonsense about burning me at the stake...! You can go jump in the lake."
"Yet the stake awaits thee, girl. In a little while yell see."
The half naked girl leant back against the stone of the wall but found no comfort in its chill. "Is that all ye sought me for?" she asked helplessly. Then in fury, "Damn you, I'm beginning to talk your fool idiom! Get me out of here!"
"Soon. Does't want absolution?"
"Shove it! I've had a bellyful."
"Humility would serve thee best, lady."
"Look, you can be back in the eleventh century if you want. But I'm not. Your show's clever and damn convincing. But it's a rotten lousy trick to play on a girl. What do I have to do to get out of here?"
"Burn."
Again the vision! Screaming as the flames rose. Flinging her bound nakedness against the chains and the unyielding timber to which she was fastened. But it was all too easy to visualize-too many pictures of Joan of Arc! Angrily, she fought down panic. This man's gift for the wrong word in the right place was brutal. Urgently, she pleaded, "Couldn't you give me sensible answers-please?"
"I could give thee a bit o' comfort."
Bitterly, she considered it the first human thing he'd said. "You mean fuck me?"
"Aye. Tis considered a pleasure."
"For you, I'm sure! You should have thought of that before you chained my feet together."
"They are not that nigh, lass. Tis still possible."
Griselda had little doubt it was. "No thanks," she said stiffly, "that wasn't in the contract."
He looked at her strangely, as at an anomaly. 'Thy speech," he queried, "'tis naught of Norman or Saxon-nor of women...."
"It's yours that's screwy," she told him tartly. "Look! Go to your boss man and tell him I want out."
"Thy breasts are passing beautiful...." he observed irrelevantly.
"They are, aren't they!" The girl flamed. "You've been looking at them ever since you came. Try a topless joint-"
He shook his head sadly, shrugged, was about to say something but changed his mind and exited. The door thumped shut, the bolts thudded home. The lock turned. The girl by the window was alone.
Griselda shook her head as though to clear it of a dream. Clasping the bars with her fettered hands, she gazed from the tower room out across the parkland. It was verdantly peaceful. It could have been England-but it could have been many places! Venerable trees and greensward. ... Her eyes roved for power lines or planes. There were none. The scene was ageless. She cast aside the idea of being adrift in time. A sense of unreality her stone prison and her visitors had, without obvious intent, imposed. In a continuing fascination with their incongruity she again played idly with her chains. They were of rough iron. Crafted well enough, but the chain could have been improved at any good hardware, and the bands around her wrists were heavy and rendered immutable by the rivets whose splayed heads shone raw against the rust.
The rivets were frightening. They were forever. During the days of her captivity, Griselda had come to realize the metal welded on her limbs was less to inhibit than to engender a state of mind. Her chains were a symbol. But of what! Quite soon after the door had first slammed on her she had discovered the fetters prohibited nothing. They were simply an irritating and shaming imposition on anything she wished to do. She was never free of their clinking and their weight. She had even considered using the chain between her wrists as a weapon, and her wristlets as clubs...! But she was frightened of consequences and the damage she might do. Even if she gained freedom from her tower prison she could not run. That was the one certain thing the shackles denied. Even walking must be dealt with in caution.
The four days had not been easy. Her nights on the straw were restless and haunted. Bedeviled by recrimination of her own stupidity. From the first, she had been grateful for any visitor no matter how unrewarding. Mostly they were men who had stood and used their ambiguous words as an excuse to examine her nakedness. It was only on the third day Sister Amaldis had vouchsafed her the scrap of white which now hung from one hip, shielding her sex. Her breasts were bare, her navel a sweet innocence on a belly in which there was little food.
Sister Amaldis was the most provoking enigma of all. Her coif and nun's habit precluded intimacy, but she was kind. Her voice was soft and sympathetic, evasive as the rest, but sweetly feminine in a world of men. Her features were classically exquisite. Griselda wondered if truly she was shaven bald as nuns must be. She suspected, too, that beneath the habit there was a female body vibrant and still young.
And The Seigneur! Griselda had not even seen The Seigneur.
The captive's reverie was shattered by the door. This. time it was Sister Amaldis herself. Deferentially, two soldiers took up positions against the portal. As usual, the male eyes found their prisoner's breasts of absorbing interest.
"Ma pauvre cherie!" Sister Amaldis swept across the prison and enveloped its chaired occupant in cloth and ardent arms. "My poor child-"
"Sister, I am not a child. I am twenty-six."
"We are all children in the sight of God."
Griselda sighed. Everything was quicksilver. "Sister, please! Please get me released."
"It is today your spirit leaves us, cherie."
"Okay, Sister, okay. Some idiot has already-"
"But it is to be, dear girl Our good Bishop-"
"All right, all right, I'll play it right on through for you. But tonight I leave with my check. Okay?"
"I know naught of this 'okay'-"
"Sister, drop it. Between us girls there's no need. This whole thing's getting me scared."
"The fear of judgement, child-"
"Yes, yes, I'm a child, and I'm a prisoner in a great big castle, and I'm chained, and I'm naked, and a lot of kooks assure me they're going to burn me in a bonfire....Dammit, Sister, why wouldn't I be scared! Give me a break."
"Such strange speech, beloved-"
"And there'll be a lot more of it if I don't get out! Look, if you'd only carried through on that first day! I was all hyped up for whatever it was. But days and nights in this damn dungeon all alone and fixed the way I am-It's got me into a dither. Something's gone wrong and I'm frightened."
Sister Amaldis regarded her perturbed charge sadly. "Tis a thing most terrible to happen to so lovesome a morsel as thee," she mourned, "but there be no doubt within thee lurks a demon most vile."
Griselda grudgingly admitted its cleverness, its plausibility. If only-if only! Her mind flashed back to the first day suspended naked before the Inquisitor and the rest of the solemn men who had asked their questions and recorded her answers and then watched while her writhing nudity had been pierced with needles ... needles that would betray the entry of Asmodeus ...!
"But we don't have to believe it," she whisped urgently into the habit which, strangely enough, generated waves of ultra feminine perfume of a headiness that might have been of Sister Amaldis herself. 'That first day I was primed ... it's all this other."
"God will give thee courage, dear."
"All I want is OUT."
"Thy spirit shall most surely soar."
"Sister, this burning caper...?"
"Tis said the agony be but short, beloved. Unconsciousness comes quickly in the flames."
"Sister! Lay off the theatricals. I'm jittery enough already. I know damn well I'm not going to be burned alive. But this whole act...!"
Sister Amaldis laid the captive's head on her own shoulder and gently patted the disarrayed hair. She murmured endearments as to a child, some of them in Latin. Having offered the comfrot of hands and lips to the girl about to die, she raised her hand and nodded a signal to the waiting men....
It was the worst of the moments yet. Every nerve in Griselda's loveliness screamed revolt. She longed to beat the metal of her chains against the leather vests and the rough strong hands. But she foght her panic; perhaps her panic was as absurd as all the rest! Afterwards she might be ashamed...? And anyway ... chained as she was they could handle her with ease. She clinked her way between them from her prison.
The sun was warm and felt good upon her skin. It was the only benefit. For a moment they stood at the postern gate surveying the double line of bug-eyed spectators who lined the course she must tread. They were a motley miscellany of both sexes, eyes and lips avid for her sufering. No doubt as a bonus for their enjoyment the bit of cloth was whisked from her loins to leave her starkly nude. Some sort of monk, friar or priest mumbled Latin and placed a huge cross upon her forehead before he lifted it high and led the way to her martyrdom.
It was then Griselda saw it!
The stake stood as starkly naked as she herself. It was massive, and doubtless well planted in the ground. Around its base were piled great bundles of twigs and branches. Griselda recalled the word: faggots. Bemusedly, she wondered why the term was applied to homosexuals. For a breathless moment her chained foot resisted, but the strong arms urged her on.
She wanted to gaze straight ahead, seeing no one. But a compelling curiosity denied. All these people! Of another age, nearly a thousand years past...! Or were they "extras" hired through an agent! But they were too real! It was all too real! The exclamation thudded in her mind: Too real, too real, too real...! The grips upon her arms tightened. The soldiers had sensed her disquiet.
The villagers, or whatever they might be-peasants was probably the word-were controlled by scattered men-at-arms. But all were vocal. There were tentative cheers, some clapping, and a few taunts about witches and their just desserts. But most of it was uncouth sex.
"Too fine a cunt for the fire, lads."
"Mayhap she'll piss through it and douse the flame."
"I'd pay silver for a roasted tit."
"How about a fuck, lass, afore ye fuck no more?" Sister Amaldis, close behind, laid a soothing hand against the captive's cheek. "Heed them not, child. I will pray for their forgiveness."
It was strangely comforting. There had fallen upon the naked girl a terrible loneliness. She recalled something about when you entered the world and when you left it. She shook her head impatiently. Why, oh, why must it all be made so real! Who was watching? Who? And it must cost a fortune! She wondered why her nakedness did not embarrass her more. But she supposed, like all excess, it numbed and was its own defeat. Ribald comment approved her pubic hair.
"She's got a bush to hide a fox."
"Hast lost a man in thy thatch, girl?"
""Twill flame bright to warm thy belly."
Perhaps they were not paid! Griselda realized her nakedness was sport enough to attract volunteers! But the history books had said it: The burning of a witch was a public holiday. She was largesse tossed to the rabble!
Around the grim and lonely stake the soldiers formed a circle, beyond which the audience might gawk and fantasize their lusts. Griselda no longer saw those who had come to watch her die, nor did she hear their carnalities. Her gaze was riveted, in shivering fascination, upon the wooden column designed to hold her while she burned. She paid but scant attention to the cowled figure and his Latin and his Ikon. She returned the kiss of Amaldis in perfunctory recognition of a sympathy devoid of mercy.
For a brief moment she stood alone in her chained nakedness while her guards threw planks upon the tinder. It was an awkward scramble to hoist her to where she could stand upon the tiny platform hidden beneath the twigs. It was there for her feet alone. The brittle firewood embraced her feet lovingly. With care, as though it was a kindly task, the two men circled her waist with bands of coarse rope, constricting her stomach and welding her to the wood at her back. They knotted it firmly behind the post where she could never reach. They used no other bond. There was no need. The shackles were still fast upon her feet and hands. She was wedded to the vertical column, bride of the wooden phallus, in a union indissoluble, save by the fire. They scrambled back to firm ground and retrieved their planks.
For a short moment Griselda knew a wild exhilaration. She was the star, the cynosure of every eye. If there was an iota of glory in this madness it was now. But the euphoria was short. Her questing hands had found the rope, arching against it she knew herself helpless. Around her feet was piled the dry faggots by which her lovely nakedness would be burned to ashes....
She remembered Disneyland where the controlled gas jets simulated the burning cabin and the camp fire. Somewhere beneath her feet? Some cunning replica...? Or perhaps this was it! Surely it was grand finale enough! Surely...? Without interest she kissed the big cross thrust at her lips. No doubt she owed them that! She did not start to scream until the soldiers struck flints for a flame and set the flame to the tinder at her feet.
Thrusting uselessly at her bonds she told herself it was a clever, artful trick. A simulation only. Perhaps if she screamed enough they would desist and call it a day. They did not call it a day. While her screams pealed high, they applied the flame, again and again...! Smoke pillowed up so that the screaming girl inhaled its acrid taste.
The smoke was real.