‘You may harm me but your heathen ways will not
harm His Majesty in England.’ The hooded figure looked
up from the fireplace. ‘Your English king will never truly
rule our land,’ it declared. A woman’s voice, strident and
passionate, echoing from the walls.
Face concealed by the cowl, she again removed the
poker. Now, apparently satisfied with the tip glowing
white, she approached the slab. At the same moment she
nodded to the kilted figures and they moved to part the
Englishman’s buttocks.
‘A curse on you,’ he screamed. ‘I will be avenged.
May it be 200 years, 500 or more, I will be avenged.’ He
strained to turn, to look at his torturer. She merely raised
her eyes to a high, circular window as if exulting at her
moment to come. Lightning flared again, silhouetting
many irregular stones outside that loomed like furtive,
curious trolls.
The hooded woman now stood over her victim
with the poker. ‘A simple death for you would not please
me,’ she said. ‘May your entrails burn as your heart bursts.
Even above the wind and thunder, your shrieks will be
heard when this flaming instrument of justice enters your
bowels.’
She stooped over the prostate figure and slowly,
carefully, inserted it between his parted buttocks.
And she was right.
*
44
*
*