Cover those bitches a bit, I’m not sure if the old man’s heart can stand so much naked flesh!” The laughing of Simon de Montford and his torturer brought her back. She bitted on a kind of metallic tongue, part of a metallic bridle, whose sharp needles touched the skin of face. Strong chains hold her in the sitting position, tied her hands, her legs were hold by the wooden stocks.
Arnaud just tore the remains of Louise’s skirt in twig pieces and threw it on the hip of the bound girls.
“We soon have a guest here, who wants to hear your confessions! Don’t say anything wrong…” He squeezed Louise’s nipple between thumb and index finger, “…or you will regret this!”
Louise rebelled against the grip, pulled at the chain, that hold her arms as well as Bernadette’s bridle, whose needles now pricked her face, scratched along the skin, but the tongue effectively suppressed her screams, when she desperately tried to follow the erratic moves of the bridle with her head.
So she didn’t notice the entrance of the towns Major who was accompanied by Simon de Montford into the dungeon and led to the prisoners.
“For God’s sake, this is the Marquise?” He had needed some time to recognize her, almost nude and with the traces of the beatings in her face below the bridle. Bernadette felt her cheeks glowing, feeling the look of the mayor on her bare breasts, her legs revealed to the eyes of the old man, who she knows since she was a little child.
“Yes, indeed … and she will tell you some shocking news later. But first to this one… a maiden of the noble family who had heretics writings in her chamber.”
“What…what have you done to her?” His shocked eyes gazed on her smashed fingers, the swollen wrist of her broken hand.
“Not much… it was not necessary to give her a hard torture, she confessed rather early, even before we needed to use the branding irons…. But as I said, first to this one.”
He pointed to the girl. “Look at the mayor and tell him about your sins.”
Louise swallowed hardly and croaked with hoarse voice “Please, give me some water, milord.”
“Water?” Arnaud let the whip slap against her bare breasts. She howled out loudly, and Bernadette screamed in her metal gag, when the sudden move from Louise made the bridle’s needles scratch along her face.
“Water, bitch? You will get enough to drink later, but now repeat your confession first!” With each word the whip hit her chest, belly and breasts. “And don’t forget anything!”
She repeated her confession, speaking haltingly, when she accused the Marquise and her family.
“Now you understand, why we had to care about Marquis de Tranceval and his daughter, right?”
“The Marquis a heretic? I cannot believe it.”
“We also were surprised, but you will be convinced, when the Marquise has repeated her confession, too. But first give the maiden her sign, her guilt is doubtless.”
Quickly Arnaud took a glowing iron from the coals, hold her head in a strong grip, and pressed the ‚H‘ for heretic on her forehead. The smell of burnt flesh filled the room, when her screams ended and she hung fainted in her chains.
“Now it’s your turn, Marquise.” Arnaud removed the bridle and laid his heavy hands on her trembling shoulders. “You’d better repeat everything exactly like you told us before.”
Bernadette swallowed hardly, for a moment she wanted to resist, but then they would torture her again, maybe even worse than before, and she knew she could not stand such a torture anymore. Haltingly she started to speak, forced to look at the mayor during her confession, that she now begun to understood in detail, her own words made her cheeks glow, and she was relieved when it was finally over and she was allowed to turn her head away.
“You have heard it, my dear Mayor.” Simon de Montford laid a hand on his shoulders. “Certainly you agree, that only another heretic can have any doubt on the guilt of the Marquis and his family.”
The mayor nodded and murmured a low consent. “Unfortunately the Marquis himself flew from the punishment and sought his own dead when we tried to arrest him. So his soul is condemned forever – .he will be buried on unholy ground outside the city walls. But his daughter’s soul can be saved… after her confession the flames of the stake will save her soul from eternal doom.”
This was no thread anymore for Bernadette, she only hoped that she could die soon, flee from this misery, even if she had to go through the flames for this.
“And you, as the mayor of the city, you will have the honor to mark this heretic with your own hands!”
Grinning Arnaud reached him the grip of reheated branding iron.
“Me? I…I’m no henchman, I cannot do this!”