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Two - The Cell
Time passed in the tiny cell.
At first, Solana wept. Naked, her hands confined in the fetters overhead, she quickly discovered the cruelty of her restraint. Even after nine or ten hours, when she guessed night wa s w ell advanced, she could not lie down to rest. The best she could do was an awkward slump, legs stretched across the floor, her arms held over her head.
H ow had the word of a jealous she-goat led to this? That callous blonde whore, Catalina, had simply whispered into the right ear, and here Solana was. Chained, deep underground, in a dank and lightless cell. As the hours crawled, she sometimes lost all self-control, and shrieked curses to Catalina into the darkness. At times, she struggled to her feet, fighting the shackles that held her hands confined. But inevitably, sobbing and frustrated, she would sink down again, returning to slump against the wall, arms lifted and head lolling against them. H er dark eyes stared into the blackness.
Endless hours.
Solana was aware of her growing thirst and hunger. At first, no more than a minor discomfort, but as ten hours became twenty, twenty slowly wore into forty, the need swelled and grew to the intensity of torture. Solana found herself calling weakly towards the door.
But there was no sound. No water. No relief.
A thousand days passed. An entire lifetime.
Daylight and fresh air seemed distant memories. The freedom to move her own arms seemed no more than an imagined luxury. Numb with despair, Solana slumped against the cell wall, chained, naked, insensible to the cold, the silence, the slow passage of time. She barely registered the rattling of the cell door being unlocked. As it creaked open, she turned her face, hiding her eyes behind her uplifted arm against the glare of a torch - but glimpsed, briefly, a small figure padding into the tiny enclosure, guards standing in the corridor beyond.
A girl. “What is your name?”
The voice was soft, sweet. As the cell door was closed and locked, Solana dared to look. The girl was not even twenty: thin, petite, naked but for two metal cuffs - bolted, not locked - about her wrists, connected by a foot-and-a-half of iron chain. She paused to secure her torch in a bracket on the wall. In the flame's light, her skin was given a golden sheen. H er breast s w ere tiny buds, brown nipples. H er ribcage was stark, her belly hollow, jutting hip-bones. Long black hair hung about her pale shoulders, a wispy thatch between her slender thighs. H er lip s w ere a puffy rosebud, her eyes dark. She held a basket, which she brought to Solana's side.
“My ... name?” Solana found the strength to move her head, her raised arms shifting slightly to the rattle of chains. She tried to sit up. “Solana Degas.”
“I am Maria,” the girl offered. “It is my job to tend the women imprisoned here.”
“You are in chains,” Solana observed.
“I am a prisoner, too,” Maria admitted. “I have been for two years. My mother was a witch, and salvation for me can only come through a lifetime serving the Church.”
“That is terrible,” Solana breathed, for a moment forgetting her own situation.
Maria shrugged. She reached into her basket, lifted a carafe of dirty terracotta. “I am used to it, now. It is a life. Drink.” She held the vessel to Solana's dry lips, and the latter drank gratefully, though the water was brackish. Soon she was at least partially slaked, and let her head rest against the stone again.
“Thank you. God, thank you. I do not know how long it has been since I last drank.”
“You were brought here two days ago.”
Only two days? Could it really have been so short a time? To Solana it seemed forever. H er wrists hurt within the fetters' hard grip, her lifted arms ached, her fingers and toe s w ere frozen. Only two days?
“You are beautiful,” Maria said quietly, peering at Solana's face as she retrieved a crust of stale bread from the basket. “It is a shame.”
“ H ow is it a shame?” Solana frowned.
Maria smiled sadly. “You must know, surely, that your time is as good as done? God has finished sporting with you. It is over.”
“What?” Solana was so shocked that she completely ignored the food offered in Maria's small fingers. She raised herself in the chains. “ H ow can you say that? I am innocent!”
“Please!” There was already a shine of tears in the young woman's eyes. “Do not say that! When they send for you, confess all. Just confess, or there will be much suffering. At least if you confess, you will go to the stake with your beauty intact.”
“The stake?” Solana's voice carried the horror her eyes showed. “ H ow dare you! I am a free woman, wrongly imprisoned! Justice must, and will, be done!”
Maria shrank from the outburst, fear on her young face. She fumbled for her basket, found her feet with wrist-chain jingling. “Speak no more to me! I beg you to confess, or you will lose your mind upon the rack! Do not be a fool, I implore!”
“Maria, wait!” Solana tugged on her chains as the girl pounded on the cell door. It opened, and she grabbed the torch, taking light and hope with her. Darkness closed in, the door was locked.
For perhaps an hour, Solana's anger slowly cooled, and doubts began to creep from the edges of her mind. Chained, locked away from daylight and humanity, a horrible realisation grew. H ow many witches had she seen arrested in her twenty-seven years? A dozen? All had returned to the village square, pale and weary, to be bound upon the tall wooden stake while their confession s w ere read aloud to all. Solana had never cared for these executions, the long screams, the hissing flames, the rolls of oily smoke as flesh caught lazily alight. But it had never occurred to her that these might be innocent women, forced by torture into confessing false sins!
Solana's hands closed about her chains at the thought of such injustice. Surely not! And surely they would not try to make her, Solana Degas, confess to witchcraft, when she was guilty of none? She tipped her head back, stared blindly towards her shackled hands in growing despair.
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