Chapter 2
Like Madeline, the parting of Lily's legs in the dungeon, caused her body to lower down the wall, enough to remove the slack in the chains above until they had no more to give and became almost torte.
"That disguise won't fool me." The youngest of the jailors said to the poor innocent cleave gagged girl. "We all know you're a witch, and that's why you're going to be tried as one."
The tallest of the group of three men, wrapped his thumb and finger around one of her wrists, to measure the girth and looked her straight in the eye. "When we get back, we're going to put you in there." He said, pointing to the raised stocks of the pillory standing in front of the wall. "And this time it will be my turn to poke your insides."
Not concentrating on his oldie world dialect, Lily pulled down on the chains securing her wrists and tried to bring her legs closer together, knowing that this position would soon become unbearable, yet she could do nothing about it.
Picking up the whip from the wall, he wrapped it around the stretched up waist of Lily's belly to take another measurement, causing her to suck in thinner and wince with fear as the hard leather, snaked like a flexible bone around her body. "Can't have you pulling free of your chains again can we?" He said, giving her the answer to her question of what he'd been doing with his fingers around her wrist and the whip around her waist.
Looking down at her helpless predicament, she felt thankful for the grace of still having her clothes. The cowgirl boots prevented her ankles from being bruised, and the red chequered shirt, at least kept her chest covered. Her tight bleached blue denim shorts however were digging into the sides of her thighs due to the manacles spreading her legs. This position caused the shorts to ride up higher, forcing the tough denim seam in her crotch, to cut deeper into her most sensitive lady parts, each time she adjusted her stance for comfort.
Left alone to stew and unable to shout for help, the sight of the pillory occupying the same cell, immediately to her right, gave her the shivers. Dreading the boys return, she compared how much more vulnerable being trapped in it would make her, but with the added ache of being bent over for a prolonged period of time. To have to keep looking at the wooden contraption proved to be torture enough, without having to surrender herself to the mercy of it for the abusive rape and torture of her captors.
Eventually, after hours of standing in what had become a stress position, the three men returned, with one approaching her the closest, carrying clothes in his hand.
Reaching around behind her, he passed a sheet of dirty white linen with straps, around her waist to form a skirt. Once tied off he presented her with a large bunched up cloth mop cap and placed it on top of her head, pulling some of the surplus down behind her, out of the way.
Relief came when the men unfastened her ankles so she could stand again, but her worst fears were confirmed when the same two men grabbed an arm each and released her wrist cuffs to drag her over to the stocks, where the third jailor waited with the large clapperboard's open jaws.
The man holding her right arm pulled on the peak of the cloth cap, drawing it down over her face and head, removing her crucial sense of vision.
Pleading into her gag, she felt the relentless rigidity of the solid wood on the front of her throat as her wrists were forcefully pulled into the lower semicircle cut-outs at her sides and the back of her struggling neck became pushed down by the weight of wood from above. The holes for her wrists were tiny and tight but the dangerous one imprisoning her neck had plenty of play around it.
Panicking, her nerves hit maximum when she heard the sound of horse's hooves and the wheels of a cart stop outside the entrance tunnel, followed by more men's voices entering the dungeon cell for what she feared would end in a gang rape.
"I have the manacles you requested." The visiting blacksmith said, "But I'd like to try them for size before we fit them."
Lifting her shirt, the clean, new-born softness of her flesh caught his attention where he lay the hinge of the curved metal strap across her spine to swing the two halves of the waistband closed about her midriff.
Not knowing what the heavy contraption draining heat from her tender skin was, she winced and sucked her stomach in, whilst staggering her rump around like a nervous pony being saddled for the first time.
Having grown up with Madeline and been an admirer of her all his life, the blacksmith couldn't believe she had resorted to such a heinous crime as witchcraft, in seeking revenge against her uncle.
The opportunity presented before him proved too much of a temptation to pass. The underside of her hanging down shirt created an opening for him to take advantage of by reaching up her chest and fondling the cold bullet nipples of her gravity weighted breasts. Lily's concealed lower half of clothing and lack of modern day bra raised no suspicion to the blacksmith as to why this couldn't be Madeline who arched helplessly in the pillory under the weight of his chest as he rested himself on top of her. The curious smell of cleanliness brought his mind back from assaulting her, onto his task of testing the size of her bonds, in case they needed adjusting at the workshop, before being fitted.
Moving around to the front of the pillory, he checked the sizing of her cuffs by pulling each hand as far as he could towards him, through the wooden holes that encircled them, and closing the iron manacles around each wrist, to check there would be no way of her slipping them off.
He couldn't see the gagged source of the moaning coming from inside the pulled down bonnet hood, which again raised no suspicion of the girl in front of him still being that of Madeline, the accused witch. Her beautifully manicured fingers and the delicacy of her palms should have raised the alarm, but obliviously he continued with his task of checking the shackles.
"These are fine." He announced, "Bring her to the workshop so I can hammer them in place."
Lily felt the freedom of the pillory's top half being lifted, allowing her to remove her wrists from their entrapment but not her neck. Two strong hands held her head in place long enough for the pillory to be slammed shut again, imprisoning only her neck with her arms now free. Collectively, the men tied her wrists behind her back before finally releasing her neck from the wooden stock and leading her outside where her carriage awaited.
Two of the men rode with her on the back of the flatbed cart, as the gagged and hooded girl was paraded in shame through the village, along their short journey to the Blacksmith's workshop.
The heat from the furnace told Lily where they were before her head became free of the bonnet, allowing her to see again. Still gagged, she took a look at the blacksmith who did a double take when he saw that this wasn't the Madeline who he'd grown up in the village with.
A well-practiced flick of her blond hair revealed to the blacksmith, a beautiful yet terrified face, partially obscured by the knotted cloth gag between her lips, but none the less, stunning him instantly.
Lily noticed the look of captivated interest her introduction had put on his face, giving her hope of him being able to help her.
"Bring her here." The blacksmith said to the three jailors.
With one man behind and the others either side, they ushered her towards the anvil where the blacksmith stood.
Clearly proud of his skilled work, he held a finished cuff up in front of his body and tested the hinge by operating the stiff action, open and closed, destroying Lily's hopes of help from him.
She knew it pointless to resist and so walked amongst them, not quite taking on board the severity of what was about to happen.
The blacksmith didn't stop at trying the cuff on her wrist for size again, he asked one of the larger men to hold it closed and turned to the fire with his tongs.
Lily kept catching glimpses of the warm metallic bracelet that the man held against her skin.
