The opposite wall was covered in blood, oozing from the sharp stones. Looking towards the top of the wall I could just make out in the dim light, three pairs of bloody shackles.
When I walked through the oak door, I saw where the screaming was coming from. In the middle of the floor was a woman, her head viciously shaven by a guard. He had no compassion, as he grabbed giant chunks of her blood stained hair and began hacking at it with a knife. As he attacked her hair, he also took away chunks of her scalp. After each lock of hair he would dip the razor into what was once clear water, but was now deep red with her blood.
I saw two more prisoners, both lying in a ball on the blood stained floor. They both had their hands shackled together as well as their feet. All that they could hear, over each others sobbing, was the shrieking of their fellow prisoner. imagining with fear what horrors she was going through.
Later that day I entered one of the guard towers, which over looked the cobbled courtyard. In the centre of the courtyard was a large pile of wood with a ring of soldiers around it, in highly polished armour, holding back a huge mob of people that had come to witness the execution.
There was a gigantic roar as the huge, oak double doors opened to reveal the three prisoners, all with shaven heads covered in bloody scars. They walked willingly towards their fiery death, through the gauntlet of soldiers and people, as if they had accepted defeat.
I moved to the roof of a nearby building to get a better view, but when I got there they had already been tied to a post in the middle of the wood stack. They were standing outwards so that everyone watching could get a good view. Suddenly they broke their silence and began to beg for mercy and pray once again, as the torch was carried towards them.
But their cries were hard to hear over the ecstatic crowd. The crowd’s roars got louder and louder, as the torch set the first section of wood on fire, and the cries for mercy soon stopped and gave way to coughs because of the thick black smoke. The torch made its way round the pile of wood until there were flames on all of the sides.
Then the crowd began throwing large bundles of firewood over the heads of the soldiers whist their cheers got ever louder. The coughs of the victims, in the middle of the thick jet black smoke, became louder and more frequent till suddenly, they stopped. All fell silent.
