“Stretch her, face downwards, over a slow fire. Bind her hands and feet to four stakes, and so—scourge her.”
He was obeyed, and the crimson blood trickled over her white skin at every stroke of the lash, and hissed in the glowing charcoal.
The multitude, looking on, could not bear the sight, and with one voice entreated that she might be removed and dismissed.
But the shouts only made Selenus more angry, and he ordered the executioners to redouble the blows. Thomais, unable to endure the sight, fainted at the feet of Hiera, who uttered a cry of “Oh, Febronia, my sister! Thomais is dying.”
The poor sufferer turned her head, and asked the executioner to throw water over the face of the fainting woman, and begged to be allowed to say a word to Hiera.
But the judge interposed to forbid this indulgence, and ordered Febronia to be untied and placed on the rack.
This was sometimes called “the little horse.” It had four legs united by planks. At each end was a crank. The sufferer was attached by the feet and hands at ankles and wrists to cords that passed over rollers between the planks. She thus hung below and between the two pieces of wood. At a signal from the magistrate, the executioners turned the cranks, and these drew the feet and hands tighter towards the rollers, and strained them, so that if this were persisted in, the limbs were pulled out of joint.
“Well, girl,” asked Selenus, “how do you like your first taste of torture?”
“Learn from the manner in which I have borne it, that my resolution is unalterable,” answered Febronia.
On the rack her sides were torn with iron combs. She prayed incessantly: “O Lord, make haste to help me. Leave me not, neither forsake me in my hour of pain!”