Catherine's knees ached. She had been kneeling on the floor for a good half hour, her hands, and her head between them, tied in a wooden pillory. Daphne and Helen found themselves in the same position. The slaves' pillories were placed in a triangle, each two metres apart, so that they could look at each other. They were firmly anchored in the ground and could not be moved.

The slaves did not speak to each other. Each was completely preoccupied with her own fate. Daphne stared at the marble floor, trembling all over, trying again and again to pull her neck and hands out of the pillory. Helen closed her eyes and whispered prayers. Catherine scanned her two fellow sufferers with her gaze, then looked around. They were in the ballroom of the villa. The only company they had were the masterfully carved statues that adorned the hall. They would become the silent witnesses to their imminent punishment.

Catherine tried to fight the racing in her heart. What would she do with them? No one had told them. But she already knew the answer. There was no question what Tiziana would do to them. She just hoped it would be quick.

What would she feel?

What had Julia felt when it was her time?

Does it hurt?

Does one die instantly?

What do you feel below the neck when it happens?

And then? What is there? Would she stand before the gods, a naked soul? Would she have to answer for her actions? Would she be judged on whether she was brave and honest in life? Or is there simply nothing there? How would that be? Not to be. Julia already knew...

A sniffle brought her out of her thoughts. She looked up and looked at Daphne. She had become even more pale. By now she had given up trying to free herself from the pillory. More and more she became aware of the hopelessness of her situation. Tears rolled from her eyes.

The minutes crept by with cruel slowness. Again and again, Catherine managed to dispel the fear for a moment. She knew it was foolish to fear something that was going to happen one way or another. But this insight did not help. Immediately, fear gnawed its way through her insides again. Waiting for what is absolutely certain to happen is nothing short of torture.

Footsteps approached. The three girls' hearts felt as heavy as lead. Helen stopped praying and opened her eyes. Catherine could see from her spot how her mistress walked leisurely towards them. She stood in the middle of her slave girls and looked at one after the other.

The young aristocrat was wearing a white blouse, white shorts and flat sandals. Catherine stared at her. Her perfect long legs, her athletic body, her beautiful yet cruel face. She was truly the result of generations of the finest breeding. Tall. Racy. Proud. Noble. The blood of centuries-old houses flowed through her veins. She was one of these superior people, full of inexhaustible strength, force, life affirmation, self-confidence, with a strong indomitable will, always overcoming, striking and frightening. A born master.

The young slave girls at her feet were beauties too. But they were simple creatures, from lowly families. Their grace was accidental. Their beauty a quirk of nature. Like four-leaf clovers. And Tiziana was here to pluck them.

She turned to Daphne and Helen and broke the silence.

"I had ordered that not a word be said in my house about the uprising in the south. Thus, you have deliberately disobeyed my order. Rest assured, every one of these rebellious slaves will end up on the cross. I will spare you that fate. Of you, Daphne, I am sorely disappointed. I will miss your soft lips and your nimble tongue between my legs. Is there anything else you wish to say?"

"Domina, have mercy! I am not a rebel! I was merely curious to hear from them. I wish their downfall. I will continue to serve you faithfully. Please don't do this!"

Tiziana watched warm piss run down the trembling slave's thighs and form a pool on the marble floor.

When Daphne realised her mistress was pulling out the white box, she fully panicked.

"No! No! Please!"

Helen and Catherine watched as she tore at the pillory with all her strength to free herself. As if that would have helped anything. The slave tried to get up, braced her feet in the ground and tugged at the wooden frame in desperation. But it did not give way. The soles of her sandals slid without hold across the urine-soaked marble floor.

"No! Wait! Wait!"

Tiziana watched the panicked struggling of her former bed slave for a few moments more. Then the collar clicked.

Daphne's hands suddenly spread as her head fell from her neck to the floor, eyes and mouth widened in terror, and rolled to Tiziana's feet. Her headless body was staggered for a moment as if struck, then fell back to its knees. The decapitated servant's hands hung lifeless in the holes of the pillory, while her severed neck continued to remain stuck in the middle opening. Catherine and Helen gasped and stared at the decapitated girl. Where her head had rested a few moments before, there was only a dark crimson well from which it kept spurting. They could not understand it. This young body had just been wriggling so wildly. Now it was absolutely motionless. Kneeling. Tied up. Headless. Only the trickle from its neck still bore witness to its former vitality.

Tiziana looked at the lifeless head at her feet. Then she looked down at herself. Her legs had received a few warm splashes of blood. They slowly rolled down her thighs until they finally dried.

"Such a pretty thing. What a waste..."

"The gods will judge you!" sobbed Helen. But immediately the slave regretted what she had said in her fright. Tiziana turned to face her. Helen's fear almost drove her out of her mind. She no longer dared to look the aristocrat in the eye and bowed her head. It was as if the slave was symbolically offering her neck as she stared at her mistress' feet with frantic breathing.

"The gods...tell me Helen, do they await you in the afterlife?"

"y...yes..."

"And you have served them faithfully all your life?"

"I have, mistress"

Tiziana grinned.

"Strange. None of your celestial masters seems to come to your aid. That means either they are displeased with you or they want me to send you to them. You can ask them when you stand before them in a moment."

The pronouncement of her death sentence made Helen lose the last of her composure. She screamed with all her might.

"No! Please! Gods, I beg you! Save me!"

Her begging died in a wheeze as she tore her eyes open like shutters. Her face turned red. The veins on her neck and forehead stood out clearly. With her hands she tried to touch her constricted neck. But the pillory did not allow it. She wrenched her neck in all directions, hoping to catch just one breath. She slid around on her knees, trying every pose to open her windpipe.

Helen threw her head back. Still no oxygen. Now she stared at her mistress with her mouth open. As if she wanted to scream. Only, she couldn't. She could only stare into her face. Begging, she shook her head.

Catherine closed her eyes and turned away. All she could hear of Helen's death throes was the tugging on the pillory, the kicking of her bare legs on the smooth floor and short soft gurgling sounds from her throat.

Tiziana watched in amusement as the life slowly drained from the frail creature's body. Helen's convulsions subsided. Her eyebrows lifted. She looked into the patrician's eyes one last time with a pleading look, shook her head, then slumped lifelessly in the pillory. A transparent thread of saliva dripped from her soft, motionless lips to the floor.

"Now to us, Catherine. You heard the two of them talking about the rebellion. And you didn't report it. That I have to punish you for that, surely you see?"

Catherine was silent.

"You get to choose: Do you want to lose your head, or cease to breathe?"

The slave slowly raised her head and looked at her mistress. Her eyes burned with mortal fear and at the same time the courage of desperation. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and yet in a shaky voice through her gritted teeth she prevailed to say:

"Do what you want. Just do it. I'm ready."

Tiziana looked surprised.

"Are you not afraid?"

"I have done what I have done. I have no regrets. If I must die at your feet now, so be it. It is not in my hands. But I will not disgrace myself."

With that, Catherine closed her eyes and awaited her fate. Her young heart raced, her breathing was shallow, and yet she kept her composure. She tried not to think of the two executions she had witnessed moments before. She tried to rest on her bravery. But again and again those thoughts flickered through her mind. Would she also flounder like Helen, should Tiziana suffocate her? Would she die instantly, should she be beheaded? Would Tiziana do other cruelties to her that she did not yet know about?

"It doesn't matter. This is my fate" the slave thought to herself, clenching her eyes tighter and digging her teeth into her lower lip. The tension under her abdominal muscles brought her close to the breaking point.

Click!

Catherine's eyes snapped open. A gasp escaped her. Her heart froze. She tried anxiously to understand what had just happened. She still felt everything. The wood around her neck and wrists, the cold ground beneath her knees, the soft leather under her soles and between her toes. She tried to breathe. She could. Cold sweat dripped down her temples. She was still alive.

"You believe in your fatalism. I believe in pedagogy. Today I'll spare your pretty neck. So you will let every slave know what happens when my orders are disobeyed."

With that, Tiziana turned away and strode out of the hall. Catherine was left alone before the lifeless bodies of Daphne and Helen. She did not know what to feel...