Sweet Dreams

Late at night, when all the other townsfolk have gone to bed, local peasant woman and insomniac, Ms Albreda madam, likes to torment the prisoner-slave in the town square pillory, by poking him in the eye and asking him lots of pertinent questions, such as:

·     How is he liking it, being confined in the pillory for days and nights on end?

·     Isn’t he tired? Wouldn’t he like to get some sleep?

·     Is it even possible for him to get any sleep with such a heavy burden – the stone of shame – tied around his scrawny neck?

·     Speaking of which, how is his neck?  Are the muscles in his neck feeling the strain of the heavy stone? Have they started throbbing yet?

·     Where else is he in pain? Has he been whipped yet?

·     She expects he must be feeling the cold from the chill night air? Perhaps he should politely request his gaoler to whip him on the morrow, so that at least he will have something to wear on his bare back tomorrow night i.e. the sting of his gaoler’s whip?

·     Is he hungry? She isn’t – her belly is full of victuals from her earlier evening meal. Can he smell her digested food on her breath?

·     Doesn’t he feel afraid and vulnerable in this humiliating position? Does he realise she could do anything she liked to him?

·     Doesn’t he yearn to bow down and kiss her feet – beg her for mercy?

·     Isn’t he ashamed of himself – that he is unable to kneel down in the dirt and kiss her peasant-woman shoes right now? Shouldn’t a slave like him be kneeling in the presence of one of his peasant superiors?

·     She can see from the words of shame written on his pillory that he is a liker of socks? Would he like her to bring him a pair of her husband’s dirty, worn socks to clean? No really – it’s no trouble! It would save her from having to wash her husband’s dirty socks – if the slave could kindly sniff and suck all the sweat out of them?

She then laughs at him in his face, giving him a close-up and personal experience of her stale, peasant breath, before walking away from him in triumph, back to the warm bosom of her husband in their (relatively) comfortable bed. And she will be dreaming of the suffering of the prisoner-slave in the pillory – a sweet dream if ever there was one.

Meanwhile there shall be no sweet dreams for the helpless prisoner-slave – only pain, tiredness and fear; fear of what the rest of the townsfolk will do to him later that day when they awaken from their slumbers!