the prison, if the condemned were not handed over to them to take to the
place of punishment: a great murmur arose, continuous, ever the same,
like the growling of thunder: the queen's heart was petrified with
terror.

But, in spite of the desire of Bertram de Baux to satisfy the popular
wish, the preparations for the solemn execution were not completed till
midday, when the sun's rays fell scorchingly upon the town. There went
up a mighty cry from ten thousand palpitating breasts when a report
first ran through the crowd that the prisoners were about to appear.
There was a moment of silence, and the prison doors rolled slowly back
on their hinges with a rusty, grating noise. A triple row of horsemen,
with lowered visor and lance in rest, started the procession, and amid
yells and curses the condemned prisoners came out one by one, each
tied upon a cart, gagged and naked to the waist, in charge of two
executioners, whose orders were to torture them the whole length
of their way. On the first cart was the former laundress of Catana,
afterwards wife of the grand seneschal and governess to the queen,
Philippa of Cabane: the two executioners at right and left of her
scourged her with such fury that the blood spurting up from the wounds
left a long track in all the streets passed by the cortege.

Immediately following their mother on separate carts came the Countesses
of Terlizzi and Morcone, the elder no more than eighteen years of age.
The two sisters were so marvellously beautiful that in the crowd a
murmur of surprise was heard, and greedy eyes were fixed upon their
naked trembling shoulders. But the men charged to torture them gazed
with ferocious smiles upon their forms of seductive beauty, and, armed
with sharp knives, cut off pieces of their flesh with a deliberate
enjoyment and threw them out to the crowd, who eagerly struggled to get