it was put there to taunt and torment me. A priest told me that once a year the damned in hell are permitted to glimpse the beauty of the heaven they can never enter, to comfort them in their suffering. When I saw the reflection of the sun on the sea, I knew that if those in hell are shown heaven it’s not an act of mercy, but just another torture inflicted on them.
The sea wind funnelled through the arches of the dungeon, flaying my wet flesh. The skin on my feet and legs, especially the tender parts around my cock, was cracking open and peeling, leaving raw wounds and sores which stung viciously with each new flood of salt water, and itched madly as the salt on my skin dried at low tide. With my hands chained either side of my head, I couldn’t even relieve the torment by scratching my crotch. Merciful heaven, to think it was summer now! How much worse would it become if I was still chained up here in winter?
They had rowed me out to the tower within hours of Carlos seizing me. Dona Lúcia’s nephew was a wealthy man, and the rich can buy vengeance which is denied to the poor. Had I robbed some poor market woman of every miserable thing she had ever owned, I would have merely ended up in the town jail, not comfortable perhaps, but not torture. Try to borrow a few escudos from a woman who’s so rich she wouldn’t even notice the loss, and they chain you up in here. There’s no justice in this world.
And to think that just a few short weeks ago Silvia and I had stood, arms round each other, her head resting on my shoulder, gazing out from the shore at the tower, its windows glowing with soft yellow light. Silvia had thought it so romantic with its little turrets and graceful arches. Believe me, the romance dies pretty quickly when you see it from this angle.
A guard clattered down the stone steps, swinging a pail in one hand and half a loaf in the other. He stopped somewhere behind me and addressed another prisoner hidden from my view.
‘How are we today, Senhor? In a better humour, I trust.’
The only response was an incoherent mumbling, punctuated by sudden shrieks of demented laughter.
I knew there was someone else chained up behind one of the other great pillars that supported the vaulted ceiling. I’d never seen him, but I could hear him talking to himself, though if I shouted a question at him he’d immediately fall silent. Each time the tide started to roll in, he’d begin whimpering and crying, and as it rose he’d start howling above the wind like a starving dog. How long had he been here? Had he been mad when they brought him here or had he gradually lost his wits chained up in this place, month after month? How long were they going to keep me here? Until I was as crazed as he was?
I had given up asking the guards what was to happen to me. They simply laughed, sometimes drawing their fingers across their throats, or else twisting their heads sideways and making their tongues loll out in the grotesque mockery of a hanged man. But they never answered me.
The footsteps moved towards me again and the guard rounded the pillar, a grin on his lopsided face. I stared at the quarter of the loaf remaining in his hands. I was sure he’d given that other prisoner the bigger share. He stuffed the bread into my chained hand and watched me lean my head towards my fingers until the bread was close enough to my mouth to eat. I devoured it as rapidly as I could. If I took too long, the guard would become bored and wander away without giving me anything to drink. But I had learned from painful experience to hold the chunk of bread tightly, for if my numb fingers dropped it, the guard wouldn’t pick it up and return it to me again. He’d simply walk away, leaving it on the floor where I couldn’t reach it. And the sight of the bread, so near yet so unattainable, would only make my stomach ache more with hunger.
The guard dipped a ladle in a stinking bucket of water and held it to my lips, tilting it only slightly. I sucked as fiercely as a baby at the nipple, before the water