Not sure if people will like this but if you do I can post part 2 which is the execution. Ann is someone who has fascinated me since I first read about her.

The young woman entered the dank room which was lit by guttering torches fastened to the wall and a series of small, grilled windows high on the wall at one side.
“Ah Mistress Askew we have some questions to put to you” the Lord Chancellor said with a smirk on his face.
“I have nothing to add to what I said in the Guildhall My Lord” Ann said steadfastly.
“These are not questions about your beliefs madam. They have seen you convicted as a heretic and condemned to the stake. You will soon be burning in Smithfield. The questions we have relate to the others who believe as you do. We would have their names. We believe that some may be close to the Queen…or perhaps that she herself shares your heretical views.”
Ann’s face showed shock as it suddenly dawned on her why she had been brought to this room. Inside her a cold fear began to grow.
“You will now give us those names madam.” The Lord Chancellor’s voice was hard and as cold as Ann’s fear.
“I cannot give names. I have no knowledge of what others believe…what is in their hearts… and I know nothing of the Queen’s views. I have never met her”
“Perhaps not madam but you have received comforts from the Court by one of the Queen’s Ladies. We now need you to tell us what message she brought you from Her Majesty”.
“I have nothing to say” said Ann.
“Very well. Take her to the rack. Perhaps the sight of it will bring her to her senses”.
The two men to whom the order was addressed grabbed Ann by the arms and hustled her across the room to stand before the long wooden frame. At one end was a thick beam from which leather straps hung to secure the prisoner. At the other was a roller with two ropes hanging from it. There were leather thongs fastened to the rope ends. The roller was operated by two windlasses. When the windlasses were turned the rope wound around the roller and a person fixed between the beam at one end and the roller at the other would be drawn apart.
Ann turned her gaze from the dreadful device with a visible shudder.
“Behold madam the rack. You can have no notion of its action but I can assure you that the pain will be excruciating”.
“I can believe that “ said Anne with a further shudder. “I can give you no names. You must do with me as you will”.
“Very well. We have no alternative. Madam you will take off your robe.”
Ann looked at him in horror. “You would have me disrobe her in front of you and these men?”
“You can disrobe yourself madam or these gentlemen will help you” the Lord Chancellor indicated the professional torturers.
Ann hesitated for a moment and then said “I cannot undo the lacing on my gown”.
The Lord Chancellor stepped forward and smiling moved behind her to unlace the back of her robe to the waist.
Slowly Ann pulled her arms out of the sleeves and then untied the waist ribbon allowing the dress to drop around her ankles. She stood before them in her thin shift ad all their eyes were fastened on her.
The Constable of the Tower who had not spoken previously said quietly “Your shoes and stockings too madam. They will impede the machine otherwise.”
Slowly Ann removed her shoes and stockings and stood barefoot as the men watched her every move. The professional torturers had never watched a ‘lady’ undress before and they wondered if they would actually get the chance to turn the windlasses and make this stubborn woman sing.
The Lord Chancellor nodded to the two torturers “Secure her”.
The two men again approached the trembling young woman. One seized her under the arms and the other took her slim legs. They lifted her, placed her on the rack and secured her wrists and ankles with the leather straps. When they had done this they moved to the head of the rack and took their places at the windlasses.
“Now madam. I ask you again for the names”. The Lord Chancellor’s voice was harsh as he looked down at the young woman spread eagled on the device, her body shaking with fear.
“I can give you no names” Anne repeated her face set stubbornly in spite of the terror in her eyes.
“Very well. Let her have a taste” said the Lord Chancellor as he and the Solicitor General moved closer to rack to ensure they missed nothing of what was to follow.
The torturers began to turn the windlasses, the thongs tightened on Ann’s wrists and her slim body was drawn up the rack. Then the thongs drew tight around her ankles and her arms and legs were raised. Suddenly her shrieks pierced the dank air of the chamber.
“Mercy! Mercy! Please! “. The agony was excruciating. Far worse than the pain she had expected when they burned her at Smithfield. Her whole body was quivering and then mercifully she lost consciousness. They would not allow her to remain in that happy state for long. The windlasses were released allowing her body to go limp and then they revived her with vinegar. As soon as she had regained her senses they turned the windlasses again and this time her poor body was lifted off the bed of the rack and held quivering as her shrieks again filled the air.
“Enough” called the Constable and the torturers eased their pressure on the windlasses and let Ann’s poor body sink limp onto the table once again.
“That was merely a taste” yelled the Lord Chancellor. “Now let her have the full fury”.
“The woman has been put to the question My Lord” said the Constable firmly. “Hold, have done” he ordered the torturers and they moved away from the windlasses.
“Very well” said the Lord Chancellor. “Then we must work the device ourselves”. As the Constable and the professional torturers left the room the Lord Chancellor and the Solicitor General of England threw off their coats and moved to the windlasses. If Ann has thought she had felt pain before she quickly realised that what she had endured was merely a start. Her poor sagging body was lifted from the bed of the rack once again and this time there was no release. Ann’s cries were horrific as the rack did its terrible work. After a minute or so her taught sweating body jerked and extended as with two dreadful pops her shoulders came out of their sockets. Blood began to oose from under her finger and toe nails as her feet and hands were compressed by the straps that held her to the dreadful device. Her cries and screams were wordless now. Just expressions of the damage her body was suffering. Ripping noises as her tendons were drawn apart, the creaking of the rack and the shrieks of agony were occasionally broken by the Lord Chancellor’s demands for names. Both he and the Solicitor General were sweating profusely and Ann’s body too was covered in sweat making her thin shift transparent.
There was nothing in Ann’s mind now but the desire for death. She had feared death in the fire before and she knew she would not be spared the scorching of the flesh, but now she yearned for it. The quick sharp bite of the flames blistering and eating into her body as she writhed at the stake could not be as terrible as this.
Eventually they stopped. They realised that she would give them nothing and they needed her to burn. Besides the death on the rack of a respectable woman could not be concealed and her body could take no more punishment. Even the Lord Chancellor, desperate as he was to see Queen Katharine burn at the stake knew that Ann would die rather than name her.
They released the windlasses and called back the professional torturers to unfasten the broken woman and lay her moaning on the floor.

 

Sehr gut geschrieben

 

Your work is excellent. I'd love to see part 2!

 

I'm working on it

 

Part 2

Keys jangled and the cell door swung open. The jailor who had escorted her to her torture stood there. For one terrible moment Ann thought that perhaps they were going to rack her again. She had taken so much punishment last time that she was not sure she could hold out again. But if she named the Queen! She imagined poor Queen Katherine Parr stripped to her shift being bound to a stake. Surely it would be done in private on Tower Green and not in front of a jeering crown at Smithfield.
“You are to go to Smithfield in the morning Madam. You will wear this.” He threw a black garment towards her and started to close the door. “I cannot dress myself since you racked me.” Ann said quietly. He nodded. “Very well I will send someone to help you.” The door slammed shut and Ann was left alone with her thoughts.
The poor woman slept fitfully and was awake the next morning when the cell door opened and two women entered. They were prisoners like her and had been sent to help her get ready for Smithfield. The older of the two was about 30 with hard eyes while the younger was barely 20. The older woman took the lead pulling Ann up to sit on the bed. Her face hardly registered emotion as Ann groaned with the pain of movement but the younger girl was more sympathetic. She looked at the deep wounds on Anne’s wrists and ankles where the straps had fastened her to the rack and shuddered slightly. “Go gently with her Bessy” she said.
“Why? She’s a heretic and she’ll roast for it shortly. Then she’ll have something to scream about.”
“They won’t roast her. She’s a gentlewoman. They don’t roast gentlewomen. She’ll be strangled before they light the fire to spare her the scorching of the flesh.”
“Don’t be stupid Abigail” Bessy said “they racked her didn’t they and they’ll roast her too.” Roughly she pulled Ann’s shift down to her waist and then with Abigail holding one arm and Bessy the other one they stood Ann up. The shift dropped around Ann’s ankles and they sat her on the bed again and pulled the shift away. “Pass me the execution shift” Bessy said to Abigail and as she waited her eyes examined Ann’s naked body. “I see that they spared you branding heretic. They were soft.”
“Why are you so cruel to her Bessy” said Abigail bringing the black execution shift and sliding Ann’s legs into it.
“She’s a heretic girl. She deserves what is coming. She has gone against the laws of the church. In a few weeks I will burn for coining and you will burn for murdering your husband. I was simply making a few shillings to live on and you were defending yourself from a violent man. We’ll die screaming in the flames as the crowds jeer. Why should she be any different? If she’d talked on the rack then they’d be roasting the Queen and some of her Ladies with her.” She grasped Ann under the arm again and with Abigail’s help lifted her and pulled the shift up. The sat her again, slid her arms in and tied it at the neck and laid her back down to await the guards.
Ann shuddered at what she had heard. They had treated her like an object as they moved her around and discussed her fate. She realised that know she was nothing to anyone just a body to be roasted and reduced to bubbling fat and cracking bones for the entertainment of the London crowd.
A few minutes later the guards came for her and she realised as they lifted her up that the shift she had been given was split to the waist at the back and barely come down to mid-thigh. “I cannot wear this it is not decent.” She cried out. “ Be quiet woman” one of the guards replied “the fire will strip you soon enough anyway.”
Ann was taken out to a cart which was full of bundles of different sizes of wood. Behind it and attached to it by ropes was a wicker fence hurdle. They laid her on the hurdle face up and then spread eagled her and fastened her wrists and ankles to the corners. As soon as she was secured the cart started off and Ann groaned as her already stretched muscles and joints were jerked as the hurdle bounced over the cobbles on its way to Smithfield.
Mercifully the journey only lasted 5 minutes. Then they were at Smithfield in a cleared area in the center. A huge hooded executioner came to look at her and then he cut the ropes binding her to the hurdle and lifted her over his shoulder to carry her to the stake. Ann gasped at the indignity of this but she knew that as she could not walk it was the only way. When they reached the stake he slid her off his shoulder and lowered her down onto a narrow iron bar that had been hammered into the side of the stake. Now she realised why the execution shift she was wearing had been split to the waist at the back. The hooded man held her firmly against the stake as a thick iron chain was pulled tightly around her waist and secured. Her knees and ankles were chained tightly too and the executioner released her. Poor Ann groaned as the chains and the iron bar took her full weight but she was completely unprepared for what happened next. The executioner grasped the collar of the thin black shift she was wearing and jerked it down to her waist. She cried out in shock and embarrassment and tried to cover her breasts but pressing himself against her the executioner forced her arms behind the stake where a second man bound her wrists with a tight, damp cord. Next a third iron chain was passed twice around poor Ann’s chest to hold her firmly upright. The chain coiled below her firm, full breasts lifting them slightly.
Unable to move now and red with embarrassment Ann watched as the executioner and his assistant piled wood from the cart around her and men in the crowd made ribald remarks about her body. When sufficient wood was piled the executioner went to a brazier and lit a torch. Ann’s eyes were riveted on him and that deadly torch as he approached the pyre in the midst of which she was standing. Her breaths came more quickly now that the moment had come and she winced slightly as the torch dipped and lit the wood around her. “I must be brave, be brave, be brave” she thought as the fire began to crackle and move towards her. The heat increased as the small amounts of thin wood piled close to Ann’s legs began to smoulder and then burst into a sheet of flame that for a short while completely enveloped the stake and its victim. The crowd were treated to agonised shrieks and howls as the flames roared up Ann’s body. The shift, her hair and any dignity that might have remained to her were quickly reduced to ash. The flames died back down leaving just a roasting fire burning in the thicker wood at her feet and her head twisted from side to side in agony as the flames slowly climbed up her legs blistering, blackening and finally eating away the flesh. The stench of burning flesh filled the square accompanied by the crackle of flames, the cracking of roasted bones and the shrieks of the victim.
The burning continued for a considerable time and at one point poor Ann broke and begged in a croaking voice “More wood! More wood! I beg you give me more wood and let it end!” A little extra wood was thrown onto the fire but not enough to make a real difference. Finally after what must have seemed like and age to the poor woman chained at the stake the roasting flames reached her breasts and as they sizzled and melted Ann gave a last terrible shriek, convulsed for a few moments and then slumped dead at the stake.

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