Three hundred years is a long time to be standing up in a cabinet.
That is the thing nobody tells you about the iron maiden — not the spikes, the STANDING. The spikes are a moment. The standing is a career.
And the three ladies had a very great deal of time in there to go over the whole arrangement in their minds, item by item, and to compose certain remarks.
So when the hinges finally gave and the smoke came up off them and they came pouring out into the great hall with their eyes lit red and their hair going like weather — the village was not the destination.
The village was never the destination.
Himself is upstairs. And Himself has some explaining to do regarding the century, the cabinet, and a certain portrait of a much younger woman hung exactly where the wives could see it.
