When they have beaten her with straps till they have lacerated her flesh, and till the blood which issues through her wounds runs down from them, and when for all that they can do nothing nor extort sigh or word promise her; they are meddling to no purpose. And from her, and she never moves nor stirs, then they tell her that they must seek fire and lead, and that they will melt it and will pour it into her palms rather than fail to make her speak. They seek and search for fire and lead; they kindle the fire; they melt the lead. Thus the base villains maltreat and torture the lady, for they have poured into her palms the lead, all boiling and hot just as they have taken it from the fire. Nor yet is it enough for them that the lead has passed through and through the palms, but the reprobate villains say that, if she speak not soon, straightway they will roast her till she is all grilled. She is silent and forbids them not to beat or ill-treat her flesh. And even now they were about to put her to the fire to roast and grill, when more than a thousand of the ladies, who were in front of the palace, come to the door and see through a tiny chink the torture and the unhappy fate that they were preparing for the lady, for they were ****** her suffer martyrdom from the coal and from the flame. To break in the door and shatter it they bring hatchets and hammers. Great was the din and the attack to break and smash the door. If now they can lay hold on the leeches, without delay all their desert shall be rendered them. The ladies enter the palace all together with one bound, and Thessala is among the press, whose one anxiety is to get to her lady. She finds her all naked at the fire, much injured and much mishandled. She has laid her back on the bier and covered her beneath the pall. And the ladies proceed to tender and pay to the three leeches their deserts; they would not send for or await emperor or seneschal. They have hurled them down through the windows full into the court, so that they have broken the necks and ribs and arms and legs of all three; better never wrought any ladies. Now the three leeches have received from the ladies right sorry payment for their deeds; but Cliges is much dismayed and has great grief, when he hears tell of the great agony and the torture that his lady has suffered for him. Almost does he lose his reason; for he fears greatly and indeed with justice--that she may be killed or maimed by the torture caused her by the three leeches, who have died in consequence; and he is despairing and disconsolate. And Thessala comes bringing a very precious salve with which she has anointed full gently the lady's body and wounds. The ladies have enshrouded her again in a white Syrian pall, wherein they had shrouded her before, but they leave her face uncovered. Never that night do they abate their wailing or cease or make an end thereof. Through all the town they wail like folk demented-high and low, and poor and rich-and it seems that each sets his will on outdoing all the others in ****** lamentation, and on never abandoning it of his own will. All night is the mourning very great. On the morrow John came to court, and the emperor sends for him and bids him, requests and commands him: "John! if ever thou madest a good work, now set all thy wisdom and thy invention to ****** a tomb, such that one cannot find one so fair and well decorated." And John, who had already done it, says that he has prepared a very fair and well-carved one; but never, when he began to make it, had he intention that any body should be laid there save a holy one.
"Now, let the empress be enclosed within in lieu of relics; for she is, I ween, a very holy thing." "Well said," quoth the emperor, "in the minster of my lord Saint Peter shall she be buried, there outside where one buries other bodies; for before she died, she begged and prayed me with all her heart that I would have her laid there. Now go and busy yourself about it, and set your tomb, as is right and meet, in the fairest place in the cemetery." John replies: "Gladly, sire." Forthwith John departs, prepares well the tomb, and did thereat what a master of his craft would do. Because the stone was hard, and even more on account of the cold, he has placed therein a feather bed; and moreover, that it may smell sweet to her, he has strewn thereon both flowers and foliage. But he did it even more for this, that none should spy the mattress that he had placed in the grave. Now had the whole office been said in chapels and in parish churches, and they were continually tolling as it is meet to toll for the dead. They bid the body be brought, and it will be placed in the tomb, whereat John has worked to such effect that he has made it very magnificent and splendid. In all Constantinople has been left neither great nor small who does not follow the corpse weeping, and they curse and revile Death; knights and squires swoon, and the dames and the maidens beat their breasts and have railed against Death. "Death!" quoth each, "why took'st thou not a ransom for my lady? Forsooth, but a small booty hast thou gained, and for us the loss is great." And Cliges, of a truth, mourns so much that he wounds and maltreats himself more than all the others do, and it is a marvel that he does not kill himself; but still he postpones suicide till the hour and the time come for him to disinter her and hold her in his arms, and know whether she is alive or not. About the grave are the lords, who lay the body there; but they do not meddle with John in the setting up of the tomb, and indeed they could see nought of it, but have all fallen swooning to the earth, and John has had good leisure to do all he listed. He so set up the tomb that there was no other creature in it; well does he seal and join and close it.
Then might that man well have boasted himself who, without harm or injury, would have been able to take away or disjoin aught that John had put there.
