High above the murmuring crowd, the scale loomed like a skeletal giant. Its immense wooden beam, warped by years of sun and rain, stretched between two thick posts, ready to weigh sacks of grain, fat hogs, and today, a human soul. Elara stood before it, frail and exposed even in her coarse shift. Reverend Mother Agnes, a woman of severe rectitude, and Father Thomas, his face a mask of pious condemnation, stood beside the scale, their figures imposing against the grey sky.
"Silence!" Father Thomas’s voice boomed, rattling the very air. "Today, by the holy word of God and the grace of our Lord, we shall discern the truth. Elara, accused of consorting with unholy spirits, shall be weighed against the sacred text. For the Devil, in his cunning, makes his disciples unnaturally light, that they might escape God's justice!"
A ripple went through the crowd, a collective gasp of anticipation. Elara shivered, not just from the cold that seeped into her bones, but from the raw fear that gnawed at her. Her crime? A poultice that had healed a child's cough, a whispered word of comfort for a dying man. Deeds of kindness, twisted into acts of maleficence by fear and ignorance.
"To ensure no diabolical charm or hidden weight interferes with God’s judgment," Reverend Mother Agnes intoned, her voice cold and flat, "the accused must be stripped clean."
Two burly market guards stepped forward, their hands rough as they tore away Elara’s shift. The last vestiges of her dignity vanished, leaving her naked, vulnerable, a pale stick figure before the hundreds of staring eyes. A few women in the crowd gasped, some turned away in shame, but most stared, their curiosity outweighing their decency. The cold air raised gooseflesh on her arms, and her teeth chattered uncontrollably. Humiliation burned hotter than any fever.
She was prodded towards one side of the giant scale. With trembling legs, Elara stepped onto the vast wooden pan. It groaned under her pitiful weight, barely dipping. She clutched her arms across her chest, trying to make herself smaller, to disappear.
Then, from the church tent, four deacons emerged, straining under the burden of a massive tome. This was the Bible, the holy word, bound in rich, dark leather, its covers emblazoned with brass hinges that caught the dull light, and an iron latch that looked strong enough to hold a prison door. It represented all the power of the Church, the unyielding authority of the pulpit, the very word of God made manifest in a physical object.
With a grunt, the deacons lifted the colossal Bible and carefully, reverently, placed it onto the opposite pan of the scale.
For a moment, suspended in dread, nothing happened. Then, with a slow, inexorable groan of ancient wood and creak of rusty chains, the scale began to move.
Down.
Slowly, majestically, the massive Bible descended. It sank with the heavy, unyielding certainty of truth, or perhaps, of a predetermined outcome. As the Bible lowered, the pan beneath Elara’s feet began to rise. Higher and higher she went, her emaciated body lifting above the heads of the jeering crowd. She swayed precariously on the vast wooden platform, a shivering, scrawny woman silhouetted against the unforgiving sky, a tiny, powerless speck against the unyielding weight of faith and fear.
Her fate was now sealed. She was light. Too light. The Devil’s mark.
From the raised platform, Father Thomas pointed a condemning finger at her, his voice ringing with victory. "Behold! The Lord has spoken! The Devil’s unnatural lightness revealed! Let righteous judgment be delivered!"
Elara, high above them all, saw the glint in their eyes, the satisfaction on their faces. She was innocent by natural law, but guilty by their twisted decree. The gallows, stark and empty moments before, now seemed to call to her with an unbearable inevitability. Her ordeal, it seemed, had only just begun.
