This story is set in 1567 in Scotland. Duncan MacRae has received a piece of booty from a raid of a neighboring clan. The unwilling Aileanna McDonell has become Duncan's Leman by his demand alone. There is much more to this story, this is only a scene I chose to write. **Historical Romance**
--------
...The men grabbed Duncan roughly by the arms and drug him to his feet. Pain shot through his back and legs and he subdued a cry of rage and agony, refusing to give the English brutes the privilege of knowing his state of torture. They drug Duncan across the rough floor, jagged edges to stone biting at him. They tossed him to the floor of his darkened cell. He grunted as his knees hit the hard, bloodstained, mucked floor. Then they grabbed his right arm and stretched it out and put his hand palm down upon the bloodstained block. Duncan watched as the flickering light from the doorway caught the rock that was lifted high above his head. He tried to pull back, but two men held him, and the stone came down with a vengeance...
Duncan sat up in a cold sweat, breathing hard. His own screams rang in his ears from the memory. Sharp searing pain throbbed in his hand and up his arm. He looked down at the ruined hand. He couldn't see it through the blankets, but he knew its state. He had seen it in the light enough to know that it was a mangled mess. Every bone had been broken; and since then, he relived the memory in his dreams. It had been years. The hand had healed, but had healed wrongly. The bone repaired itself, un-set and crooked, at odd bent, unnatural angles. He had tried to set it himself back in the Tower, but the pain had driven him to retching or passing out each time. He shuddered at the memory of that encasing darkness and stretched out on the bed and looked up at the drapes that surrounded it. Duncan was back in his beloved Scotland. The English no longer had possession of him, only by the grace of their savage Queen's bidding. He had been allowed free and to go home only weeks ago after thirteen years in that damnable Tower.