rackmaster

Updated: May 24, 2025

He had faced all this in his mind again and again, but it was a different thing to have the horror within arm's length; old phrases he had heard of the torture rang in his mind a boast of Norton's, the rackmaster, who had racked Brian, and which had been repeated from mouth to mouth that he had "made Brian a foot longer than God made him"; words of James Maxwell's that he had let drop at Douai; the remembrance of his limp; and of Campion's powerlessness to raise his hand when called upon to swear all these things crowded on him now; and there seemed to rest on him a crushing swarm of fearful images and words.

Robert Hugh Benson - By What Authority?