Chapter 2
Ursula
What alerts them to his presence are the flies.
There are so many, their buzzing forms a steady droning that is felt almost as much as it is heard.
Sister Ursula makes to go around it, for any meat that has become a feast for flies and maggots brings nothing but sickness, and sickness is what killed Sister Hildegard—only that’s not really true, now is it?
—but Elsebeth moves straight to the source of the sound, her dirty handkerchief pressed to her face.
“What is it?” Sister Ursula asks, her voice high with fear as Elsebeth bends over the thing that lies propped against a tree. It’s hard to see through the heaving sheet of flies that covers it.
“A man,” Elsebeth says. She doesn’t get up, and so Sister Ursula has no choice but to come closer and see for herself.
The man’s mouth hangs open. His swollen tongue, strangely pale because it is coated in dried spittle and plaque, protrudes from between his lips like a grub.
“From the smell of him, he must have been dead a while,” Elsebeth says.
Indeed, he reeks of rot. Sister Ursula presses her face to the crook of her elbow and takes little sips of air through her mouth, but even so she can taste the decay, sweet and meaty and horrible.
The flies are the worst, though. They crawl all over him, mating, filling him with maggots. It makes Sister Ursula’s stomach roil.
She has always been squeamish. The first time she saw the crucifix in the refectory with the corpus of Christ on it, His wooden hands seeming to strain against the nails beaten through them, His face contorted with pain, His whole body liberally splashed with bloodred paint, she fainted dead away.
It is for this reason that Reverend Mother Regina has chosen her to assist Sister Junius in the infirmary: They are always assigned some post that they have no affinity for, because singularity, even when it is accompanied by excellence, is the enemy of monastic life.
“But don’t worry,” Sister Junius told her the day she was assigned to be her apprentice, her eyes twinkling, “give me a year or two, and with Christ’s help, I shall make an excellent infirmarian out of you yet!
” Dear Sister Junius, always confident, always quick to reassure, always merry.
Of all her fellow nuns, Sister Ursula has found Sister Junius the easiest to love.
Elsebeth shoos away some of the flies, revealing something that looks like a box wrapped in dirty cloth tucked under the man’s arm. She reaches for it.
Sister Ursula takes hold of her sleeve to stop her. “You don’t know what killed him. It might be sickness. That would explain why no animal has touched him. We should follow their example and leave him be. I don’t want you to fall ill.”
Like poor Sister Hildegard, who you then killed, a voice inside of her head sneers.
It is a sharp voice, rough and mocking, not at all like the gentle, burbling voice of Christ her Husband, who murmurs sweet things to her on those moments she opens her heart and soul completely to Him.
An ugly voice, this, and thus likely from the devil.
“He didn’t die of any sickness. He’s been stabbed, see?
” Elsebeth says and points to the man’s belly.
Through the rips in his shirt and the teeming flies, Sister Ursula spies a festering wound the length of her little finger just left of his navel.
The sight of maggots wriggling in the inflamed flesh makes her feel faint.
She strives to love all creatures because all have been created by God, but if she’s honest, she can muster nothing but hatred and disgust for the humble fly and its squirming progeny.
Elsebeth reaches for the object held in the crook of the man’s arm again. Sister Ursula tightens the grip on her sleeve.
“It might be food,” Elsebeth says.
“If it is, it will have spoilt by now.”
“We don’t know that. Come, let me at least take a peek. Whatever is in there won’t do him a lick of good, but it might serve us well. Or do you want for so little that you may turn up your nose at this unexpected bit of luck and be sure you’ll not come to regret it?”
“No,” Sister Ursula has to concede. Then, she adds, “It just doesn’t seem a very godly thing to do, to rob the dead.”
“How do you know God didn’t send this man to us? You’re a pious woman. Surely you see His hand in everything around you. Why then not in this?” Elsebeth asks, smiling.
Sister Ursula doesn’t know whether the girl is mocking her or simply trying to disarm her with that smile. Before she can retort, Elsebeth has already pulled her sleeve free and picked up the bundle. She pinches the edge of the cloth between two fingers, begins to pull.
The man’s hand shoots out and grabs Elsebeth’s wrist, causing her to jerk back, mouth twisting into a snarl, her other hand balling into a fist.
“Water,” the man gasps.
“Sweet merciful Christ, he’s still alive!
” Sister Ursula cries out. Her first instinct is to freeze, as if this man cannot sense her if only she doesn’t move.
Then, that phantom pain in her belly that always throbs quietly whenever she sees another in pain roars to life.
It is strong enough to conquer her fear and revulsion.
She drops to her knees, grabs her waterskin, and carefully pours a bit into the man’s mouth, as Sister Junius taught her.
He lets go of Elsebeth, clasps Sister Ursula’s wrists instead. He drinks only a little. Then, exhausted, he sinks back against the tree, his head drooping. He doesn’t even swat at the flies that still swarm him.
She props him up a bit more to stop his head from lolling so horribly. He whimpers, presses a hand against his belly.
“I know, I know,” she says. “You poor thing. Let me help you.” She turns to Elsebeth.
“Can you see what he has inside his pack, please?” There might be something in there she can use.
At the very least, that bit of fabric he has wrapped everything in might be cut up and used as bandages to dress his wound.
Elsebeth nods and sits down, drawing his pack into her lap. Her bare feet are dirty and bruised, her heels covered in a thick rind of calluses. How long has she been going around without shoes for her feet to look like that?
Sister Ursula wets her handkerchief, uses it to clean away the filth that has gummed the man’s eyes shut. He barely seems to notice. With every breath, something wet rattles inside his chest. She has heard that sound before.
He will be dead before sundown.
“Can you tell me what has happened?” she asks.
For a while, it seems the man is beyond talking.
The only sounds are his labored breathing and the rustling of Elsebeth’s deft hands as she rifles through his possessions to look for fabric.
When he finally speaks, Sister Ursula has to bring her ear close to his mouth to make out the words.
His voice is no more than a hoarse whisper.
His breath reeks of death. “Soldiers,” he murmurs.
He swallows, which seems to pain him, then continues.
“I was stabbed. I ran into the woods until I could run no more. Then I hid.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Three days, I think. It might be more. It rained once. I know that. I opened my mouth and caught the drops.”
Sister Ursula looks over her shoulder to Elsebeth to tell her that the soldiers who have stabbed this man may well be the very same ones who ambushed them, but the words die on her lips. Elsebeth has unwrapped the bundle.
Inside is a box made of glass and wood.
Inside the box made of glass and wood is a skull.
Sister Ursula doesn’t remember getting to her feet, but one moment, she’s at the dying man’s side; the next, she is taking the box from Elsebeth, careful not to jostle it.
Through the panes of Venetian glass set carefully in rosewood, she can see the skull, which has been wrapped in silk gauze.
Someone has stitched locks of reddish hair to the gauze and given the skull eyes of painted glass.
Sister Ursula has seen remains like this before.
Her own convent has the incorruptible body of one of her fellow nuns, Sister Anna, on display, who must surely be a saint, because she obtained stigmata in the wrists and feet when still a postulant and made a deaf boy hear again after praying with him.
Then, after death, her body did not rot.
Elsebeth, clearly, is not familiar with such holy relics. “What in Christ’s name…?” she mutters, her lip pulled up in what is half a sneer, half an expression of fright.
“It’s the skull of a saint,” Sister Ursula explains. “The gauze is to keep the bones together and to protect them against dust and vermin.”
“How do you know?”
“Our beloved Sister Anna wears a wax mask over her face. The gauze keeps it from sticking to the skin underneath and staining it.”
Elsebeth stares at her. “A wax mask?”
“To show what she looked like when she was found to be incorruptible, which is a possible sign of sainthood.”
“If that’s a saint’s skull, shouldn’t it be in a nunnery somewhere, for the papists to fawn over?”
Sister Ursula winces. Yet despite Elsebeth’s brash way of wording the matter, she is right.
A skull such as this belongs in a convent or a church, where it can be given the honor and love it is due, and where it can be preserved.
Otherwise, vermin, dust, light, and other common things will eat away at it until nothing but grit remains, and that is no way to treat something that was once human.
Perhaps the man has a legitimate reason to be traveling with a saint’s skull. He might well be a monk wearing layman’s clothes to stay safe on the road, as she is doing now.
Or perhaps he’s nothing but a common thief who took the skull when a cloister was sacked by the Protestants and hoped to sell it and make a tidy profit.