Chapter 2 #2
Still, Sister Ursula tries not to judge lest she be judged, and so she hands the box back to Elsebeth, crouches down next to the man and asks, “This is a saint’s skull. How did it come to be with you?”
“I didn’t steal her,” he murmurs.
“Are you sure about that?” Elsebeth asks, one eyebrow quirked.
“I am! I won her from a soldier in a game of dice two weeks ago.”
“And you have kept it all this time for what? You thought it would make a fine traveling companion? You are lying. Mayhap you dressed up this skull yourself so you could sell it to some gullible papists and make money from the dead.”
“No, no,” the man moans. “I speak true. I swear it, on Christ and the Holy Virgin and all the saints above. This is the relic of a saint. The soldier told me that if you reunite the skull with the body, she will grant you a wish. I’ve been looking for her body ever since.”
Sister Ursula asks, “Do you know how the soldier got it?”
“No. I didn’t ask. It’s better that way. He was a mercenary. A man who knows only war is no man at all, but a beast. The things some of those mercenaries have done…” He shudders, which causes a bout of pain to rack him. He moans through gritted teeth. The sound is pitiful.
Sister Ursula passes her hand over his face to brush away the flies. It’s little use, the flies crawl back as soon as she removes her hand, but she can’t bear to do nothing. “What can I do to ease your suffering?”
He clasps her hand with all his might. It would not even break a twig. “You must take the skull and reunite her with her body. She yearns to be whole.” He smiles, causing a sore at the corner of his mouth to weep yellow pus. “I’ve never known such longing.”
“Of course,” she says to soothe him. “Where must we take her?”
“The cloth that was wrapped around the box,” he rasps. “There’s a map embroidered on it. But if you lose it, not to fear. She’ll show you the way.”
“Show us?”
He nods, smiles. “She shows me things all the time. She’s an eager one. I think she must have been lonely before she came to me.”
Sister Ursula’s skin ripples with gooseflesh, though from fear or wonder, she doesn’t know.
Can it be that Elsebeth was right and God has indeed placed this man in her path?
Daily she prays for her sisters’ welfare, for forgiveness for her many sins, for the strength to overcome her many faults.
Has God heard her prayers and given her this miracle, not only to allow her to conquer her cowardice and to atone for what she did to Sister Hildegard, but also to ensure that her sisters are safe and well?
If it is indeed so, then I thank you, my Lord; your love and mercy truly know no bounds, she thinks and tightens her hold on the man’s hand. “What things has she shown you?”
“Things of great beauty and bliss,” he says. Suddenly he begins to wail, his mouth a dark cavern. “Forgive me, but I don’t want to die!”
The sound distresses Sister Ursula more than she can say. She feels tears spring into her eyes. “Don’t be afraid!” she pleads with him.
He smiles again. Something inside his mouth has begun to bleed. It paints the lines between his teeth not red or pink, but a horrible brown color, as if the blood has begun to fester in his veins. “I’m not afraid. How could I be, after all the wonders she has shown me?”
“What upsets you so, then?”
“I have failed her, and I am ashamed.”
If he had any tears, she would dry them for him.
There are only the flies, though, and so she brushes them away, her hatred for them surging as they settle in the same spots again after mere seconds.
“Peace, my son,” she says. “You have done all you could. The saint knows this, as does God, who sees all. Now rest. I shall take this burden from you. Would you like to pray with me?”
He shakes his head, coughs weakly, grimaces. “Please just let me hold her one last time.”
They do as he asks. He strokes the box like one would a cat, coos at it. Not wishing to intrude upon something that seems strangely intimate, Sister Ursula averts her eyes and goes to stand with Elsebeth, who is studying the cloth with the embroidered map. It’s crude work, perhaps done in haste.
“Can you read it?” Sister Ursula asks.
“I believe so. This might be the Bavarian Forest; this the river Donau.”
“Her body is close, then?”
“If the map is to be believed, it’s only three weeks of travel or so away from us, less if we travel hard, and mostly to the north, too.”
A sure sign that this is a godly endeavor, a chance for her to repent for her many sins and to show herself worthy of being a bride of Christ. Excitement fizzes through her veins. She can’t help but smile.
Elsebeth isn’t smiling. A frown like a thumbprint has appeared between her brows.
She is hugging herself again, restlessly shifting her weight from one leg to another.
She steals a glance at the man, then lowers her voice and says, “If you ask me, that soldier played him for a fool, filling his head with stories about wishes.”
Sister Ursula feels her smile growing tight. “Do Protestants not believe in miracles, then?”
“They don’t believe in saints.”
“What do you mean, ‘they’? Are you not a Protestant?”
Elsebeth’s cheeks stain such a violent red, it’s as if someone has spilled wine on a tablecloth, yet she still meets Sister Ursula’s eyes with a boldness that Sister Ursula should find unseemly but instead rather thrills her. “I was raised as such, but lately, I have found it difficult to believe.”
Sister Ursula is instantly filled with tenderness toward this peasant girl. “You are not alone. It is common to struggle with faith in trying times. Maybe that is why God has sent this man to us: to show you that He is real and that His love for you is boundless.”
With her fingers, Elsebeth plucks at a loose thread of the map. “I don’t see God anywhere around me. If anyone sent this man, it’s most likely the devil.”
What horrors has Elsebeth seen that makes her speak so?
Oh, but how it breaks the heart! Perhaps Reverend Mother Regina was right after all to assign Sister Ursula to the infirmary, because in this moment, she wants nothing more than to heal and mend.
“You mustn’t speak like this!” she says and reaches for Elsebeth’s hand to still it.
“If you come with me and we bring back this skull, you’ll change your mind about that. If—”
“What does it matter to you whether I come along?” Elsebeth says, her gray eyes hard and dry as dusty stones. “This morning when I woke, I didn’t even know you. If you want to travel around with that skull, I’m not stopping you, am I?”
Sister Ursula feels as if she might cry. Distress makes her bruised throat ache as if at the onset of a cold.
Why this strength of feeling? she wonders.
She cannot say. All she knows is that to be separated from this girl would be unbearable.
Besides, wouldn’t this journey give her the chance to restore this girl’s faith and instruct her in the ways of the Lord, both of which are spiritual works of mercy and thus godly?
She clasps Elsebeth’s hand, strokes the velvety bit of skin on the inside of her wrist where the veins cluster like tangled yarn.
She can feel the girl’s pulse jump like a bucking horse.
“Please don’t be angry with me. I mean well.
I am not forcing you to come with me, but I would be glad of your company.
I can’t… I don’t…” she stammers. How can she put into words these feelings she does not understand herself?
“I daren’t well travel alone, not after what happened this morning,” she finishes lamely.
But that is not what I meant at all!
“I’m no papist,” Elsebeth says.
“I know that, and I am not asking you to do anything against your conscience, though I do have to wonder: Do you want for so little that you may turn up your nose at this chance and be sure you’ll not come to regret it?” she asks, echoing Elsebeth’s remark from earlier.
Those words hit their mark, as she knew they would.
Elsebeth flinches, bites her lip. “I want for a great many things,” she whispers.
“Then let us seize this chance!” Excitement makes her tighten her grip on Elsebeth’s hand.
How delicious it is to touch her! She licks her dry lips as she thinks on what else she might say to convince the girl to come with her.
Elsebeth seems to her pragmatic above all, and so she says, “At worst, you and I will have kept each other safe on my fool’s errand, though even then, we will have done some good, for we will have fulfilled a dying man’s wish and restored a dead woman’s disturbed rest.”
“And at best?”
“At best, that poor wretch spoke true, and we get to wish for anything that is in God’s power to give.”
“How prettily you speak,” Elsebeth murmurs. She rocks on her heels, almost close enough to kiss. She sighs, rubs her eyes with her free hand, smearing her calloused palm with tears. When she looks up, her eyes are steely with resolve. “God take me for a fool and a sinner. I shall come with you.”
“God bless you, you darling creature! You won’t regret this!” She brings Elsebeth’s hand to her mouth, kisses the jagged knuckles. “Why don’t you study that map a little longer whilst I tend to that poor man?”
Elsebeth’s eyes dart anxiously from left to right. “It’s no use. He won’t live, and we should keep moving. It’s better not to stay in one place too long.”
“I know that, but if there’s anything I can do to comfort him in his final hours, I must.” Yet when she crouches down next to him, she finds she is no longer needed. He lies slack-jawed, his eyes not quite closed but definitely unseeing, the glass box hugged to his chest.
She realizes she never even asked him his name.