Chapter 5
Ursula
When they reach the road again, darkness is already stealing over the land.
By now, Sister Ursula is limping badly. Her knee is much swollen; the skin is taut and pearlescent in some places, various shades of angry red and purple in others.
She chewed some willow bark to help with the pain, but the joint still throbs and burns with every step.
Elsebeth kindly found her a stick she can use as a cane and offered her a shoulder to lean on, but even so, Sister Ursula is ready to weep with relief when they spot a farm in the distance, smoke curling from its chimney.
By the time they arrive at the farm, which is dilapidated, the fields untilled and the stable empty, although the smell of manure still lingers, it has gone fully dark.
The night sky is a beautiful dark velvet speckled with stars, the moon a buttery smear.
Unfortunately, a clear sky means a cold night; already their breaths plume from their mouths, and their hands and feet have cramped with cold.
Sister Ursula limps to the front door and raises her cane to rap on the wood. Elsebeth’s hand shoots out and stops her.
“What is it?” Sister Ursula asks.
“I’ve heard no dog or goose.”
“Is that unusual?”
Elsebeth blinks in astonishment, then says, “Yes. Dogs and geese guard their homes well. For a house this close to a road plagued by plundering soldiers to have no animal to warn them…I don’t like it.”
“Perhaps they had one, but they’ve eaten it. The harvest was bad last year, and a farm this close to the road has probably seen a great number of soldiers come by and demand food and drink. We haven’t heard any sheep, cows, or chickens, either.”
Elsebeth chews her lip. “Mayhap.”
“I understand that you are wary, and I understand that you are afraid. I am afraid, too.” She almost laughs at this pathetic attempt to put into words the bone-deep dread that has dogged her all these years, so persistent and so often present that it sometimes oppresses all else she feels.
She clears her throat. “I am more afraid than I can say, but I am also cold, and I am tired, and my knee pains me. We can’t stay outside much longer. Besides, God provides.”
“Not for me, He doesn’t,” Elsebeth mutters darkly.
Sister Ursula turns her hand so that her palm presses against Elsebeth’s.
Their hands are so cold as to be almost without feeling, but still, there’s comfort in the touch.
“He will provide for us, truly,” she says, because if the poor girl has lost her faith, Sister Ursula shall need to believe for the both of them. “Come. Let us chance it.”
With her stick she knocks on the door. Although there is light inside and a fire in the hearth, no one comes. Sister Ursula tries the handle, but the door is locked fast against them. She knocks again, harder this time, keeping it up until they hear someone moving in the hallway.
“Hello?” she calls out.
“Who is it? Who are you? Make yourself known!” a man barks.
“My name is Ursula, kind sir. My companion, Elsebeth, and I are looking for a place to spend the night.”
“Go away! There’s nothing for you here!”
Sister Ursula blinks at the man’s vehemence. “We could sleep in the barn, if that pleases you? We won’t make any trouble for you. All we need is a place out of the cold to rest our heads.”
The man says something she doesn’t quite catch. She asks, “Will you please open the door? That’ll make talk a little easier, and then you might see me and know that I speak true.”
This time, fear makes the man loud. “Do you take me for a fool? Come hell or high water, I know better than to open my house up to the likes of you!”
Sister Ursula looks at Elsebeth in astonishment. The girl, confused, shrugs.
“Please! If we find no shelter, we might well die of cold. Can you not hear our teeth chatter?”
“You won’t trick me, you demon!”
Demon? Sister Ursula thinks, feeling her brow wrinkle. Her poor face is so cold, she fears the frown might split the skin. “We aren’t demons, just two women looking for a place to stay. Have you no mercy in your heart?”
“This is a good God-fearing household, and you shall find no shelter here. Now get you gone!”
Sister Ursula makes to say something about how godly people should be charitable and hospitable, but Elsebeth gently pulls her away. “There’s no reasoning with people as afeared as this, and we grow colder the longer we stand here. Let’s try our luck elsewhere,” she says.
“But I am so cold, and my knee… I don’t know how much longer I can keep going,” Sister Ursula confesses.
Elsebeth takes out the skull’s map and moves her fingers across the stitching, squinting at it in the weak light of the moon. “According to the skull’s map, there should be a village not much farther from here. We can find a place to sleep there.”
They make their way to the village, though how, Sister Ursula can’t say. She is freezing; a wind has risen that tears through her clothes and cuts her with cold.
The village is so small, it barely deserves the name; it’s no more than a cluster of houses around a well, some of them quite grand, made out of stone and wood, others mere shacks.
It is also deserted.
No smoke comes from the chimneys, and no lights have been lit.
The only sound comes from the wind whistling between the buildings.
If Sister Ursula’s skin was not already pimpled with cold, gooseflesh would ripple over her limbs and the hairs on her nape would rise at that sound, so mournful and eerie.
They knock at the door of the largest house. When no one comes, they try the handle and find the door unlocked. Inside, Elsebeth manages to light a lamp with a bit of flint.
“Oh,” she breathes.
Inside, everything is untouched, as if the house’s occupants have only just stepped out. A coat is slung carelessly over the back of a chair; an open almanac and a bit of sewing are lying on a little table near a window; in a different room, the table is laid for dinner.
Yet whoever used to live here has left a long time ago; spiderwebs are draped between the furniture, and all flat surfaces are gray with dust. When Elsebeth lifts the lid off one of the pots on the table, the earthy stench of mold wafts out. She gags and quickly places the lid back.
“I don’t like this at all,” she says. “Whoever lived here left in a hurry. Why?”
“Maybe they saw soldiers coming? This village has no wall to keep them out,” Sister Ursula says as she carefully places the reliquary down on the table. The tablecloth has yellowed.
Elsebeth shakes her head. “If that were the case, then why is everything exactly as they left it? If I were a soldier out on the prowl, I would have taken the food and the candlesticks and much more besides, and then I would have smashed and sullied everything else. Such is their nature. They can’t see a plate without wishing to break it. ”
Sister Ursula knows this well. Her convent has been looted close to five times over the past few years. She says, “I don’t know why this town wasn’t plundered. Perhaps it wasn’t soldiers that caused the people here to flee, but something else. Whatever it is, it’s likely gone now.”
“If it’s gone, then why did no one come back?”
Her flesh crawls as if it is covered with flies.
She shudders. But unease is not all she feels; she is exhausted, too, and cold and in pain.
It clouds her mind. She begins to cry a little.
“I don’t know. All I know is that we can’t leave, not tonight.
It’s too cold outside, and even if it wasn’t, I can’t walk. ”
Elsebeth comes to her and wipes her tears away.
Her hands are cold, and so Sister Ursula chafes them and blows on them to bring them back to life, only her own hands are too cold to do any good.
To warm them, Elsebeth starts a fire; whoever lived here left a neat stack of firewood next to the hearth and a little twist of paper for them to light it with.
Sister Ursula picks up the reliquary—she can’t bear to have it out of her sight—and places it on a little table out of the way of any stray sparks, then sits down heavily in a chair, hissing at the pain in her knee.
It doesn’t take long for their fingers and toes to throb as the blood forces its way through their cold-tightened veins, and for a while, they both sit panting and crying. Soon, the pain becomes bearable, then fades altogether, leaving them feeling pleasantly warm and drowsy.
Elsebeth yawns till the tears run down her face, then knuckles her eyes roughly and gets to her feet. “I’m going to make us something to eat. If I don’t do it now, I don’t think I’ll ever get up again.”
“Do you need any help?”
She places her calloused hand on Sister Ursula’s shoulder, gives it a squeeze. “You stay here and rest that leg of yours.”
Sister Ursula mutters a halfhearted protest, then slumps back in her chair and stares at the fire dancing in the hearth. She has always loved fire. There’s something mesmerizing about the flames licking the wood, leaping this way and that.
Though you’ll soon lose your love for it when you burn in purgatory, as poor Sister Hildegard is doing now, she thinks.
She hoists herself up from her chair and kneels in front of the fire, hissing from the hurt in her knee.
She places the poker into the fire until it glows.
Then, she pushes up the sleeve of her left arm and presses the hot iron to the skin on the inside of her wrist. She cannot bear it for more than a second; already the pain is so horrible it drives out all thought.