Chapter 5 #2
Back home, at the convent, one of her sisters suffers from cankers around her throat.
Sister Junius suggested trying to cut them out, then packing the skin with herbs to stave off infection, but Sister Valentina wouldn’t hear of it.
“Suffering brings us closer to Christ our Husband, and so I rejoice that God has seen it fit to send me this affliction,” she said and wears the evidence of her illness with the same pride a rich woman might a necklace of gold.
Or wore, perhaps. She might be dead now.
Like Sister Hildegard, who burns because of you.
Keening softly to herself, Sister Ursula sits back in her chair, her wrist throbbing and burning. If only she could be more like Sister Valentina, who offers up her suffering so gladly! But she has always been too sensitive, too cowardly.
Too weak.
Too sinful.
“When I was a little girl,” she whispers to the skull, because if she doesn’t talk, she’ll go mad, “I wanted most desperately to be a saint.” She licks at her wounded wrist, hisses at the hurt.
“I know I’m not and never will be. I think saints are strange and unknowable.
I am common in my weakness. All the same, I shall do everything I can to serve you. ”
She opens the glass reliquary so she can touch the saint’s skull. A delicious thrill runs through her as soon as her fingertips touch her red hair. There’s a smell to her, sweet and heady, like incense or precious oils. She bends over the skull and presses her mouth to the soft, cool bone.
“I like to think I would serve you even if there was nothing in it for myself, but I don’t know if that’s true.
I’m only a weak woman, filled with shame and sin.
Please won’t you make me better than I am?
” she murmurs, the gauze and the bone underneath growing warm and damp with her breathing.
Her teeth graze the skull’s brow, and she suddenly is overcome with the almost irresistible urge to bite down and consume her, to take her into herself.
She tongues the glass eye, licking the rim of bone around it.
She tastes something cool, dusty, and slightly sweet. The gauze is rough against her tongue.
Her burned wrist brushes against the edge of the table, bringing Sister Ursula back to herself. She wipes away the spit from the skull with her sleeve, then closes the reliquary’s glass door and prays fervently for her sisters, both alive and dead, which is just another way to please the Lord.
Despite the pain, she must have dozed, for the next thing she knows is Elsebeth handing her a mug with frothing beer.
She takes it, then glances at the skull, which is snug within its glass box as if nothing has happened, and perhaps it hasn’t; when Sister Ursula looks at her wrist, there is no mark.
Dream or miracle?
“Drink up,” Elsebeth says, gently pulling her out of her muddled thoughts. She has been industrious; she has toasted the mushrooms they have gathered in the woods, chopped the greens into a salad, and made broth from water drawn from the well and some ingredients she found in the pantry.
“Most of the food has spoilt,” she explains as she blows on her bowl of soup to cool it, “but I have found some cured meats and plenty of beer. There might be more in the other houses. Better we don’t eat the meat just yet.
It would probably make us sick on account of us not having eaten much these past days. ”
Sister Ursula sighs with relief. “We can stay here a while then, at least until my knee is a little better.”
“Mayhap,” Elsebeth says. In the flickering firelight, her gray eyes appear much darker, her face much gaunter.
What have those dear eyes seen? Sister Ursula wonders.
She briefly has to close her own eyes to force down the images that rise in her mind unbidden.
They are half-formed things, but dark and full of power.
When she opens her eyes again, she makes herself smile at Elsebeth.
“Come, let’s not dwell on bad things. There’s no end to them; we would be dwelling until the Second Coming.
I’d much rather we speak of something nice instead. ”
Elsebeth blinks in her owlish manner, which, even though Sister Ursula has known the girl for less than a day, already feels familiar. “Will you tell me a story?”
Sister Ursula launches into the miracle of the loaves and the fishes, but Elsebeth raises her hand to stop her and says, “Something that isn’t religious. I’ve my belly full of religion.”
“Oh,” Sister Ursula says. “Well, I don’t know any other stories.”
Elsebeth exclaims, “No other stories! Did your mother never tell you any?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Do they not let you see her because you’re a nun?”
“She died when I was still little, before I became a postulant.”
Elsebeth grimaces. “I am sorry to hear that. It’s hard, losing someone you love. But did you not have a father to tell you tales?”
“I only saw him once a week, when he visited my mother and me, sometimes less than that if he was traveling.”
“Visited?”
“They weren’t married.” After all these years, she still feels herself flush with shame, as if her parents’ sin is her own.
She laughs awkwardly, says, “That’s why my father thought it prudent I become a nun.
I would be safe and looked after, and I could intercede with God on his and my mother’s behalf. Adultery is a terrible sin.”
As is murder, but then you know all about that, don’t you?
“Let’s not talk about sin,” Elsebeth says. “I shall tell you another story then as we ready ourselves for bed, seeing as you don’t know any.”
There are two bedsteads and three cots, the former for the master and mistress of the house and their children, the latter for the servants and apprentices. Elsebeth has made up one of the bedsteads for their use. “Unless you’d rather sleep apart?” Elsebeth asks.
“No,” Sister Ursula says. She’ll be grateful for the girl’s warmth in the night, and for her presence when a nightmare inevitably comes to torment her. How can it not, after everything that has happened today?
As they undress and comb their hair—though there’s not much to comb, for Sister Ursula’s is only chin-length, and Elsebeth has hers cut short, too—Elsebeth tells her a strange story about a servant who eats a white snake and can then talk to animals.
She uses voices for the animals: She honks for the goose, which makes Sister Ursula laugh, squeaks for the raven fledglings, and gulps for the three fish.
By the time they have crawled into bed, Elsebeth has reached the part of the tale where the servant must complete an impossible task in order to marry a princess.
Sister Ursula tries to concentrate, but her lids keep fluttering shut, as if someone has threaded them and is now tugging hard on the string.
The story ends with the servant happily married to the princess.
“And if they didn’t die, they’re living on today,” Elsebeth finishes solemnly.
She’s lying on her side, her body firmly pressed against Sister Ursula’s, which is both startling and pleasant.
At the convent, each nun sleeps alone in her own cell.
Sister Ursula loves her cell, which is her sanctuary and her bridal chamber, but lying here now with Elsebeth stirs something deep inside of her, a memory, perhaps, of when she was very little, and her mother was still living, and physical touch was sweet, safe, and easy, not this loaded thing that must be thought about carefully lest it lead to lust.
Sister Ursula knows she should get up and kneel and pray before sleeping, but the thought of putting pressure on her knee makes her feel this funny sensation at the back of her head where the skull is jointed to the spine.
She has wrapped a cold cloth around it to help reduce the swelling.
Once again, she wishes Sister Junius was here.
With her perpetual smile and quick, deft hands, her presence alone would be a balm to Sister Ursula’s troubled nerves.
Of all her sisters, she misses the infirmarian the most.
Please, Almighty Father, she prays with her hands folded on her chest and her eyes closed, ensure that Sister Junius is safe and well, and has everything she needs to tend to my other sisters.
Please care for them as well, and forgive me for loving Sister Junius just a little more than the others when I know that I should love them all equally. As for Sister Hildegard, please…
Elsebeth brushes against the wet cloth on Sister Ursula’s knee and squirms, pulling Sister Ursula out of her prayers.
“I’m sorry. It mustn’t be pleasant, to share a bed with me like this,” Sister Ursula murmurs.
“I don’t mind that. All I mind is that your knee pains you.”
“Only a little, and suffering purifies. All for Jesus.” That’s what Sister Valentina says, or signs; they are not allowed to speak during the time of the Great Silence and use gestures instead. Besides, the cankers in her throat sometimes rob her of her voice.
Elsebeth turns toward her. Her eyes catch the light of the sole candle that still burns, and for a moment, it looks as if her eyes are aflame. “Would you rather I sleep somewhere else?” she asks.
Sister Ursula shakes her head.
“It’s quite all right if you do. My sister, Margarethe, had rheumatism.
Sometimes, her feet would swell so much, she couldn’t get her shoes on, and her legs and her knees would pain her horribly, as if she was being stretched upon the rack.
She couldn’t stand the feel of the blanket, let alone my touch. ”
“I shall teach you how to make a poultice for her. It might bring some relief,” Sister Ursula says, having to stifle a yawn behind her hand.
“Don’t bother. She’s dead,” Elsebeth replies.
Sister Ursula winces, her faux pas creating an almost physical pain. “Oh, Elsebeth, forgive me. I am so tired; I wasn’t thinking. I shall pray for her, and the rest of your family, too.”