Chapter 10
Ursula
All is not well with Elsebeth.
Ever since they kissed, now almost a week ago, she has been waspish, her mood so foul Sister Ursula is sometimes sure she can almost see it.
Though perhaps it’s not the kiss that is to blame for this, but Sister Ursula’s knee. It’s all black and blue and swollen. Putting weight on it hurts abominably.
The best thing would have been for Sister Ursula and Elsebeth to remain where they were and allow her knee time to heal. Except for the Nachzehrer, the village had much to recommend it: food, beer, and a hearth with enough wood to keep a fire going for days.
Only Elsebeth insisted that they keep moving. “We found this village. That means others could, too. Soldiers, or worse,” she said.
“Worse? What could be worse than soldiers?” Sister Ursula asked.
“You know what I mean!” Elsebeth snapped. “I have stayed alive for as long as I have because I kept moving. I shan’t change that now.”
Sister Ursula can walk, but only for short stretches at a time, after which she has to rest. She manages a little farther every day as her knee slowly heals, but all the same, their progress on the road has been exasperatingly slow.
When Sister Ursula has to sit down, Elsebeth scavenges for food, or she mends her dress with fabric she found in the house they stayed at the night of the Nachzehrer’s attack.
She also found a pair of shoes that fit her there, so at least it wasn’t all bad.
Sometimes, she sits staring without seeing, her eyes like two dull shards of stone in her face.
At other times, she cries soundlessly. Sister Ursula will look up from her hands folded in prayer or from the cattails she is cutting up or some other small task, and see that suddenly Elsebeth’s cheeks are awash with tears.
Yet whenever Elsebeth catches the other woman looking at her, she scowls and turns her face away.
Sister Ursula wishes only for things to be right between them.
Multiple times a day, she prays for this, clutching her rosary so hard that it leaves a string of little indents in her palms; Elsebeth gave it back to her the day they left the village, with no explanation as to where and when she found it.
The string is still broken, but the girl did clean it; there was not a speck of blood or dust on it.
That evening, they find an abandoned farm, which is a lucky thing. These past few nights, they were forced to sleep out in the open. They had to make a fire or risk perishing of cold, but neither of them slept well, afraid the smoke would draw unwanted attention.
After they eat a meal of cheese and cured meat from the Nachzehrer village supplemented by some beer and pickles from the farm, Sister Ursula decides to polish the glass of the reliquary.
It is futile—as soon as they pick up the box, their fingers will inevitably smudge the glass again—but surely the saint will see the care she takes to keep her little home clean and appreciate the effort?
She certainly looks quite content, grinning with her yellow teeth.
She’s missing one next to the incisor. If they follow the route Elsebeth has decided upon using the saint’s map, they will come quite close to Sister Ursula’s convent, so perhaps they can take a detour, stay there for a bit, and find a replacement tooth for her there?
“Say that the saint wouldn’t give you one wish, but as many as you’d like, no matter how silly. What would you wish for then?” Sister Ursula asks.
“Saints don’t exist, and neither do wishes,” Elsebeth says sullenly. She’s making a poultice for Sister Ursula’s knee from wild herbs.
Sister Ursula laughs uncomfortably. “Come now, you doubting Thomas. You won’t know that for sure until we have reunited the saint’s skull with her body.”
Elsebeth grunts. Her mouth is a tight line, her brow as creased as a roughly handled broadsheet. Sister Ursula can feel the anger and hurt waft off her like the stench of something left to rot in the summer sun.
“Please just indulge me,” Sister Ursula begs as she bends closer over the box. Her face, reflected in the glass, becomes superimposed on that of the skull. It’s a strange sight. She quickly straightens her spine, changing her reflection.
Elsebeth shreds some herbs with her fingers. “I don’t know what ‘indulge’ means.”
“It means that you’ll do it for my sake.
Please? I’ll go first. If I could wish for anything in the world, even silly small things, I’d wish for teeth that never rotted and never pained me.
” A year ago, one of her molars went bad, swelling her cheek until it was round and red as an apple.
When Sister Junius grabbed the tooth with pliers to extract it, the pain was such that Sister Ursula almost fainted.
Every now and again, she pokes the hole left behind with her tongue; the silky-smooth feel of her gums is strangely delightful.
“That’s not silly; that’s just common sense.
Not many things are worse than an ache in the tooth or ear.
My little brother Friedrich’s ears would often become inflamed, and he would weep so sorely with the pain of it, it would break your heart.
Had he lived, those constant infections would probably have left him deaf.
” She stops suddenly and turns her face to the window, looking so lost and helpless that Sister Ursula has to sit on her hands to keep from reaching for her; she fears her touch will not be welcome now.
“You’re right. My example was bad. Let me try again,” she says, hurrying to keep whatever emotion threatens to overwhelm Elsebeth from pulling her under. “If I could wish for anything at all, I would wish for a cup that would always fill with milk whenever I was thirsty.”
Elsebeth drags the needle out, the thread rasping softly against the fabric. “How is that silly? You are no good at this game at all.”
“What silly thing would you wish for then?”
“I can’t think of anything silly. After everything I’ve suffered, I think all my wishes are sound.”
“The Lord sends no more than you can bear,” Sister Ursula says without thinking; it is what her sisters and she tell each other whenever something bad happens.
Elsebeth’s face darkens. “That’s a lie!” she spits.
“I don’t claim to know why the Lord made what happened to my sister happen, but I do know it’s more than I can bear, and definitely more than she could, for she died lying in the dirt where the soldiers dropped her when they were done with her, as if she were no more than a soiled bit of cloth. ”
“Elsebeth, I never meant—”
“No! I want no more of your religious prattle. It sickens me!” she shouts and dashes outside, leaving Sister Ursula stricken and feeling ill.
“Oh, Ursula, you absolute fool,” she whispers and knuckles her eyes so hard, she sees spots, like little pools of spilled blood darkening the sand.
* * *
That night as they lie in bed and try to sleep, Sister Ursula can bear their discord no longer.
“Elsebeth, are you asleep?” she whispers. The girl is lying with her back to her and has been sleeping so for the past few nights. No more kisses, no more stories, no more tearstained confessions of the horrors she has witnessed.
She doesn’t reply, but her breathing isn’t deep and even enough for her to be asleep.
Sister Ursula swallows, then continues. “I am sorry for what I said earlier. I spoke without thinking, and I fear I was both callous and cruel. Please know that I am deeply sorry for it. If I could take those words back, I would.”
For a while, it seems that Elsebeth won’t respond. When she does, her voice is small. “It’s not your fault any of that happened.”
Sister Ursula waits to see if she will elaborate, but no more words come. She licks her dry lips. “Well, I am sorry all the same. I wish I could help you. Won’t you let me?”
“I am beyond help.”
“No one is beyond help.” Sister Ursula hesitates, then gently touches the girl’s back.
She tenses; her spine stands out like a line of pebbles.
Sister Ursula must use her wish to save Sister Hildegard’s soul from purgatory and to ensure the safety of her sisters still living, but if she had one more wish, she’d use it to wish Elsebeth well again, both in mind and body.
She’d undo everything that has scarred her, drag out those memories like a faulty thread.
Sister Ursula folds her into her arms, presses her nose to the back of her neck.
The hair there is soft and fine. She inhales the smell that’s all Elsebeth’s own and that has come to mean safety these past few days, no matter that Elsebeth has been so plagued by melancholy and anger.
“Won’t you let me help you?” she murmurs.
Elsebeth is crying again. “I know not how,” she whispers.
“My head is so full of memories and thoughts that there’s no room for anything else.
Mayhap my mind is broken. It’s not normal to relive all these memories of awful things that happened to me, that I did to survive…
At times, I wonder if I ever even left the farm at all.
Mayhap those soldiers got to me after they were done with Margarethe, and I am dead, and this is Hell. ”
“If this were Hell, then nothing good would happen to you,” she tries. “Yet good things have happened.”
“Mayhap that’s part of my eternal punishment. It’s mighty cruel to give someone something good and then snatch it away from them.”
This is no good. If she is to help Elsebeth at all, she must distract her from all the horrors festering inside her mind. A wound can’t heal if you keep picking at it.
“Tell me: What is the Latin name for a daisy?” she asks.
“Daisy?” Elsebeth asks. In her surprise, she turns to Sister Ursula.
A lock of hair lies plastered against her cheek. Sister Ursula takes it, tucks it behind her ear. “Yes. Do you remember?”
“Bellis perennis.”
“And the common dandelion?”
“Taraxacum officinale.”