Chapter 10 #2
“If there’s still room for Latin in your head, that means your mind isn’t broken.” She wipes at Elsebeth’s wet cheeks with a corner of her blanket, then kisses her temple where the veins lie so close to the surface she can feel the blood throb through them. “Won’t you tell me a story?” she asks.
“I can’t think of any,” Elsebeth sniffs.
“Please?”
It takes a while, but eventually, Elsebeth begins to talk.
“There was once a girl who wanted a husband who would always be true to her,” Elsebeth begins, the sentence broken into three strange pieces as her breathing, still affected by her crying, hitches.
“But only Jesus Christ is always true, and so she was still not married when she was well into her twenties, even though she had a pair of quick, deft hands, was fair of face, and had hair that looked like spun gold, so long it dragged behind her in the dust if she did not sew it to her head in long braids.
“The day before she turned eight and twenty, she had had enough. She went to a local wise woman who had made a living out of blessing the cattle of the local peasants. This woman was said to know many things, and so the girl asked her where she could find a man who would always be true to her.”
Sister Ursula dabs at Elsebeth’s eyes with a wet handkerchief to soothe them. She whimpers at the touch of the cold fabric, at the relief it brings to the puffy flesh.
“What did the woman tell her?” Sister Ursula prompts her.
“The woman made cruel sport of the girl, first sending her to a nunnery to gaze upon a papist carving of Christ, for He will always be true, then sending her to the graveyard, for dead men will not alter and thus will remain always true also.
When the girl came back a third time, the woman understood she meant business.
“‘If you give me your hair, I shall tell you where to find a husband who will always be true to you, and how to catch him,’ the woman said.
The girl loved her hair, but wanted a husband more, so she cut it all off.
The woman then told her where to go and what to do.
After she was done, the girl raised her eyebrows, for what she had been told was strange.
‘If you are making mischief, I shall come back and strangle you with my braids,’ she told the old woman, for she may have been fair of face, but she was also terrible of tongue.
“Yet she did what the old woman had told her to, and wandered to the river, where she found a filthy vagabond.
He was dressed only in a pair of torn trousers and a shirt.
His hair and beard were long and matted, and he stank.
He was also possessed, for this was a long time ago, when such things still happened.
In his eyes, the girl could see many things looking back at her, all of them quite evil.
“‘What an ugly old maid you are, with your hair all hacked off,’ the vagabond said, for one of the demons that possessed him was proud and haughty and delighted in hurting others.
“The girl huffed at this. ‘I’m not,’ she said.
The vagabond smiled and said, ‘Then prove it, and take off your dress.’ The girl had been prepared for this by the old woman and had gone home before wandering to the river.
Over her own dress, she wore her grandmother’s dress, her mother’s dress, and sister’s dress also.
“She took off her grandmother’s dress, and underneath the possessed vagabond found not milky skin to defile, but another dress.
“‘My turn. Take off your shirt,’ the maid said, and though the vagabond grumbled and spat, for the demons inside of him were both proud and wrathful, he had no choice but to do as she said.
“‘Take off your dress,’ he said, and she took off her mother’s dress.
“‘Take off your breeches,’ she said. He gnashed his teeth and said many lewd things, for all demons are lechers, but the girl would not be moved, and so he had to do as she bade him.
“‘Take off your dress,’ he said, and she took off her sister’s dress.
“‘Take off your skin,’ she said, for the vagabond had no more layers betwixt the air and his skin.
At this, he turned pale, fell to his knees, and begged her to take back her words.
She might have, for a man weeping and groveling is a pitiful sight indeed, but she had only the one dress left, and so she told him firmly to take off his skin.
“Having no other choice, the vagabond had to take off his skin. She took it to the river and scrubbed away all the filth and all the demons clinging to it using fistfuls of sand and mud, then beat his skin with sticks until it was all clean; she may have had a terrible tongue, but she was not shy of work. When she was done washing it, she strung it from a tree to dry. Then, she took it back to the trembling vagabond and dressed him, and behold: Now that he was no longer demon ridden, he had turned into a rich merchant’s son, handsome and kind.
To thank her for banishing the demons that had driven him mad many years ago, he married her and stayed true to her forever, and if they didn’t die, they’re still living on today. ”
Sister Ursula wipes at a crumb of salt stuck at the corner of Elsebeth’s eye. “What a wonderful story! Thank you for telling, mein Liebchen.”
Elsebeth flushes fiercely at being called “my little love”; Sister Ursula can feel the heat beat off her cheeks. “It’s only a silly story that my grandmother told me,” she murmurs, but she’s smiling all the same.
“I don’t think it’s silly.”
“No, me neither,” Elsebeth confesses. “In truth, methinks it would be nice to have someone take off my skin and wash and beat it clean of all the filth that has come to cling to it.” She hesitates, then traces Sister Ursula’s eyebrow with a fingertip, smoothing down the dark hair.
“Why are you so kind to me?” she whispers.
Again, Sister Ursula finds that the words she has at her disposal do not suffice to explain properly all she feels and thinks. “Kindness is godly,” is what she settles on.
Elsebeth’s hand has traveled down her face, cradles her cheek. It’s a peasant’s hand, all rough and red from work. If Sister Ursula had a third wish, she would wish for an easy life for Elsebeth so that her hands might grow soft. “Are we friends again?” she whispers.
Elsebeth strokes her cheek with a calloused thumb. “We never stopped being friends.”
Sister Ursula’s heart soars. That night, for the first time in months, perhaps years, she sleeps easily.