Chapter 17 #2
“So can some witches and sorcerers, or else the Bible wouldn’t tell us that talking to the dead is displeasing to the Lord,” Elsebeth says.
She hugs her knees to her chest and rests her chin on top of her knees.
Her short hair, pale, fine, and thin as silk, whereas Sister Ursula’s is dark, thick, and coarse, falls forward and obscures her face.
“But how are you so certain it was a simple witch we saw, and not the devil himself?” Sister Ursula presses.
“The skull told me he was a necromancer and not Satan in my dreams,” she whispers.
“The saint came to you in your dreams?” Hope and wonder shift the stone of shame on Sister Ursula’s chest, making her feel much lighter.
She shakes her hands into the water to wash away the sand, then wipes them on her dress and takes hold of Elsebeth’s left hand, carefully avoiding the broken skin of her palms. A hundred questions crowd inside her mind, words inside her mouth.
“What did she look like? What did she say or show you? Oh, but this is a miracle!”
But why did she not come to me? she thinks but drowns that question immediately; Elsebeth, so lost within her Protestant dogma and all the horror she has suffered, is in much bigger need of a miracle than she herself is.
“The first time, she was just a skull bobbing around like an apple in a barrel,” Elsebeth says, her voice soft and hesitant.
“She told me the necromancer and a mercenary whom he bewitched were looking for her, and that I should wake up, for you were in grave danger. That was the night you had wandered out and the Nachzehrer had gotten you.”
“And the second time?”
With her free hand, Elsebeth brushes the hair from her face.
Her color is up, though that might just be the cold.
“Some days after we left that Nachzehrer town. She was mean to me then, calling me all sorts of names, saying we had to hurry lest the necromancer catch up to us.” She smiles wryly.
“I suppose she was right to be so rude after all.”
“Why did you not tell me?” Sister Ursula asks, doing her best to keep any hurt from bleeding into the words.
“I thought that they might just be strange stories my mind spun as I slept. You know I don’t believe in saints, and dreams can be so mighty strange that only a fool would think they mean anything.
Then, I thought that, if the skull really crept into my dreams and sent me signs from God, she’d do so thrice, for three is the number of the Lord.
Until then, I thought it better not to tell you.
I did not want to worry you. Not that it matters anymore, now that the necromancer and Otto have stolen her from us. ”
“You speak of him as if you know him.” She remembers the stricken look on that soldier’s rotting face and adds, “And he seemed to know you.”
Elsebeth is quiet for a long time. When she speaks, she won’t look at Sister Ursula, only at the water flowing so beautifully, a little miracle that doesn’t stop being miraculous just because it is so ordinary. “I’m loath to tell you, for you will look at me with different eyes once I have.”
Sister Ursula shakes her head wildly. “I won’t, I won’t! How could I ever think anything but well of you?”
“You won’t think well of me after I’ve told you this.”
Sister Ursula says, “By God, I won’t think poorly of you.
I won’t, I won’t, I won’t.” She punctuates every sentence with a kiss, one on Elsebeth’s knuckles and two on the inside of her wrist, where the skin remains smooth no matter how hard the work.
“There. I’ve sworn it three times by the Lord, and so by your own admission, it must be true. Now won’t you tell me?”
“You are silly,” she says. She sighs, then straightens her spine, her shoulders tensing. “Remember how I told you my sister made me run when the soldiers came, and I did? Well, once my panic had run its course, I went back for her.”
Sister Ursula sits very still, even though that phantom ache has begun in her stomach again, that sense of a spreading something, not quite pain but not quite pleasant, either.
Whatever Elsebeth tells her now, she mustn’t interrupt, or the girl will gather all those memories back to herself and keep them inside, where they will forever fester.
“I couldn’t find her at first, and I thought that mayhap those soldiers had taken her back with them.
They sometimes do that if they take a liking to a girl, or if they think her family has money.
They won’t give her back then until you’ve paid whatever they ask of you, and the longer it takes, the worse they treat her.
But they hadn’t taken her. When I found her… I… She…” Elsebeth stammers.
“You don’t have to describe it to me if it hurts too much,” Sister Ursula says.
Elsebeth briefly closes her eyes. “It was the worst thing I have ever seen, Ursula. I don’t think I can put it into words, not even if it didn’t pain me, and that it does, horribly so.
So bad it was, it struck me mad for a while, and thank God for that.
It was a great kindness, that madness of mine.
Had I not lost my wits, I think I may have…
God forgive me, but I think I may have done myself an injury.
“I ran mad,” Elsebeth continues, “and in my madness, I fell in with the baggage train of the imperial army. I had nowhere else to go. Everyone else in my village was dead or had fled. A soldier took a liking to me. His name was Gottfried. He was a mercenary, just like that man Otto. The two of them were friends. That’s how he recognized me: I often spent time with his wife, helping her bake bread.
She was a baker’s daughter before she wedded, and Otto was a miller’s son once, before he turned his hand to war making.
“But it’s not Otto who matters here, but Gottfried.
He brought me trinkets and fed me bits of bread dipped in milk and slices of apple he cut for me himself, and in that way won my trust. Soon, he began to use me in the way a man should only ever use his wife.
And God forgive me, for all that I hated him for it, my body would at times draw pleasure from the things he did to me, no matter that I did not want it to… ”
Elsebeth buries her face against her knees in shame and sobs.
Sister Ursula sits stunned for a moment, not knowing what to do. Then, she hugs Elsebeth from behind. The way she’s sitting, she’s all taut muscle and hard bone, and it’s uncomfortable, but then so many things in life are; why should this be pleasant?
“I often begged him not to,” Elsebeth says, the words muffled, “for it was not right or proper for him to use me so, but he just slapped me and said that I shouldn’t whine, for did he not feed me?
Did he not keep me warm? Did he not protect me from the other soldiers?
It was more than many a farm girl could say.
Besides, he said, none of this was his fault.
It was war, and war makes beasts out of men. ”
She raises her head, wipes at her cheeks with the hem of her dress, sniffs.
Her gray eyes are sharp as flint underneath the tears, her mouth an angry slash.
“Mayhap it’s true that men can’t help acting like beasts.
My grandmother told me some fairy stories in which men are turned into beasts, and beasts they must remain until a woman comes along to tame them and turn them into men again.
But life is no story, else it would make more sense than it does, and even if it were, I didn’t want to tame Gottfried, for even if he were a prince, I could never forget how he had used me. ”
Wordlessly, Sister Ursula hands Elsebeth her handkerchief.
She wipes her nose with it, sniffs again.
“I may be a silly farm girl who knows very little on account of not being able to read and write, but I am not entirely stupid. I know some things are right and some things are wrong, and what he did to me was wrong. As soon as there was a break in the winter’s cold, I ran from him.
From then on, I lived on the road, too scared to trust anyone. Until I found you.”
“And I am gladder than I can possibly say that you did,” Sister Ursula says.
Elsebeth roughly rubs her eyes, then goes on as if she hasn’t heard.
“That’s why I was so cruel to you after you kissed me.
It was not your fault, but when you and I kissed, and you let your hands travel up and down my body, I felt that same lustful pull in the pit of my belly that I had felt at times when he was rutting with me, and I was so ashamed I hoped God would strike me down.
Sometimes…sometimes, I wish I were dead already, that my suffering may cease. ”
“Elsebeth—” Sister Ursula begins.
“I would never kill myself. You don’t have to be afraid of that.
A man in my village hanged himself. He was always melancholy, I know not why.
They wouldn’t let his family bury his body, but they threw it on the trash heap to rot out in the open as a warning to all, because suicide is displeasing to the Lord.
” She smiles, and it is both sad and a little mad.
“Though I suppose it doesn’t matter anymore now, does it?
All those people dying left and right, and no one to bury them properly.
But fret not, Ursula. I know you and I don’t believe the same things, but I believe in Satan, and I believe he has a claim to my soul.
I have no desire to meet him any sooner than I have to. ”
“I don’t believe Satan has a claim to your soul,” Sister Ursula says, “and if he does, well, then he shall have my soul, too.”
Elsebeth’s hand forms a trembling fist around Sister Ursula’s handkerchief. “Don’t mock me. You don’t believe that.”
“I believe that if you are damned, then so am I, because I have sinned more than you. You see, when I told you about Sister Hildegard, I wasn’t entirely honest. I let you believe I left her at the side of the road, but that’s not true.
I didn’t even think of that. All I thought was that we had to hide, but for that to work, we couldn’t make any noise, only Sister Hildegard kept screaming, so I…
I placed my hands…” She has to take a shuddering breath to steady herself.
“I placed my hands over her mouth. She struggled mightily at first but then grew slack. I thought her strength had merely spent itself, but when those men had finally passed us by and I looked at her, I saw she was dead.”
“That doesn’t count. You didn’t mean for that to happen.”
“Neither did you mean for Gottfried to use you, and yet it happened, didn’t it? If you are damned, then so am I.”
“That’s no consolation to me,” Elsebeth hisses.
Sister Ursula takes the handkerchief from her, dips it into the stream, then raises it to Elsebeth’s face to wipe her cheeks and eyes and brow, only the girl flinches away from her. “You aren’t damned, Elsebeth,” Sister Ursula says calmly. “Being raped is not a sin.”
“But it was! It was,” Elsebeth cries out, “because sometimes, I enjoyed it!”
“You didn’t. You said you hated Gottfried for what he did to you. Your body may be a traitor, but your soul is pure.”
Elsebeth shakes her head wildly, her hair slapping her cheeks. “No, no! I am damned, Ursula, damned, damned, damned!” She pounds her fists against her forehead.
Sister Ursula draws her onto her lap.
At first, Elsebeth fights her, screaming and kicking, but Sister Ursula won’t let go of her.
She holds the girl, rocks her from side to side, drops kisses on her tear-smeared face.
She tries to think of something to say, but once again, words fail her.
Perhaps it’s for the best. What words could possibly soothe Elsebeth’s troubled soul?
She has often found that, for her, the Bible can be a balm, but it is as Elsebeth just said: Her way of worship is not Elsebeth’s, and as such holds no comfort for the girl.
As Sister Ursula holds her tight, she catches her nightdress fluttering in the breeze from the corner of her eye, all clean now, like that merchant’s son in Elsebeth’s fairy story once the woman had washed his skin.
It’s an old motif. In the Bible, there is plenty of washing, both in the symbolic and the literal sense: Christ washes the feet of His disciples, and before that, Mary Magdalene washes Christ’s feet, dries them with her hair, then anoints them with perfume, showing love, devotion, and humility.
An idea comes to her then, so simple that it might just work.
She is no fairy-tale maid, and no Mary Magdalene, either, just a coward, but if her life as a nun and now this strange quest with the saint’s skull has taught her one thing, it is that divinity may be found in the humblest and unlikeliest of places.
She bends over Elsebeth’s softly sobbing form and whispers, “Come to your feet, mein Liebchen, for I know how to make you well again, and free of sin.”