Chapter 20 Otto
Otto
Don’t think, Otto tells himself as he follows in his necromancer’s wake, don’t think, not even a single thought, no, don’t think at all.
But though he tries to focus on the wet grass flicking against his legs, the cold little smells of the stream burbling close to them, and the necromancer’s giggles, he can’t get the image of Elsebeth out of his head.
Her face all pale from fear, her hand shaking as she held the knife, her mouth set so grimly…
Some pictures sear themselves into the brain and won’t be scrubbed away, but it’s strange that this should be one of them. Otto didn’t hurt the girl, after all, only had to threaten a bit of violence before the nun gave him the skull.
But still his mind fixes itself upon Elsebeth’s face.
Is it only the shock of finding someone he knows?
Though ‘knows’ is too big a word. Unlike Frieda, who spent hours with the girl as they did laundry, baked bread, and performed other household chores, Otto had never had much to do with her.
Why would he? She was just Gottfried’s little whore.
No, not whore, Otto reprimands himself. His little toy more like, to do with as he pleased whenever he pleased, and what she wanted and felt didn’t matter, because she was just a thing to him, as I am to my necromancer.
They have stopped walking by now. The necromancer sits down, heedless of the wet ground, and takes the skull out of her box. In the pale light of the moon, the bone seems almost to glow. A slight breeze keeps ruffling the hair, as if an unseen hand is picking up a lock before dropping it again.
Otto imagines slapping the skull out of the necromancer’s spidery hands, imagines it tumbling to the ground and breaking into clean white shards held together only by the fine silk wrapped around it.
He imagines grabbing a fistful of that hair, lifting the sordid thing into the air, and then throwing it into the stream so the water may carry it far away from here.
Water can cleanse. Water can destroy. Though maybe it’s better to set the whole thing on fire first, then trample the blackened fragments of bone until nothing but ash remains.
Otto does not lunge at the skull, though his hands itch. Instead, he turns to the necromancer, who sits gloating at it. “Will you release me now?” he asks.
The necromancer doesn’t tear his enraptured gaze away from the skull. The skin of his hands is so sallow, the color is barely distinguishable from the pale bone. “No,” he says.
Otto represses the urge to throw his hands into the air. The more he moves, the bigger the chance he will damage his joints and limbs beyond repair. Already his body pains him, though not as much as it should. “Why not? You have your skull now, don’t you?”
The necromancer chuckles. “My dear Otto, do you believe I brought you along only to obtain this skull? Think a little harder, please.”
“Then why?” Otto asks, despair roughening his voice. “Why did you bring me if not to help you? Am I just a thing to you, something to play with? Or are you my own personal demon, come to show me all I have done wrong in my life? For I have done many wrong things. I know that now. You’ve shown me.”
“Such as?” the necromancer asks, looking up from the skull. The two of them have matching grins.
Otto swallows thickly, looks at the ground.
He feels like a schoolboy being chastened.
Normally, that would enrage him, but he feels too tired for anything as hot and potent as fear now.
“I shouldn’t have tortured that farmhand before I threw him down the well.
I shouldn’t have smacked that farmer’s daughter in the face and broken her teeth, no matter how she wept and moaned and groaned.
I should have tried to keep her safe from my fellow soldiers. ”
“Go on.”
“What are you, a priest? Must I confess all my sins to you?”
“Why not?” the necromancer says, and he isn’t smiling now. “Why don’t you tell me everything you have done that you knew to be wrong but did anyway?”
Little flickers of fear make the blood in Otto’s hands and feet run cold.
His mouth opens of its own accord, and the words spill out like vomit.
He is powerless to stop them. “I shouldn’t have stood by and done nothing when my fellow soldiers raped that servant girl in Magdeburg,” he says and marvels that this is the first thing that comes to mind, for it’s been almost four years now since that city fell to the imperial troops and almost everyone inside was slaughtered.
“I shouldn’t have laughed at her as she cried.
When we found her master cowering in his study, I shouldn’t have tied him to his chair and burned his feet till they were all black and cracked to get him to tell us where he kept his money.
I shouldn’t have cut off his fingers to get his rings.
When the others went deeper into the house, into the nursery, where the baby lay, I shouldn’t have let them grab it and dash it against the wall until the brains ran down the wood. I shouldn’t have…”
It turns out there are a lot of things Otto shouldn’t have done.