Chapter 22 Ursula
Ursula
Over the past few years, Sister Ursula has experienced a great many horrors: the siege of the castle of Eichst?tt, where she thought she would surely die; the plundering of her convent; her and her sisters’ flight; the death of Sister Hildegard; the attack on the road where she would have been raped and murdered were it not for Elsebeth; the Nachzehrer, the Aufhocker.
As she and Elsebeth cut off the head of the Aufhocker’s mother, skin it as well as they’re able, then drop it into a simmering pot to get rid of the remaining strips of flesh and tendon, Sister Ursula wonders if there’s perhaps a limit to what the human mind can take before it either cracks or grows callous.
If horrors happen to you all the time, do they stop being horrors and simply become ordinary life?
That would explain why soldiers can murder and maim with such ease.
But Sister Ursula’s mind is not like theirs, or it simply hasn’t reached its limit yet, because although the work isn’t as horrific as some of the other things she has gone through, it still frightens and revolts her.
Halfway through, that funny feeling in her head that always blooms when she sees anything disturbing overpowers her, and she wakes some minutes later with Elsebeth cradling her head in her lap, crying softly.
“I thought for a moment the Lord had struck you down and you were dead,” the girl sobs. She has a bloody smear on her forehead where she has brushed away the hair with a gore-smeared hand.
“I fainted, I think.”
Elsebeth drops kisses on her face. “Please don’t ever frighten me like that again. Now you stay here and rest for a bit. I’ll see if the flesh has softened enough to peel off.”
But Sister Ursula shakes her head. As a nun, she believes firmly that anything worth getting is worth suffering for, and that she mustn’t let anyone suffer on her behalf if she can help it; Jesus has already suffered enough for her.
Everything for Jesus.
“It’ll be faster if we both peel,” she says.
It is.
* * *
For the next three days, they travel hard in order to reach Sister Ursula’s convent, where they will gather the fine silk they can wrap the skull in and stitch the dead woman’s hair to.
The closer they get, the more nervous and excited Sister Ursula becomes.
For weeks, she has worried about the sisters who stayed behind.
Apart from Sister Junius, the others are all old or frail, sometimes both.
It really shouldn’t be wondered at if one of them has passed, like Sister Valentina with her necklace of cankers.
That should not be an occasion of mourning but of rejoicing, for that sister will have joined her Husband in Heaven.
All the same, not knowing whether they are dead or alive drives Sister Ursula to distraction.
She talks incessantly about her sisters and the ways of the convent to Elsebeth, partly so that the girl knows what to expect, partly because the words just keep tumbling out of her mouth.
Elsebeth, by contrast, grows more and more quiet the closer they get.
“What’s wrong, mein Liebchen? Are you afraid my sisters won’t like you?” Sister Ursula asks her as they are walking the final mile toward the convent. They have already spied the building, large and beautiful, and Sister Ursula’s heart is beating so fast with excitement, she feels slightly sick.
Elsebeth shrugs. “Papists usually have no love for Protestants. They may not like me for that, or for my rough peasant ways.”
“Not at all! My sisters will see your generous, brave heart, and they’ll have no choice but to love you deeply and dearly.
That’s how it was for me, anyway. I think I may have loved you from the moment you took my hand.
” And she flushes deeply, laughs, and takes Elsebeth’s work-roughened hand and kisses the meat at the base of her thumb.
Elsebeth flushes as well, a deep purplish color that is reminiscent of a wine stain on white linen. “You are too sweet for your own good.”
“Would you rather we not tell them you are Protestant?”
“No, for that would be lying, though mayhap it’s better if we don’t tell them about the saint’s skull.
It would be mighty complicated to tell them all, and they might not agree with what we are doing, might try to keep you here as they think it all over, but we can’t spare the time for that. What say you?”
But Sister Ursula doesn’t respond. She has stopped walking. What she has seen makes fear flare inside of her chest, suffusing her limbs until she must stand stiff and still once more, like a wooden puppet waiting for another to move her.
“What’s wrong?” Elsebeth asks, but terror has stoppered Sister Ursula’s throat, and so she cannot speak, only stand and stare, her heart battering her chest.
Their order is a cloistered one. To allow their minds to focus completely on God, they try to separate themselves as completely from the world as possible.
The sisters are only allowed to leave the convent grounds if circumstances leave them no other choice.
To keep them inside and the world outside, all the doors should be firmly closed and locked at all times.
But the front door is neither locked nor closed. It gapes open, the cool hallway beyond shrouded in shadows, and so something must be horribly wrong.
“Ursula? Speak to me, please,” Elsebeth says. She moves in front of Sister Ursula, touches her cheek. Sister Ursula’s face has gone numb; she feels the calloused fingers only faintly, as if she’s stuck in that limbo between waking and dreaming where everything is muffled.
Elsebeth takes hold of Sister Ursula’s chin, makes her tilt her head down.
This breaks the spell, at least a little; when Sister Ursula manages to speak, her tongue feels like a slug, and the words come out sounding strange and oddly graceless, like dead things.
“Something is wrong. Something bad has happened here.”
Elsebeth frowns. Two lines appear between her brows, so stark and deep that it seems impossible that they’ll disappear when her face relaxes, and yet they do, they will, at least for now.
Not so many years to go anymore until such creases become permanent.
Sister Ursula might have some wrinkles already.
She doesn’t know; she hasn’t seen her face in a long time, because the convent has no mirrors, which are only baubles that encourage vanity, and whatever glimpses she has caught in the reflection of a pane of glass or puddle she has done her best to forget, to…
She realizes she has gotten lost in her own head again. She blinks, makes herself focus on Elsebeth’s pale eyes. “What did you say?”
“I said, ‘How do you know something bad has happened?’”
“The door,” she whispers. She swallows thickly. “It should always be closed, but it isn’t. That means that something has happened to my sisters, something big and terrible that has prevented them from living by our order’s sacred rules.”
“Mayhap they decided to leave after all and forgot to lock the door, and it’s nothing as sinister as you fear. Come, let us go inside and see.” Elsebeth turns around, begins to move toward the door, which still gapes so darkly, so horribly, like the maw of an animal intent on eating her alive.
Sister Ursula says, “I daren’t go inside.
” As soon as the words have left her mouth, she knows them to be true.
“God curse me for a coward, but I daren’t go inside.
I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, please don’t make me, because I can’t…
” She realizes she’s babbling, but she can’t help herself.
When Elsebeth comes close to her, she backs away, raising her arms as if to fend off a blow, and still she pleads and begs.
“Peace,” Elsebeth says. She places her hands against Sister Ursula’s cheeks and makes her look at her again.
“Peace, Ursula. I won’t force you to come with me if you daren’t.
I understand. You needn’t explain to me.
But someone has to go inside, if only because we need that gauze so that our fake saint’s skull looks real.
Now tell me: How many of your sisters will I find inside if they haven’t left already? ”
“Seven.”
“Seven,” Elsebeth repeats. Her mouth and eyes are all grim determination. “You wait here now till I am back. If anything happens, scream for me, and I will come running.”
Don’t leave me alone! Something inside of Sister Ursula wails, but she presses it deep down, and what comes out of her mouth is simply, “I don’t want you to go inside, mein Liebchen. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
Elsebeth gives her a crooked grin, though her eyes remain cool with fear. “I think I can take some old maids in a fight if I have to.”
Sister Ursula doesn’t laugh.
Elsebeth’s smile fades. “Be comforted, my love. All shall be well.”
Sister Ursula watches Elsebeth go inside, and the day is so bright and the hallway so dark that it looks as if the convent swallows her in one big bite.
Sister Ursula kneels in the dust of the road and takes her rosary out of her pocket.
She prays as she waits, but there is no gathering of the senses, no turning inward, no sweet sense of love to salve her troubled soul.
It is merely something to make the time pass as she waits for Elsebeth to come back and tell her what horror she has found.
Not horror per se, she thinks. My sisters may have fled after all, as Elsebeth said. They may be alive and well. They…
Elsebeth staggers outside, whey-faced, breathing fast and hard, and Sister Ursula knows then that the worst has happened.
Her sisters are dead.
With this realization, her fear shifts and changes.
Before, she wanted to stay ignorant.
Now, she wants to know.
No, not “wants”; she needs to know. She needs to see, smell, and experience what has happened to her poor sisters, who are not of her blood but are her family all the same.
Whatever she will find in these cool and lofty rooms will scar her mind and heart, of this she has no doubt, but it also beckons her.
Sister Ursula strides to the door, feeling nothing but the fear roaring inside of her veins and the siren’s call of the horror inside of the convent.
Elsebeth grabs her wrist, and the shock of it is enormous.
“Don’t,” the girl says. She’s pale and sweating like a piece of cheese left out on a hot day. “Don’t go inside, Ursula, please. Your poor sisters are terrible to look at.” She swallows thickly. “I wish I hadn’t seen.”
“I must, I must, I simply must…”
“You don’t. There’s naught you can do for them now. If you go inside, you’ll regret it. It’s better not to know sometimes. Please let me carry this for you.”
But how can Sister Ursula do that when the burden Elsebeth carries is so heavy already? Better to share the load. Anything else would be selfishness and cowardice.
Elsebeth’s grip around Sister Ursula’s wrist tightens.
“It’s not cowardice,” she hisses, as if she has read Sister Ursula’s thoughts.
“Fear isn’t a bad thing. Bravery is a virtue only when there’s fear, for how else can it be bravery?
It’s better if you don’t go in, believe you me, for they… Ursula, no!”
Sister Ursula has already ripped her hand free and is running, running, running.