Chapter 25
Elsebeth
Once again, Ursula and I spend the night in a house belonging to death. It’s the third time since we met, so it must mean something, three being the number of the Lord and all that, but all I can think that it means is that there’s a lot of death in this world.
Before nightfall, though, there’s much to do.
We don’t bury the bodies. There’s no time to dig seven holes, not if we want to be on our way again tomorrow to hunt down the necromancer.
It’s not right to just leave them as they are, though, so Ursula sets to washing them and dressing them in unsoiled clothes.
I want to do it myself at first, afeared that Ursula will sicken with whatever killed them, but she tells me in her voice all hoarse from screaming that it’s all right, she had the plague before and is safe from it now.
“You must make sure no fabric touches their mouths, or they’ll become Nachzehrer,” I tell her, “and you must place something on their eyes to keep them closed, for it is bad luck to look the dead in the eye. My grandmother said that their stare might stun you, and if they turn into restless corpses, anyone who has looked them in the eye when they were dead shall be bound to them.”
Ursula doesn’t respond. Mayhap she hasn’t heard, yet when I make to repeat myself, she takes my hand and squeezes it, and I hush.
We cut Sister Junius down. Ursula doesn’t want anyone to know the manner of her death. I wonder if that’s a sort of lie, but it’s done out of kindness, and if Ursula uses her wish to save Sister Junius, I suppose it may not matter.
It’s an awful thing, to cut her down, for she is much rotted. I don’t want to touch her, but I steel myself, and as I wrap my arms around her waist, I go deep inside of myself and hold the image of Ursula’s face all flushed after I’ve loved her well into my mind, and that helps, but only a little.
When Ursula has cut the rope and Sister Junius comes down, her upper body snaps forward. Black and foul liquid sprays from her mouth. I have to let go of the image of Ursula then, for I don’t want to link dead Sister Junius and black corpse juice to Ursula in my mind.
Once we have eased her down on the floor and I have managed not to vomit, I offer to help wash the body and lay it out, for those who die by their own hand are more likely than anyone else to be damned and wander restlessly until rot has claimed them completely, but Ursula shakes her head.
“This I must do alone,” she says.
Mayhap it’s better like that, for I have no love for this woman whom I know not, but Ursula brims with it, and it seems to me that the dead deserve at least a little bit of love.
I decide to make myself useful in another way.
I look for food. The cloister gardens are a mess, all torn up, likely by soldiers, though mayhap also by some of the peasants who work for the convent, because even if the fear of God burns strong in your heart, in the end, the hunger burns stronger.
I gather what I can and what I know to be edible.
Next, I go find the kitchen and the pantry.
There’s not much left. The nuns may have hidden some food in strange places where plundering soldiers are not likely to look, but I don’t want to go poke around any more than I have to.
Besides, there’s no time. I prepare what I have found.
After I’ve cooked, eaten, and kept some for Ursula—even if grief strangles her hunger, I shall make her eat, for I need her healthy and strong—I go look for some of the fine mesh silk similar to what the saint’s skull was wrapped in.
When I finally find some, I set to cutting it to size for our fake skull.
I can’t sew it up just yet, for we still lack the glass eyes, and I know not how else we might add those later on if the skull is covered already, but I can attach the red hair.
It’s delicate work and hard to do without daylight, but there likely won’t be any time for this later.
It’s rather a gruesome job, sewing all those strands of hair we took from a dead woman to the silk, but in some strange way it reminds me of home.
In the evenings or on long winter days when there was no plowing, planting, or harvesting to be done, we’d all sit together near the hearth.
My father would repair his tools or whittle something out of wood, and my mother, Margarethe, and I would sew.
We’d sing as we worked, hymns, mostly, or we’d tell each other stories from the Bible.
Every now and then, my grandmother would tell us one of her fairy stories.
My mother disapproved, for she felt these stories were ungodly, but my dad was a little milder, and because he was head of our household, and because a wife should heed her husband and children their father, it was he who determined what we could and could not tell.
I try to sing as I sew. My voice falters before I’ve finished my song, for it feels wrong to raise my voice here, not only because this is a house of death and mourning, but also because everything around me is so quiet.
I feel like there is something lurking in the convent’s dark corners, and if I make a lot of noise, it shall know that I am here, it shall know where to find me.
Something that has had a good long look at Sister Junius as she hung there slowly rotting and will wear her face as a mask to fool us, I think, and I shudder and prick my finger.
As I suck on it, I look at the dead woman’s hair piled in my lap.
Hunger ate up the shine, leaving it all muted and brittle, but the candlelight paints it all these different shades, and so it’s almost beautiful.
“There you are,” Ursula says.
I shriek and jump to my feet. I manage to catch the skull, but the hair that is not yet sewn to the silk flies everywhere.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you,” Ursula whispers as she and I gather the strands, raking them with our fingers to get the dust and the tangles out.
“Why are you whispering?” I whisper back.
“I shouldn’t talk at all. It’s the Great Silence. I haven’t been observing it very well lately, since Sister Hildegard died and I was alone. It feels wrong to speak here, but I didn’t want to frighten you, make you think I had gone mad…”
“That’s kind of you. Have you eaten yet?”
She shakes her head. I make her take a few bites of the dinner I cooked. When she is done, she motions for me to come with her. I gather up the skull, the mesh, and the hair and follow her deeper into the convent, inside what I suppose must be her cell.
“Every cell is sacred,” she whispers. “No nun may enter another’s cell without permission.
This place is for her and Christ alone. It’s both a bridal chamber full of love and bliss, and a crucible in which we fight our darkest demons.
I am letting you in here, Elsebeth, because you are very dear to me, and I… I want you to see this, I want you to…”
I put my fingers against her lips. “Hush, my love,” I say. “You said you mustn’t speak till morning, so please don’t speak, not for me.”
She nods gratefully, then opens the door and lets me inside.
For a bridal chamber and crucible, this room seems awfully bare.
It has a bed, a stool, and one shelf, no more.
The shelf holds a pitcher, a bowl, three books.
The bed is hard and small. We barely fit here, but that doesn’t bother me.
We have slept in worse places. I hold Ursula tight to me, listen to her breathing.
I wish I could kiss her and love her, and in that way make her forget all the horrors, but I don’t know if she’ll like it now, in here.
If I were to come live here with her once her still-living sisters return, would she let me creep into her room at night, to hold her as I am holding her now?
Or would she not want me here, afraid of what might be done to us if we were caught?
Ursula told me they are not supposed to love one person more than the others and that touch here is as rare as a miser spending a coin, for the sisters seek the death of all flesh so that their minds may turn to God, their Heavenly Husband, completely.
I know not how a nun might be punished for having a special friend.
Mayhap they’ll beat her, or starve her, or make her kneel on shards of glass.
I have heard that papists can do all manner of sinful things, like witchcraft, fornication, and other deeds Satan would delight in and be proud to call his own.
Though if I am quite honest, now that I have been with Ursula for a while, I no longer think it’s all true what I have heard.
Mayhap some of the most gruesome things I was told are just stories meant to frighten us away from popery.
All the same, I don’t think Ursula and I can live here together, at least not in the way I’d like, and…
My thoughts are interrupted by Ursula. She sobs in her sleep, this sad, frightened sound, and I make to wake her, but she has hushed already, so I kiss her head instead and hope the feel of it somehow travels into her dreams and makes them less horrible.
“Don’t you fret,” I whisper into her hair. “We shall steal back the saint’s skull from the necromancer, and you shall have your wish, and all you have seen and smelled and heard here shall be undone, and I shall wish for…”
I have a dark thought then.
I might use my wish for Ursula and me to stay together.
But no, I mustn’t be selfish. I must use my wish for the good of my family. I should ask to have them brought back to life.
Only what if it’s greedy to ask for so much? In His life, Christ made only three people come back from death. What if the saint makes me choose between my grandmother, my mother, my father, Margarethe, and my little brothers, Johannes and Friedrich?
Then she won’t resurrect all of Ursula’s sisters, either, and the two of us shall have to wish for something else. Mayhap it’s good to have another wish up my sleeve, just in case.
And that wish shall be for me and Ursula to be together, for she is mine to protect, mine to cherish, mine to love, I think.
But only if my family can’t be brought back to life.
I want more than anything to have them back.
Don’t I?