Chapter 26
Ursula
During the night, Sister Ursula has many disturbing dreams that fade upon waking.
All she remembers is Sister Junius’s blackened face.
If she could draw, she’d sketch out her face as it was before death in an effort to get rid of the horrible sight of her all rotted.
It has stamped itself upon her mind, and she fears that it will stay there no matter how much time passes.
You shouldn’t have left her.
This thought haunts her both when she’s asleep and when she’s awake.
She knows it’s useless to think it. There is no altering the past. All she can do is use her wish to ensure Sister Junius’s soul will make it to Heaven.
But she needs Saint Columba’s skull if she is to wish for anything, and to get that back, she needs a convincing fake skull with red hair and glass eyes, which she doesn’t have yet, at least, not the eyes.
Only the Venetians know how to make convincing eyes out of glass, and they guard their technique jealously, thus making such eyes expensive and rare.
She has heard some very wealthy people wear them when accident or disease has robbed them of an eye, but she herself has only ever seen the dead adorned with them, like the saint’s skull, and a waxen replica of Saint Stephanus in a church she visited when she was little and her mother still alive.
That model had frightened her; it had looked like someone living, and no matter how much her mother had whispered to her that it was a statue, Sister Ursula wouldn’t go near it.
If only her own humble convent had a wax model like this, she and Elsebeth might…
Inspiration strikes her so forcefully, she sits up in bed, her hands pressed against her mouth so as not to laugh.
Her convent doesn’t have a full wax model of any saint, but it does have a wax mask of one of her sisters, namely Sister Anna.
The mask is supposed to be an accurate portrayal of her face when her tomb was opened a month after she had been interred.
The nuns had begun to smell a sweet, delicious scent coming from it, which is a sign of possible sainthood.
Upon opening the tomb, they had found the body still looked as fresh as if it had only just died, and so letters were written to the Vatican, and a wax maker commissioned to make this replica.
Sister Ursula has always avoided going near it, because she hasn’t left that childhood fear of wax models entirely behind, and so she can’t remember if it has glass eyes, but it is worth looking into. Where else will they find a pair?
Sister Ursula dresses hastily but quietly, careful not to wake Elsebeth.
Her Liebchen is so endearing as she sleeps, her face all soft in a way it never is when she’s awake, alert, and suspicious of the world.
Sister Ursula represses the urge to press a kiss to her sweet, slack mouth.
She lights a candle instead and slips out into the dark hallway.
With the keys she has taken from Sister Junius, she lets herself into the crypt where they have hidden Sister Anna’s incorruptible body to protect her from plundering soldiers.
It has been placed carefully in a wooden box and stacked upon some other boxes to keep it safe from any damp rising from the stone ground.
Sister Ursula places her hands on the lid, but familiar fear stays her hands. She had hoped that her experiences of defleshing the head of the Aufhocker’s mother would have made this desecration easier, but perhaps there are some things you can never get used to.
Coward.
Only she promised Elsebeth that she would never call herself that again, didn’t she?
“I am no coward,” she hisses and pushes the lid to the side. From the box wafts a fusty old smell, not quite a stink but definitely not the sweet and rich perfume that alerted the nuns to the possibility of Sister Anna’s sainthood, either.
She presses her sleeve against her mouth, then bends over the box and peers inside.
In the soft candlelight, the waxen mask placed over Sister Anna’s face looks not like wax, but like flesh, slightly wrinkled at the eyes and forehead, gone soft at the cheeks and mouth, delicately veined at the temples and eyelids.
The wax maker who labored over this piece for weeks even used real hair, all so that the mask would give the impression of life.
It’s fine and brown, and likely has been shorn from the head of a peasant in desperate need of money, or perhaps from an uncomplaining corpse.
But through that fine hair poke rough black hairs, hinting at something much darker and less palatable underneath. Sister Anna was incorruptible once, yes, but that does not mean she hasn’t gone to rot since.
No matter. Sister Ursula isn’t interested in anything but the mask.
She stoops a little, holds the candle close to see better.
If this mask truly is an accurate replica, then the eyes should be open at least a little.
Death relaxes the muscles of the eyelids, leaving them half open unless something is placed on top to keep them shut, such as a coin.
Yes, the eyelids are not entirely closed, and through the lashes something glints.
Are those lashes real, too? Did that wax maker pay some poor wretch a few thaler to pluck out their lashes? Or are they merely animal hairs painted and shaped to look like something different?
Don’t get distracted, she admonishes herself. She’s here for what she can see shimmering between those lashes. Only glass could harness light like that, then throw it back all in sparkles.
Sister Ursula smiles nervously, touches the little crucifix at the end of her broken rosary, and offers up a small prayer of thanks to God for helping her so.
Now, all she needs to do is extract the glass eyes from the mask, and she and Elsebeth will have everything they need to make a convincing replica of Saint Columba’s skull.
Sister Ursula stretches out her hand, but she can’t bring herself to touch the mask.
A horrible thought has sprouted in her head that touching the wax will waken Sister Anna.
There are no wax casts covering her hands, and though the light is poor, Sister Ursula can see the shape of them as they lie folded on her chest, the fingers thin and twisted like the legs of a dead spider.
Sister Anna won’t like to be wakened, especially not by a thief, and so those hands will unfold with hard, snapping sounds, and they will reach for Sister Ursula, and…
Stop it. You are not a child, afraid of the dead and the dark, Sister Ursula scolds herself.
Only those are not childish fears, now are they? The Nachzehrer was dead yet still moved and hunted for prey in the dark, and that poor Aufhocker boy hadn’t known to die, either.
But they hadn’t been buried properly, and Sister Anna has. There is nothing to fear. She wasn’t scared of her dead sisters in the infirmary, nor of poor Sister Junius all corrupted, so why would this fellow nun frighten her?
Sister Ursula takes a deep breath, then forces herself to touch the waxen cheek with her fingertip.
She shudders at the contact. The wax is not cool as she expected, but tepid, as if warmed by the body underneath.
Only that can’t be, because Sister Anna has been dead for thirty years, long before Sister Ursula came to live here.
Likely her hands are just cold, and that gives the impression of warmth when there isn’t any. Yes, that must be it. Now she must get to work, for time is precious.
Sister Ursula’s fingers hover over the left eyelid.
Despite having touched the mask’s cheek and felt that it is truly wax and not flesh, she still needs to conquer something within herself before she’s able to touch it.
It looks so lifelike, as if she is about to plunge her finger into a dead woman’s eye.
She strokes it once, quickly and lightly.
Sister Anna doesn’t stir.
of course not she’s dead dead dead well and truly dead and even if she wasn’t you have nothing to fear from her because you are on a mission of God and she must know that because she is likely a saint herself Sister Junius said so Reverend Mother Regina said so the Vatican said so and even if she’s not a saint she’s dead and so can’t hurt you…
Sister Ursula presses into the eyelid with her nail.
The painted wax is old and fragile, no longer pliable.
It cracks under the pressure. She digs her nail in deeper, then brushes away the shards of wax, shuddering at the feel of the lashes against her fingertip and the soft, dry sounds the wax makes as it falls into the box.
The glass eye underneath is cloudy, though no doubt it’s just residue from the wax, and it’ll come off with a bit of water and soap and a clean cloth.
She breaks away more wax until she can grip the eye and pull it out. When she holds it in her hand, she laughs softly, nervously, then quickly stops, because she still can’t shake the feeling that Sister Anna is aware of her and won’t appreciate being laughed at.
She tucks the eye into her pocket—not the one with her rosary, because glass eyes are fragile and she can’t risk breaking it—then starts digging out the second eye.
She uses both hands this time, working fast and recklessly, because the fear that has dogged her every step of the way is still breathing down her neck, ready to pounce.
The sooner she can leave this place and be with Elsebeth again, the better. She shouldn’t be alone right now.
But you’re not.
Sister Anna is here.
Sister Ursula shudders violently. A great chunk of the waxen face breaks off, crumbles between her fingers. She only just manages to grab the eye; at least the little layer of wax coating it means it’s not slippery in the way glass usually is.
The mask is ruined now, and underneath, speckled with crumbs of wax, part of Sister Anna’s face is visible.
Don’t look, Sister Ursula tells herself as soon as she realizes this, both because she fears the image will haunt her and because she remembers Elsebeth’s warning to not look the dead in the eye because that will give them power over her.
She hadn’t heard of that before, but so far, Elsebeth hasn’t steered her wrong, and even if this is merely superstition, it won’t do any harm to heed it.
But it is already too late.
She is looking.
Unlike the mask, which gave the impression of soft, supple skin, Sister Anna’s face looks like leather in various shades of brown and yellow, all tough and strangely shiny. Time has eaten away part of her nose and her eyelid, but not the eye.
It should have gone cloudy, then rotted. It should have sunken and shriveled as a raisin before disappearing altogether, but it hasn’t. It’s round, and wet, and clear, and it is looking right at her.
Something seems to leap from that eye straight into Sister Ursula’s mind. She stands frozen, her throat so small she can barely breathe, let alone scream.
She doesn’t know for how long she looks into that terrible eye, pale and sharp as a chip of ice. It has no lid to blink with, and so there is nothing to break the spell. It’s only when another piece of wax from the mask crumbles and obscures the eye that Sister Ursula finds she can move again.
She stumbles back, her breath coming in great gasping heaves.
With the glass eye still clutched tightly in her fist, she runs up the stairs, taking them two at a time.
She steps on the hem of her dress, stumbles, bruises her knees and scrapes her hands, but she doesn’t drop the glass eye, and she doesn’t stop, not until she is out in the light again.
Elsebeth is standing close to the door with their meager belongings packed and ready to leave.
When she sees Sister Ursula, her eyes widen, and the tightness in Sister Ursula’s chest and throat lets up a little.
How could she ever think those gray eyes were harsh?
Compared to those of Sister Anna, they are as soft as a pigeon’s down.
“Where were you?” Elsebeth asks. “I called for you, but you did not heed me. What is wrong? You look sickly.”
Sister Ursula sways. Relief has made her light-headed, and she can’t feel her feet anymore.
Immediately, Elsebeth grabs her to steady her, then feels her forehead for any signs of fever, makes her stick out her tongue, sniffs her breath.
She undoes the top buttons of Sister Ursula’s dress and rubs her throat, then puts her fingers into the other woman’s armpits.
“No buboes, thank God, so what ails you?”
Wordlessly, Sister Ursula takes Elsebeth’s hand, which the girl balled into a fist as soon as she was done using it to check Sister Ursula for signs of the plague.
Her Liebchen, always ready to fight everything and everyone.
She uncurls those beloved fingers and places the two glass eyes on her palm.
Elsebeth’s own eyes grow large. “Where did you get those?”
But Sister Ursula’s throat is still so tight, she can’t speak. She just rests her head on Elsebeth’s shoulder and allows herself to be comforted by the feel and heat and scent of her.
“Come,” Elsebeth says after a little while. “I’ve looked at the map, and it’s not so far anymore to the saint’s grave, three days of travel at the most.” Elsebeth takes hold of Sister Ursula’s chin, makes the woman look her in the eye.
“It’s almost over now,” she promises, two lines of determination carved between her brows. “Let’s leave this awful place behind and get you your wish.”