Chapter 27
Elsebeth
Ursula and I have to travel two more days before we find the necromancer and Otto.
It’s only through luck that we do, or mayhap through God.
After all, it is said that nothing happens without Him willing it, and for One who made the world, making sure that Ursula and I find these two men must be a little thing indeed.
It’s evening when we come upon them, and almost dark. They have already set up their camp for the night. Ursula and I hide ourselves in the bracken and study them as Otto cooks a rabbit they have caught.
When I was still Gottfried’s whore, I was terrified of Otto, who seemed a giant to me, so strong, loud, and rough.
I took care never to be alone with him, for fear he might rape or otherwise hurt me, simply because he could.
Men like him take what they please whenever it pleases them, and though I knew he did not think me beautiful, for I have never been so blessed, I have found that beauty does not matter when men are possessed by lust. He might even have taken me just to spite Gottfried.
Men so love to spoil and break one another’s toys.
Now, Otto’s hard face is much rotted. His nose has fallen off, leaving a dark hole, and his cheeks look gray and pulpy, like fruit threaded through with mold.
If I were to push my finger against that rotted meat, it would go straight through.
His broad shoulders have shrunken and are rounded, and his hand trembles as he lifts the spoon to his face to sniff the stew he’s cooking.
Some of his fingers are just bone and bits of stringy tendon now.
A part of me pities him, this mercenary who once inspired terror but is now no more than a corrupting corpse.
A different part of me revels to see him brought so low.
Ursula and I retreat to a safe distance so we can discuss what to do next in low voices.
Around us, the wind rattles the branches of the trees.
With the fall of night comes this rich smell of damp earth and leaves; the fields will likely be studded with dew come morning.
We shall have to travel far and fast, or the grass shall mark every step and make us easy to track.
But that comes after we have taken back the skull.
With the gauze, the eyes, and some embroidery, we have managed to make our skull look enough like the saint’s skull that the necromancer won’t notice the deception if only he doesn’t look too closely.
“I shall creep into the camp when they are both asleep and switch the skulls,” say I.
Ursula interlaces her fingers with mine, and I marvel once more at how perfectly our hands fit. “I shall come with you,” she says.
“Why? Two women are more likely to make a noise than one.”
“You might find that an extra pair of hands comes in useful, and I don’t want to be a coward.”
I squeeze her long lean fingers. “I know you’re no coward. You needn’t prove yourself to me.”
“All the same, I am coming,” she says, her forehead all lined with stubbornness. And because she speaks sense about an extra pair of hands mayhap being useful, and because I like her forehead best when unfrowned, I agree.
We wait for a long time after the necromancer and Otto have banked the fire and crawled underneath their blankets, for we want to be as certain as we can be that they are asleep. Then, Ursula and I creep into their camp, our muscles taut and our hearts beating in our throats.
The necromancer took the skull out of her box before he went to bed.
It rests in the crook of his sleep-slack arm, his fingers tangled in the red hair.
I wait for Ursula to lift it so I can replace it with the fake skull now tucked under my arm.
She reaches for it, then suddenly grabs my arm, squeezes it very hard.
I look at her to see what has upset her so, then follow her gaze to the necromancer’s face.
For a moment, I freeze, my heart bucking in my chest.
His eyes are open, and he is watching us.
It is all over. We won’t reunite the saint with her body; we won’t get our wish. Instead, we’ll die here, in this field, where the ravens and the foxes will pick over our bones, and…
The necromancer doesn’t reach for us, doesn’t spring to his feet, shout, and work his black magic, and when my mind finally understands why that is, I almost laugh, it’s all so silly.
He sleeps with his eyes open, I mouth to Ursula.
She briefly closes her own eyes, relief turning her mouth loose and sweet. When she opens them again, she takes hold of the skull. Slowly, carefully, she lifts it.
The necromancer twitches.
We freeze. My heart drums in my chest, and my hands are wet with sweat.
Ursula takes a shuddering breath, then slowly continues to extract the skull.
Her hair brushes against his fingers, and he clenches them in his sleep, trapping a lock between them.
I have no choice but to kneel next to him, our fake saint balanced in my lap.
I daren’t touch his fingers. Instead, I take a blade of grass and raise it to his face.
Without looking into his animal eyes—I fear that, if I am to look into them too long, he shall trap me in his gaze until he wakes—I brush the grass against his cheek.
He grunts as he lets go of the saint’s hair to rub at his face.
Quickly, Ursula plucks the skull from his grasp. Again he grunts, his left leg twitching. I push the fake skull into the hollow of the necromancer’s arm before he can wake.
Ursula’s eyes meet mine, and I smile at her, for the hardest part is done now.
All that remains is leaving these two behind and making our way to the saint’s burial place as fast as our legs can carry us, for we know not how she has been buried.
If she has been laid to rest in a stone tomb, for example, it shall likely be hard to get into, and…
When I turn around, I find that Otto is awake and watching me.
I expect him to run his sword through me, or to shout and thus wake the necromancer, and I instinctively reach for my little knife so I can cut him down.
Instead, he clears his throat, pain flickering over his face, and says, “Please don’t take the skull. It isn’t what you think it is, Elsebeth.” His voice, too, is a weak thing now, all used up, as he soon will be, too; dead things rot down to bone within days in the summertime.
“Shut your mouth!” I hiss. I glance at the necromancer from the corner of my eye to see if he’s stirring out of his sleep, but he lies unmoving.
Otto goes on as if he has not heard me, or mayhap he has but doesn’t care. If he has ever heeded a woman’s word, it must have been his mother’s or his wife’s, not a peasant girl’s he deems no better than a whore. “It’s not a saint’s skull,” he says.
“Hold your lying tongue, or I shall cut it out for you!”
“I’m not lying. The necromancer has told me so himself. It’s the skull of his wife. She is like me: dead, and yet somehow not, because he brought her back to life.”
Ursula dashes toward Otto, presses the blade of her own little knife against his throat.
Otto tilts his head back, but lazily, as if Ursula is more likely to shave than to stab him, though mayhap it’s because his muscles and tendons have hardened, and it’s not so easy for him to move quickly anymore.
He has a wound there stitched up with black thread.
It’s poor work, the stitches large and uneven.
“Elsebeth told you to hold your tongue,” Ursula whispers.
Otto swallows, which makes his Adam’s apple bob in his throat. It scrapes against the knife. “I mean only to warn you,” he whispers back. “You are risking your life for nothing. If only you’d let me explain, I—”
He hisses, for Ursula has cut him with the knife. What wells up from the cut is not blood, but a clear fluid that smells strongly of alcohol and vinegar. Has Otto been pickled so that he may last longer? Laughter burbles in my throat, makes my face spasm.
“You lie,” Ursula says. She is very calm, her hand very steady, and I find that I am a little afraid of her, for I have never seen her so.
“I think you may not be able to help it. You are in league with Satan, after all, that lord of lies. All the same, Elsebeth and I won’t be deceived by you.
Now here is what will happen: Elsebeth and I will take this skull, you won’t raise the alarm, you won’t tell the necromancer what has happened, and you won’t come after us. Understood?”
Again, Otto swallows. The nick Ursula made opens and closes as a baby bird’s beak. “I can’t,” he whispers. “I am not free to make my own choices. I’m sorry.”
He takes a shuddering breath. Then, quick as a snake, he rears back, out of reach of the knife, and smashes his fist against Ursula’s face. She crumples without a sound, the knife tumbling from her hand. Otto catches the skull with both hands before it can smash to pieces on the ground.
Seeing Ursula lie on the ground with her eyes half-open but seeing nothing in the manner of a corpse, I run a little mad again.
I growl like a dog and rush at Otto. With his hands full of skull, he can’t fend me off.
With my trusty little knife, I hack at the back of his left leg, cutting through flesh, muscle, and tendon.
Otto cries out as he falls to his knees.
I kick him hard in the chest, so he falls to his back.
Something inside of his rump crunches. Even before he’s down, I sit on his knees to keep him from rising, and I plunge the little knife into his belly as deep as it can go. I pull it out, plunge it back in.
Over and over again I stab him in his belly, hard and fast.
He may be dead, but that doesn’t mean he can’t feel pain, and it doesn’t mean he can’t be destroyed, either.
Otto grunts and groans but doesn’t let go of the skull to defend himself as I make a mess of his belly. The smell of rot, vinegar, and alcohol is so thick in the air, I can taste it with every breath, and though it makes me heave, it is good, and it is sweet.
I only stop stabbing him when the knife slithers out of my hand. It’s all slippery with this stinking sludge made up of bits of rotting flesh and whatever juice the necromancer has used to pickle him.
Ursula has come around now. She gets to her feet, sways, presses one hand to her aching head.
With the other, she reaches for the skull.
Together, we take it from Otto. He struggles, but only a little.
Mayhap he’s glad to be relieved of it; this way, he can finally press his hands against his belly to try and keep everything inside.
For good measure, I spit in his face. “I told you I’d gut you like a pig if you touched Ursula. Should’ve believed me,” I snarl.
When I stoop to pick up my knife, I see the necromancer is awake and sitting up. His goat eyes glow in the dark like two golden coins catching sunlight, and the sight is so unsettling, I drop the knife again.
“Otto?” he asks, the words sleep-slurred.
“Quick, quick!” I tell Ursula. I move the skull to the crook of my arm.
It’s all soiled, its red hair sticking to the mesh in great clumps as the fluid from Otto’s belly begins to clot.
I wrap my free arm around her waist so I can support her and keep her from falling.
A blow to the head can leave a person sick and dizzy.
“What has happened? What have you done?” the necromancer asks, and there’s nothing sleepy about his voice now.
We run.