Chapter 31
Elsebeth
Ursula jerks, and she groans, and then she sits up. Her head lolls, causing the terrible wound in her throat to gape open. Her eyelids are at half-mast, her eyes like that of a sleepwalker, all empty.
“I regret I have to do this, I really do,” the necromancer says, “but if you insist on being difficult, then I see no other way.”
He makes Ursula stand, and it’s all wrong. She never held herself like this, so stiff and strange.
I almost gulp down the little bone still in my mouth; I had forgotten it was there. I spit it back into the grave for fear I might choke on it otherwise. “Don’t,” I beg, though I know not whether I am talking to Ursula or the necromancer. “Don’t do this, please. It’s not right.”
“We are beyond that now, Elsebeth,” the necromancer sighs.
When Ursula moves toward me, it’s in the manner of a child who has scarcely learned how to walk, but it is fast, and it is terrible.
Those beautiful hands of hers, which have brought me such pleasure, grasp for me, and I sob with the horror of it even as I dash out of her way. “Don’t, don’t, don’t,” I moan as she comes at me again with her arms outstretched.
Widdershins, she chases me around the grave. Although I am close enough to the necromancer for him to grab me and pluck the bones from my hand, he does nothing but stand back and watch, giggling all the while.
With every jarring step Ursula makes, the tear at her throat widens and then closes again like a mouth. There’s this horrible gurgling sound that comes from it.
It’s only when I stumble and the gurgling intensifies that I realize it’s laughter.
Ursula—no not Ursula only her body it’s just her body being moved about like a puppet for Ursula would never not ever ever—straddles me. She wraps her cool white hands around my throat and squeezes.
I have often felt pain, and yet there’s nothing that compares to the horrible ache of having your throat pressed shut.
Instinctively, I try to push her away from me, but she is much taller than I am, and the way she is sitting on me makes it hard to buck. I grab her hands instead, try and pry them loose, but her grip is iron.
The only way to stop the restless dead is to behead them or set them on fire. I have no means to make a fire, though mayhap if I grab Ursula’s hair and pull hard enough, her head will tear away from her neck; the wound the necromancer made is awfully deep.
I don’t want to hurt her, but what choice do I have? The blood beating in my head is loud as a drum of war. My lungs are burning, my throat is aching, and black spots float in my vision.
I let go of her wrists. My fingers have gone numb and feel more like sacks of needles than meat and bone.
“I am sorry,” I try to say, but I’ve no breath to spare and can hear naught but the desperate pumping of my heart.
With all my strength, I punch Ursula’s chin.
Her head snaps back. The wound at her throat widens, a spurt of fluid that may be blood or something else entirely shooting out and only narrowly missing my face.
Her hands loosen, and that is all I need.
I flip on my belly and wriggle out from under her.
I gulp in the air, drinking it the way a drunkard does wine, eagerly, quickly, and as much as I can, and it matters not that each breath is liquid fire that scorches my throat and makes my eyes tear.
And then Ursula is coming for me again, and I am not fast enough to crawl away from her, not when there’s still flecks of dark in my vision and I am coughing and choking.
“Please!” I gasp. “Please, God, help me. Save me!”
“God won’t come for you,” the necromancer sneers.
Ursula grabs me by the hair and drags me back. She kicks me in the belly, and it drives all the air from my lungs once more. I curl around the pain, try to make myself small as she keeps kicking me. One of her kicks catches me in the face, and my mouth instantly floods with blood.
“Please,” I choke, blood dribbling out between my lips. “Please, God, help me.”
If He exists, He must help me, for it’s not right that I, who have suffered so much already, shall be pummeled to death at the hands of my beloved’s corpse.
“Please, God, please, please,” I babble.
The necromancer’s voice whispers in my ear, “Save your breath, you stupid girl. Look around you. Do you see God here? He has forsaken us. He won’t aid you.”
And I believe him, for nothing happens without God willing it, and so if God did not will this, then He would have stopped it by now.
Mayhap this is punishment for falling in with papists, or being so greedy as to think I could get my family back when God has called them to Him. Mayhap I deserve this for all the filth that stains my soul, for I am a sickening sinner, aren’t I? I know I am.
Yes, mayhap the best thing to do is to lie back and take it; there’s a good girl.
Or mayhap there is no reason for any of this, for there is no God, and I am no more than a stupid peasant girl being beaten to a pulp by someone bigger and stronger than me just because they can.
Those soldiers who raped my big sister, Margarethe, to death were bigger and stronger than me, as were Gottfried, the Nachzehrer, and the necromancer.
They are always bigger and stronger than me.
Why are they always bigger and stronger than me?
I am sick of it.
It’s as that witch said, the one I saw burned when still a girl: this is a cruel world, and poor women such as she should grab any crumb of power they can get their hands on.
Poor women such as I.
As I dance at the edge of unconsciousness, which feels a little like flying, I whisper through my broken and bloodied mouth, “Satan, help me, please.”
There is a sudden drop in the air of the kind that normally heralds a thunderstorm.
Ursula stops beating and kicking me.
I lie very still for a moment. In places, my skin feels too tight for the flesh underneath.
My legs, back, belly, chest, neck, throat, and head all ache, throb, and burn, and I am afraid I have been hurt in some way that won’t heal and might worsen if I move now.
I breathe out slowly, letting a little blood dribble out of my mouth.
I tongue my teeth carefully. None have been broken, but the molars in my left upper jaw are sore and feel loose, so I shall have to take care not to chew on that side.
Something cool and smooth touches my cheek.
I open my eyes, or try to. The left one has almost swollen shut, and blood has leaked into my right one. It paints the world red.
The necromancer and Ursula stand frozen, he with that smug, gloating look on his face that I dearly desire to peel away with something small and sharp, she still looking like a sleepwalker.
I sit up and look around to see what brushed my cheek so tenderly, and I find it only a few feet away from me.
I thought Satan would be a dark and handsome man with cloven feet and the horns of a ram, or mayhap a red-haired woman with broad hips and full breasts.
But to me, as he did to Eve, he comes in the guise of a large snake, black and gleaming like oil.
The snake has raised itself, and now that I am sitting, we are of the same height.
Its eyes are orange and intelligent, and they are looking at me expectantly.
I make to spit out the blood still in my mouth, but I don’t want to give offense, so I swallow instead, wincing at the pain. Say I, “I have conjured you here, that I may barter with you. Tell me: Do you understand me, and are you Satan?”
“I am he,” the snake says. It doesn’t open its mouth, but I hear its voice clearly in my head, not the harsh hiss of a snake in distress, but a soft, sweet whisper, so cool and slippery it makes me shiver, though from fear or delight, I know not.
There are many questions inside of my head, but the one that makes it into my mouth and tumbles out first is this one: “Have you power over time? Is that why the necromancer and Ursula are so still?”
The devil says, “I have made it so they cannot move, but time still flows onward.”
“Can they hear and see us?”
“The necromancer can. The nun is just a corpse devoid of its soul, and so neither hears nor sees.”
That makes my heart flutter. “Where is Ursula’s soul now?
In Heaven or Hell?” For if it is in Heaven, I shall leave it there, no matter that the loss of her ravages me and we shall not meet again, for if a papist can get into Heaven, I think that a lapsed Calvinist sinner such as I stands not a chance.
The snake says, “She might be, and she might not.”
I frown, but it pulls painfully on the swollen skin of my face, so I try to smooth my brow once more. “What sort of answer is that?”
“The only one you shall get from me. I know many things, but not all, and some of the things I do know I cannot share.” The devil’s snake head bobs this way and that. It’s strangely soothing to look at. “Now tell me, child, what is it you desire?” he asks in his whisper voice.
“What can you give me?”
“I can give you pretty dresses and ribbons for your hair. I can give you butter, cream, and bread every day of your life. I can give you a pretty wench to dally with who will pleasure you with her hands and mouth until you forget even your own name.”
“What care I for that?” I may be a sinner, but I am not vain, I am not greedy, and though I may at times be lustful, it’s only Ursula I lust after.
“Then what is it you desire?”
I take my time to answer, for I know from my grandmother’s stories and the necromancer’s tale that I shall only have the one chance, and I must be both polite and precise, and thus give Satan no way to cheat me.
“That man over there is one of your servants. He sold his soul to you in exchange for power over death, that he might return his wife to the land of the living and keep her there until he gave her leave to die.”
“What is it you desire?” the snake repeats.