Chapter 13 #2
This time, I didn’t bother to pay attention to the labyrinth of halls—I treated them like the forest and kept my mind fixed on where I was heading, and where the house itself turned me toward.
But I stepped as quietly as possible, afraid to alert some hidden horror or trip across some strange enchantment.
It wasn’t long before I stood at the top of the long hall where Lord Death had left me the day before. Given a true direction, my mind had ceased it’s racing and focused only on the tasks. Gripping the keys tight, I walked the entire length of the hall twice, inspecting each door as I went.
The doors were identical—wooden and arched, set into stone.
He’d told me to work through them one by one, but he hadn’t mentioned where to begin.
How would I choose the right one? The question nearly paralyzed me from choosing at all, but I finally stopped at the first door on the right side of the hall; it seemed logical, at least, to start at the beginning and work my way down.
I pulled out the keys. They clinked in a taunting chitter like bones, and the sound frightened me so much I gasped and dropped them.
I would not pass any trial if I didn’t get my head right.
They keys hadn’t sounded alive, they’d sounded only strange.
And everything here was strange. I felt Rochelle’s hand slipping through my fingers all over again, and it shook me out of my stupor.
Even though Death had insisted it had been an illusion of my own desire, the feeling was too personal, too deep to simply forget.
I could not fail her again, even if she wasn’t here.
Taking a deep breath, I picked up the keys and squinted at the keyhole.
The iron surrounding the keyhole was molded into a cross and pulpit shape, and I checked for a match, grasping each key tight in my fist so they would not make a sound.
I found three that looked promising. The second one I tried worked, and the door swung open.
I stepped into a void, the torchlight to my back.
The sound of murmuring Latin drifted from deep within the dark.
I almost turned around right there. Churches? It was as if Death knew how much I hated them, how my very body twitched with the memory of pain under the whispering Latin, the overbearing cross, the flicker of candles. Sweat beaded on my forehead, but I forced myself forward.
The candles emerged first. Then the priest in amber relief, hands raised as he spoke. It took a moment for my mind to understand the impossibility. This was the Riquewihr church.
Prostitutes were not forbidden from services in Riquewihr, but they had to remain in the back of the nave, standing.
For all Dacia cajoled, she had never convinced me to go.
I had no interest in huddling in the back like a flock of ravens with our black cloaks covering our dresses and curled hair.
I knew how it felt to be condemned from my years with the nuns.
I remembered how my feet had hurt. My knees had hurt.
God would not be saving me, no matter how many prayers or candles I lit.
I had run from God, after all. But the truth the nuns had never admitted was that God had abandoned me the moment of my birth.
Even the priest was the Riquewihr priest, an aging man who would come to the brothel for Christine—not for her to lie with him exactly, but to strip naked and lie against his skin.
“Warming,” he called it. “The church stones are so cold.” And I had always thought it a strange image of the priest, the church his bride, hard and unyielding against his passion, his body.
And so of course he paid Christine, who was soft and pliable and looked every inch a noblewoman, except that she was under Josef’s thatched roof.
The illusion of our village rites was so complete, the world narrowed to this room and its rules and my panic.
I forgot all about my flight into the forest and the magic I had already done in Death’s home.
Instead, I was small and mean and worthless once again.
In a dreamy haze, transfixed by the spectacle, I realized I’d walked too far toward the front, but when I looked back for the nave where I could slip in behind the rest of the somber black cloaks and other undesirables, something seemed changed. I looked down.
I was no longer wearing my blue dress. Or even the cloak of a prostitute, which would fit the illusion.
Instead, my cloak, my tunic, my veil, all were the length and breadth of a noblewoman’s.
Finer spun than even the finest weavers in the nunnery could produce.
Trimmed with glimmering thread and fur on my cloak.
A gold chain hung heavy on my neck. I spotted the cluster of prostitutes where Dacia would be, but though I tried to hurry toward them, I never got any closer.
The room simply wouldn’t allow it. A sheen of sweat erupted on my brow as it felt for one sickening moment that the edges of the room swirled away like blowing sand.
This was where I belonged. I was known as a prostitute.
I was unclean. I didn’t have the patronage.
To be anywhere other than the very back, with the other people like me, would mean a public judgment—put in stocks or even, in some cases, drowned.
But still the room herded me forward, trapped in a dream where I kept running but could not move.
The door. Frantic, I looked for the small crack in the illusion, the wavering torchlight of the chateau hallway I knew lay just beyond it.
It was still open, close enough that I could see the edge of the blue carpets.
But I could get no farther, and I realized in horror that I was almost to the altar.
The new baron and baroness were seated to my left.
I couldn’t see their faces, but I recognized that fur trim on his robe.
They sat in the pew they paid for, at the place of highest importance at the front of the congregation.
The pew opposite them was open, and I knew, in that dream-magic way, that I was supposed to sit there.
Sweat dripped down my back under the layers of finery.
The congregation stood and I spun in a panic, thinking they were coming to seize and drag me off.
The village crowded in the aisle, coming toward me like a mass of bugs from some uncovered hole.
They would take me like they had Valerie.
They would burn me alive. The smell of crisping flesh flooded my nose. I screamed, but no sound came out.
The crowd split around me. As if I weren’t there. Sweeping me forward. Jostling around me like struck cattle, never saying a word.
They were only lining up to receive the sacraments.
Relief eased some of my panic. I was like one of those gruesome spirits, caught in the flow of life like a rag in the wind.
I grabbed the arm of a woman passing me, but she somehow slipped away and didn’t look back.
Notice me. Kick me out! The winds of my emotions reversed so quickly I felt breathless in the tumult.
I caught the eye of the man behind me—a farmer I recognized.
He met my eyes but looked blank, as if he looked at nothing.
Darkness swallowed everything but the circle of wavering light thrown on the stone by the altar candles.
The priest kept his low murmur of absolution, but there was no absolution for me there.
I moved along with the others, sweating like a pig in my elaborate dress and veil.
The woman ahead of me kneeled and received his blessing.
I couldn’t see where she went. I stood before the priest. He looked expectant and I did not know what else to do. I kneeled.
He looked at me with the knowing all men have, a knowing that always laid like a thick film over my skin.
He knew me, would recognize me. He’d once laid naked between me and Dacia.
Sweat gathered at my temples as he looked at me.
I was on my knees, head tipped so far back my veil shifted back and my breasts strained at the edge of my dress.
Slowly, I extended my tongue. My heart thrilled when he lowered the Communion wafer toward me.
“Come closer, my child,” he said. “Don’t be scared.”
I was already close enough to cling to his robes. He looked at me and I at him, and then, as if drawn by an unseen force, I straightened and looked over my shoulder.
Behind me, a merchant’s wife stood clothed in a simple brown tunic and white veil. She sank onto her knees, her eyes downcast and pious, blush fresh and pink on her gleaming cheek. Everything about her screamed maidenly and innocent.
And then she lifted her chin and she was no one.
I reared back, falling onto the steps and the priests’ robes. She was no longer a flesh-and-blood woman, she was a spirit in rags, fury and hunger, lunging for my neck, hands outstretched.
I forgot that I had entered this moment of my own free will, that she could not truly hurt me. I scrambled frantically across the floor to keep from her hands.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a door on the side of the altar.
It was small and arched and I could have sworn it had not been there before.
I suddenly felt the weight and clink of the keys still in my pocket.
The keys! I remembered some of myself and bolted for the door, slamming it shut against the horror behind me.
I found myself in a grand hall. It’s arched ceiling and walls were lined with rich tapestries woven of golden threads that caught the glimmering candlelight and made it seem as if I floated in a world woven by the gods.
The room was filled with strangers in rich clothes that whispered and winked light with every breath, and it felt like they were all oriented around the center point of the room.
I turned.