Chapter 24 #3
“Ooh.” I fumbled with the bottle, almost dropping it into the water.
With cautious fingers, I massaged her scalp, mindful of any hidden injuries lurking under her hair.
Shoulders hunched, she remained stiff, tense even, under my touch, however gentle.
It was no surprise; she was a heathen, and unwarranted touching between us was penanceable outside the templum…
flaying, I recalled. They’d peel the skin from your arm like a corn husk, then season the muscle underneath with salt until you fainted.
Instead of pulling away, I changed my rhythm, trying to mimic the circular rubbing of my mother’s hands in my hair—the kind that once lulled me to sleep in our wooden tub by the hearth.
Rounded motions, then a slight pull behind the ears, finishing with soft scratches from the base of the neck to the crown of the skull.
After a while, her shoulders slumped and she leaned back, her head resting on the small of my shoulder.
I found myself smiling, looking down upon her, both her eyes now shut.
She was beautiful, defiantly so, and in spite of it all, an elegant sharpness to her features that was so dissimilar to the rounded softness of my own.
Her breathing slowed, like she was asleep, and I rinsed the last suds from her strands.
The high-pitched trill of a bell had Esioul jerking away, her eye snapping open. We swivelled in the water, my arm strapped to my chest, towards the source of the tinkling.
A woman watched us, or I assumed she did, her eyes and nose hidden by the flap of her headdress.
With one hand pressed to her heart and the other clutching a bell, she tinkled it with chubby hands, its dainty peal bouncing off the tiles: a silent sister—the only sect of women who served the Dendralis, spared from the offerings.
I did not know how one became a silent sister.
“Chosen,” the druids had told us, “selected by the Blood God Himself.”
I marvelled at her, unused to the sight of one.
They were usually kept hidden, emerging only for the occasional ceremony, and like their namesake, silent.
“All take a vow of soundlessness,” Capriche’d revealed.
“A pledge of submission and surrender to His divine rule. What need is there to speak when you need only but listen?”
A crimson scarf knotted her throat like an apple.
Its bulk forced her chin forward, giving her an air of reverence, as if mid-prayer, her head tilted back by unseen hands, just the rectangle of her mouth visible, half-cast in shadow.
A squared, boxy headdress framed her face, fastened by another scarf, this one grey, like her long-sleeved dress.
No colour, save for the red at her throat. How long had she been there?
She tinkled the bell again, pinched delicately between two short fingers of her outstretched hand. Attaching it to a small loop at her waist, she beckoned us to leave the bath, turning on her heel. As she moved towards the preparation chamber, a faint jingling accompanied each step.
“Why druids need to hear silent sister coming?” Esioul asked, limping to fall in step beside me, a trail of watery footprints marking our path.
Why, indeed.
As the Butcher promised, waiting for us and folded into neat piles were basic undergarments, grey woollen dresses, and leather slippers.
Esioul’s fingers brushed over the fabric, stroking the fibres before bringing it to her nose and sniffing like a mouse does a crumb of cheese.
Though not the coarsest of weaves, it was far from the finest, either—but compared to pits’ yarn, it must have felt like the smoothest of silks.
I helped her into it, not waiting to be asked, lifting it over her wet hair and tying the laces at the back. She let me.
I pulled mine over my head, not bothering with the bindings, eager to cover myself in front of the sister’s hidden eyes. Dress secured, I twiddled my sleeves under her assessing gaze from beneath the fabric, fingers hunting for something that wasn’t there. My stomach dropped.
The buttons.
I fell to my hands and knees, hunting for my old dress, should it still be under one of the benches or bundled in a corner. What had the Butcher said? Something about them being burned? Or was that just Esioul’s?
A loud ringing, perilously close to my ear, froze me in place.
Hands set across wide hips, the silent sister loomed over me, her small mouth downturned.
In the candlelight, her skin resembled homespun wool, dipped and raised with scars—no doubt the remnants of a bout of the pox—covering the expanse of her jaw and lower cheeks, the only part of her I could see.
Pressing one finger, trembling slightly, to her lips, she motioned ‘up’ with her other hand, tension wrought into her every movement.
“My dress, the one I was wearing before…do you know where it went? I need it—”
“Si-lent sis-ter.” Esioul sounded out over her shoulder, enunciating each syllable. “Si-lent,” she repeated, shaking her head. “She no reply, Helikri.”
Whatever she saw in my expression had her rounding the sister to stand next to me, one eye softening.
“Dress gone.” She tugged at my shoulder with her good hand. “We go. I hungry.” Rubbing her stomach, it gurgled, as if awakened by her touch. “We. Get. Food?” Esioul almost shouted, each syllable making me wince.
“She may not be able to speak, but she can hear us, you know.” I rose to my feet, an empty feeling gnawing at my insides, the hollow widening with yet another loss.
“Could you ask the Butch—Druid Vetrius where they have taken my dress?” I tried, wringing out my hair, a patch of darkened wool spreading at my breast. “I have two buttons sewn onto its sleeves that are…” My request dissolved to nothing with a dismissive wave of her hand and another finger pressed to her lips.
With a sharp spin, she motioned us to leave, bringing her hand to her mouth in a clear, universal signal for ‘food’. Despite her limp, Esioul all but skipped to the arch.
My appetite had long since vanished, along with the small kernel of peace I had felt while washing Esioul’s hair.
My dress was gone, the buttons most likely destroyed.
We were trapped in a templum, Demetri somewhere unknown, and in the morning, the Butcher would begin examining my blood—whatever that entailed, and most likely for nought.
I shadowed the two women, all of us as silent as the sister, padding our way through the templum, already feeling like a ghost.