[Angelika Fleischer 02] - Sacred Flesh Read online

  Ivo talked. “But we can speak in general, yes? You mean only that arguments are forbidden.”

  She smacked him in the mouth.

  “Ow,” he said, touching his lips, looking for blood. There was none. The faintest of red spots could be seen where she’d struck him.

  “If you see trouble,” elaborated Angelika, “speak up. Otherwise, keep your traps shut, all of you, till I say otherwise.”

  The cowed pilgrims kept quiet as they made their way through tall grass and up a steep incline. They indulged in muted whispers as they panted up the side of a brambly hill. They laughed and gossiped across an alpine meadow, tromping on periwinkles and flattening fields of queenslace.

  By the time they trudged across a barren plateau, a purple sunset flared up behind them, and they returned to their full-throated chattering, as if they were drunken patrons in some cavernous Altdorf mutton house. Angelika shushed them, to only momentary avail. She found a patch of sod clinging tenaciously to the plateau’s granite face, and decided that this was as good a place as any to camp for the night. It was out in the open, so they would he exposed to the view of hostile roamers—but her sentries would then have plenty of time to spot charging marauders and sound the alarm.

  She ordered the group to a halt and told them to start pitching their tents. Complaints began. The prioress said she’d hoped to camp near water, so that her morning ablutions might be performed as usual. Ivo Kirchgeld clutched his hands to his upper arms, suggesting they find a place where the wind would not blow on them.

  Thomas Krieger gasped from his stretcher, “Do as she says. She works for your safety.”

  The complainers seemed abashed for a moment, then set about fumbling with their tents and bedrolls. Angelika and Franziskus went among them, helping them pound in pegs and screw support poles together. Half of the tents were completely inadequate and impossible to erect even in a slight breeze; the other half were expensive and surprisingly elaborate. The tent of Stefan Recht, the advocate, took the form of a small chapel and had more floor space than any room Angelika had ever lived in and required half an hour to put in place. Recht sputtered briefly when Angelika ordered him to take in all of the pilgrims whose tents could not be put up. He gave in quickly after seeing the angry light in her eyes.

  Without needing to be ordered, Richart and Brother Lemoine scaled down the side of the plateau into the wooded area below, in search of firewood. They came back with armfuls of dead branches. Caution dictated that Angelika let them build only a small fire that could be quickly extinguished. But the bedraggled pilgrims, damp with sweat and chilled by a steady mountain breeze, seemed to need a lift in spirits. As vexing as they might have been, they’d made it safely through a day of hard travelling. A good flame would be their reward.

  Franziskus expertly piled the collected branches and set to work with his flint and tinder. Soon the group sat huddled and mesmerised around a reaching blaze. They watched the progress of the bluest licks of flame eating away at beech wood and pine bark. Franziskus circled the pilgrims, gazing abashedly at Devorah, whose lovely skin had turned ruddy in the damp, chill air. He looked down at the spot on the ground beside her. The prioress bustled her robe and settled in closer to the young sister, all the while flashing Franziskus a warning look. He cleared his throat and wandered off, as if to check on the tents. The prioress laid her head on Devorah’s shoulder and was soon gently snoring, her lips periodically rippling, her eyes moving restlessly beneath their lids.

  “Some pilgrimage this is,” said the widow, Kinge Kloster. She shook the rusty curls of her hair and attempted to settle her generous rump into a more comfortable position.

  “What have you got to complain about?” asked Ivo Kirchgeld, his peevish voice fluting up. “At least you don’t have to withstand the constant abuse of ignorant, chattering magpies.” Angelika watched temptation flit across the faces of Ivo’s adversaries, Waldemar and Jurg, but they refused the bait, contenting themselves with a few modest grumping noises.

  The widow gesticulated enthusiastically, warming to her topic. “Where are the sackbuts? Where are the cornets? Whenever you hear about pilgrimages, in all the epics and romances, you hear of the celebrations of the journey. The fine ales. The ripe cheeses. If I’d known it was all going to be damp ground and waiting for the next round of inhuman creatures to attack, I’d have selected a journey of some other sort.”

  Brother Lemoine, scandalised, pursed his lips and raised his brows. “Good lady, this is not a pleasure jaunt. It’s a holy duty we here undertake.”

  Widow Kloster leaned across Ludwig, the sailor, to tug at the hem of Lemoine’s sleeve. “But we perform it in the name of the goddess of mercy, don’t we?”

  “Certainly,” said Lemoine, gently unhooking his garment from her short-fingered paw. He spoke with the reluctant tone of a man well aware that he was being led into a metaphorical alleyway for a rhetorical mugging.

  “Well,” continued the widow, “if I wanted to show mercy on this wilted gang of sorry sojourners, I’d have music, dancing and wine. Surely Shallya wouldn’t object to any of those things. She isn’t forbidding old Sigmar, with his angry beard and his hauberk spotted with the blood of the unrighteous.”

  “Milady!” gasped Lemoine.

  “Good widow!” sputtered the friar.

  “More blasphemy!” choked the summoner.

  Widow Kloster rocked back on her haunches, pleased with herself. “I bet she’s laughing at your sorry sour faces right this minute. That’s why faith should never be left to the clergy—all you want to do is squeeze all the joy out of living.”

  “There’d be plenty more joy in my life if you’d shut your gob, you nattering old harpy.” It was Ludwig Seeman, the gnarled, white-haired sailor.

  A feline smile flitting across her face, Kloster edged over, forcing the old salt to do the same. “Harpy, is it? It figures that’d be the worst insult you could dredge up.”

  “What are you saying?” Ludwig muttered.

  “It’s my womanly nature that gets up your nose. As a man who’s spent his entire life out on the seas, in the company only of other men, you plainly fear the female species.”

  “Fear?” Ludwig demonstrated his amazement at the idea by hocking a generous wad of spit into the flame, where it briefly fizzed. “I no more fear women than I fear the buzzing gnat, or the crawling earthworm.”

  Kinge caught Angelika in her gaze. “Are you going to let him impugn our sex in this way?”

  Angelika threw up her hands. “You started it.”

  “I know what we can do to while away the time,” said Jurg, brightly. He paused for someone to ask him what this might be. His shivering companions peered at him distrustfully. When it became apparent that no one was prepared to pick up his cue, he said, “We can discuss the provenance of the gewgaw that dangles from the bailiff’s neck!”

  “Oh shut up about that,” said the puffy-faced bailiff.

  “We were interrupted as we discussed this before. Tell us again what that is around your neck.”

  “Just ignore him,” Seeman said.

  But Altman could not. He wobbled to his feet, fumbling under his tunic to produce a length of silver chain. Angelika’s posture straightened, as it always did in the presence of jewellery. At the end of the chain swung a pendant, about the size of a baby’s hand. It was comprised of a ring of rough, crudely worked silver, encircling a smooth chunk of dark, polished wood. Ancient engravings, perhaps runes, incised the setting’s surface; they seemed as if they’d be too worn to read even on close inspection. Angelika frowned; it was merely a religious relic. These were difficult to sell. The settings were usually crude, like this one, rarely worth much for the metals or gems alone. Their value depended on their authenticity, which, in the case of a piece lifted from a corpse, could never be proven.

  Angelika did not believe that even supposedly real divine relics had any miraculous powers, but even if they did, it was not a thing you could test, like the
purity of a gold bracelet. If she were to take Altman’s relic to her buyer, Max, he’d offer, at most, a handful of shillings for it.

  “This is a true piece of Sigmar’s hammer!” the bailiff cried, stepping around the fire to wave it in the miller’s face.

  “I’ve seen a thousand just like it!” the miller laughed.

  “It was splintered off from the handle of the great hammer right here in the Blackfire Pass, at the decisive battle of the World’s Edge Mountains. It was picked up by Sigmar’s banner-bearer, Haug the drummer, who worked this silver with his own famous hands—”

  “In all my surveys of the ancient texts, I’ve never seen any mention of a drummer called Haug,” Waldemar sniffed.

  Altman shook the fist that held the pendant. “He existed then as sure as you and I do now, summoner! Surer! Because it passed down through his family for generation upon generation, then to a noble family of Altdorf, who fell on hard times, whereupon it became collateral for a debt incurred at the gaming table. And then it fell to me, or rather my lord, in lieu of rent, and I paid a solid hundred crowns—a bargain for a thing so holy and potent as this. I paid out of my own pocket for it. And I am not a wealthy man, I assure you. Simply a devout one, who could not bear to see such an object pass into irreverent or ungrateful hands.”

  The miller fell into a fit of laughter so severe he had to gasp for breath. “And you did not for a moment think that perhaps your lord’s tenant was telling you a story, so he could discharge a debt for next to nothing?”

  Altman stuffed the pendant back under his tunic. “He spoke quite sincerely.”

  Jurg wiped tears from his right eye. “And I am sure your master was also sincere, when he allowed you to take the relic off his hands, for a mere hundred.”

  “He was most insistent, in fact.”

  This statement sent Jurg pitching over at the waist, seized again by helpless laughter. Some of the others—the widow, the merchant, the lawyer—who’d been suppressing their amusement, now joined in explosively. Widow Kloster, overcome with laughter, pounded her nemesis, the sailor, on the back. He shifted, to put himself out of her range.

  “Thank you, Jurg,” said the widow, “this is nearly as good as music and beer!”

  Angelika rose to join Franziskus.

  “Remind me never to complain about your company again,” she told him.

  “You’re delirious,” Franziskus said.

  “Outside of your young nun, and possibly the landowner,” Angelika said, “there’s not one of them I wouldn’t love to drown in a good, cold creek.”

  Franziskus turned to steal a pensive look at Devorah. As if detecting his gaze, she turned, blushed, and averted her eyes again. Franziskus flushed. He shook his head; his expression grew serious. “They’re frightened, Angelika. They find themselves a long way from home, in an undertaking that has turned out to be much more dangerous than any of them had reckoned on. They want to trust us to save them, but can you blame them for their apprehension?”

  “Point taken,” said Angelika, heading toward the tent where they’d left poor Krieger.

  “Rather than show their fear, they’re sniping at one another. Be glad they’re squabbling amongst themselves. They could be making us the targets of their blame.”

  “I’d like to see them try.” Angelika slipped into Krieger’s tent. He tossed his head, semi-awake. A fresh trail of drool, diluted with blood, dribbled down his chin. Angelika looked around for a cloth to wipe him with, but there was nothing at hand. She patted her sleeve against his wet lips and dabbed it on his forehead. His eyes flew open.

  “I’m going,” he said. There was a certainty in his lone that Angelika found chilling. She saw that her sleeve had done nothing more than smear dirt across his forehead. It made him look like a congregant on the festival of Morr, after the ritual application of ashes.

  “I’m sorry if I prolonged your suffering,” she said. A lump appeared in her throat. She got angry at it, but it stayed right where it was. She laid her cold fingers on the side of his face; he was icier than she was.

  Krieger worked hard to smile for her. “Death and pain await us all. I’m lucky to go in this…” His strength failed him. His eyelids dipped shut; Angelika thought he was about to slip again into his dying slumber. Then he opened them.

  Angelika completed his sentence. “You’re lucky to go in service to Shallya.” She didn’t believe it, but he did, it seemed.

  “Please, if you get the chance, mention my name to Mother Elsbeth.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “I was not a good man, for most of my life,” he said, after a lengthy pause.

  Angelika shushed him.

  The dying officer would not be silenced. “I was no worse and no better than the men around me, but is that truly enough? The preachers say no.”

  “Should I go get one of them for you?” Angelika did not know who was worth bringing. Perhaps the prioress? The churchmen in the group seemed an especially ratty lot.

  Krieger pitched his head laboriously from side to side and it took a moment for Angelika to recognise that he was answering her question. He was telling her not to go. “It’ll only distress them.”

  “Aren’t there last unctions, or some such, that could be performed?”

  He grasped her wrist, his grip surprisingly strong. “This is my unction: I want a promise from you.”

  Angelika got a sinking feeling.

  “You must guarantee their safety. Especially the ecclesiasts.”

  Angelika returned the tightness of his grip, squeezing hard. She said nothing.

  “Promise, please. Before I go.”

  Angelika swallowed.

  Franziskus stepped in closer. “I’ll guarantee it,” he said.

  Krieger struggled to summon another tortured smile. He wanted it to seem fatherly and wise. “Take no offence, boy,” he coughed. “But it’s her promise I want.”

  Angelika leaned in close. “I know you don’t want a false promise.”

  Krieger’s eyes closed and stayed that way.

  Angelika whispered in his ear, with a lover’s softness. “I’ve nothing against you, understand? It’s sad you’re dying, but I swore off sentimental gestures a long time ago. I’ll do my best, but I won’t martyr myself for those people—or anyone.”

  Blood dribbled from his mouth. He tried to reply but died instead.

  Angelika and Franziskus walked back to the fire. Any burial would have to wait until later as there wasn’t enough dirt here to sink him deep enough.

  “He’s gone,” she said, but her breath failed her, and her words were inaudible. The pilgrims were laughing, apparently at Ivo Kirchgeld’s expense.

  “I know,” said the miller. “I have an idea. It’ll pass the time and keep us all in good spirits.”

  “What might that be, my dear?” asked the Widow Kloster, clamping an affectionate hand on his shoulder.

  “We’ll keep ourselves entertained with a spate of tale telling. Make a contest of it. Each of us will tell two stories in the course of our journey to the Holy Mountain, then two on the way back. How say you all?”

  Angelika interrupted them. “I’ll smack anyone who even tries it.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  There were footsteps.

  They were his.

  Mother Elsbeth had become skilled in the identification of footfalls, ever since Manfried Haupt’s arrival at the Holy Mountain. His was a confident tread, though there was a pronounced scraping of the soles, as he moved along the abbey’s stone flooring, like he was anxious to push the world behind him with every step. Elsbeth’s frail heart ticked feebly in her rattling chest. The trembling of her bony, knotted hands accelerated. She rose from her wooden bed, with its thin, woollen pallet, to examine herself in a small round mirror she’d recently had nailed to a crossbeam in her tiny cell.

  There, in the mirror, was that ghostly face. It looked back at her, its skin nearly translucent. All the veins and vessels were working slugg
ishly below the surface, backed up and brackish, like rivers clogged with silt. The whites of her eyes had turned parchment-yellow; the irises were the grey of an overcast sky.

  Elsbeth tugged her top lip up, exposing the teeth and gum line. Although she knew that there was considerable rot and decomposition in the molar region, her slightly protruding front teeth retained their miraculous longevity: they were large, straight, strong, and had taken on the colouration of old ivory. She lowered her head to examine her scalp; she was losing hairs again, though those that remained were an increasingly coarse and determined crew. Under a bright light, these resolute survivors were not white, but clear. Elsbeth pointed the tip of her sagging jaw upwards, to expose her neck. She checked the red, blotchy blemish that had recently made itself known on the seam of her neck, just above the clavicle. Yes, it had expanded since she’d last looked for it. Now it resembled a crimson island marked out on a faded old map.

  Elsbeth’s cell had but one window: a small circle cut in the stone, about three feet above her head. She’d had it covered with oilskin, so that only a muted glow escaped through it. It was enough; there wasn’t much to look at in her cloister, anyhow.

  Until recently, she’d never much noticed how bare it was. She had always thought of it more as a retreat than a cell. Material things had never mattered to her before. Now, though, she thought she might ask for a small, painted icon of the goddess Shallya, to give her solace. Father Manfried could not deny her that. He would want to perform the gesture. He did not want to think of himself as her jailer. If she asked, he would go to one of the many travelling vendors among the flood of pilgrims and buy the fanciest, most expensive icon he could find for her. He would get her one of those ones with gold leaf pounded into the halo and semi-precious stones worked into the frame.

  No, Mother Elsbeth decided, better not to rely on the young priest’s taste. She’d have one of the novitiates hunt for something simpler.

  She sniffed. The room smelled of mould and dust. Nearly eight decades ago, when she’d been a small girl, her scholar father had gleefully shared a terrible fact he’d picked up from one of his books: he’d explained to her that dust was mostly made up of bits and pieces of dead and fallen skin, too small to see.