“A convent is better than disappearing.”
“These girls aren’t disappearing, Dacia. They are running off to Strasbourg or Comar or Dambach-la-Ville. Running to something better,” I said.
“I thought you said it was the bandits?” Dacia said, a little smile at the edge of her mouth.
“Don’t you think when you must leave, we will have to say you have disappeared?” I retorted. My throat felt tight. I cleared it and scraped the edge of the bowl.
“I saw him once, did I tell you?”
“Who? The bandits? You’ve never told me that. Don’t distract me.”
“I’m serious. Their leader. I saw him at the market—he had a hood on and was rather shorter than I expected, but I saw those green eyes. They are just like the songs say.”
I rolled my eyes. “You saw a farmer with green eyes and a cloak his mother gave him, it happens. You can’t go to a convent being swept away by farmers in the market.”
“Salomé,” Dacia sighed. But she didn’t say anything, and when I glanced at her, she met my gaze with her clear blue eyes. “I’m gettingtoo old for this. I’m twenty-five. I only meant to be here for a moment. I had nowhere …” but she stopped, giving me a sad smile.
“You have so much life,” I blurted, unable to hold the words back. “A nunnery will crush it out of you.” I thought of Rochelle, then. “You could marry someone! You’re beautiful and loving. You are not meant to be in a nunnery.”
Dacia rolled her eyes, as if I were joking, and I wished desperately for the power to change her fate. “If I stay much longer,” she said, “I’ll die here. I’ll be in so much debt I’ll never be able to leave. I think I could be happy as a nun. To serve one God instead of many who long to be. I know you didn’t like it, but you were a child and …”
“Salomé,” Josef barked behind us. “You owe me for the pitcher you broke last night. Clumsy woman.”
I had to tell myself to unclench my hands before I added a broken bowl to my debt. Since leaving the convent, I hadn’t had any outburst, excepting a tendency to beclumsywith pottery.
Dacia gave me a commiserating glance, her sentence lingering unfinished in the air. Together, we stood.
Rainy days were busy. Especially in the cold, as the soldiers and farmers looked for comfort.
“Salomé,” Christine called to my back as if calling her servant. “I told Lorraine you would let her borrow the old pink silk that the priest gave you. She is too afraid to ask.”
“Why did she send you?” I asked, foot on the stairs. I didn’t care about the silk. I just didn’t like being ordered about by anyone. Christine had the air and stature of a lady, but her face had something horse-ish about it—as far as I could tell, men liked playing at both lord and rider. Since the Baron’s arrival, Christine’s demand rose to a level none of us anticipated—both from villagers and his soldiers. In my opinion, it had gone to her head.
“Oh, let her. She won’t spoil it,” Dacia interjected, tucking her hair under her cloak.
“Where are you going?” Christine asked, eyes narrowed. “Confession again?”
“I’m running an errand for Cook. I won’t be long.” Dacia shot me a glance as she turned. As if I were supposed to know what she was doing. She was out the door before I could ask.
Christine cleared her throat. She clearly did not care that Dacia was going out alone.
“All right,” I said with a sigh and marched off to grab the silk, trying to shake off my worry. Dacia would be fine.
“Salomé, was that story Cook told me true?” the new girl asked, sitting at the bottom of the stairs with her face as white as a sheet.
“No, but what’s true is that Josef will punish you if he catches you sitting around. Go on,” I said, nodding her up ahead of me.
The brothel had three narrow levels, but only in the highest confines of the attic were we able to keep anything of our own. Up in our small quarters, I picked my way through the clothing and rumpled bedding to my few belongings hidden alongside Dacia’s, digging out the pink silk. Two of the girls were talking as they dressed, the same strains of village gossip we’d all been told the night before.
All the chatter was the same these days—nobody talked of anything but the Baron or the bandits. Carpenters came back from his estate, describing his furnishings brought all the way from Italy, walnut and oak inlaid with ivory and gold and cushions made of velvet. Farmers spoke of his fields, fallow and rich. Masons shared the details of his home—forty rooms and built entirely of a delicately blue-veined granite quarried from the Vosges. The Baron’s soldiers boasted of their time in the emperor’s court, complained of our backwater looks and food, and regaled us with stories of how he’d been an ardent supporter of the young Joan who had led the French armies at Orleans.
“Was he at her execution?” Dacia asked once.
The men had all just blinked, as if they’d forgotten that part of the story.
I dressed quickly—my patched hose, long tunic, and a veil overmy long, black hair. It was a bit pointless; the farce of modesty only seemed to work for women like Dacia and Christine, whom men could fantasize about ruining and possessing.
“Salomé, you look like a dour frau,” Josef yelled as soon as I stepped foot downstairs.
