I was about to reply something that would surely have gotten me in trouble, but Dacia opened the door and swept inside. Where had she gone, that she returned so quickly? I shoved the silk into Lorraine’s hands. “I’ll change,” I said to Josef and followed Dacia right back up the stairs.
“Where did you go?” I asked quietly. The room was empty now, much to my relief.
“To get this,” she said, handing me a wrapped bundle. “I know you don’t believe as I, but I’m worried. I want you to stay safe. I thought …” She trailed off, her cheeks suddenly flushed with embarrassment.
Her demeanor unnerved me. Dacia was normally as calm as a forest pond. With trembling fingers, I hastily unwrapped the cloth. Inside the small bundle was a silver medallion adorned with a woman’s painted face.
“Mary Magdalene,” Dacia explained. “She was a prostitute who was with Jesus.”
Of course I knew this. But I couldn’t say anything in response. It took all I had not to cry. I couldn’t recall ever getting a gift, but especially not one like this. I clutched the medallion in my palm and the longing I kept so carefully buried threatened to crawl up my throat and break free. I tried to say thank you, but it came out as a whisper: “I wish we could run away.”
The silence stretched long and heavy. I almost thought she hadn’t really heard me. But then she said, softly. “It’s to keep you safe. I don’t need you to be taken away from me, not even by Lord Death.” She gave me a nervous smile and twisted her hands.
I longed to reach for her and tell her how much the gift meant, but I heardas a sisterin the silence, and so I could only stare helplessly atthe medallion. Suddenly, instead of Mary’s serene face, I saw Rochelle, screaming as she slipped between the trees. Valerie, in agony, in the hands of the dark, unburning figure. I saw my mother, drowned. Everyone I had ever loved, dead or gone.
Whether Dacia knew it or not, between us was the divide between what was good and what was evil, what was holy and what was profane. I was not just a whore who saw spirits or could find an egg in the yard, but something deeper and darker, something irredeemable, cursed from the moment of my birth.
I would not plunge her into the depths with me.
“Thank you,” I managed, my voice cracking. I closed my fingers around it. “I will wear it always.”
She exhaled a clear sigh of relief and gave me a sad smile. “When I leave, I want to know you’ll remember me.”
“I could easier forget my own name,” I said. Then, before she could speak, “Josef said I look like an old frau! And I’m freezing. Help.” I made my voice rather pathetic. The medallion burned against my palm.
Dacia laughed, and the moment moved on, other girls joining us in a flurry of preparation and gossip.
Downstairs, the rain sluiced in dark rivulets as the men began to arrive, someone singing drunkenly about the exploits of the Bandits of Molsheim. Josef yelled, the young girl was now earnestly retelling the story of the giant and the lantern to a farmer who had her in his lap, and Cook caught the meat on fire. I lingered as close to the warmth of the hearth as I could. Smoke filled the air, mixing with the spirits the men brought and creating a strange blue miasma.
In that swirl of spirit and smoke, the usually dull-faced spirits seemed to stare at me. But whenever I looked back, their faces went slack, and it was only a trick of the light. I watched it all with a strange feeling, as if I were slowly waking from a dream and every breath I took was on the knife’s edge of waking or sleeping. It was in this shifting world that, unbeknownst to me, my true nature determined to reveal itself.
V.
The Calm of the Tomb
Maxime arrived just as the rain clouds cleared, and a weak sun slid behind the ridge. He stomped into the brothel, mud caked to his shoes, already in a heated argument with one of the soldiers with him.
“That bandit should be gutted, along with all his men. I’ll do it with my bare hands,” Maxime roared.
The other women’s gazes darted like rabbits, and they melted closer to the men they were entertaining or quickly left the room on some pretense. Even the merchant Kaufman, our richest and most powerful villager, ducked his head deferentially. But I straightened my shoulders and leaned against the pillar, my face arranged into a seductive scold.
It was that look that had brought me Maxime. My long black hair, my face sharp, to some men so frightening it was ugly, but to some representing all the mystery and darkness of the world. Maxime was the captain of the Baron’s retinue. An enormous and cleverly stupid man, he’d fought in the Holy Wars and made the twin passions of blood and lust the aim of his entire life. He kept his head and beard shaved like a mercenary and stood a head taller than any man in the room. I had immediately recognized the look upon his face the first time he’d visited the Blue Moon. He’d worked himself up into a red-faced fervor with brutal tales of war and then shoved into a shaking girl until shebuckled under his violence. The other girls all feared him, but I, who had learned to fear other things, saw opportunity.
“Salomé, stop looking at me and take my boots off,” Maxime barked and sat in a chair by the fire.
I shot him a look, but without a word lowered gracefully to my knees to remove the mud-caked shoes.
I abhorred him. I detested him. But there was relief with him. These evenings with Maxime were the only time in my life where I didn’t need to be quite so afraid of that darkness inside me striking out. Where I did not have to work so hard to keep my ugliness contained. I pulled off the second boot, my fingers deep into the icy mud. I set the shoes by the fire to dry and stood.
“A drink,” Maxime said.
I bit my lips and then turned for the casks.
Honestly, this game was one of the easiest to play—to take Maxime’s money and spread my legs. The first time I put my hands on his meaty shoulders, I felt the edge of violence all around him—a great sea of blood whose tides swept over his body. I handed him the beer, and he took a drink and then spewed it all over me and the floor. “You stupid cunt, you got mud on the mug.”
“My mistake,” I said coldly and upended the mug into his lap.
He jumped out of his chair, hand closing over my neck. As soon as he touched me, I felt the wave of that red sea and I went numb.
