CLEVER GIRLS
Photo by Daniel J. Schwarz on Unsplash.
The following story is excerpted from our forthcoming print edition, River Styx 108: Chronicles. Order a copy.
The men filled the hall, reeking and filthy from their journey. Hard sets to their bristled jaws, fists clamped on sword hilts. Muscles bulging. Male power, male presumption. My father next to me, listening to their lackluster pitch. Marry Ethereus, prince of heathen England. Spend the rest of my days far from Brittany in a drafty, damp castle, eventually die in childbirth.
They finished talking and my father scratched at the curly brown hair under his crown. I might not have said anything if I couldn’t smell the fear of war rolling off him. I was a clever girl, and the problem with clever girls is that we always think we can find a way out.
“My Ursula is a pious daughter of God,” he started.
“Just a moment, father,” I interrupted. “I’ll marry this Ethereus. I just have a few conditions.”
The men smiled. Men like hearing yes, especially when it comes from a girl, especially when that girl is renowned for her devotion to virginity. They like it a lot.
“First, Ethereus must send me the ten finest, fairest, most beautiful and cultured maidens in all of England.”
The men shrugged.
“Then,” I said, “I will require one thousand more women apiece. To attend to each of us properly.”
The men struggled to do the math.
“That’s eleven thousand virgins. I’ll require ships to bring them here to Brittany and then to carry us on pilgrimage.”
The men nodded. I was requesting an armada and they were thinking of a forest of shaking, spreading legs.
“I’ll need three years of respite to sanctify my virginity,” I said. I smoothed the front of my dress, drawing my hand from breasts to womb as the men watched.
I had no idea what that meant but neither did they. Their brains lumbered on, wondering how virginity could be improved.
“Ethereus must give up idolatry, convert to Christianity, be baptized and instructed in the faith. If he meets all these conditions, then I promise I’ll love him more than any other creature.”
I smiled like these were perfectly reasonable demands and the men went away. My father looked at me with the weak kind of gratitude men feel when they’re saved by a girl.
“Well,” I said, “Hopefully they’ll realize that’s absurd.”
“If not?”
“I’ll win eleven thousand converts to the faith. They’ll remember me forever.”
He couldn’t really argue with that.
The day the masts crowded into the harbor dawned hot and hazy. I was awakened by the shouts of surprised locals and spent the morning staring out of my window. I’d never seen so many women. My word made flesh, all of Brittany a writhing mass of hair, breasts, and hips. The streets filled with laughter, sneezing, perfume, and skirts. There was a letter from Ethereus informing me that he’d started the conversion process, urging me “to proceed with all haste in the consecration of your maidenhead.” I laughed when I read it.
There wasn’t room in the castle for eleven thousand virgins, so they were put up in hostels, houses, churches, basically everywhere. The ten finest stayed with me in my quarters. They were of noble birth and probably came with names, but I numbered them and told them they were welcome to do the same with each of their thousand servants.
Some servants, unclear whose precisely, brought in a tray of fruits and cheeses. The eleven of us were sitting in the shade of a canvas tent in my private garden, sweating. The jasmine was in bloom. Women’s voices drifted up from the city below. Some were singing hymns.
“Do we have to stay virgins forever?” Six asked, chewing on an apple. Crunch-crunch went the skin, and the juice dribbled a bit from the corner of her mouth until she wiped it with the back of her hand.
“Well, obviously,” said One, who flashed her eyes at me to say, see, you were right to name me One. I smiled but didn’t let it go to my eyes. She was only One because she was standing closest to me when I numbered them. One’s hair was very fair and curly, but her cheeks were a bit porcine, an ugly flush in the heat.
Over the years, just by being quiet and female, I’d overheard many conversations between priests. Priests are certainly capable of imagining what women might do together—they spend quite a bit of time considering it—but they’d never want to plant such indecent ideas in our heads. As long as we were discreet, it wouldn’t be explicitly forbidden.
“Four,” I said, “I have something to show you.”
Four was my first favorite, a dark-haired girl with an elfin face and a broad nose. Her molten eyes more than made up for her nose, and we’d been sneaking glances at each other for hours. She smiled and walked, perfectly languid, toward my bed.
That much virginity concentrated in one place? We were clever girls. We knew the potential for disaster crackled in the air all around us.
Eleven thousand virgins attract attention, and soon the place was crawling with bishops, cardinals, and garden-variety priests. Widows with children, unattached third daughters of dubious virginity, prostitutes, ale makers, the bored and restless hordes. It got crowded, a bit rowdy, and when my father started muttering, I kissed him on the cheek and decided it was time to move on. Having promised to consecrate my virginity, I couldn’t exactly sit around doing nothing. I figured we’d head to Rome, ask the pope to say a blessing. No one could argue with that, and along the way we could proselytize, spread our faith across the continent. If I had to marry Ethereus, I was going to satisfy my own wanderlust first.
My ten and I consulted my father’s maps. We could have sailed west, around Europe and through the Strait of Gibraltar, approaching Rome by sea. It would have saved us time and trouble, but we weren’t in a hurry. We’d find more converts by land, and a proper spiritual pilgrimage included suffering by design. Surely, walking would be more holy. We decided to use the ships to sail east through the English Channel. We’d disembark at Tiel, stop by Cologne, and then follow the course of the Rhine until we finished with a triumphant hike over the Alps to the holy city.
“To Tiel!” I said, and we swarmed the wharfs. My armada of women struck out to sea. We sailed past forests, the mouths of wide rivers, and pink granite cliffs. The sailors told us that the channel was remarkably, supernaturally calm. Surely our voyage was blessed by God. We made excellent time, which was a pity because I could have sailed for weeks. The lift of the deck beneath my feet, the hum of water under the keel. Creaking lines tugging canvas and the heat of salt and tar, all of it suited me. I regretted not having chosen the longer sea voyage, but I was practically alone in that. Poor Seven spent her time puking over the side with a few dozen servants.
After arriving at Tiel, we walked several days to Cologne, where we were welcomed with much feasting and dancing. Six, Four, and I got very drunk thanks to an alewife who was so delighted to be hosting me, Princess Ursula, that she practically martyred me with alcohol and fatty foods. We stayed up late singing hymns and laughed at Nine’s imitation of One, all prissy lips and huffy sighs. The next morning, we and our throbbing headaches got on smaller ships to travel down the Rhine toward Basel.
The Rhine cut through countryside and bristling forests. Rocking to sleep onboard the ship that first night, I bunked down with Four, who was snoring softly on my shoulder. An angel appeared.
“Do not be afraid,” the angel said, like they always do because they are grotesque, writhing masses of eyes and wings. I wasn’t afraid, but I was disgusted. Feathers brushed across unblinking, shining eyeballs whose pupils widened and shrank at random.
“Princess Ursula! You and your thousands of virgins will win the palm of victory and glory through martyrdom when you return to Cologne!” It paused, clearly waiting for me to show appreciation. I mustered a half-hearted smile.
I’d known martyrdom was a risk. I’d thought it was a risk worth taking when the alternative was bleeding out in grim England. I hadn’t until this moment considered that we might all die. I’d thought that if anyone died, it would be me, the betrothed. Surely there was strength in numbers?
The feathers stirred and the eyes stared in different directions. I knew that it was all true and inescapable, and the force of that knowledge stopped my breath.
The angel did the equivalent of a shrug, a flutter-blink maneuver, and vanished. It left behind a stench like burning hair, and so I buried my face in Four’s neck. She smelled sweaty and a bit like water-softened wood. She wrapped her arms tightly around me. I lay very still, reasoning we’d have plenty of time to talk about the angel later.
It took only a few days on the Rhine to reach Basel. We loaded up on supplies and then headed out on the longest part of our journey. It would take us weeks to walk to Rome. This had sounded like a grand adventure in Brittany, but I was starting to have my doubts as to our fitness for the task ahead. I might have turned back if the angel’s prophecy wasn’t still rattling in my head. I knew what awaited us in Cologne, but I hadn’t given up hope that there was still a way out. Surely the pope would have an answer for us, his faithful daughters of the Church.
Word ran ahead of us, as it tends to do. Despite our locust hunger and our trampling feet, people were generous. Our sins were forgiven because we were devotion and faith in human form. Sanctity beat in our hearts, flowed in our blood. We were offered fruits, vegetables, breads, and meat, but no one forgot we were an army of women, vast and unrestrained. For every eager mother pushing a child forward to be blessed, there was a teenaged son with his arms crossed. There were priests who wanted to speak with us, but there were also middle-aged men with a hard set to their shoulders, a flex in their calves. So many unmarried, unchaperoned women were a holy abomination more terrifying than angels.
I knew the mountain range was coming. I’d heard stories about it, used my fingers to trace the peaks on soft vellum maps in my father’s study, but that was nothing like standing in the foothills looking up at earth stretched to sky. They were God-sized mountains, and when we first saw their expanse, there was a wave of panic in the ranks.
“Look,” I said to my virgins, who were staring at the knife-edges slicing the sky. “It’s all a matter of one step at a time. That’s it. Just one step, and then the next. God will be with us, every step.”
The message was passed back, virgin to virgin, until it reached the back rows, and then a cheer rolled its way back up to me. I turned, raised both hands in the air toward heaven, and took the first step. My flock followed. We hired local guides to help us through the trickiest of passes. We forded rivers; we peed in the woods. We chopped trees and forged new trails with the stomping of our feet, a drumbeat of prayer. We left streams dry from our thirst, we slaughtered fowl and beast to tame our hunger.
One morning the fog was so thick that Four and I held hands, despite the narrowness of the mountain path, afraid to lose each other in the mists. We had fallen back from the head of the procession because Four’s foot was badly blistered. Through the fog we heard a terrible boom, a thundering rush that rang in our ears. I looked for angels but saw nothing, nothing but fog. We kept walking until we saw a long portion of trail buried under rocks, mud, and snapped branches. It was the jumbled remains of a landslide so recent there were no footprints over it. The mountain had given way, slid clear across the narrow trail, and plunged down into the ravine. Carefully, we picked our way across the mess. Ahead, we could see nothing but fog; behind, nothing but our own tracks.
“What sort of mountain crumbles to nothing?” Four asked, but I shook my head. It’s best not to speak such portents aloud. I stepped as near the edge of the trail as I dared, looking down a sheer cliff. All I could see was fog, swirling, void.
Four and I jumped when a group of girls stepped suddenly through the fog. They’d doubled back at the sound.
“A landslide?” one asked, but no one answered. The mountain was silent too.
“Anyone hurt?” another asked. I raised my hands, helpless. Girls peered over the edge of the cliff. Four began praying, her voice sweet and tearful. We all joined in, keeping our voices low to avoid disturbing the rock.
Camp that evening was suffused with a damp dread. Everyone kept looking for more arrivals to appear on the trail. Virgins had perished, but how many? It was impossible to know for sure. When it was clear no one else was coming, I counted my ten and came up one short. Seven.
“Maybe she’s somewhere else?” One said.
“Well, that’s obvious,” I snapped, and Four put a hand on my arm. Eventually everyone went to bed, but Four and I sat beside the fire. She prayed, but I had lost the words. The next morning, we broke camp and kept walking, our hearts full of ache for Seven and for however many others had slid with her into the depths.
I kept my remaining nine close, but there were other casualties. Sickness, disappearance, exhaustion. Rumors of a bear attack. We did our best to help each other, and sometimes even in our grief there were spectacular sunrises. There was the fresh smell of cedar, bounding roe deer, and snorting wild boar. We slept under fiery, wheeling stars, holding hands. We crossed the Alps. The last night before we would reach Rome, sitting with my nine disciples around the fire, I broached the topic of our preordained deaths.
“Ladies, I had a vision.”
No one would look at me. They knew what was coming. It was remarkably hard to force myself to say the words. I could feel them, fully formed, in my mouth, but I couldn’t quite push them out. Ursula, I told myself, you are the princess. These are your subjects. This is your responsibility. None of them would be here without you. Guilt clenched my jaw, then opened it.
“An angel came. We’re going to be martyred when we return to Cologne.” It was quiet. The thousands of maidens had gone to bed, and the hush of their breathing surrounded us.
Poking a stick into the fire, One looked up to the heavens. “We’ll be sainted,” she said.
“Yes,” I said, with as much enthusiasm as I could muster.
“Meet with Jesus in Heaven.”
“Yes,” I said. “Although perhaps Pope Ciriacus will intervene.”
“No one can intervene with God’s will,” One said. “Not even His Eminence the Pope.”
“Do we tell them?” Three gestured to the thousands of prone women just outside the fire’s light.
“Isn’t it worse to know?” Five asked.
“Some of them may wish to escape,” Ten said. There was a long silence in which I became certain that all around us, women were awake and listening.
“They’re clever girls,” Four said, looking at me. The light from the fire flickered on her delicate face and I couldn’t read her expression, but her voice was hard. “We may not have had a choice, but we have all known this for what it was.”
I wanted to ask, would you rather have stayed in England? Am I sorry? Are you?
The fire crackled. I thought of the original virgin, Mary. Was this how she had felt when the angel had first come to tell her about Jesus? Helpless? Trapped? Should I have simply married Ethereus and been content with one convert? Was this punishment for my greed and hubris? I had so many questions, but I sat in the dark and listened to the sibilance of thousands of women whispering in the dark. If they hadn’t known, they would now. Singly and in pairs, my nine left the fire. I stared at the flames as they dwindled into embers.
When we arrived in Rome we went straight to the Holy See to find Pope Ciriacus. The closer we got, the harder my heart pounded. Surely, surely he would have an answer for us. The Church wouldn’t stand for all of us to be martyred. There must be a way out, if not for me, then for the many. Sins, forgiven. Maybe even mine.
Pope Ciriacus and his cardinals in their pointed hats welcomed us and expressed frank disbelief that we’d all made it from Brittany. They eyed our torn garments, our smudged faces, our matted hair.
“Eleven thousand!” Pope Ciriacus kept saying. I tried not to notice how nasal was his voice rang. How flat-footed he stood. How ordinary his hands were, with their blunt fingers and gaudy papal rings.
“Thanks be to God,” I said. We weren’t eleven thousand anymore. Besides the casualties, I suspected some women had done what Ten had suggested, tried to run from our fate. If that was the case, it wasn’t many. It had been a twisted relief to see that our camp appeared largely unchanged when the sun rose.
“Eleven thousand,” I said with a smile as Pope Ciriacus made the sign of the cross over my forehead. It wasn’t like anyone was going to count.
That night my nine and I bedded down in the private home of a wealthy landowner, bathing for the first time in a long while, braiding each other’s hair. We didn’t speak of what had transpired around the fire, but there was a tenderness in our hands, an ache in our throats. There was no return from an adventure like this.
In the morning light, the mood had shifted and we admired each other. Our bodies had filled in with muscle and the fluid strength of endurance. We weren’t the rounded girls we were when we’d begun the journey. Our faces were dark from the sun, our feet blistered, our thighs strong. Ten and Two fake wrestled to raucous laughter. Watching, I found a new determination, born of rage. The pope would have to help us. I just needed to find the right words. I had conquered the Alps; surely, I could do something as simple as speak to the pope.
Pope Ciriacus came bursting in as we ate breakfast. He was followed by a nervous quiver of cardinals. He stood too close, and he stank of onion.
“Ursula! My sweet daughter, I’ve had a vision!” he said. “A revelation from God! I will go with you to Cologne to share in your fate, whatever it may be.”
Four and I exchanged glances. She’d heard my incessant prayers for his merciful intervention, but here he was, looking like a child wanting a pat on the head.
“Our fate?” I asked. Perhaps he just didn’t know. “Your Holiness—”
“Glory in the Lord, I’m sure,” he said, rubbing his round stomach and turning to talk to a cardinal. He was avoiding my gaze.
Four whispered in my ear, “He knows. He just doesn’t want to tell us we’re going to be martyred.”
I felt sick. That rotten angel had told him we were all to die, and instead of trying to save us, he had decided to go along for the ride. He’d be sainted if he delivered us all up to God as martyrs.
“Surely, Father,” I said, “we should stay here, under your gracious guidance. Fast, perhaps. Repent, be shriven. Attend many masses. It’s too dangerous for us to be out there alone.” My clever brain fumbled. What could convince him to protect us now?
“No, no, no,” he said. “No need. I shall protect you. My vision was quite clear! The angel said I should accompany you all to Cologne. Something magnificent will happen there.”
The men started arguing about whether the pope should go to Cologne. Four took my hand and led me away. I heaved up my breakfast outside the door as she rubbed circles on my back. When I was empty, Four linked her arm in mine and led me toward our thousands, standing in the bright morning on the outskirts of Rome. A mountain, ready to crumble.
“Look,” Four said. “Dry your eyes and look at the community we’ve birthed.”
“I never should have—”
“It was preordained,” Four said, with a light shrug.
“I thought Pope Ciriacus would—”
“Psh. A mere man.”
The pope came running up, winded already and sweating heavily. “Ursula! Virgins! I’m coming with you!”
I could think of nothing worse than dying while this man who could have saved us stood by and gave his blessing.
“Look,” I said, “That’s very thoughtful of you, but we really don’t need—”
“I’ve renounced my papacy to follow you! I’ve named Ametos to replace me and the cardinals have struck my name from the list of popes.” The words tumbled out of him, and he disappeared into the crowd, dispensing blessings.
Well. What could I say? He had joined our band and it was time to go.
I sent a message through the virgins, relying on our mouth-to- mouth method of passing information, and then my flock was behind me. I led the way out of Rome, my sun-lightened brown hair streaming behind me in the wind. I marched at the very front so that no one could see my tears, not even Four.
The second time through the mountains we knew we could do it, which gave us confidence. We only lost a dozen or so virgins along the way. We kept that from the pope. We were eleven thousand virgins and we’d stay eleven thousand virgins.
When we reached Basel, we were tired but doubly triumphant. I learned my fiancé Ethereus had also been visited by angels and was on his way to meet us in Cologne. Honestly, I’d almost forgotten that Ethereus existed.
We ate in the finest house in Basel the night before we were to board our ships and make our way back up the Rhine to Cologne.
“Listen,” the woman of the house said, sitting at my right elbow. “You don’t want to go to Cologne. Julian’s waiting with a gang of Huns. There are plenty of Christians in the city but you lot are something else, and the Romans don’t tolerate threats to their order. They’ll let the Huns do the dirty work, reward them handsomely for it. One virgin might be holy but eleven thousand is a plague.”
I sighed. “What do you suggest we do instead?”
The woman looked around her crowded room. Wine was flowing, women were eating, girls were laughing. She shrugged. “It seems a waste, that’s all.”
“It always is,” I said.
“Well. At least they’ll remember you after you’re gone.”
“Make sure you tell them,” I said. “Eleven thousand virgins.”
She arched an eyebrow. “That’s a lot of certainty in a lot of virginity.”
I shrugged. She laughed. “Have some more wine, Princess.”
The mood had shifted as we climbed into the ships that would take us to Cologne, but I was proud to see steadfastness and determination. The pope alone looked like he was regretting throwing in his lot with us.
As we sailed up the Rhine, I began to daydream about marching off toward the East, taking our chances in the wilderness. We could become a warrior gang. Hide in caves. Raise wooly cows on the wild steppes. Lovely fantasies.
One night we anchored close to shore, and Four and I disembarked, looking for some quiet. The forest stood before us, darker and wilder than the sea. I told her what I’d been thinking. The possibility of escape, survival. How I’d failed as a leader, how the whole thing had gone from preposterous whim to tragedy.
“None of it was ever really in your control, Ursula. A fate preordained by God, heralded by angels? No matter how we run, we’ll never escape.”
What if I no longer believed? I didn’t dare say it aloud as I listened for the hum of feathery wings, scanning the dark forest for the glisten of lidless eyeballs. Four must have read it in my face.
“Faith no longer matters,” she said. “It’s done.”
We stopped at the ragged edge of the forest, breathing in the scents of growing trees and moldering logs, struggling to make anything out in the gloom. We held each other and cried for a while, then we wiped our faces and headed back to the boats, to the others. If we were to die, we’d die together.
Fighting the currents, it took us three days more to get to Cologne. I was first to disembark, and there was Ethereus. He was shorter, scrawnier, and uglier than I’d expected, and I hadn’t been expecting much.
He was striding around, arms akimbo, excited to get martyred. He muttered a constant stream of prayers, moaned when he was hurriedly baptized by the pope. Holy water dripping off his thin nose as he stared at my breasts, clearing his throat.
I felt a moment of pity for his youth and ignorance. Still, if he hadn’t capitulated to my exaggerated, ridiculous demands, maybe none of us would be here. We both had a hand in creating the apocalypse, sure as if we’d made a child together.
We walked through eerily empty streets toward the center of the city. The air crackled and I had to pee. We could feel unblinking eyes on us from all directions. The air was thick with the stench of burned hair.
The angels hadn’t been specific about where exactly in the city we were to be martyred, so we wandered around a bit, looking for the proper place. It wasn’t a bad city, considering. Lots of shops, all closed, homes secured for the coming slaughter. We passed a small church with boarded-up windows. Another reminder that the Romans weren’t opposed to all Christians, just to us specifically. Our skirts rustled and our feet thumped the ground, but otherwise we were a silent river of women, flowing toward fate.
There was a sign for a park, and I thought that would probably be it. Lots of room for all of us to stand together. At least it would be a pretty place to die. I rounded the last corner to see a beautiful, large, open space full of bunched blooms and small trees. All around the outside, waiting for us, were men with bows and swords, the sun glinting on their weapons. I gripped Four’s hand in my own, and she gave it a squeeze and then she let go, stepping forward. Some sort of belief still lived in her and I admired it almost as much as I hated it. We went to the far side of the park, next to a small stream that burbled gently over smooth rocks, surrounded by vibrant green mosses. Eleven thousand virgins piled in, everyone making space for the girls who followed. Some held hands, some cried, some prayed. Some looked elated, most stood too still. Were we really going to do this? Surely, surely, someone would intervene?
Pope Ciriacus stood next to me and cleared his throat self- importantly. We turned to look at him.
“God—” he managed, and then the men let loose with arrow and sword, falling upon us like wolves.
It was a long, brutal slaughter done with arrows and swords. There’s no reason to describe it. Some of my girls went down praying. Many took swings of their own, but for this they were cruelly tortured. God was nowhere, but his hideous angels hovered above us, watching every drop of blood soak into the earth.
My golden circlet gave away my identity and I was grabbed by a man with bad body odor who took me to his leader, Julian. As I waited for his attention, I watched the murder of my would-be husband Ethereus and then each of my nine. I did not look away, even when Four crumpled to the ground and my whole heart went with her. Pope Ciriacus’s head bounced along the ground and came to rest next to my shoe. I toed it away in disgust. A mere man, indeed.
Covered in gore, Julian finally made time to talk to me. “You know,” he said, “you’re pretty. What a waste. Marry me, and I’ll save your life and make you rich.” He paused and lunged with his sword at one of the last virgins. She dropped. Nearby, two soldiers were stabbing the pope’s quite dead body.
I looked out across the massacre. Absurd, unnecessary slaughter. So much blame to go around.
Blame for Ethereus, blame for me. Blame for Julian and his Huns, blame for the Romans. Blame for the pope and the church, for their martyr bloodlust. I looked upon the bodies of my beloveds. What kind of god is this?
“Ursula. Renounce your faith and come live with me.”
With nothing left to renounce, I spit in Julian’s face. The spit hits just to the right of his bumpy narrow nose, slides down alongside. His forehead creases, his ears redden. He’s just a man, after all. Just a small, small man. He draws his bow and shoots an arrow straight at my heart.
Source Material:
Delany, Sheila, ed. A Legend of Holy Women: A Translation of Osbern Bokenham’s Legends of Holy Women. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992. The phrase “palm of victory and glory through martyrdom” is a direct quote.
Sarah Starr Murphy is the managing editor for The Forge Literary Magazine and is eternally at work on a novel. She’s a marathoner with dogs, kids, and epilepsy. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Epiphany, Nat. Brut, The Threepenny Review, and elsewhere.