Page 1 of Blood on Her Tongue

Chapter 1

The train left the station at noon.

By then, so many little things had gone wrong that Lucy couldn’t help but wonder whether her journey was ill-fated. Firstly, she had intended to be on an earlier train, the one that left at ten, but one of the horses pulling the carriage taking her to the station had thrown a shoe, delaying her by almost two hours. When she finally arrived, the heel of her left boot snapped off, causing her to sprain her ankle. Once she was seated within the train, she thought herself momentarily safe from the common misfortune that had dogged her that morning. This proved to be an illusion when a fellow passenger, a middle-aged woman who smelled strongly of rose water, dumped her travel bag onto Lucy’s lap.

Startled, Lucy jerked in her seat. The book she had been idly flicking through, a collection of gothic tales translated from English, fell from her lap. In between its pages, tucked there carefully to prevent loss and creases, lay the most recent letters from her twin sister, Sarah. They spilled onto the floor and under the seats.

“Oh my!” the woman said. She snatched up the bag as if afraid Lucy would make away with it. “I didn’t see you,” she said, by way of explanation. Then she added, “You really should be more careful, you know.”

Lucy, who had dropped to her knees to gather her precious letters, only smiled wanly in response.

Offended, the woman huffed and sat in Lucy’s seat. Lucy opened her mouth to tell her, then decided against it and took an empty seat by the window. She brushed away the dust and hair that clung to the envelopes, then smoothed them carefully and counted them to make sure she had retrieved them all. Merely looking at them had her feeling restless and sick, her sternum throbbing as if a piece of string had been wound around the bone and someone were trying to gather it up, pulling her along with it.

She did not have long to muse on these sensations. The only other passenger in the carriage, the woman who smelled of rose water, let out a scream a mere five minutes after the train had pulled out of the station. “Oh my God!” she shrieked, pressing her hand to her chest.

“What?” Lucy asked wildly. “What is it?”

The woman pointed. At first, Lucy had no idea at what. Then she saw a spider had crawled onto the windowpane, on their side of the glass. It was only little, barely bigger than the nail of Lucy’s thumb.

“Oh,” Lucy said. “Don’t worry. It won’t hurt you.”

The woman shook her head. Her eyes had gone round, leaving the irises all rimmed with white. “Get it away from me!” she gasped, as if her fear were so potent it was choking her.

Perhaps this is another sign , Lucy thought, as she took a letter out of its envelope and placed it in her lap, though a sign of what, she didn’t know, and besides, signs were cheap when you went looking for them. Better to just focus on the task at hand.

She applied pressure to the sides of the envelope, causing it to gape open, then carefully brushed the spider inside. Spiders did not frighten her, nor did any other insect, for that matter. Aunt Adelheid, her mother’s eccentric older sister, had loved them and studied them obsessively. One of Lucy’s earliest memories was of herself and Sarah sitting on a blanket in the garden while Aunt Adelheid dug into a patch of earth close to them. It must have rained only recently; Lucy remembered the blanket had been damp, and the soil had been dark and soft, sticking in great clumps to her aunt’s fingers.

“There!” Aunt Adelheid said triumphantly. She plucked something from the ground and held it out for her nieces to see. It was a worm, nearly as long as a finger, delicately segmented, with a thick band near one end. The worm writhed in her grip. In the soft spring light, it gleamed various shades of pink and beige.

“Pretty!” Sarah cried out.

“Pretty!” Lucy agreed.

“You may touch it, but be careful! It’s delicate,” she said. “Some people think that if you cut a worm in half, you will have two worms. How amazing that would be! A creature that can twin itself! But that’s…”

Sarah, always quick, always decisive and boundlessly curious, grabbed the worm and tore it in half.

“…nothing but an old wives’ tale,” Aunt Adelheid finished.

Sarah placed half the worm into Lucy’s hands. It was cool to the touch, slightly wet. Sarah’s own half, the one with the band near its end, continued to wriggle in her grip, its whole body curving and then straightening again as it tried to get away. Lucy’s half only twitched weakly. Soon, it lay still. Lucy stared, aghast, as its vivid pink hue blanched into an unremarkable gray. It looked pathetic next to Sarah’s squirming half, a poor version of what a worm should be.

A thought had come to her, horrible enough that she remembered it even now: What if she and Sarah were like those pieces of the worm? Sarah, vivid and alive, and Lucy, nothing but a weak imitation of the real thing?

No wonder people don’t notice me and accidentally throw their luggage on my lap , Lucy thought, as she folded the envelope shut with the spider inside, taking care not to hurt it. Funny what things one could remember in sudden moments of stress. Not that the thought caused her any anguish, not anymore. She had long since accepted what she was and was not. In fact, the memory was almost sweet; Sarah had tried to comfort her by saying her worm must simply be sleeping and, when it still wouldn’t move, she had dashed it from Lucy’s hand and declared the whole thing silly, asking Aunt Adelheid if she had something else to show them, something better?

Lucy placed the envelope with the spider carefully on the empty seat beside her. She could release it once she left the train. It would be much better off spinning a web in a tree somewhere, or a lantern post, where the light might attract moths and other insects it could eat—or was this not the kind of spider that wove a web? Sarah might know…

No sooner had she let go of the envelope than her fellow passenger whacked it with her umbrella. She used such force, the envelope flew into the air. With a screech, she batted it to the floor, where she stomped on it with first her left foot, then the right. Her boots left dark marks on the paper, which was now so flattened as to make the survival of the spider impossible.

Shocked, Lucy stared at the woman. “Whatever did you do that for?” she exclaimed.

“Nasty creatures,” the woman said, then shrugged. When she alighted at the next station, it was to Lucy’s profound relief.

Only a few more hours, and then I shall be with Sarah again , Lucy thought as the stationmaster blew his whistle and the train resumed its journey.

Rain rattled against the thin windowpane, mingling with the soot on the glass and creating fantastic streaks of gray. Lucy frowned. She hadn’t thought to bring an umbrella. No doubt it wasn’t the only thing she hadn’t brought and would miss; her mind had been elsewhere as she packed, and she had done a poor job. Mrs. van Dijk had offered to help her, but how could Lucy have accepted? Mrs. van Dijk was old and infirm. More importantly, she provided room and board for Lucy and paid her a small amount of money each month in return for companionship. A world in which an employer packed her employee’s belongings would be a strange one indeed.

Only, Mrs. van Dijk would never have forgotten to include an umbrella.

At least Lucy had thought to bring a book, though stories teeming with women bricked up alive and haunted by chattering ghosts did not appeal to her now. But to simply sit and wait was even more unappealing, so she took out one of her sister’s letters from between the book’s pages, fished it from its envelope, and began to read.

When she was done, she felt nauseous, though perhaps that was partly because she hadn’t eaten properly. Mrs. van Dijk’s cook had made her some sandwiches for the journey, but Lucy’s mother had ingrained in her a firm belief that eating anywhere in public was indecent. It did not matter that she had the train carriage to herself now that the woman who smelled of rose water had left and that she could have consumed those sandwiches slathered with butter and cold cuts unobserved.

Not that she had much of an appetite anyway. Who would, after reading something as disturbing as Sarah’s final letter? If one could even call the undated sheet of paper with almost illegible scribbles that.

Lucy sighed and slipped the letter back between the pages of her book. She had read it so many times, the creases from where the pages were folded threatened to tear. Tucked in the same envelope was Sarah’s drawing of the bog body. Lucy did not take it out. She had looked at it often enough to conjure it in her mind. It came to her unbidden now, and she closed her eyes in an effort to strangle the image.

When she opened them again, the train had left behind the sprawling farmer’s fields, which looked stubbled and unkempt now that the summer grain had been harvested, and wound its way through an area full of trees. Their leaves plunged the carriage into momentary twilight, snapping Lucy out of contemplating her sister’s letter. She frowned and turned her head to the window.

Sarah’s face looked back at her, gaunt and wild and mad.

Lucy jerked back violently, her heart pounding, only for Sarah to do the same.

Your reflection, you silly goose , she thought. The sudden darkness from the thick foliage outside had turned the window into a mirror. She almost laughed at herself in derision. Instead, she leaned closer to the glass and studied her reflection. A tendril of hair had escaped its pins, and she had a smudge of something dark that was hopefully just ink on her cheek. Worse were her eyes: there was something frightened and wild about them, like the eyes of a pursued animal. Anyone who didn’t know Lucy would think her untidy and therefore a little mad. Wasn’t a slovenly appearance a reliable outward manifestation of a disturbed mind?

As Lucy rubbed harshly at her cheek with her handkerchief, one thing she had not forgotten to bring, she thought, Maybe I shall find my sister with unkempt hair and crusty eyes and dried spittle at the corner of her mouth, and I shall know for certain then that she is, indeed, a lunatic.

She had barely finished the thought when fear grabbed her by the throat with enough force to cut off her breath. She dropped the handkerchief to her lap and buried her face in her hands to keep from crying.

Please , she thought with such fervor, a light sweat broke out all over her body and the knot at her sternum pulsed painfully, please don’t let her be mad.

Not again.

Letter from Mrs. Sarah Schatteleyn to Miss Lucy Goedhart

Zwartwater, 19 September 1887

My dearest Lucy,

You won’t believe what Michael and I have been up to today! In fact, I can scarcely believe it myself. It was such a peculiar day—thrilling, yes, but also slightly frightening. Above all, though, it was incredibly interesting.

It all happened just after Michael and I had finished our lunch. One of the tenants came running to the house and told us they’d found a body while cutting peat. He hastened to add it was likely a very old body, not a recent murder victim, just one of those bog bodies peat cutters sometimes find. I have read a little about such bodies, but I’d never seen one, and neither had Michael, so the two of us hastened over to see it for ourselves.

We had to leave Katje at home; the poor girl was in great pain again. With her, you truly understand why they call it the monthly curse, don’t you? I left Pasja with her. She’s such a gentle dog, though you’d never think it when you saw her hunting rabbits! Enfin, I left both Michael’s poor relation and my dog at home, and once I was armed with my sketchbook and some pencils to capture the body’s likeness before the processes of decomposition could alter it too much, Michael and I made our way to the scene of the crime.

It didn’t look much different from other fields of peat: just grassland, slightly soggy, with large squares of wet earth gouged out, leaving deep, dark pits. Bricks and slabs of peat lay drying in the next field. The air smelled of them and hot grass, this good, clean scent.

The new groundskeeper, Mr. Hooiman, met us there. He’s a giant of a man, with bowed legs and a skin tanned this fascinating nut-brown color from all the work he does outside. He explained that one of the boys had found the body while cutting peat. Poor thing got a nasty shock. Nothing can quite prepare you for cutting into the earth and revealing a human hand, now, can it?

They had soon found that the hand was still attached to an arm, and the arm to a rump, and so forth. By the time we arrived, they had just unearthed the head, and did we want to see?

The first thing I thought when I saw the head was that it really didn’t look much like a head. Had Mr. Hooiman not told me what exactly it was that I was looking at, I would have thought it was a deflated ball made out of pig’s bladder. Something animal in origin, yes, but malformed. But as the men set to rinsing away clots of earth clinging to the head, I saw things hitherto hidden from me: tendrils of red hair, the gentle curl of an ear. I had expected a face, but the unfortunate wretch had been buried face down; I had been looking at the back of the head all the while, and felt silly for not realizing it straight away.

While the men worked, I asked Mr. Hooiman if he had any idea what we should do with the body, him having often assisted the peat cutters and therefore more likely to have experience with this sort of thing. He shrugged and said that it wasn’t up to him, this not being his land. If it were though, he’d tuck it back and try to forget it.

I shivered at that and said, “Oh, but I could never! I would always know it was here, and it would haunt me. Surely we have a duty to discover who this unfortunate wretch is and who put them here? We should study the body and see what we can learn from it at the very least. We owe it to the scientific community to find out all we can.”

Mr. Hooiman shrugged again. “’Tis what was usually done with the bog bodies in my grandfather’s time, and his before that. If you ask me, ’tis the only decent thing to do. It may not look much like one now, but it used to be a human once, just like yourselves,” he said (or something very much like it. You know how hard I try to memorize whole conversations so I can reproduce them in order for you to feel you were there, sweet sister mine, but I confess I don’t always manage it perfectly. I’m sure you’ll forgive me!).

Michael thanked Mr. Hooiman for his suggestions and said we had much to think about. In the meantime, it would be best if the men continued to dig the whole body out so I could sketch it in its entirety; the medical men would appreciate pictures of the body in situ. We could always rebury it later if we were so inclined. I’d stay and sketch it while Michael went to see if he could get Arthur to come. A doctor would likely see things we’d miss.

By the end of the afternoon, they had uncovered all of it: a naked human body—impossible to say whether male or female from looking at the back of it—lying face down and straight as a board. Wooden stakes had been driven through the knees, elbows, shoulders, and neck, which had set the men murmuring, some of them crossing themselves (you know Michael has never had a problem with hiring Catholics). I sketched the body from multiple angles, paying close attention to the place where it had been staked to the earth, then asked the men to lift the body out. They did so reluctantly.

When they turned it over, they gasped. There was more fervent crossing themselves, some murmured prayers. The men holding the body dropped it as if they’d been burned and wiped their hands convulsively on their trousers and jackets.

I came closer to admonish them—God only knows the damage they could’ve wrought—only to find myself, for a moment, quite stunned.

The body had a large piece of stone wedged between its jaws.

It couldn’t have been an accident nor coincidence; the stone was of such a size that the mouth had been opened to its absolute limit to cram it in. Some of the teeth had broken in the process, and the incisors were missing altogether.

Mr. Hooiman took me aside then and explained to me that the men wished to stop working. They were afraid of the restless spirit belonging to the body. Someone buried in such a manner as this body must have been a suicide or criminal, and those make restless dead.

I didn’t laugh at that, as I know Michael would have. I didn’t want to disrespect the men, but I didn’t want them to stop working either, not when there was still much more work to be done before sundown.

In the end, I got them to stay only by offering them double their normal wages for the day. To show them my goodwill, I sent one of them back to the house with instructions for the servants to prepare good hot food for them, and plenty of beer.

Until the food arrived, I bade them to keep working. Someone had made a crude casket, which stood propped up against a fence. I convinced some of the braver men to put the body inside it, then asked them to cut the peat around where the body had been found, to see if they could find any clothes or objects.

As they did so, I took a closer look at the body.

She was such a strange thing to look at, Lucy! Her skin looked most like tanned leather, stained the color of tea. Her body no longer seemed straight and stiff, but slightly contorted, as if she had been writhing a little before I had fixed my gaze upon her. I know it was only the uneven length of the stakes resting against the backboards of the casket that made it look thus, but it was disconcerting to behold, all the same.

I have started calling her “she,” though I have to admit I still don’t know for sure if the creature was male or female. When turning her over, the men had debated draping a handkerchief over her loins, presumably to protect my modesty, only the body had no sex to speak of, at least none that we could see. Bog eats bones and eyes and, apparently, also genitals!

(I’d like to warn you not to read this part out to Mrs. van Dijk, but a part of me would absolutely love it if you did. If she fires you on the spot, know that you can come live with me and Michael, as I’ve always said you could, just as I’ve always told you that the position of companion is utterly beneath you. I could give you money so you could get some lodgings nearby and employ a little maid, and it would all be very respectable. But I know, I’m flogging a dead horse here. Still, it’s good to give it the occasional thrashing to ensure it really is dead.)

Where was I? Ah, yes: the apparent sexlessness of the bog body. I didn’t think her nearly so sexless. She didn’t have any of the usual clear physical markers of her sex, yet her face made me believe she must have been a woman, once.

That face…

It is one of the strangest, most haunting faces I have ever seen. I find it hard to describe it. I’ve included a sketch, but I fear it doesn’t do her justice. When I studied it, it initially just looked like a wizened sack of meat, sadly crushed and misshapen. Yet, when viewed from a certain angle, that same face I had thought a deflated football at first suddenly took on a rare beauty I have only ever encountered before on paper or in marble. I know that may sound strange, since it’s the face of a corpse and one greatly altered by the bog. Certainly this optical illusion disconcerted me, but it is true, and if anyone will understand, I am sure that it must be you. They say a husband and wife are one flesh, but you are my twin and thus my other half.

Well, I gazed upon it, and I wondered what she would have looked like in life, before the bog tanned her to leather and dyed her hair red and consumed her eyes, before her jaw had so savagely been opened and a rock thrust inside her mouth, breaking her teeth down to pearly pips. Merely looking at it gave me a phantom pain in my jaw, and I resolved to remove the rock then and there; who knew what we might find once it was gone from her mouth? It wouldn’t be easy. I feared I might damage her teeth and jaw even more in attempting it, and that would rather defeat the purpose.

But I couldn’t very well leave her like that, now, could I?

I felt around the bit of rock, reached into her mouth with my fingers. The inside of her mouth felt damp, like the mouth of one still alive, and I shuddered, but did not pull away. Instead, I began to extract the stone from her jaw, doing it gently at first, then with a bit more force, grimacing at the sound of her teeth grinding against the stone. I tried to get a firmer grip but cut my knuckles on the broken stumps of her teeth.

I pulled my hand back with a cry. Little cuts gaped on my knuckles. Already blood as dark as the water from the bog flowed freely down my palm and wrist. It had stained her teeth pink.

The peat cutters have got it all wrong. “She’s not hungry, just thirsty,” I thought, and then laughed at my own silliness. I sucked on my knuckles, the harsh taste of blood mixed with the smokiness of peat blooming on my tongue.

Don’t bother trying to read that last paragraph. It’s just morbid nonsense. You know that I sometimes fall prey to very peculiar flights of fancy, especially after my darling little Lucille… But I don’t need to go into that now.

Well, I had a strange turn, probably due to the sun beating down on me and that damnably creepy illusion that made the bog woman look beautiful for a moment and then the shock from cutting my hand on those little teeth of hers. I stood sucking at the cuts, frowning at the pain, when Michael and Arthur finally arrived.

Arthur was immediately drawn to the body. He paced around the casket, studying the body from all angles, then asked to look at my sketches to see how we had found her. Next he began to touch her, feeling her throat and jaw, then the joints staked through, muttering all the while.

“Well? What do you make of it?” Michael asked.

I went to him and threaded my arm through his. I felt very tired all of a sudden.

“Fantastic!” Arthur said. His cheeks were flushed, and he looked like an excited schoolboy. “I think the body is at least a century old, but look at those hands! I can take fingerprints as easily as I could from my own hand. Bogs truly are remarkable.”

“Have you ever seen anything like it?” Michael asked.

Arthur shook his head. “No, but I’ve read some accounts. Bog bodies are rare, but such finds are not entirely unheard of, though it has been a long time since one was found in Dutch soil. If I remember correctly, the Germans had more luck and found a body like this in Schleswig-Holstein some fifteen years ago. They recorded the find and the subsequent autopsy meticulously. We might do the same here. Imagine the secrets we might uncover!”

He and Michael stood talking for a long time then, both growing animated by the prospect of discovery. I said little. I’m afraid I’d started to feel tired and a bit faint, probably from lack of food and the pain in my hand; though my knuckles had ceased bleeding, they still smarted abominably, the pain hot and pulsing.

After a while, the food and drink arrived, and Michael went around paying the men. Soon, they were almost merry, yet none of them stayed much longer. The light was fading fast, and they wished to get on home. Michael employed the bravest of them to help carry the casket back to Zwartwater; the cellar, being dry and cool, will help preserve the body, and with some small adjustments, it’ll be an excellent place for Arthur to perform an autopsy, which he wishes to do as soon as possible. I think he would have taken a knife to her out in the fields, or else this very night, if we had let him.

As Michael and I walked home, I asked him again what we are to do with the body. He has his heart set on an autopsy, as has Arthur. Strangely, I find myself torn. There is no denying that opportunities like this seldom come along and we might learn all manner of things from this body, yet I find the prospect revolting distasteful, though I am not sure how I can account for these feelings. I’ve never been one to stand in the way of scientific discovery, so why should it bother me now? Perhaps I shouldn’t have tried to think of the body as a human being.

What do you think, Lucy dearest? To cut or not to cut?

I’ll stop this letter now. It’s quite long as it is, and you know how Michael loves to tease me about how often I write to you. Besides, my hand smarts from where I cut it, and though writing isn’t exactly agony, it isn’t quite pleasant either. An apt punishment, perhaps, for being so immodest as not to wear gloves outside the house! Mother would have had a fit, had she been alive to see me sit in that field with my hands and wrists exposed for all the workers to see, but then, she was never one for drawing, which is very hard to do when wearing gloves. Pencils are so very slippery.

I only wish you could have been there with me to see it, Lucy mine. I wish to know if you would have been able to see the beauty in that strange face, too .

I’ll truly stop now.

Arthur sends you his love (I know you are not the marrying type, but should you reconsider, know that he’d make a fine husband, and you a very fine doctor’s wife! But you mustn’t mind me. I’m flogging yet another dead horse. Truly, I sometimes feel I’ve got enough of them to pull a whole carriage!).

Give Mrs. van Dijk my regards. Better yet: tell her I think she’s positively cruel for keeping my twin away from me; only think that you and I could have seen the excavation of this body together if you still lived with me!

Your loving sister,

Sarah