Chapter 16 Aleys
Aleys
The sun peaks high. It’s nearly Midsummer, thinks Aleys.
A year ago she was learning Latin from Finn in the fields.
Just before they moved to the orchard to read the Song of Songs in the trees.
Canticum Canticorum. The world brimmed with promise and blood rushed through her veins like a spring-fed river.
She knew where she fit. Or thought she did.
And now? Finn’s in some scriptorium, copying out Latin, dipping his reed in a pot of red ink and embellishing the D in Deus.
He’s adding flourishes to words that need no embellishment, that were perfect and sacred and their very own.
The beams of our house are cedars, and its rafters are firs.
Does he think of her as he copies? Will someone explain the meaning to him?
Maybe to them he’s nothing more than a hand with a quill.
Either way, he’s risked nothing, she thinks bitterly.
She’s better off forgetting him. Finn’s safe within his monastery.
Whereas she’s a novitiate nearly two months into her probation, already running out of time.
She’s supposed to be recruiting other women.
Friar Lukas seems to think it would be easy, like she could bang her spoon on her mug and announce that she’s looking to form a women’s order, would anyone care to join?
She’ll have to approach the candidates one by one.
She figures she’ll have better luck with the ones not yet pledged.
Aleys steps from the dormitory into the sunny courtyard, where she nearly trips over a pair of young beguines seated on a ground cloth spread across the path.
They’ve pulled their skirts above their knees and stretched out their legs, stockinged feet nearly meeting to create a diamond of space.
Between them is a pile of sheep fleece, straight from the sack, still tightly curled in locks, still full of seed and bramble.
The girls clutch long willow switches, poised to beat the curl from the fleece so it can be carded.
Aleys smiles. Wullebreken. She and Griete used to chant as they broke the wool, their yellow switches whipping the locks into a churning cloud of wispy fleece angels.
And sure enough, the girls nod to each other and begin singing as they snap their switches into the fleece.
Wullebreken, Wullebreken
Send me a dowry
Wullebreken, Wullebreken
Send me a man
If he’s not handsome, I’ll go to the convent
Wullebreken, Wullebreken
Fast as I can
Wullebreken, Wullebreken
Nun in the convent
Wullebreken, Wullebreken
Send me a priest
If he’s not holy, take me to the begijnhof
Wullebreken, Wullebreken
We’ll have a feast
Wullebreken, Wullebreken
Priests want your money
Wullebreken, Wullebreken
So do the nuns
The beguines will make you work for your living
Wullebreken, Wullebreken
Till the fleece is done
Within moments, the air is full of angels. These girls look way too happy to join the Franciscans.
The problem is that they all seem happy.
So Aleys has decided Marte should be her first target.
She’s stalked Marte through the laundry, spied as she sweeps the church, watched her kneading dough.
Perhaps a life of prayer would be a relief from constant toil.
She’s noticed how Marte lingers at the evening readings.
Marte is on her knees, scrubbing a doorstep.
“Marte? Do you have a moment?”
Marte pauses to wipe sweat from her forehead but doesn’t look up. “What’s on your mind, miss?”
“I’ve been hoping to talk with you.”
“You’ve not wanted for opportunity.” She puts down the brush and sits back on her heels, wiping her hands against her apron. “You’ve been on me like a brown shadow all week.” Marte hoists herself to stand. “What do you need? You can just ask.”
“Well, I . . .” Already the question seems preposterous. Marte, limping down the lane with an alms bowl? Aleys has to start somewhere. She claps her palms together. “I thought you could join the brown friars.” She waits. Marte frowns. Aleys rotates her palms against each other. “With me,” she adds.
“The friars?” Marte squints. “Why ever would I do that, miss?”
“To get closer to God?”
“Hmph.” Marte snorts. “If you’ll pardon my saying so, God seems to prefer me at a distance.”
“But . . .”
“You forget that I’m married.”
“Oh.” She had forgotten.
“I don’t know that your brown friars are recruiting any wives. If God wants me closer, he’ll need to make me a widow.” She rubs the back of her neck. “I might thank him for that.” She picks up the scrub brush. “Until then, miss, I’m grateful to be here with the beguines.”
Aleys next considers Cecilia, who’s carried herself with fresh confidence since the reading of Mary Magdalene.
Perhaps she’s looking to go deeper. At least she’s friendly.
But Cecilia’s never alone. On a wet afternoon, Aleys finds her among the dormitory girls winding skeins onto niddy-noddies that look newly made.
Katrijn must have recently ordered them.
Aleys picks up a spare one, examines the slim rod of beech crossed by bars at the top and halfway down; it’s well-made, neatly polished so the wood won’t snag the yarn that’s wound in figure eights over the crossbars.
Ida nods curtly as Aleys takes some yarn from the pile and perches at the end of her cot, away from the rain splashing off the windowsill.
Aleys loosely knots the yarn onto the top cross and begins wrapping.
There’s not a woman in Flanders who doesn’t know how to wind yarn, how to keep the tension even and the twist constant so that the skeins won’t tangle when they’re slipped off.
They can wind yarn while walking, while minding a toddler, while talking.
As usual, it’s Cecilia who’s doing the latter.
“Well, he was just the worst man, stealing and cheating and beating his wife and children. To hide his sinfulness from the priests, the man forbade his son to go to church, but of course the boy does go, and he confesses, and when the father hears about it? Whoa! He’s so angry he grabs the boy and throws him into the village furnace.
Just like that, right in there with the bread as it’s baking. ”
“His own son?” gasps a nearby girl.
“Yes, Sister. And you know what happened? When they pulled that boy out, he was unharmed. Completely fine. Not even a hot blister. He said the Holy Mother came to him in the fire and placed her blue mantle about him and that protected him from the flames.”
Aleys pictures a swirl of sky, softer than silk, impenetrable as iron, around the child.
“She can do that?” another girl asks.
“She can do anything.”
Several of them nod.
“What happened to the father?” asks Ida, suspicious.
“Course they threw him right inside, where the devil was waiting.” Cecilia leans in and her large eyes grow larger. “They say that fire still burns and if you look in, you can see the man in agony. The town had to build another furnace, on account of the bread always coming out burnt.”
They do love their miracles. Aleys believes in wonders, at least the ones in scripture. Those happened a long time ago. Cecilia’s miracles, she thinks, might be tall tales.
The noon bell rings. Cecilia puts down her winding and looks out the window. The rain has picked up, the hush dampening the sound. The dormitory feels like a small drowsy ark swaying above a green sea. “I’ll go fetch the beer,” Cecilia announces.
“Again?” says one of her companions. “Didn’t you go to the brewery just yesterday? Besides, it’s pouring.”
“It’s a warm rain.”
Hardly, thinks Aleys.
“Cecilia, you can’t go alone,” says Ida. “It causes too much gossip.”
“I’ll take Sister Aleys with me.” Cecilia looks straight at her. “You’ll come, won’t you?”
Aleys has to run to keep up, skirting puddles.
“Cecilia, wait!” Aleys pants. “I have something to ask you.”
“Right now? In the rain?”
“Yes, can you please just slow down a moment?”
Cecilia stops, but her head leans toward the brewery. She shields her eyes. “Maybe you can ask me later?”
Cecilia tugs down her dress and sets back her cap, allowing a few wheat-colored curls to escape.
She pushes into the brewhouse, where they are met with a warm gust of yeast and rosemary.
Sawdust covers the floor. Housewives and errand boys are bargaining over barrels.
Cecilia cranes her neck, searching. At the back of the hall, a door to the side yard opens.
A gangly young man strains to push a large barrel over the lip of the doorway, putting his thin shoulder to the staves.
“Rolf!” cries Cecilia. Rolf straightens at her voice, and the barrel rolls back against his foot. He winces as he smiles, reddening to his jug ears. Rolf doffs his cap, pressing it to his chest as the rain plasters ginger hair to his cheeks. “Miss Cecilia?” he calls out, his voice cracking.
“Rolf! More ale!” she commands, and Rolf abandons the barrel in the doorway. “The juniper flavor!” she bellows after him.
Cecilia looks at Aleys, reads her eyes. “He’s the brewer’s apprentice.” Aleys frowns at her. “No, really, it’s not like that. Rolf just knows me from fetching the small beer.” Then she grins. “But he always gets me the best.” Aleys doesn’t doubt it.
Rolf returns with a cask in his arms. Water sluices from his orange eyebrows. “Shall I carry it for you?” It looks as though Cecilia could bear the load more easily than Rolf. Pit the pair of them in an arm wrestling contest, and Aleys would put her coin on Cecilia.
“Yes, Rolf. Follow me.” Cecilia lifts her chin and sails out the door.
“You see?” she says to Aleys over her shoulder. “The city is good. Just,” she says, “maybe don’t mention it to Sister Katrijn.”
Wouldn’t matter if she did. Cecilia won’t last any longer at the begijnhof than Aleys.
“Now what did you want to ask me?”
“Oh, that?” says Aleys. “Never bother.”