Chapter 18 Aleys
Aleys
The reading chair has migrated to the window to catch the evening light.
Aleys has asked permission to read. She hopes to make up for the night that she corrected Cecilia.
She hopes that they will like her if she reads.
She feels the contradiction, that she wants to belong even as she tries to recruit them away. But there you have it.
Katrijn pushes aside the spindles in her basket to extract a sheet of parchment.
It’s riddled with holes where the parchminer scraped the goatskin too thin.
The translator, whoever he is, uses cheap materials.
The readings are always in the same cramped hand, hastily executed, words crammed onto the page in uneven lines.
Katrijn passes the reading to Aleys. For a moment, they’re face-to-face, gripping the parchment.
Aleys looks down. Katrijn’s hands are blemished with liver spots.
Even her cuticles are stained brown. Aleys starts.
On her right hand. Just her right hand. When Aleys looks up, Katrijn’s eyes are stern. She releases the reading.
Aleys’s eyes follow as Katrijn resumes her seat and pulls cloth work from her basket. Every nail on Katrijn’s right hand is stained brown; her third finger bears an angry red callus, as if she’s been gripping a pen too long. It’s a sudden realization: Katrijn is the translator.
Aleys’s head reels. How is it possible? Katrijn must work through the night by lamplight, Latin to her left, blank parchment to her right, the words gloria, pax, fides flying across the gap, landing on the new page as glory, peace, faith. This page she holds is written in Katrijn’s hand.
How had she missed it? She hadn’t imagined that the woman with the coin purse could also cherish scripture.
But it makes sense. Katrijn reads Latin.
Now Aleys understands why Katrijn is so wary, why she watches Aleys as if she were an informer.
Aleys could bring down the Church upon them if she reported the translations.
“Let us pray.” Sophia gives the benediction, her voice as calm as a compress.
Sophia—she’s been harboring a translator in the begijnhof.
For Sophia knows, of course she does. Katrijn and Sophia are always together.
They’re close, closer even than sisters.
You can see how they lean on each other.
They may disagree, but there’s some understanding between them, a tenderness. They protect each other.
The women are waiting. Aleys holds in her hands the parable of the mustard grain, the tiny seed that grows into a towering tree to delight the creatures of the air.
She imagines the Dutch syllables springing into forests of words.
As Aleys begins reading, Katrijn tips back her head to listen, intent as a composer hearing the first notes of her own music.
Later, Aleys corners Ida.
“Katrijn translates scripture, doesn’t she?”
Ida looks at her sharply.
“You don’t have to say. But why?”
Ida frowns. “If you don’t understand, I can’t explain.”
“No, I do. Just, why her? Why does she do something so dangerous we can’t even talk about it?” Aleys thinks of the martyrs in her psalter. Is Katrijn that brave?
Ida lowers her voice. “If you must have a reason: Her old father is gone deaf, but he can still read. She makes three copies. One for us, one for the townspeople, and one for him.” Ida looks Aleys straight in the eye. “She doesn’t want him to die without joy.”
“But it’s so risky.”
“You learned Latin to read the psalms”—she purses her lips—“to yourself.”
“But that’s not illegal.”
“You think we can all study like you? That we all own psalters? It’s hard enough to read in Dutch. We can’t master Latin, too. Some of us have to work.”
It’s the most she’s ever heard her say at once. “Ida, I could teach you.”
But Ida is shaking her head. “You still don’t see, do you?
It’s not just me. Look around. God rules our lives, our deaths.
He judges whether we will spend eternity in heaven or hell, but Rome won’t let us read his word?
” Ida grips Aleys’s arm and the look in her eye is fierce. “She does this for us.”
Katrijn’s translation is a gift. Sure as bread on the table, she’s given them meaning.
She’s offered Cecilia forgiveness. She’s given Marte the solace of stories of the afflicted.
Katrijn brings her father poetry when he can no longer hear.
Some want to understand so they can follow.
Sophia, so she can lead. And Ida? Ida just thinks no priest should stand between the people and their God.
And Aleys realizes that it’s not just her, not just the beguines—there are people all over the Low Countries who would hold the word close if they could.
“Magistra? Might I seek counsel?” Aleys knocks on Sophia’s door.
“Advice from an old beguine?” Sophia smiles. “Come in.”
Sophia’s home is modest, with nothing more than a prie-dieu, a painted wall cupboard, and a table, but there’s a thick rush mat on the floor and the chairs before the fireplace have good wool blankets across their backs.
On a table lies open an accounting book, ink still wet on the page; Sophia has just been making an entry.
A narrow stair leads to a bedchamber above.
It’s not the largest house in the begijnhof, but the magistra doesn’t take in boarders as some others do.
It would be nice to have a room like this, thinks Aleys, all to yourself.
Sophia gestures her into one chair and takes the other. “What’s on your mind?”
“I wanted to ask you”—Aleys hesitates—“about the translations. I know we don’t discuss the source.”
“But you’ve figured it out. I thought you might.”
“Yes.” Aleys releases her breath. She adds, hurriedly, “No one told me.”
Sophia nods. “And you want to help.”
Can Sophia read her mind? “Exactly! If I could get parchment and ink, then I could—”
Sophia leans forward and puts a hand on Aleys’s knee. “I’m sorry, child. I can’t permit that.”
“Why not?”
“This is a matter between you and Friar Lukas.”
“But the friars don’t translate.”
“Exactly, and for good reason. The Franciscans are so radical, their commitment to poverty and love so uncompromising, that it makes powerful men uncomfortable. You know there are those in Rome, right now, trying to persuade the pope that the friars must be forced to own property? As it is, the Franciscans dance on the edge of papal approval. They don’t dare translate, even if they’re sympathetic.
If you did, you’d be putting your own order in danger. ”
“Then why do you risk it?”
“The Church isn’t concerned with the activities of old women who mend stockings.”
“We could keep it secret, if I helped.”
Sophia gives her a long look. “That attitude is in neither the spirit nor the law of your vows.”
“It’s the only thing I know to do!”
“Child, there are many gifts of the spirit. Prayer, charity, devotion, healing, teaching, among others.”
“But what’s my gift?”
Sophia laughs. “Such impatience! You’ve been in religious life for what? Two months? Not even prophets foresee their own gifts. God will call your talent from you when it’s needed. Until he does, child, serve with a full heart. It’s all he asks.”
It’s what Friar Lukas said. Be patient. She doesn’t want to be patient.
Aleys harnesses herself to the prie-dieu, prays and prays harder to be shown her gift.
A real gift. She has to prove herself. More than fasting, more than a hair shirt.
If she can’t attract followers and she can’t preach and she can’t translate, there must be something she can do.
She prays for a calling to serve God that’s as clear as a clarion. Something big.