Chapter 27 The Bishop
The Bishop
Miracles are an issue for the bishop. He paces the nave of Sint-Salvator, avoiding the withering gaze of Christ over the altar.
The peaked miter perched on his head begins to slide to the side, so Jan yanks it off and ruffles his hair.
He can’t think straight in that hat. He resumes walking, turning the hat in his hands.
First, there’s the matter of his staff. Everyone is talking about the girl.
Jan has heard the rumors; his priests, his cook, his footman all speak of the saint in the begijnhof.
They can’t stop talking. The kitchen help are concocting false ailments to get into Sint-Janshospitaal just to see her; the scullion went so far as to stab himself in the thigh with a carving knife.
Jan thinks to remind them that no one is a saint until he says they are, until Rome agrees, and certainly not before they are dead, but he holds his tongue.
A surge of faith is swelling over the Low Countries like a wave that will swamp them all.
Even in Brugge, especially in Brugge; today’s Mass was so crowded, they ran out of altar bread.
It has been a week since anyone was murdered.
He needs to stop this. They might wake God up with their fervor.
Jan reaches the end of his pacing before a small door set in the wall, the entrance to the old anchorhold where the recluse Gunther lived.
Another fanatic. They’re all over Europe now, these hermits, pretending they’re the original desert fathers who abandoned their earthly possessions, shouting that they were off to commune with God.
Madmen. Back in the first centuries of Christendom, before there were more comfortable ways of showing devotion.
Like becoming a bishop. But today’s hermits, the anchorites?
God, they’re even more unhinged. Instead of wandering free in the wild, they volunteer to be walled into cells hastily slapped on the sides of churches and abbeys—for a life of prayer.
Especially women. There are over a hundred anchoresses in England, even now.
It’s too strange. He remembers, as a boy, how they’d throw pebbles at Gunther’s window, daring each other to peer through the panes of shaved horn.
Even though you couldn’t quite see into the anchorhold, Jan always feared that Gunther’s leering shadow would pop up in the window like a jack-in-the-box.
Jan turns the corner, setting his back to the empty hold.
Gunther died years ago. He has more immediate issues with the living zealots.
People thirst for wonders. The problem is, he can’t arrest Lukas’s girl now.
He doesn’t believe she’s actually performing miracles, but as long as the people do, the girl is untouchable.
He might not even be able to arrest the magistra who houses her.
He still needs an arrest. This miracle business is complicating everything.
How ironic it would be if the miracles were real.
Just as he was about to round up the heretics, God raises his head from his soup and makes one of them a saint?
No. He can’t think like that. It’s unproductive.
Why would God get involved in the affairs of his own church?
He’s turned a blind eye to the corruption for centuries.
No, the thing that needles Jan the most is the missed opportunity.
There must be a way to monetize the miracles.
He needs to meet her. Either she’s as accomplished an actor as Willems, or she’s a bona fide miracle worker.
If she’s the real thing, he’ll present her to the pope.
If she’s a good actor, he’ll present her to the pope.
If she fails, if she’s a bad actor, he needs her to fail flagrantly, publicly, so the people see her scam, and he can arrest her and close down the whole begijnhof for fraud.
He can throw in translation to make it stick.
Problem solved. No matter what, he’s going to Rome. He just needs to think of a test.