Chapter 29 Aleys
Aleys
As the men leave, a breeze blows over the rooftops and the sheets lift from the lines.
They float in the dawn light, impossibly lovely.
As they settle, one by one, the beguines emerge from their homes, until Aleys is surrounded by women in gray.
The only noise is the children, who have begun their games, unaware of their mothers’ plight.
I want to be a child again, thinks Aleys.
Several of the beguines have bowed their heads before her, believers who think her capable of anything.
To the side, Katrijn, who thinks her capable of nothing, stands with arms crossed.
Only two beguines can begin to understand the impossible bind she’s in.
Ida murmurs, “I’m so sorry, Aleys.” Ida has been beside her at the hospital. She knows Aleys is helpless to control this thing.
Sophia steps forward to take Aleys in her arms. “Child, come here.”
“I might not be able to heal them,” she whispers.
“I know.” Sophia looks around at the community she’s built. A band of sunlight illuminates the first lines of laundry. “I know.”
“I can’t do it,” says Aleys. “I can’t, I can’t do this.”
“Shhh. It won’t be your doing. It will be God’s choice, whatever happens.”
“But why? Why would he do this?” Isn’t he supposed to protect them?
“I wish I knew.”
“But if I fail—”
“It’s not in your hands. You’ve told me so yourself. You can’t will what happens.”
But can’t she? She thinks of Marte. Aleys wishes now that Marte still limped as badly as the day they met.
It would have been better if she’d failed that day, if her hands had been inert, if there’d been no rush of sensation when she placed her hands on Marte’s foot.
Then she’d know she had no power to heal at will, that her own desire had nothing to do with it.
What will happen to Marte if she fails? To all of them? Where will they go?
A thing so precious and beautiful as this place, these brave women. All of it in her hands.
She mumbles into Sophia’s shoulder. “I didn’t ask to be chosen.”
But she did. She asked for a big gift.
Sophia shakes her head. “We’re all chosen, child. Some are chosen to the cross and some to feed the chickens. There’s no second-guessing God’s intentions. You know that.”
She does. Sometimes.
“Well, at least we should give you the day off from the hospital.” Sophia gives a weak smile. “I think you should pray.”
Aleys positions herself on her knees before the altar.
She starts a prayer. She stops. She begins again, stops again.
Here in the nave where the women sang and danced at Midsummer just months ago, where their voices wove music from verse, she can find no rhythm, no beauty.
She wants to prepare. She wants to lose herself, as she has before, in the twilight of poem prayers that curl through her like smoke until her spine is made of whispers. She wants to disappear.
But that doesn’t happen. The light ticks across the stones.
Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.
She can’t manage the words that follow: Thy will, not mine. She wants too much. She wants to save the begijnhof. She wants to save Sophia, Ida, even Katrijn. Herself. What if that’s not his will? Can she pray for that?
Please, she beseeches, just make this go away.
She tries harder. She sends her prayers to heaven, but they fall to ground, their wings bare assemblages of bone without feather, useless.
At noon, she gives up. She’s too angry to pray. “Why?” she asks. “Why are you doing this to me? To us?” If she could reach out and touch God’s fabric, she would rip it.
She needs to calm herself. Aleys fumbles for her psalter.
It’s there, as always, under her dress, the pouch smooth against her skin.
She slips out the book and opens it to Saint Ursula.
There’s the miniature Ursula in a blue dress, russet hair loose around her shoulders, a soldier’s arrow pointed at her breast. Around her lie eleven thousand slain maidens.
What is in Ursula’s heart? Her expression is placid, but so is that of the archer and of the virgins bleeding to death at her feet.
Did she rage against God for sending an assault on the women he’d commanded her to lead?
Or did Ursula still call him beloved? It seems to Aleys, now, that the tale couldn’t possibly be true.
Or maybe that’s what makes you a saint: the ability to face the worst and pray, Thy will be done.
I don’t understand you, she thinks. When I was a child, you hid messages in the clouds and love notes in the psalms. But I’m a woman now, and I see your cruelty and wonder what you are.
You create, you destroy. You plague, you heal.
You’ve made me your fickle instrument and I don’t understand your mind.
Show me, face-to-face. I want to know you.
This is her prayer. Show me where to find you.
She collapses back on her heels and opens her palms. Show me.
She feels it come on this time. A blurring of her edges, a fuzziness in the light, the smell of charred rosemary.
The light on the floor ticks backward. Aleys lurches like she’s leaned into the wind only to feel it slacken.
She opens eyes that were already open and sees before her a windswept vista of hard-packed sand.
It is a solitary place. A single tree stands in the center of this plain; its shadow is precise in the glare.
She walks toward the tree and halts. She has found him.
She knows this. He is the sun and the shadow, the perfect solitude.
The beautiful, perfect solitude. She knows she will find him if only she can stay here.
She doesn’t know whether she’s calling him or he’s calling her.
Let me stay with you, she says to this Christ. I will dwell in the desert, if only you will let me find you. Forty days, forty nights, forty years.
Then the Lakenhalle bell tolls and Aleys is pulled back into a world that makes no sense. You have broken my heart, she thinks.