Chapter 30 Aleys
Aleys
As the bell echoes, Aleys walks through the twilight courtyard.
The laundry hasn’t been taken in. No lamps shine in the windows, except for the reading room.
By this, she understands her sisters have spent the day together, in prayer.
They fear, too. But will they not walk with her?
No one has come to see her to the carriage.
Not Ida. Not Sophia. It’s a long way through the courtyard, alone.
She passes under the archway and steps onto the bridge.
The bishop’s carriage waits on the cobble, its black door open.
The swans twist their necks to follow her.
As she steps up into the carriage, Aleys hears raised voices from the courtyard behind her and turns to look.
But the footman has shut the door. There’s no escape.
Inside is Lukas with a friar she’s never met and Brother Hervé, whom she hasn’t seen since the day of her induction. How odd it feels to be surrounded by her order at this moment, how little they understand what’s at stake. Hervé reaches out the window to slap the carriage roof. It begins to roll.
“Sister Aleys,” Lukas says, smiling, “are you ready for this day?” He looks overexcited, slightly demented. “Our day of victory?”
“Father?” Surely, he understands the risk of this? He has witnessed the limbs that didn’t heal, the wounds that festered, the babies who died. He knows her gift can fail.
“You’re nervous,” he explains. “It’s only to be expected.”
“I’m more than nervous! How can you be so sure of miracles?”
“Have you prayed today?”
“Of course!” And he sent me a vision I can’t interpret.
“Good, good. All will be fine.”
“Why do you think that?”
“It’s God’s will. He will not fail his chosen.”
Hervé watches her closely. “Perhaps,” he says, “we should ride in silence.”
The buildings close in as they approach the plaza through narrow streets, until only the peak of the Lakenhalle belfry can be seen over the roofs.
The way is lit with torches, as for a holy day.
The streets are already crowded; the progress of the carriage to the Markt is slow and halting.
Voices are pitched high. Aleys wishes she could crawl under the bench.
She wishes she were anywhere but here. She reaches to the back of her neck, to yank at the spiky nubs of hair under her veil.
To feel something, anything, other than fear.
The carriage turns into the plaza and the noise grows.
Aleys clutches at her brown dress, rocking back and forth, trying to contain herself.
People bang on the carriage, eager to reach her, straining to touch even the horses, and the animals grow nervous, starting and stopping, so it takes them an eternity to reach the middle of the plaza.
Aleys’s heart is beating so hard she can hardly hear.
A high buzz has entered her ears. Please let that be God, she thinks, please let that be his presence.
The carriage door is yanked open, and the bishop stands there in full regalia, the golden shepherd’s crook in his hand, the white miter on his head. He is holding an azure cape embroidered with the insignia of his office, the crenellated tower topped by three golden fleurs-de-lis.
“We are ready for you.” He leans forward to wrap the cape around her.
“What are you doing?” says Lukas. “She’s Franciscan! She doesn’t wear a bishop’s costume.”
“Tonight she belongs to the Church,” says the bishop.
Aleys is too dazed to care what men want her to wear.
As the bishop fastens the cape about her neck, she cranes around him at the platform erected in the heart of the plaza, trying to see who she’s been called to heal.
She focuses on her hands, trying to feel the tingle, the sense of wasps in her palms. They are bundling her out of the carriage.
Just as she is stepping down, there’s a commotion.
It’s Cecilia, out of breath, broken through the crowd, shoving people aside.
“Aleys!” she cries, and Aleys can’t make out what she says next, but she sees wild desperation on Cecilia’s face.
“Stop!” Aleys says to the bishop, who’s taken her arm and is leading her toward the platform.
“Wait!” Cecilia is speaking to Lukas. He looks quickly up at Aleys, his face ashen.
“What is it?” she shouts back. The bishop tightens his grip and pulls.
“I said to stop!” He pulls again. Aleys steps on his foot, hard, wresting her arm away and turning back through the crowd toward Cecilia.
The people want to touch her, she feels them tug on the accursed cape, but Hervé and the other friar hold them back until Aleys reaches Cecilia and Lukas.
“Aleys, we need you!” Cecilia’s voice is desperate. “Sophia. She’s taken ill. She rose from prayer to see you out, and she just collapsed. She can’t move, Aleys!”
“Sophia?”
“Yes, we were all in the reading room praying on our knees. When the bell rang, the magistra stood and her hands went to her head like she was struck by lightning, but from inside like, and she crumpled and couldn’t get up.
Oh, Aleys. It was horrible. It’s like only half of her is working, like the bolt struck her right side. I’m not even sure she can see!”
No. Not Sophia.
Cecilia yanks on her arm. “Katrijn said to bring you back.”
“But Katrijn doesn’t believe . . .”
“She does now.” Cecilia gives Aleys a pointed look. “She’d believe anything to save Sophia.”
Aleys faces Lukas. “We have to return to the begijnhof.”
The bishop reaches them. He is glowering. “The people are impatient.”
The crowd has begun to chant her name. It starts out as Aleys, a sound that ripples through the crowd with a hiss, until someone, somewhere, changes the word, and it comes back as a whiplash: “Sint!” They are calling for a saint.
Aleys is not a saint. She is far from a saint, but the chant grows louder.
“Sint! Sint!” It fills the Markt like an arena.
She thinks of Perpetua’s death in the emperor’s stadium.
She thinks of Mama wrestling with demons the night she died.
“I have to go back. Turn the carriage around.”
The torchlight catches the gems on the bishop’s miter. His crook glows. The bishop shakes his head.
Lukas speaks up. “Jan, it’s the magistra. She’s been struck down. You see your people. They’ll wait all night for Aleys. Let her go to the begijnhof. We’ll bring her back.”
Aleys feels panic in her throat, a hot acid. She has to get to the begijnhof. She thinks of Sophia on the floor, unable to stand, unable to see. She remembers the moan that snaked under Mama’s door. She has to be there. Whether or not she can help, she has to be with Sophia. She can’t lose Sophia.
But the bishop is angry. “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s one woman. Look at this crowd!” His eyes narrow as he focuses on Aleys. “On that platform are three gravely ill souls who have been waiting for you for hours. They could die while you dither.”
Behind him the raised platform is illuminated with torches.
In the center are three people. One is on a litter, covered with a blanket.
Two are standing, bent, shivering. They’re dressed in rags.
Their eyes are large in their faces, turned to her.
She realizes with horror that one of the standing figures holds an infant.
The chanting grows even louder, the crowd impatient.
The bishop bends too close to Aleys’s ear.
She feels his spittle on her cheek as he enunciates, each syllable crisp and quiet.
“If you leave, the test is aborted. Failed.” He straightens.
“Your choice. You can save the begijnhof and these three souls.” He gestures to the platform.
“Or we arrest you and your magistra. I don’t care if she can’t see.
I don’t care if she can’t walk. She can still burn. ”
Aleys hates this man with a perfect fury. She doesn’t know if he will keep his word, but she thinks he will keep his threat. For all her prayers to God, he’s sent her a devil in a bishop’s robe.
She wants desperately to flee to Sophia. The magistra could be dying. But if she can heal these three people quickly and get to Sophia in time, the begijnhof would be saved. If she fails, they’re all condemned. If she leaves, they’re condemned. She knows what Sophia would say. Try. You have to try.
“Lukas,” she says. “Go to the magistra. Run. If she requires last rites . . .” It’s hard to say. “Cecilia, go with him. Tell them I’m coming.” Cecilia turns and starts throwing elbows to clear the way. “Hervé, get this carriage turned around.”
Aleys turns toward the platform.
The crowd is baying now as one animal. Aleys walks past the bishop, not even glancing at him.
She reaches the stairs, fumbles with the fastening at her throat, tears off the bishop’s cloak, and throws it behind her.
She runs the last steps. The scene on the platform is infernal.
A dozen torches frame the stand, their caustic tar stinging her throat.
She can hardly draw breath. She thinks she hears someone cry “Aleys!” in a familiar voice.
Even in the midst of everything, she startles.
Finn? But the sound is swallowed by the mass of people chanting “Sint!” The stage is lit so brightly that she can’t see beyond the first row of people who are reaching up to touch her hem.
She steps back from the edge and turns to face the patients.
They are shivering, though it is hot as hell, cowering in the center of the stage, their eyes huge, like the souls in the devil’s cauldron in her psalter.