Chapter 31 Aleys
Aleys
Inside the begijnhof, lamps are turned up in every window in vigil.
Aleys senses the beguines at their prayer benches within.
She can hear their murmurs flowing together, merging into a fast-pleading river.
Cecilia’s grip on her arm is so fierce Aleys can feel her nails bite through the wool.
They run through the courtyard. The door to the magistra’s home swings open on silent hinges.
Inside, three women look up from preparing poultices, their cheeks flushed.
The room smells of vinegar and rosemary.
Marte stands before the fire, urging the flames with the bellows, though the heat is already stifling.
The sisters regard Aleys with relief, as if now all will be well. She feels their hope climb onto her back, and she could collapse under the weight of it. Their eyes all bear the same message: Save her for us. The oldest gestures her poultice toward the stairs. Go.
Aleys feels the heat rise with her as she mounts the narrow stairs, palms against the walls. It’s a long climb. The hopes of the beguines trail her up, plastering her ribs like bandages. It’s hard to breathe. God is not at her bidding. They have no idea how willful he is.
Sophia’s bedchamber is lined with candles.
They must have brought every beeswax taper from the church stores.
Aleys sees, surprised, that the walls of Sophia’s bedchamber are painted a golden mustard.
The wavering half-light casts shifting pools of amber and ochre.
So the magistra allowed herself this one luxury.
No lace, no tapestry. Just this cocoon of warm light.
Something in that thought makes Aleys glad.
Her hand travels to the small rectangle of the psalter she wears beneath her dress.
Katrijn is bent over the bed, her strong back flexed taut as a bow. Just inside the door Lukas is murmuring prayers. Her heart sinks. He has delivered last rites. He raises his eyes. They are bloodshot and troubled. He shakes his head. It’s bad, his eyes say.
Katrijn cradles Sophia’s head with one hand, strokes her brow with the other. There’s a great tenderness in the gesture. Sophia’s form disappears beneath the blanket. Katrijn twists to look at Aleys. Her eyes are desperate.
“You have come,” she says. “Finally.”
“Yes.”
Katrijn can’t bear to relinquish Sophia. So Aleys waits, her hands folded, breathing vinegar, which stings a throat already raw from the torches on the bishop’s stage.
Katrijn bends to press her brow against Sophia’s, and Aleys can tell she is trying to pull the affliction from Sophia’s body into her own, like drawing a splinter from the flesh.
Finally, Katrijn pulls herself away and stands to face Aleys.
“Please,” she whispers, “please.” Katrijn’s anguish is plain on her face, a naked despair that is willing to bargain.
Heal her, and I will believe you. Heal her, and I will do anything.
Aleys holds her breath as she approaches Sophia.
The magistra is childlike against the pillow, pale and hollow, perfectly still, waxy but for the spot of color on her forehead where Katrijn has pressed her own.
Her hair is spread out like a silver corona.
Has she already passed? Then Aleys sees, with a bolt of horror, the magistra’s eyes wheeling toward her with the terror of a frightened horse, overshooting Aleys’s face.
“She still can’t see,” says Lukas, “nor move. She couldn’t take communion.”
Katrijn moans. She hugs her elbows to her waist and bows her head, a gesture that belongs to another woman.
Aleys leans toward Sophia. “Magistra, can you hear me?” Sophia’s eyes train on her voice, latching to a rope thrown down a well.
“Yes, Mother, I think you can.” She concentrates on her hands, strains to feel the spirit within them.
She thinks back to the evening the magistra brought her the lamp in the church.
Nights when she woke racked with pained spirit, to find Sophia at her side.
He asks too much of you. Aleys bends to her ear and whispers, just for her, “Magistra, I will pray for you as you taught me.”
And so Aleys removes herself to Gethsemane, to the garden, and she prays his word so quietly that only Sophia can hear, over and over again.
One word to animate her frozen body, one word to bring her home, one word to bring her back: “Abba. Abba. Abba.” She hears Christ’s anguish over the valley and she feels his wonder and she tries, she tries, to let the magistra feel what she feels.
Into that word Aleys pours all her desire so that it channels a route; she carves with that word like a pickaxe, “Abba,” flint and pull and rock and mud, “Abba,” and the beguines’ prayers quietly fill the canal until it swells and spills over its banks.
She can see the way, opening to the sea; it is ahead and it is light, and she takes Sophia’s still hands and warms them and murmurs, “We are there, Magistra, it is just ahead.” She can feel the miracle descend.
They will save her, this cup of suffering will pass. And then . . . nothing.
The vision dissolves and Aleys is back in the room with the cloying scent of rosemary and the magistra’s eyes now closed, and there is no safety, she knows, because the world is flat again.
Her hands do not tingle, her spirit is damp.
She is empty of miracles. The beguines’ prayers have watered fallow ground.
Katrijn covers her face, stricken. She knows.
Aleys has failed.
Sophia issues a rattling sound and Aleys pulls back. She feels a weariness in her bones.
Sophia opens her eyes, searching. “Katrijn,” she murmurs.
From the corner, Katrijn lifts her head. “Sophia?” She pushes Aleys aside, takes Sophia’s hands.
“Katrijn?” It is a hoarse whisper, barely audible. The two women lock gaze, hazel eyes searching brown, as if in this moment, they both see each other. Then Sophia closes her eyes, exhales, and it is over.
Katrijn stiffens. She does not move for a long while. No one does. Silence expands to fill the room.
Then the beguines begin to sing. It is Ida first up the stairs, then Cecilia, then they are all there, around the bed.
They sing Ave Maria. Their dresses are spotted with raindrops and they smell like wet wool, but their song opens the shutters and Aleys feels Sophia slip out the window.
Do not go. But it is too late. Katrijn sobs quietly, her broad back heaving.
Aleys looks around the room at the tearstained faces. “I’m so sorry . . .” she begins, speaking to Katrijn’s shoulder.
“Get out,” says Katrijn, never moving her gaze from Sophia.
“I tried—”
“Get out,” she repeats louder, turning. Her eyes blaze.
“You fraud. Sophia believed in you, thought you were something rare, like some kind of”—she spits out the word—“angel. It was all about you. Since the day you arrived it’s been all about you.
And you didn’t even save her.” Katrijn nearly chokes. “You didn’t deserve her.”
None of us did. “Katrijn, I love her as you do.”
Katrijn shakes her head. Her eyes are raw. No one loves her as I do. And Aleys sees it is true.
“Get out of here,” Katrijn whispers. “You are no saint to us.”
There is a shocked pause in the song as Aleys pushes her way from the room and stumbles down the stairs. Below, Marte raises her head from gathering the sodden poultices. Silent tears wet her ruddy cheeks. The sight of Marte crying pierces Aleys as nothing else can.
Aleys runs. She races across the dark courtyard, through the arch, pushing open the double doors and passing onto the bridge.
A thin thread of cobble is visible through the offerings, mush and glistening cabbage heads.
Flower petals float below in a browning pink and yellow quilt.
A quiet rain is falling into the small square outside the begijnhof, empty in the dead of night.
Somewhere, the bell of Matins rings. She is startled.
Sophia is gone. Time should have stopped.
Aleys stands there, on the bridge, in the rain.
Behind her, above her, the begijnhof bell begins to toll.
The first stroke rises sudden, swells, fades into a watery echo.
Then the second. It will be Ida ringing the bell, pulling with all her small solemn might on the thick rope.
Over and over, clapper strikes metal. Peal after peal is born and dies.
It is so senseless. Aleys begins to cry, there on the bridge, among the offerings to her worthless gift.
A man exits his home across the way, wiping sleep from his face, looking up at the steeple. The bell tolls on and on, and with each clang, another person enters the square. Their eyes graze Aleys, then rise above her. Aleys sees the wondering in their faces: Death has chosen a beguine. Which one?
The best. Death took the best.
A small girl in the hand of her mother is watching Aleys, brown eyes under a white cap.
All the adults are gazing upward. But not the girl.
Her eyes glint with recognition, with the triumph of young children who have found the right word.
The girl mouths it. No, thinks Aleys, don’t.
Please do not say it. Not that. Not now.
But the child speaks her claim: “Sint.”
The mother looks at Aleys. Her eyes spark with the quick flint of opportunity.
She drags her child forward and presses the girl’s shoulders until both are kneeling before Aleys, demanding her blessing.
Can’t they see she’s not a saint? If she were, the bell would be silent.
Sophia would be alive. Aleys looks down at the woman.
You throw sheep knuckles onto the ground for a scrap of luck.
You require miracles to feed your faith. What in God’s name do you believe in?
Aleys opens her empty hands and looks up into the rain. I have nothing for you.
The mother grabs Aleys’s wrist and twists it to place it flat on her daughter’s head.
Aleys pulls away, but it’s too late. The crowd has noticed them.
Murmurs of “Sint!” rise from around the square.
Aleys feels the people closing in, like she’s a magnet drawing sharp filings toward her.
She pulls back, but the woman already has a handful of her robe, and then there are more, more voices, people slipping on the bridge as they push to be near.
She glances back at the begijnhof door, but there is already a man behind her with a gray beard and tearful eyes.
“Sint,” he says, touching a finger to her shoulder.
Don’t touch me, she thinks. But the sibilant hiss of “Sint!” surrounds her, until it licks across her palms and kisses her ear.
They claim her with the intimacy of ownership, like she’s a lucky rabbit’s foot.
They have encircled her now, on their knees in the offerings, hands clasped, heads bowed.
Their desire coats her limbs like ointment.
And then, from behind, hands grasp her hem. A tug, another tug. Her dress slips down her back until the front grips her throat. She claws at her neck to pull it away.
“Stop!” she gasps. But there are other hands now, scrabbling over her.
They pull her robe away from her until it is extended like a bell.
Cold rises from the cobbles up her thighs.
Before her, a man on one knee grabs a knife from its sheath, and with two flicks, nicks off a bit of cloth.
He folds it into his fist and brings it to his heart.
“Sint,” he murmurs. “Sint.” His eyes are closed.
The rip in the fabric is enough. Other hands begin to tear at it, yanking, pulling threads, grabbing handfuls from her garment.
They seize her belt, and it tightens around her waist like a vise until it too falls away, severed, and a small crowd fights over the knots.
When they look at her, their eyes are blank. They are breathing hard now, chanting “Sint! Sint!” and she feels their wildness. She pushes, but there are hands on her arms, fingers around her ankle.
“Stop!” she yells, but no one hears. Her heart can’t keep pace with her shallow breath, it’s all too fast. She’s engulfed by the crowd.
A knife nicks her shoulder and slices a ribbon from her sleeve.
She feels someone else run a knife through the other so that both sleeves are rent into brown wings that hang limp down her back.
Her arms are naked now, her legs exposed.
The drizzle is chill against her skin, hands hot where they slide along her limbs.
The people grab at the wings. She slips on their offerings and falls backward.
Fingernails bite into her calves. A fishwife is wringing her ankle as if to unscrew it and she realizes: They will tear me apart for my blessing.
A large man grunts as he pulls hard at her arm and she feels her shoulder skip its socket with a quiet ping and her back torques in pain.
Panic sharpens her thoughts. She struggles, but there’s nothing she can do.
I’m only seventeen. I don’t want to be martyred.
Then she’s groping air as they lift her above them.
Her sandals have vanished and her feet dangle far from her as they raise Aleys like a rag doll.
They will carry her somewhere—perhaps the cathedral, perhaps a bonfire—she knows not.
She is in the grip of something animal and frenzied, a wild sacrament.
Then someone slips and Aleys is falling, from their hands, from the bridge, and as she strikes the surface of the water, she knows no more.