Chapter 43 Friar Lukas
Friar Lukas
It’s more than he can bear.
He lets the black curtain fall back into place.
She prays, Christ answers. He begs, she receives. She asks, she receives. He preaches, people turn away. He blesses with cold hands. She strokes a brow, it heals. He asks, he begs, nothing.
Nothing.
Why? He’s been obedient. Poor. Chaste. He’s founded an order. Why would God raise the student above the teacher?
Aleys speaks of a love he’s read about, yearned for, but has never felt. Christ kisses her. Lukas knows he shouldn’t watch, that madness follows such jealousy. Yet he can’t tear his eyes from the courtship of his protégée and his God.
Lukas knows his duty. He should be a joyful servant, not a covetous spouse.
And how is he supposed to respond to her ecstasy?
He doesn’t dare open his mouth for fear of what he might say, for fear that he might spew venom over the sill between them.
He knows this is wrong. Envy is an error.
A sin. He places his hands on the stone frame of the window, bends his head into the fabric of the curtain.
She’s just on the other side. For a moment, he thinks he should confess to her.
But the shepherd does not confide in the sheep. He turns away.
When Lukas leaves the parlor, demons jump from the ledge to follow, keeping to the fringed shadows of the street. He glances at them and wonders that others can’t see the darkness trailing him.
Hervé watches him with furrowed brow. Hervé puts extra rations in his bowl, observes that they go untouched. Hervé interrupts an argument between two young friars. Take that outside, he says, glancing at Lukas, who merely stares into the fire.
“You’re not sleeping,” he says gently.
There are demons in the night, Lukas wants to explain, but can’t, because he leads these men.
He can’t speak of the fiends that crouch in the corners of the friary; how they whisper to each other in susurrus and go quiet when he looks at them.
In the darkness, they slide between the cots, always toward him, toward him.
He wakes with a start and knows he’s not dreaming.
The ash stirs in the grate and orange eyes wink from the cinder.
Hervé offers him wine and dishes of lamb. Lukas has no idea where he got such fare, what compromises he made to obtain it. Food has turned bitter on his tongue, and he knows its cause. He shakes his head at Hervé. There is no cure for his envy.
Lukas prays for days on end. Instead of joy, a beastly greed creeps into his penance.
He fasts until his stomach screams. Nothing.
He applies the strap to his back, opening wounds, so that something, anything, will hurt more than this.
Nothing. He feels his obedience like a plug lodged in his chest, starving him of blood, of the pulse of matter, the flesh of passion.
His tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth as if to a starched cathedral.
He tastes the wafer, always the wafer. He thirsts for wine.
Lukas returns to the glade of his vows. He lifts his robe and sinks his bare knees into the dirt until the cold mud cups his bones. He flattens the tops of his feet against the ground. He will not move until he gets an answer.
My Father, who art in Heaven, you are the word, the rule, the beginning without end.
I am but your servant.
Help me understand.
Show me a sign.
He thinks, The girl’s very desire, her lush desire, draws God like a magnet.
Lukas reaches inside for his own passion, but it crumbles like dry leaves.
He tries to recall what it felt like to be young, to be fresh as a sapling, to turn toward the sun.
He wants to say, You could have at least told me that my way was wrong.
You could have told me there’s another way.
Let me feel, Lord. Make me feel alive, he prays.
He waits. There’s no answer, save a breeze that rattles the bare limbs.
He regards his hands. His palms are dry, his wrists dry, his fingers dry.
If he were to cut himself, would he even bleed?
He imagines drawing a knife over his wrist, the long slow slice parting his skin, pressing deep to find nothing but desiccated meat to the bone.
Finally, he speaks. “You made me, Lord. You made me a creature of reason.” He is so frustrated. “Why do you require passion?”
He waits. A quiet rain begins. A drop here, a drop there, upon the ground, whispering as they strike the leaves.
He doesn’t look up. He bows his head. He waits for a sign.
The patter intensifies; the rain is all around him now.
The droplets are sprinkling his shaved head, running down his neck.
Perhaps the skies will part, the rain will cease, he will be given a sign.
But the water just keeps coming, until it’s a steady hushed wash, until his hands glisten with it, until his robe is soaked.
He doesn’t see that every drop holds answers.
Then he thinks of her, in the begijnhof courtyard, face tipped back to meet the rain.
It occurs to him then. She is the sign.
There is an antidote to the daytime poison he drinks. The source of sickness is the source of cure. Only Aleys can heal him.