Chapter 47 Aleys
Aleys
Aleys wakes with cramps and nausea. Marte brings her tea of fennel, removes her bloodied cloths.
Marte never comments, just returns the fabric clean and folded.
Aleys revives the fire and hangs a pot so she can wash.
While it warms, she curves her body around Kat, whose fur glints cinnamon in the firelight.
She scratches behind his ear, and he pushes into her hand.
There’s such pleasure in making another creature happy.
Kat flips to expose the white diamond on his belly.
Aleys strokes his silky fur and Kat traps her hand, scrubbing it with his gritty tongue as if cleaning her palm is of utmost urgency.
His paw pads are pink like the insides of shells.
After Terce, Aleys rises from the prie-dieu and smooths her black dress, careful not to dislodge the linen strips she’s drawn tight to catch her flow.
Her eye snags on the cross on the wall. She sighs.
She should pray for Lukas, too. For relief from whatever it is that’s torturing him.
There’s something on the fringe of her awareness, a flick of a black tail in the dark, a shiver.
She dismisses it. Friar Lukas is her advisor.
She returns to her knees and asks God to give the man peace.
Just, she adds, keep his hands out of my cell.
Marte raps lightly on the shutter to let Aleys know the first townsfolk have arrived.
There might be a girl seeking advice about joining a nunnery or a laborer praying for his wife to be delivered safe from childbed.
Her favorite return visitor is an old man who simply sits with Aleys in silence, his wheeze measuring out each moment.
She’s come to enjoy these visits. The showings have left her heart so full that it’s a relief to pray with others.
Like a new mother swollen with milk, she needs to share the blessings.
Friar Lukas’s midnight visit, though, has left her uneasy. It’s too much for him, she thinks. I should have held back. But what choice do I have?
“There’s a monk outside,” announces Marte. “A young one.” Aleys can tell Marte doesn’t approve. It’s one thing for the wandering friars to give sermons on street corners, she says, but monks should stay where they’re put, same as nuns in their convents.
“Let him in.” Aleys laughs. “He probably wants me to bless the abbey pigs.”
Marte huffs, snapping shut the curtain. “I’ll be headed to the Markt. Don’t let him linger overlong, miss. You promised to read me the flood and ark today.”
“Then you shall have Noah and every creature, two by two, when you return.”
“Least he saved the females that time,” Marte mumbles. For a believer, thinks Aleys, Marte is shockingly irreverent.
Aleys takes her seat and listens to Marte’s retreating footsteps. A scrape of the parlor door, exchanged words—Aleys sits up. She knows that voice. Her heartbeat quickens as new footsteps come closer.
“Finn?”
“Aleys.” His voice is deeper, but still familiar. She pictures his lean frame, the flop of sandy hair. Of course that’s gone; he’s tonsured now. She restrains the impulse to rip the curtain from its rod to see.
She runs her hands into her own hair, dark and thick and uncovered. “What are you doing here?”
“I had to see you.” He corrects himself. “To speak with you.”
It comes flooding back to her, the hornbook, the meadow, the grasses with their miniscule globe raindrops.
She’s vowed never to let herself think of him—and she hasn’t, not often, not here in the hold with her true beloved—but abruptly she’s back in the apple tree.
Finn’s long fingers tracing the written lines as he reads.
His gray eyes flecked with honey, looking up, astonished.
Aleys leans into the window and inhales, despite herself, a faint scent of leather and earth.
His breath stirs the curtain. She leans in farther and grips the sill like a fence on a cliff edge. “Speak to me about what?”
“I was at the bishop’s demonstration.”
The platform, the blinding torches, the stink of tar. It was his voice.
“I saw a performance,” he says, “of players.”
She stiffens. “You accuse me of acting?”
“No.”
“Because I wouldn’t do that.” He’s touched a sore spot. She feels her temper flare.
“I know—I know you, Aleys. I’ve seen the look on your face when you believe. The way you tilt your head when you doubt. I saw the exact moment you realized it was a charade.”
“You know me.” Her throat tightens. She looks up to the ceiling and can’t hold back the beautiful, familiar words. “The beams of our house are cedars, and its rafters are firs.”
“Our couch is green.” There’s a smile in his voice.
Her whole body starts to tingle, and she doesn’t think it miracle. How? When she has God speaking into her ear, how can a mere boy still make her heart jump like this? “You remember.”
“Everything,” he says. “I wish I didn’t.” Her practiced ear, tuned to the laments and regrets that cross this sill, hears all that Finn doesn’t say. I miss you. I think of you day and night. I made a mistake.
Well, it’s a little late now. “You’re a monk. In a monastery.”
“And you’re a miracle worker.” She doesn’t respond. Finn continues awkwardly, “I mean, I know you’re not a saint—”
She feels a heat in her chest and can’t tell if it’s longing or fury. “What do you mean, ‘you know’? What if I am? What if God called me?” And not you, she thinks, after all.
“Look.” She hears the stool clatter to the floor as Finn stands. “I shouldn’t have come.”
“No. Stay.” If he goes now, she might never hear from him again. They’re silent. There’s nothing to say; Aleys is seventeen years old and enclosed for life. After a moment, she asks, “Why are you here now? The demonstration was six months ago.”
“To warn you. The bishop is using you.”
She gives a bitter laugh. “Not anymore.” She touches a round gray stone, feels the wall solid and sure. This is her home. Her choice. “I’m the safest woman in Brugge.”
“Until the inquisitors arrive.”
“The what?”
“I wasn’t sure they told you. The abbot says that Rome is sending men to test your miracles. He’s to sit on the panel.”
A shiver runs through her. “Why?”
“That’s what they do. They test for fraud.”
How ironic. “The bishop called them?” He can’t take her from her cell. That’s not allowed.
“He’s saying you’ve had showings.” His voice drops. “Aleys, is it true?”
Aleys remembers the earnest boy in the dye yard, his urgent question. There’s supposed to be a kingdom of heaven on earth. Where is it? Finn was searching, like her. He’s still searching.
“I’ve been shown,” says Aleys, “things.”
“You have? What things?”
She sighs. Mary bade her bear the truth, but words are inadequate. Still, she tries. “They showed me this: We carry a heaven within.”
“You make it sound simple.”
“It is. That doesn’t make it easy.”
“You’re saying a man could find God within himself?”
“Or a woman.” The kingdom within. “I’m telling you what I’ve been shown.”
“You know they’ve hanged people for less.” Crucified them, in fact. “Aleys, be careful what you say to the inquisitors.”
Be careful? About God? She doesn’t know how.
It comes over her suddenly. She’s not sure if it’s love or obedience, right or wrong, but her hands are certain when they move. Aleys slides back the curtain so Finn can see the truth in her eyes. So he can see that there’s no caution in simplicity.
And there he is, larger than she remembered, strange with shaved head and sandy fringe, but with true gold in his gray eyes. “What they’ve shown me, Finn—the good, the bad—all is love. All of it.”
He leans in. Their foreheads meet, framed in the window, their bodies braced against the wall.
Their lips are so close they could touch.
Through the stone church, from the top of the spire, she feels the brass steeple cock turn in the breeze.
Anything might happen. They might kiss, they might pray.
They could fumble their hands together; he might run his tongue along her neck, she might grab his forearms. She shivers.
“All is love,” he breathes.
“Yes,” she replies.
There’s a knock at the door. Another visitor. Startled, they pull apart. The moment passes; Finn turns away, and Aleys draws the black cloth.
That night, Mary returns. Aleys is at her prie-dieu when her prayers twist the air.
“Mother,” she says.
Mary is before her, flat bellied and full breasted, larger than a man. Come, daughter.
Mary reaches to Aleys, gathers her into her arms. Aleys feels herself entirely enfolded.
They will keep her safe. There’s nothing to fear.
She rests her head in the crook of Mary’s elbow, her weight cradled in Mary’s broad hand.
The Holy Mother strokes her brow and Aleys sinks into a weightless joy.
She feels something warm splash onto her lips. She reaches for Mary’s breast in the presumptuous glory of infants and opens herself to receive the communion of honeyed milk.
Mary slaps her hand away and spills her to the ground. Aleys falls hard, still reaching, mouth stretched open like a fledgling shoved from the nest.
Mary stands. Her dark eyes burn. She is enormous, filling the cell. Her hands are slick with ointment, which she spreads over her breasts and smears roughly across Aleys’s lips. It is bitter aloe, sharp as lye on the tongue. Aleys’s eyes water; she cannot swallow.
You have been suckled long enough, says the Mother. It’s time to walk the unmarked path.
When Mary vanishes, she takes it all with her. Father, Son, Mother, gone.
Aleys knows it immediately, as if a presence has left the house.
The way you sense, from signs and sounds, that someone is in the next room—you have only to rise and call out their name.
The thrum of their presence and the sudden silence of their absence, the quick dropping away, the knowledge that you are completely alone.
The dust motes settle to the ground. Aleys reaches over to stir them up, to make them dance. They sift to the floor as the light in the amber panes dims, too fast.
Is this because of Finn? She doesn’t think so. Why would they abandon her now, when she needs them, when the Church is coming to try her?
I always need them, she thinks.
She waits, hoping, hardly breathing. He must be here. His presence is subtle and pervasive as air. The hand cannot grasp it, as one cannot clasp the wind. She has merely to feel it, to empty herself like an open field beneath an opaque sky. He will show himself in the smallest blue gap.
Except he doesn’t. The gloom descends like a blanket upon her, around her, and there is no shape in the gray.
He will return, she thinks. But she doesn’t believe it. This time, she can feel, is different. This time, she knows, they test her faith.