Chapter 50 Aleys
Aleys
Aleys lays her arms on her knees and takes her head in her hands.
It’s been weeks with no showings, not even whispers, from God.
She sighs and forces herself to sit back up and retrieve the psalter she dropped beside her on the cot.
She traces the embossed vines on the cover with numb fingers.
There’s no solace in the calfskin. When she opens the cover she finds the illustrations mere paint and mineral, flat and lifeless.
Perhaps she imagined it. Perhaps she imagined all of it. The miracles, the visions. God. She looks around the cell. What if she is truly alone?
Aleys raises the book to her mouth, traces her tongue along a tree.
Nothing. She turns the page and tips her tongue with pomegranate.
No taste. The blue is not blue, the rose is gone gray.
The deer and the monk are just pictures for children.
The archer’s arrow clatters to the ground, and with it the mystery.
She stares at the deer without curiosity.
She doesn’t wonder if it will live. She doesn’t care.
She looks at the door in the wall with no latch. She wishes she could go outside, just for a bit, to sit by the canal as the clouds roll in. If only she could see the sky, perhaps it would speak to her. Or perhaps even the sky is gone.
She thinks of the sheets flapping in the beguines’ courtyard.
She’d be glad to be there, to share a wooden bowl and crust of bread.
The comfort of other women, their sure hands and round shoulders soft and strong against hers.
Until even that desire darkens and fades into dusk.
She feels herself turning slowly to stone, one with her cell.
Her prayers fall from her lips like fragile moths. They litter the floor around her knees with their shivering, helpless flutter. Aleys forces them through her throat, but they’re already half dead on her tongue. If no one is listening, her prayers have no life.
Why? she asks Mary. Why did you leave?
She hears only the echo of Mary’s words. You must walk the unmarked path.
Kat stretches out his paw to touch her shoulder, then rubs his head against her spine as if to comfort her. It does, a little.
She prays. She prays harder. “Tell me,” she pleads, “how to win you back. I will do anything.”
Aleys pulls the candle close and squints at the text. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Genesis 1. The earth was formless and empty, with darkness over the surface of the deep. Like me, she thinks.
Aleys traces the line and wills the ink to seep up through her fingers into her blood and infuse her with spirit.
God only feels farther and farther distant, receding back into the desert, where prophets call for a Christ who is not yet born, who will not be born for hundreds of years.
In the old book, God is the Lord of vengeance, of tests and tokens.
He is implacable and hard to please. Everything is not enough.
She perseveres. God calls for Abraham. Yes, here I am!
So quick, Abraham. Then God’s bewildering command: Take Isaac, your only son, to the mountain, ibi offeres eum holocaustum.
There you shall offer him as a burnt sacrifice.
Aleys rubs the space between her eyes. Abraham makes her weary.
She’s never understood Abraham. And Aleys doesn’t want to read God’s call to his favorite, not now.
She wants Job, she wants the fellowship of the abandoned.
Right now, she can hardly bear Abraham, too willing to bundle up his boy and lash together the kindling.
The candle gutters as if someone has opened a door. Aleys draws her blanket tight around her shoulders. Perhaps Kat has left through the parlor. She looks over her shoulder. Kat’s asleep on the cot behind her, chin tucked, ginger stripes expanding and contracting with his breath.
Aleys has been gripping the page so hard her knuckles have gone stiff.
She’s given him all she has. Her vows, her freedom, her hours, her prayers, her youth.
She has no son to sacrifice. She slaps her palms onto the desk.
There’s nothing more to give, no more to yield.
The frustration of it makes her throat clench.
An uneasiness, like ants, invades her limbs. She stands and begins to pace the cell.
What more could he want? He can have her pallet. She’ll sleep on the ground. She grabs her blanket, shoves it out the parlor window. Fine. Take that. What else? The candles? Her lantern? He can have those too. She will live in darkness for him, if only he’ll return.
It’s not enough, she knows. He wants only what is precious to her.
That’s what Genesis says. She casts around the cell.
Her psalter is nothing compared to his love.
She hesitates only a moment before throwing it through the window, hears it land on the blanket.
She paces her space, one wall to the other, slapping at the stones.
If she could pry them out, she’d pile them into an offering. But there is nothing more.
Her eyes fall on the cot. Kat’s ears flick.
She steps toward him. He stretches his white paw, raises green eyes to hers, gives a small throaty sound of greeting.
Aleys’s gaze freezes. She’s transfixed with sudden horror.
No. God doesn’t want this. He is not bloodthirsty.
He is mercy. He is light and joy. Aleys twists the cloth of her dress.
He is psalm. Hymn. Yet there is a voice in the back of her head: How well do you know him, really?
She shakes her head. He’s not asking for sacrifice.
Still, Genesis has entered her blood, is tracing its way from her fingertips to her heart.
Ancient thoughts. She looks at the knife weighing open the pages of the Bible.
If he uttered, Be thou my Abraham, could she slip the blade through Kat’s fur, through the white diamond of his belly, slit him open?
She imagines his guts slithering out, warm.
Her raising them to the God of the old book.
See? I will do anything for you. Whatever you ask.
Aleys turns away, unable to look at Kat. Surely he is not asking.
Or is he? What is the sound of God’s voice?
She thinks of Abraham. In the hollow night, Sarah asleep beside him.
Did God whisper in his ear? Wake, oh Abraham, I have a task for thee.
Did Abraham, arthritic and bent, a hundred years old, throw off his blanket and stumble barefoot into the yard and gaze up at the promised heavens?
For God had pledged him milky galaxies: I will multiply your descendants beyond number, like the stars in the sky.
And there was proof, too, Isaac behind him, curled like a fetus upon his cot, his childish loins the future of nations.
His one child. The son whose name meant laughter.
How did God speak to Abraham? Did he appear in a storm of lightning?
Or perhaps he was subtle, a sudden hush of sand falling to dune.
Perhaps the moon swelled three times, burnished copper on a holy horizon.
Abraham does not say what happened that night.
Maybe he merely dreamed the voice that said, Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, and make of him a burnt offering.
When he woke he said nothing to Sarah. He didn’t ask his neighbors, Have you ever heard God speak in your dreams?
No. He gathered the kindling and strapped it to Isaac’s back and led his child toward the mountain.
Abraham didn’t question the voice in the night.
Aleys presses her troubled hands into the mantel above the fireplace to pin them to the wood.
How did Abraham know it was God—and not the devil—who commanded him to kill the boy named laughter?
She doesn’t dare look at Kat. Is it God in her head?
Or Satan? It makes her angry. He granted Abraham certainty, the gift of patriarchs and prophets. Noah, Elijah, Isaiah. They knew.
Why, my beloved, when I give you everything, do you give me doubt?
Perhaps it’s not so simple. She has a resentful thought.
Your descendants will form a great nation.
Maybe Abraham already knew the ending. The test wasn’t real.
Maybe it was all a wink and a nudge—Abraham, take your boy and bind him for sacrifice—and a whisper behind a palm—you know I’ll send an angel to spare him.
Haven’t I already promised that you’ll father tribes?
She pictures Abraham, swinging his knife high above Isaac, pausing at the peak, watching for the angel from the corner of his eye.
And sure enough, here comes the winged creature, calling out: Abraham!
Do not lay your hand on the boy. Do not do anything to him.
Was it fixed, this story?
She is exhausted to her marrow. My Lord, she begs, do not play games with me.
You don’t need to make me promises or bribe me.
Just ask. She forces herself to look at Kat, who half opens his eyes, sleepy.
When she picks up her knife from the Bible, the pages of Abraham fan out, releasing their words into her cell.
Aleys lays the blade flat across her open palms, raises her hands.
If you show yourself to me, I will do it.
Only this: Do not command me by subtle gesture and fleeting vision.
Leave me without doubt, if you ask this of me.
Use with me the voice that does not echo.
Be plain with me, beloved. Do not let me confuse Satan’s voice for yours.