Chapter 50 Aleys #2
She listens. I’ll do it, she tells him. Come stay my hand.
She reaches for Kat, pins him to the cot, feels his narrow spine beneath silky fur.
He squirms and then panics, claws into her forearm; beads of crimson rise on her skin.
She raises the knife. Kat hisses. She looks up, waits for the angel.
But there is none. No voice. Only her own rapid heartbeat, and Kat’s fear beneath her hand.
She looks down at Kat and sees the doe in the psalter.
The knife clatters to the floor, and she kicks it away. Aleys falls to her knees and drops her head on the cot and bites hard into the flesh of her own hand.
In the morning, Marte returns the blanket and the psalter. She says nothing, but her frown deepens. She takes the chamber pot to dump in the canal, and when she returns, passing it through, she asks, “Did you have another one of your visions, then? You don’t look well, miss.”
“No.” She can’t tell Marte that the whispers of the devil might be the commands of God and she’s no longer sure she knows the difference.
“Well, something kept you up. You look like you haven’t slept for days.”
“I was contemplating Abraham and Isaac.” I had the knife in my fist.
“The one where God tells Abraham to murder his own son?”
“That one.” Aleys feels tired just thinking of it. “God was testing him.”
“And he failed.”
“Abraham? Failed?” Surely Marte has misspoken.
“If that was God’s test, of course he failed. That man should have chosen his own child.”
It stops Aleys short. Is that possible?
Aleys is pacing the hold when Lukas knocks on the shutter. He’s come to explain the trial. He’s saying it would be helpful if God would speak to her while the delegation is here. She’s only half listening.
The last thing she needs now is to be interrogated about her faith. Not when it’s at its ebb, when the miracles are gone and her own visions feel like someone else’s stories. When the tests have no answers.
“Father, God no longer speaks to me. I feel like he’s disappeared.”
“That’s impossible.”
If only it were. “I tell you. I search for him, but I find nothing.” There’s only the emptiness of a sky with no birds, no clouds, neither sun nor moon nor star.
“Why? What have you done?”
Nothing, she considers telling him. I didn’t kill the cat. Should I have?
“It’s melancholia. I have warned you of this. You must pray.”
“What do you think I do in here? I’m a living prayer!” A working, crawling, living prayer. She glares at the black square. It’s so inadequate, his advice, it’s cruel. He has no idea how cruel it is. None of his prayers have ever been answered.
“Prayer requires patience.”
I can’t breathe, she wants to say. I’m drowning, my lungs are filling with dark water and I can’t see the surface and don’t know which way is up and you tell me to be patient?
“Our God is everlasting,” Lukas presses. He sounds resentful, like she’s reneging on a promise. “He is ever present.”
She’s so tired of him relying on her. “Then why has he deserted me? Tell me that much!”
“You think you’re the only one who has to wait? Be grateful for what you’ve received. You’re a spoiled child crying for sweetcakes while the rest of us toil for crumbs.”
“You wouldn’t say that, Father, if you knew the infinite sweetness of his kiss.”
His puff of exasperation stirs the curtain. “You say it is infinite. Let it be infinite. Where does it leave us, if the blessed despair?”
She has no answer. She’s afraid of the answer.
“Aleys.” She feels him lean in. His voice shifts lower, like someone in the parlor might be listening. “You must be vigilant. You must be wary.”
“Of what?” He will say despair, he will say melancholy.
“Of demons.”
“Father, no—” She doesn’t need his fear on top of her desolation. Her shoulders tense. She pictures leathery imps dropping from the sill like rats, infesting her hold, surrounding her bed. She glances at Kat, who looks back at her unblinking. Can he sense demons?
“I’ve seen them,” whispers Lukas. “In the corners.”
“Stop!” She shoves back her stool. He can’t do this to her.
“I’ve told you. All is love.” She grasps for the knowledge that was once as sure as her heartbeat.
“Nothing exists except God.” Yet she hears the desperation in her voice, her words clipped, struggling to fly.
In this gray light, the truth is vulnerable. The truth is empty and gaping.
“Yes,” he says, “so you were shown. Nothing but God. ‘My me is God,’ you said.”
She could laugh. He speaks to her like she’s something sacred. She’s not even sure she’s sane. “Father, I can’t cure you.” She remembers his hand in her cell.
“But you are the vessel.”
Aleys feels more alone than she ever has in her life.
More alone than when Finn abandoned her in the orchard.
More alone than when Mertens ran his finger along her collarbone.
More alone than she felt in the crowd that tried to tear her to bits.
She wishes it was Finn on the other side of the curtain now, wishes she could confess her struggle to him.
He would understand. She banishes the thought.
Lukas is her spiritual advisor. He’s all she has, her only lifeline.
No one else is coming. She must not fight him, even if he scares her, even if he sounds half mad. She swallows her fear.
“Father,” she says, “forgive me. I will be patient.” He says nothing. “You’ll come again tomorrow?”
“The day after. Aleys, you need to prepare for the pope’s men. They’ll want to know what you’ve seen.”
She gives a brusque laugh. “You want me to tell the pope that God is fickle?” There. She’s said it.
“Aleys,” Lukas says softly. “I know you can’t see him. But he is still here.”
Aleys feels tears sting her eyes. She appeals to the curtain like the deer looking up at the monk. Her voice is small. She’s tried everything. “Oh, Father. Help me see.”