Chapter 51 Friar Lukas
Friar Lukas
Lukas hears her close the shutter. He sits on the chair a while.
Help me, she said. How?
God will return to her. He must. Lukas rubs his hand over his belt, catches himself doing it, stops.
He looks at the black curtain. He’s spent so much time at this window.
If only he were the one in the anchorhold.
Not outside, forever in God’s parlor. A thought scurries through his mind.
He doesn’t just want to be near her. He wants to be her.
Lukas senses movement around him, as if the parlor is breathing, the furniture watching.
His eyes land on a basket Marte left in the corner.
He rises. It’s a plain basket, covered, unremarkable.
It seems to whisper to him. Come. Lukas looks around, edges toward the basket.
He crouches and lifts the cloth. Beneath is nested more cloth, coarse linen strips coiled like snakes.
A rich smell, something of yeast and mutton, wafts up.
He sees, with mild shock, streaks of blood on the linen.
Carefully, he unravels a piece, holds it up before him.
It’s striped with wet pomegranate, browning at the edges as it dries.
He looks toward the curtain. She bleeds, even now?
He thinks of the precious blood of the vessel of God.
Mary would have bled, too. Lukas falls to his knees before the basket and stirs his hand in it and inhales the scent.
He extracts a second strip, marked with clots.
Lukas strokes his thumb along the cloth and it comes away dark, and when he rubs thumb and fingers, the ruby clot bursts, lustrous and slick.
It comes from within her. It is a marvel.
He takes his thumb and smears her blood into the center of his palm.
His thoughts are spinning into a dark spiral of certainty.
He decorates his other palm with blood. Then he yanks his sleeve to his shoulder and wraps a strip around his upper arm.
Then the other. Lukas opens both hands to his God. Come now, he prays.
When he hears a voice in the street, he closes his fists and leaves quickly, with the sacred wrapped tight about his limbs.