Chapter 53 Friar Lukas
Friar Lukas
Lukas weaves on his feet. The day is hot, the bodies are close, they hold him up. Hervé is at his side. Jan is at the altar. The curtain above the couple is magenta, the petals at their feet are rose. The virgin wears blue, her golden hair swaying against her velvet shoulders.
The heat in the cathedral is making his head swim. He glances at the squint. Does Aleys pray within, as he instructed her?
Yesterday he visited the grove. He needed, once more, to return to the origin, to his covenant with God, to find it there in the damp soil. He cinched the sacred bloody strips against his arms until his hands tingled. Come to me, Lord.
Hervé grasps his elbow. The bride before them sinks to her knees to be blessed. The bishop places his palm on her head and she becomes Aleys. No. He is confused. Aleys was not wed here. She was buried here. He remembers the dirt upon her oiled lips.
His head swims back to the grove. Shafts of light cut through leaves and patches of moss glowed emerald in pools of sunlight.
There was no sound, save the tap of droplets on the forest floor.
Lukas bent to remove his sandals. He took off his belt, then lifted the robe over his head and cast it aside.
Even this, he thought, even this you may have.
A breeze sifted the glade and he shivered, his skin turning gooseflesh.
Lukas was naked before God, but for the stained cloth biting his arms. He felt himself rooted in place, as if something pulled him into the ground, his knees, thighs, cock, chest, sinking into the loam.
Make us one, he prayed. He unwound the strips from his arms and knotted them together and passed the length back over his shoulder and up between his legs, spreading the fabric over his crotch and winding it slowly, a holy dance, twisting it over his heart and around his chest until he was bound, like a Templar, with a maroon cross dark against his white skin.
He spread his arms and looked up. Passion sang through him like lightning.
This, this, was what was demanded of him.
“Lord,” he cried, “take me now.” The trees shook water onto his shoulders, his back, his arms. He felt their cool kisses and knew himself blessed.
Prepared. He donned his robe and touched his lips to his belt.
As he walked back to the cathedral, the light picked out objects and presented them for his attention, clear and beautiful and singular.
The bishop raises the wafer. The cathedral air shivers with symbols. The scarlet and blue, red teardrops on linen, the wine and wafer merging—union, God, Christ, Mother, Son. It is all one, she says.
He sways. Hervé’s grip on his elbow tightens.
Lukas hears God whisper to him. He raises his head to listen.
“Alleluia.”
His brother is blessing the union.
“Alleluia.”
It all makes sense.
Christ’s blood glistens above the altar. Jesus raises his head and looks straight at Lukas, and the friar understands. He has brought the bride to the bedchamber, but his work is unfinished. It’s a test.