Chapter 62 Friar Lukas
Friar Lukas
Lukas moans inwardly, crossing his arms over his belly.
He suffers wounds of the spirit worse than pain of the body.
Though Hervé came quickly in the night to poultice and bind Lukas’s ribs, no one can heal his soul.
Lukas confessed to Hervé that he entered her cell.
“Brother,” said Hervé, “that is grave indeed.” Lukas felt his faults curdle in his gut like a mud so dense it had to be cradled, like a thing he might birth.
“You must pray,” said Hervé. “Here, I will pray with you. We are all sinners, there is redemption for all of us.”
It will not be enough, thinks Lukas. He still wants what she has. He can’t understand where he went wrong. He did it for God. He thought her fire would course his limbs, consume him. That he would become clean as silver ash.
They try her for heresy, but Lukas knows she will be exonerated. As soon as they hear the beauty of the showings, they will revere her as the sacred vessel she is.
Lukas considers the man in scarlet who is the voice of the pope.
It should be the real pope, thinks Lukas, not this stray-eyed envoy.
She deserves to be heard in Rome. She has been with Christ. She is more precious than rubies.
He loves her that much; he hates her that much.
She’s the fulcrum of his passion. His stomach spasms.
A bee flies in through the closed courtroom window. Only Lukas sees it. It hums of miracle; it hums of madness. He has lost the ability to tell the difference, if ever he had it. If there even is a difference. The bee circles her once and lands on the rail beside her hand.
Her words are holy. The panel is reading them now. They will find no heresy. They will find music.
The Dominican stabs at the document, then raises his head to stare at Aleys. “It says here that you claim that male and female are one. That spirit and flesh are one.”
Her voice is steady. “So I was shown.”
“That is in error,” the Dominican states, as if presiding over a university debate. “And this: You say God is naught but love. Nothing else exists.”
“No devil?” the abbot interjects, incredulous. “No hell?”
The Dominican leans forward to trap her. “All is God? Are sinners also God?”
“This is heresy sure,” mutters the abbot.
The legate has been watching intently. When he speaks, there is interest in his voice. “It says here you claim”—he turns the document toward Aleys and points at the words—“that you are God.”
Lukas is puzzled. She didn’t say that. Not exactly.
My me is God, is what she said. He will never forget when she swept aside the curtain.
The illumination included not just her, not just him, but the windowsill, the chair, the sound of carts outside.
The world stopped for an instant. He looked at her, and then at his hands, which sang with energy, almost dissolving in the soup of light.
As if he were swimming in God. And for a glimmer, he, too, was God.
Then, as fast as it came, the vision fled.
His hands resolved into flesh and nail, the sound on cobbles only that.
But he had felt it. He had felt the grace.
“Did you not?” The legate waits. “Say you are God?”
Lukas should speak up to defend her. Yet how can he explain? He reeks of sin. He’s no longer an instrument of good.
He sees her hands tighten into fists, her knuckles pale.
Is she angry that her words are turned to weapon, that men have beaten her showings into swords?
Then her hands relax. She balances them lightly on the rail of the dock.
He has the impression that she has just let go of solid earth.
As if she prepares for flight. When she answers the legate, she speaks from far away, already gone.
“I was shown. To understand God is to be God with God.”
“To be God,” repeats the legate. “You don’t deny it?”
She looks at him intently, like she would draw something from him. The legate leans forward. He wants to know. Careful, Lukas warns the legate silently, be careful or you will touch the barbed faith. You will go too far.
“Do you not see?” She lifts her eyes to the cross on the wall behind the legate. “The bridegroom calls you out.”
Lukas follows her gaze. He cannot help himself. Even now, he strains to see what she sees.
“Ecce tu pulchra es.” She says the words softly. “Behold, you are beautiful.” She is offering them the words of the Canticle.
“Only if you would meet him”—her eyes return to the legate—“you must die first. You must die to your desires.” She pauses to see if the pope’s envoy follows.
She does not look at the others. The Dominican has pressed his steepled hands to his lips to stifle his objections.
The abbot bears a knitted frown of bewilderment.
But the legate has closed his eyes, listening.
“In the dying, you will fill with honey. You are the hive and the honeycomb.”
The echo of Lukas’s best sermon returns to mock him. Pity these men. While they pursue riches, the comb lies broken open at their feet.
“He is as close as your heart breath.”
Lukas sees Jan shift his weight. “Your Excellency,” Jan interrupts. “Reverend Abbot, Master Theologian. May I speak my impression?” The legate nods but does not remove his eyes from Aleys. “The words this woman chooses are sweet.”
The Dominican jumps in. “Indeed, I think they are much like the words Eve said to Adam.”
The abbot agrees. “Or the serpent itself. ‘When you eat this fruit, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’”
The Dominican opens his palms like a book. “Exactly! You will be like God!” He turns his hands over and presses down on the table, shoving heresy away. “Are these not her very words?”
The legate addresses Aleys: “What have you to say to this?”
“Insofar,” she says. “Only insofar as we love God can we become godly.” Her eyes flick to Lukas. “We cannot command God.”
Her words are delicate as a paring knife.
Lukas feels the edge of the pointed tip beneath his skin, and he is flayed, expertly, precisely, his skin sliced neatly away.
His white ribs are bare, his windpipe is exposed, pink and striated.
He grips his swollen gut so the worms will not spill onto the courtroom floor.
We cannot command God. With sudden clarity he sees his error.
He wants, more than anything, to make God acknowledge him.
For God to reach down and point a long finger—You, Lukas, you are my most beloved.
To be named, to be chosen, to be honored.
It’s spiritual avarice. He sees the slender serpent, gray and strangely beautiful, weaving restless and hungry between his fingers.
He turns it in his hand and feels a momentary pity.
The worm seeks blindly. It will never still.
He understands. His ambition to be chosen by God is stronger than his love of God.
Her eyes settle front again. Those were her last words to him, he knows. Now she faces her accusers.
The Dominican is outraged. “This is sophistry! Insofar as we love God? Is she a lawyer, that she would parse the grammar of God to us? On what authority does she speak? She is neither monk, nor cleric, nor scholar. She is a devil with a clever tongue.”
The legate puts out a quiet hand. “Did not the great Dominican teacher say much the same? Did not Thomas Aquinas write that the end of spiritual life is that man unite himself to God by love?”
“Yes, but a woman . . .” sputters the abbot. “The vessel is so, so . . . unorthodox.”
“But her words, Reverend? Can we really say her words lack precedent?”
The legate does not want to kill her.
Lukas sees his brother go rigid. When they were boys and would wrestle, there was a moment when elbows became sharp, when claws came out and laughter turned to hiss.
In that moment, Jan would pull back. He would go entirely still, and Lukas could feel the fury coiling within his brother.
Now, as Jan gathers himself, Lukas knows he is about to strike.
“Admit the next prisoner,” calls out his brother.