Chapter 63 Aleys
Aleys
The courtroom doors swing open, and there stands Marte.
Aleys sees her pale face, her hazel eyes fastened on the robed judges.
She’s still wearing her apron. The guards push her forward.
Marte stumbles, then rights herself to walk the aisle alone.
Her limp is back. She halts beside the dock, uncertain where to stand.
This can’t be. Aleys swivels to the bishop. “What do you mean by this?” she demands. “My maid had nothing to do with the showings.”
“Silence,” Jan says coolly. “You have no standing here.”
The legate frowns at the bishop. “We have traveled to try the anchoress, not her attendant.”
Jan bows to the legate. “Your Excellency, you will recall that you alerted us to Dutch translations of sacred scripture circulating in our city. We have apprehended documents that are not merely illegal but anathema. Some are so perverse they can hardly be recognized as translations. Both the anchoress and her maid are implicated in spreading heresy.”
Aleys is confused. Marte? It makes no sense. She can’t translate. She has no Latin.
From the corner of her eye, Aleys sees the bishop’s mouth crack a small smile as he tilts his head slightly toward Lukas.
It’s enough to reveal his motivation. This trial is retribution for the woman who stabbed his brother and the one who nailed the belt to the cathedral door.
The bishop doesn’t care whether the charges are true; it matters only that they advance his ends. He’ll pin them on anyone.
“We found this in the begijnhof, among the maid’s belongings.” The bishop turns to his man. “Read it to them.”
Willems carefully extracts a sheet of parchment from his bag. Marte gives a muted gasp. For a moment, Aleys thinks she’s about to lunge for the page, but Willems whips it away. “You see she recognizes her work,” he comments, then turns to read.
“Wait.” The bishop raises his hand. “No man should suffer such words on his own tongue. Let the woman recite her own abominations.”
Marte’s eyes widen.
“No. Give it to me,” says Aleys. “I’ll do it.”
The bishop nods, and Willems hands over the parchment. Aleys recognizes Marte’s hand, the same cursive that once spelled out The Lord eats peas porridge. She looks up, but Marte has closed her eyes.
“Read it,” orders the bishop.
Aleys begins. “So God created mankind in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” She remembers reading Genesis aloud to Marte in Dutch as the light climbed the amber panes of her window.
Marte must have committed the words to memory and rushed back to the begijnhof to write them down.
The old abbot nods at the familiar text like it’s a lullaby. Marte is clutching her elbows.
“Continue,” says Jan. His eyebrows are raised as if he expects pleasure from the text.
Aleys reads Marte’s next words. “God whispered to Eve: ‘Taste the apple.’”
What? Surely Marte didn’t confuse Satan and God—and surely she, Aleys, didn’t tell Marte it was God who tempted Eve.
The abbot is bolt upright now. “Repeat that.”
Aleys stops. “I don’t wish to read further.”
“You don’t wish?” injects the Dominican. “What you wish doesn’t matter. Any unwillingness will be interpreted as complicity.”
Aleys is cornered. Her refusal will help no one.
“Continue,” repeats the bishop. His eyes are gleeful.
Aleys reluctantly raises the parchment. “God said to Eve, ‘Eat the apple and share it with Adam and you will set in motion all meaning.’” What has Marte written? “‘For the apple will split and from its seeds will spring lover and beloved. When you eat the apple you will create desire.’”
The page vibrates in her hand. Marte is claiming that Eve created hunger because God wanted her to see him.
It was an act of obedience. An act that split the world in two, setting in motion sin and redemption.
Prayer. Forgiveness. It is all God’s will, right down to Eve’s sharp new teeth piercing the red skin and tasting, for the first time, the knowledge of God.
The yearning to be one. One with a lover, one with a child, one in oneself, one with God.
Aleys read Genesis to Marte in the anchorhold, and Marte wrote her own story and committed it to the page. Like a revelation. Like a showing.
Aleys pronounces the last words. “God made Eve, the mother of all who seek.”
Marte looks at her now. Their eyes meet in understanding. Oh, dear Marte, Aleys thinks. I so underestimated you.
The panel is stunned.
“This is an error so plain . . .” begins the abbot.
“. . . that it cannot be countenanced,” finishes the Dominican.
The legate turns to the bishop. “You found this in the begijnhof?”
The Dominican interjects. “We should burn the place down.” He palms the table again. “And the author with it.”
Marte turns to Aleys. Miss, she mouths silently, fear in her eyes.
Aleys sees the begijnhof on fire, the reading room filling with smoke. Flames shooting from the courtyard up the gray stone steeple. Women running over the bridge to be corralled in the square. The scene pulses before her, almost as if she has conjured it, and she feels a wave of nausea.
Aleys can’t let this happen. She can’t. Suddenly, she sees what she must do.
Her heart stops. Her lungs, too, arrest between breaths.
For she understands the test before her.
She may have failed to save Sophia, but she can save Marte.
Ida. Katrijn. Her vision recedes to a pinpoint.
This is not about miracle. This is not about visions or canals of light.
It’s about the strength of her heart. The choice is simple, hardly a decision.
Aleys slaps her hands against the railing so sharply she feels the sting within her palms. The sound reverberates through the courtroom. All eyes snap to her.
“The heresy,” she says, “is mine.” She straightens, concentrating her will inside her. “I claim it.” Eve did what was necessary. She took the fall.
You must bear the truth, said Mary.
All is one. It doesn’t matter where the truth comes from.
“I wrote this,” says Aleys. “I ordered my maid to hide it in the begijnhof until she could take it to the Markt for me.”
“Then she is guilty of distributing heresy,” says the Dominican.
“How is that possible? You can’t blame her for harboring a heresy she can’t read. The woman isn’t lettered.”
It’s a betrayal. Marte looks at her, stricken. All their hours together, every letter that birthed a sound that spelled a word that formed an insight. Every new understanding, committed in ink. All of it, betrayed. But the lie will save both Marte and the begijnhof, and Marte knows it.
The legate looks searchingly at Aleys. She knows he seeks to understand, that he wants to understand. He must, however, represent the Church. He sees no choice. Rewriting Eve, rewriting the very nature of sin, goes too far.
“You swear that this work is entirely yours.”
“I do.”
“You understand that you must deny these words or be guilty of heresy.”
She bows her head.
“And you do not recant?”
“No.”
He looks to his left and right. Both men nod. “Then we are in agreement.” He addresses the clerk. “Record this: By this present writing, this court excommunicates you and imposes on you the sentence of excommunication.”
Aleys lowers her head and nests one hand inside the other. In the end, after all, she has no need to meet their eyes. Theirs is not the mystery.
“In grace and kindness, I grant you a delay from the present time until the ninth hour; a second delay from Nones until Vespers; or in our last and peremptory patience, until Compline at the day’s end.
I pray that in that time you humbly admit your error, and in our presence abjure it and all heresy, so that you may deserve to be reconciled and reunited with the Church.
” One hand of the legate wipes the other.
“After sundown, if you have not recanted, we will decide your punishment.”