Chapter 64 Aleys
Aleys
The jail cell is no bigger than an anchorhold. High up, a square window opens above the main canal; outside, men hawk herring and eel at twilight bargains. Moss grows over the sill, mold creeps down the wall. The corner smells of piss. Someone has tacked a crude wooden cross on the wall.
Aleys thinks back to the first moments in her hold, the dense silence, how she spread her arms and spun around, how she knew she was not alone.
Beloved, are you here? She approaches the plain cross. She will speak plain truth.
“I’m so afraid.”
The first visitor, at Nones, was the bishop. He made it clear that, were she to recant, he’d be forced to charge Marte with heresy—“Someone has to die for this,” he said—and to shut down the begijnhof, to put the women on the streets.
At Vespers, the clerk came. He nodded soberly. “They said you wouldn’t.” He turned as he left. “I am truly sorry.”
Her last chance will come at Compline, after darkness has fallen, when her resolve will be at its weakest. Even now, her thoughts travel ahead, to a stake in a plaza and a torch that wavers slick and invisible under midday sun.
The hour of crucifixion, the hour with death in its soul.
Tomorrow. The tunnel in her mind is dark and cold and its exit so bright and impossible. Her pulse is in her throat.
“Beloved, I need you.”
She opens her hands and looks at them. Perhaps, she thinks, perhaps tomorrow I will understand. She hopes she’ll understand it all, on the other side. Maybe Mama will be there.
Or maybe she’ll recant at Compline. She can feel the weakness in her, the desire to escape pain.
I might die tonight, she thinks, here in this cell.
Maybe the fear will grow in my lungs like chokeweed and squeeze the breath from me and I will escape the flames.
Yet she knows that won’t happen. She will need a courage she doesn’t have, a martyr’s heart.
“Help me.”
Now and at the hour of our death. Aleys feels the prayer unfurl within her.
Her throat is too tight to speak, so she hums the words until the verse fills her chest. Ave Maria, gratia plena.
She drops to her knees beneath the cross, bracing her hands on the wall, finding her voice.
The Lord is with thee. She sings the words over and over until they wreathe the cell like incense.
The wisps form a curving labyrinth that draws inward, ever inward, circling.
The prayer calls her on, beckoning. A glimpse of blue, the scent of juniper just beyond reach.
She knows, in the center, is the courage she seeks.
As the last light ticks across the floor, Aleys enters the maze.
Wind tosses the crowns of the trees above.
She presses on, excitement pulling her heart.
The way is stony, the way is plain. They are there, just around the corner.
She is about to find them, again, to be fully reunited with her beloved.
Then, before her, a wall. Impenetrable ivy, the psalter’s ivy, the ivy that curls around the monk and doe of Compline.
She looks up to a gold sky. She knows this place.
She sinks her hands into the vine, feels its thick pulse, tries to rip it down.
It will not yield. She turns to face the archer she knows will be behind her.
He has stepped from the page, the man of malachite and cinnabar, ink arrows in his quiver.
The mystery crashes around her. Has she known, all along, this would be the cost? And yet—and yet. Her soul calls out. Spare me, Lord.
His voice, from above, from beyond, from within: Have I not given you the gifts of apostles?
Yes. It is but the first heaven.
And the treasure of prophets?
You know of what I speak. You gave them the second heaven. You are beyond.
You will be honored with the martyrs.
I do not seek honor.
What do you seek?
The third heaven. Beyond the joy of seraphs.
The archer raises his bow. Nothing exists beyond their joy.
Union.
You know not of what you speak. He fletches the arrow.
Then tell me.
You do not understand the price. The archer draws taut the string.
Name the price.
Your self.
Then where would I be?
Her soul answers: The droplet in the ocean, the blue in the flame.
He says: Thou art by nature, mine, and I am thine.
The archer awaits her order. Christ says to her: Be thou my wounded doe.
She offers all she has. Take me. Aleys looks down to her flank and sees crimson bloom.
Later, when Aleys wakes, her fingers grope for the wound. It is sealed, and within her, courage.
The last to come, at Compline, is Finn. His gray eyes are anxious. He seizes the bars of her cell as if he could bend them apart. She sees the chapped bunion on his third finger, where he’s gripped the quill for long hours.
“It’s all set,” he says. “I have a horse. We’ll go to the Black Forest. And then on to Freiberg, or maybe south over the Alps. To Assisi.” He’s speaking too fast. “Assisi would be good. They won’t know us there.”
“I thought you’d come.” She rises to meet him.
Assisi. The land of Clare and Francis, where basilicas dot the hillsides.
They could find shelter there. She almost laughs.
Like Beatrice, she thinks. Finn could sweep her away for a life of happiness.
All she has to do is recant. She reaches through the bars and he takes her hands and turns them to kiss her palms. She feels his warm lips where she once felt the buzz of miracle.
If she leaves with him, she could be a woman, just a woman, nobody’s saint.
He folds her hands in his. “The abbot sent me to offer you the last chance before they . . . well, it doesn’t matter. You’ll recant. That’s it, you’ll be free. We leave, in an hour, together.”
She hopes Finn can feel the weight of the decision in her hands.
Between her palms is the fate of Marte and all the women of the begijnhof.
The women learning to read, carding wool, gossiping about saints.
If Aleys escapes the bishop, he will turn his fury on the begijnhof.
He will destroy them all. She has seen it.
And the town who have come to trust her touch, her counsel, her blessing?
She would betray them, too. If she denies what God has revealed, if she refuses to bear Mary’s truth, Aleys will sever herself from all she’s ever prayed for.
It would be worse than excommunication by the Church.
She might as well excommunicate herself.
“You’ve risked so much to come, my friend.” Aleys withdraws her hands from his, into her sleeves.
“No, don’t say that. No.” He slaps the bars. “You have to come with me.”
“And let others suffer in my place?”
“They’ll burn you! They’ll kill you for words!”
“Finn, it’s not just words. I can’t deny God’s showings.”
Finn drops his hands. “You love him that much.”
She does. And her family, and the beguines. She loves this glorious life, but she’s found inside her a certainty. “Finn, I was always intended for God.”
Finally, he lowers his head and nods. “So all you’ve said is true.”
“Yes.”
They regard each other.
“What shall I do?” he asks. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Only this,” she says. “Try to be simple.”
The abbot has given Finn the last task of record.
When he returns to his room, Finn can hardly write for weeping: We now on our apostolic authority bind the accused in the fetters of excommunication as intractable in her heresy because the accused avoids, refuses, and scorns obedience.
The legate will add his signature in the morning. And then they will burn her.