Chapter 69 The Beguines
The Beguines
They keep the blind beguine with their bodies and breath.
When the damp creeps through the courtyard and slicks the whitewashed walls, and her hand slips along the surface as she gropes her way to the door, there is always someone who waits to take her elbow, to see her to the meal, the chapel, the reading.
The women wrap warm stones in soft wool for her bed; the orange cat curls against her.
But never a fire in her hearth, never the snap and sting of flame and smoke. They’re careful of her, in that way.
The women in gray are quick with a poultice, they will teach you the alphabet, they will guide you through the gates of death.
They know well the foggy shore between this world and the next, the sound of owls, the dancing light that beckons.
Demons do not frighten them. Angels do not impress.
They are practical and know the cost of herring and better than to question miracles.
Not everyone believes it is her. She lives for those that choose; she is dead for those that choose.
The new bishop of Tournai would rather not know.
He keeps his distance. In thirty years he will strive with the pope to bring down the beguines.
They will cite disobedience as the cause.
But the beguines will live on in flesh and in word.
Movements will grow from their ideas. Their writings will be smuggled and hidden in convents, to be revived by poets and seekers.
For now, in this city of canals and wool, of markets and miracles, there is a secret courtyard of green and white and breeze. At Terce and at Vespers children laugh from the laundry.
At the blind beguine’s side, always, is Sister Marte, who smiles, from time to time, at nothing much.
She speaks little. Marte attends the small hours, the quiet hours, quill in hand.
When God comes, they welcome him. And when he goes, they welcome that, too.
They have a knowing together, these women in gray.
They accept the shift in wind, the changing light, the play of perpetual apocalypse.
In every stroke of the bell, the world entire is born and dies and is born fresh again.