Brugge, County of Flanders
1299
The young woman appears in the square, wearing neither veil nor wimple, her short brown hair plaited behind her neck. She’s covered by a cloak of fine maroon wool; specks of white ash have drifted to land on her shoulders like snowflakes. The acrid smell of bonfire is already in the air. Witnesses will later swear the girl was lit like a taper, and some will claim she had a halo. They’ll say the brass steeple cocks spun as she entered the square and the clouds broke apart, fleeing south, fleeing north, at once all directions, impossible. Church bells snapped their stays and a wild clanging rose from every corner of the great city. No one is quite sure what happened.
As the crowd parts before her, Aleys sees the path of gray cobblestones receding to the stake. Parchment is piled high at its base. Smaller fires have already been lit, dotting the plaza. They’re burning her words, too.
A chant of “Sint! Sint!” rises from the crowd. Even now, even though the Church has named her heretic, the people still call her saint. It’s true and not true. They are all saints. They are none of them saints. They think her a miracle worker. They think she speaks with God. But really, everyone does. It’s just so hard to hear.
She takes a step, another step, her heart hammering.
Adieu, she thinks, I go to God. This time, truly, I go to God.
Liber Primus
1
Aleys
Damme, 1295
Aleys has fallen behind the group of children running along the canal. She stops abruptly. Maybe she’s dropped something, or perhaps she’s studying her feet, which would be strange enough. She’s thirteen years old and powerfully odd. The others glance back, but they’re used to Aleys freezing in mid-sentence, in mid-chore, in mid-anything, and they move on as a pack toward the bridge, where they’ll chuck pebbles onto barges headed south to Brugge or back to the North Sea and jeer at the raised fists of English skippers.
Aleys looks around to be sure she’s alone. She crouches to examine a caterpillar crossing the towpath. Aleys knows she’s getting too old to care about something so small. It’s nothing special, just a green cabbage worm, not even the length of her thumb, the kind she knows will turn into a plain white moth with tiny spots as black as monk’s ink. Aleys watches it creep across the path. It’s a miracle that the stampede of children didn’t crush it. She rises and walks over to a bush and breaks off a twig and returns to the creature, coaxing it onto the stem and bearing it carefully to the side of the path. She bends to deposit it in the undergrowth and watches it disappear beneath a leaf. Funny, how God makes creatures blend in where they belong. How strange they are when out of place. Aleys looks up after the children. They’ve forgotten her. She lifts the leaf, but the caterpillar is gone, too. She worries she might not have put it back in the right spot; she hopes it finds its friends. She hopes it gets to fly.
Aleys considers, for a moment, whether to chase after the others. By now, they’ll have reached the intersection of the canals, where they’ll wait for the old lockmaster to turn his back so they can teeter across the gates as the water fills. They might now be running up the towpath of the Zwin toward the sea or they might have veered onto the Lieve Canal that goes all the way to Ghent. She doesn’t really want to follow. “Aleys!” they’ll say, turning, laughing, toward each other. “Did you get lost?” She won’t want to tell them about the caterpillar. Not even her brothers or sister, who laughs at everything. So Aleys straightens and turns back. A bee trails her, and another joins. Bees love her like she’s a tulip. They don’t sting her. She doesn’t know why.
Mama will be at home. Papa’s gone to the cloth hall in Brugge to get the guild’s stamp on their spring wool. The Lakenhalle has a new belfry as grand as that of any cathedral, and louder, too. Mornings and evenings, it clangs out the hours that wool production must start and stop, as if there’s a race on. Papa says that even God stops work when theLakenhalle tolls. Mama slaps him when he says this, but she smiles all the same.
Aleys scuffs her shoes along the path. It’s a pretty spring day, one of those that carries the smell of the sea and the rasp of gulls from the coast. She passes homes with yards facing the canal. The spinsters have moved their stools outside and are hand-spinning thread from clouds of fleece atop long poles nestled against their shoulders. The women tip their faces to the sun and call out greetings. Aleys knows them all from collecting the skeins that Mama sorts on their kitchen table. Papa takes the best yarn, creamy and smooth, for the weavers in Brugge. The rest is used for felting or sold to carpet makers. Aleys and Griete play cat’s cradle with the cheap stuff, full of knots and noils, beside the hearth. Or they used to, anyway.
Aleys finds Mama in the vegetable garden, sprinkling carrot seed along the furrows with one hand, supporting her swollen belly with the other. Farrago, their dog, is beside her. He follows her mother everywhere.
“Mama, you shouldn’t be doing that.”
Mama dusts the last of the seed from her hands and leans back, bracing her palms in the small of her back. “I couldn’t resist. It feels like the first day of summer.”Any day now, Mama’s been saying for a week. They pulled the cradle from storage and placed it on the hearth. When no one’s looking, Aleys sits on the stool and practices rocking it with her foot. It might be all right, Mama having a baby. Aleys can’t remember an infant in the cradle. Griete’s nearly eleven. It’s been empty a long time.
Mama straightens and brushes her braid over her shoulder with the back of her hand. Aleys got Mama’s blue eyes, but not her fair hair. Her own is a glossy brown, almost black, like Papa’s.
Mama looks beyond Aleys for the others. “You’ve returned alone?”
Again, Aleys hears her think, though she knows it contains no judgment. Mama says she was the same as a girl. Sober, stubborn, wondering. Different. Mama’s the only person in the world who understands.
“What marvels did you find?” Mama asks.
“Just a cabbage worm.”
“You saved it?” Mama slaps her palm to her forehead. “You know it will eat this garden empty.”
“Not this one.”
“No? Well, better than wool moths, I suppose.” Mama gazes off over the fields that run behind their yard. She has that faraway look, brings both hands to her belly. Then she sighs. “Be a good girl, Aleys, will you, and bring in the washing?”
“Mama, I thought maybe we could ...”
“On such an afternoon?”
“Please? They’ll be back soon. And any day now ...”
