“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.
65
Aleys
The wind comes in earnest that night. It gathers in the streets, like rushing water, spilling and pooling, wish and wrath. Aleys lies awake and feels herself in the mouth of the whale, in the midst of a hurricane, enclosed and suspended, reviled by men, beloved of her beloved. She stops struggling, for what sense is the struggle against all that is? It simplyis.
The wind roars through the town, rattling shutters and blowing sparks. A roof catches fire, then another, and the sound of running and shouting fills the alley outside the jail. Somewhere in the distance, a bell is loosed from its tether and begins tolling madly. Throughout the valleys of Flanders, church doors blow open and the name of God rushes down aisles to the naves. His breath purls through her jail, reaching even between the bars, and she knows he is with her.I will keep you, he says. She does not know yet what this means, whether he means to swallow her or spit her out. She is a minnow. Crush me, for I am one with you. Crush me and use my bones for yours. Crush me and free my marrow to fill the heavens.She is the wound of Christ, the bloody hole, and her terror and love are wide and gaping. She touches her ribs, feels her heart beat within, the faithful clock that will be stilled tomorrow.
The wind does not sleep that night. Trees bend and snap. In the harbor, anchors jump their housings and beat holes into the hulls of ships. People look to the skies where clouds slip over the moon like veils. They fight their way to barns to bolt the doors. Leaves blow sideways and the word is carried. Accused. Sentenced. Burning. Soldiers cross themselves. Mothers look in twice on their infants. Dogs howl the night through. The wind funnels through town and frills the water in the canals.
The sun rises, and with it, the knowledge that it’s the last dawn she will see. Aleys waits. Faith and horror, courage and terror have been shifting within her like tides through the night. But not doubt. Her bowels are liquid, her spine is seaweed. She had hoped not to be afraid, but Aleys knows now that fear and faith are not incompatible, and that both will accompany her to the end. She is impatient for the end.
Finally, two burly men arrive. They are broad shouldered and strong. Do they think they will need to subdue her? She looks at the open door, thinks of running, but knows her place in the design. She offers her hands, wrist to wrist before her. She goes to God.
“Behind your back.”
They bind her limbs together, careful not to touch her flesh. Aleys bows her neck and her hair falls across her face. She breathes into the dark curtain of herself. She will walk blind to her death.
There is a bustle farther down the hall, gruff voices. A woman has forced her way into the jail with the fury of a trapped wasp. Through the spill of hair over her eyes, Aleys can barely make out Marte.
“Miss!” In three strides Marte is beside her and Aleys is encircled in her arms. Aleys releases a breath she has been holding for days. She leans into Marte.
Marte spits at the guards, “Have you no shame? You didn’t even cover her hair. And she can’t see.” Marte tears the leather cord from her own braid and grips it between her teeth as she reaches up to gather Aleys’s hair. She moves behind Aleys and strokes her hair back, smoothing it once, twice, away from her forehead. Marte is murmuring something under her breath. It takes a moment to recognize that the incantation is the alphabet, and Aleys thinks that this is Marte’s prayer. Marte begins again atAand plaits Aleys’s hair slowly, carefully, chanting each letter with reverence. She reachesZand Aleys hears “amen.”
“Saint or no,” Marte whispers, “you’ve been my blessing.” She wraps the cord around the dark nub at Aleys’s neck. Marte rests her forehead against Aleys’s back, and for a moment Aleys thinks of Ida and Cecilia on the night of the Canticle. Marte’s kindness drops into Aleys’s hollow and fills it. She becomes solid again, steady.
“Our psalter,” says Aleys. “It’s in Sophia’s room. Take it. Love it well.”
Marte nods into her back. “Always.”
The guards lead her to the door. It opens to cobble and canal and the path to the Markt, where they’ve driven a stake into the heart of the plaza. The Lakenhalle belfry looms above. Overhead, dense flat clouds press down upon them. It feels like a storm is coming, and the temperature is dropping. She will end there, before the wool hall. She remembers the day she sneaked from its doors, the light snow that fell as she searched the marketplace for Friar Lukas to ask him to explain:I rose up in order to open to my beloved. If she could, would she warn that girl? That child, that naïve and ambitious child, is no more. And perhaps that was always her path, the intended and only path, the necessary path, to her beloved.
The way to the Markt is short. A great mass of people line the street. The baker, the butcher, the seamstress, the cobbler, the children, fill the road in a murmuring sea of witness. Aleys cannot look at them, not yet. She turns her head to the left, toward her anchorhold and its beautiful hours, the warmth of Kat between her shins. And beyond that, the green court of the begijnhof, where the breeze stirs the laundry into sails. She looks to her right, at the canal that flows to the sea, back through her childhood. Perhaps she will see Mama before the day is out.
The great cathedral bell tolls deep and round and swimming. Aleys must face forward. Smaller bells join from all over the city, urgent and sharp, hammers on anvils. They come from every direction to this moment, and Aleys feels herself the center of a swell of sound so beautiful it quickens her breath. Though the church may crumble, the bells will echo forever. It is time. She walks.
