Pieter Mertens comes from Brugge, dressed in his finest, and spends an hour with her in the garden. It’s a warm day with the promise of spring, but Aleys still hugs her maroon cloak tight. Griete watches from the kitchen window. Aleys toes the greening moss by the well while Mertens speaks of mercantile interests, of horses, of tapestries and pearls. He stands too close. He assumes too much.
As soon as he leaves, Aleys runs to her bedchamber and bursts into tears. They can’t make her do this. They can’t.
Griete enters and leans against the door. “He’s not that bad, Aleys. He’s healthy, he’s tall. He obviously wants a wife.”
“But I don’t want a husband.” Aleys starts pacing back and forth in front of their altar. There must be a way out.
“You could become a nun,” says Griete. She sounds hopeful.
Why does everyone want Aleys to become a nun?
“You know, you’re not the only daughter in this family.” Griete plays with the tassel on her belt. “I’m only two years younger than you. I’m nearly of age.”
Aleys ignores this. How can she marry a man like Mertens? She imagines his shiny pink body on a fur-draped bed. She shudders. Perhaps she could be like Saint Cecilia, who converted her husband to chastity on their wedding night. But Cecilia wasn’t faced with Pieter Mertens. His heavy breath, his damp fingertips when he ran his hand from her cheek to her neck before she could pull away. Nuptial conversion is not a solid plan. Aleys will have to drink poison the night before. That’s how she’ll do it. They’ll find her at dawn, dark hair strewn across the pillow, pale and pure. Like Saint Ursula. Her suitor isn’t exactly a Hun, but still. She’d rather die on the sword than submit to Pieter Mertens.
She prays for guidance. She wants to ask Mama, but she’s afraid of the answer. Mama would put the family first.Never could Ileave you, not even for God.What if Mama expects her to sacrifice herself by marrying Mertens? It’s hardly the martyrdom Aleys had hoped for. But Mama also told her to seek. Aleys is so confused. One moment she burns with shame that she would even think to abandon her family. The next, she’s furious at Papa’s betrayal. She can’t look at him, has to leave the room when he enters.
She is sure of one thing. Marrying would break a promise she made to God. Aleys has to leave. But where can she go? She could pound on the doors of a convent, beg to be admitted, even though it’s about the last place she wants to be, even though she doubts they’d take her without a dowry. Besides, how would God find her among all those women?
Then she has another idea. A better one. That visiting friar from last summer, the one who blushed as he read the Canticle, is the head of the Franciscans in Brugge. It would be marvelous to be a Franciscan, though she doesn’t really know what their women do. Of course, she won’t baptize souls or shrive sinners. She’s not naïve. In the brown robe, though, she could travel, she could debate, she might even preach. Thevita apostolica. The open road, the sky, the marketplace, the stink of fish canals, not the walls of a cloister. Or the bed of a merchant.
She confronts the next set of friars she sees. Friar Lukas, she learns, preaches at noon on the corner of the Markt, as reliable as the Lakenhalle bell. So, when the family hitches their newly purchased horses to set up their new stall in Brugge, Aleys grabs her cloak and sneaks into the plaza as the church bells begin to toll.
It’s snowing lightly. She spies Friar Lukas preaching to a knot of widows. He’s smaller than she remembered. She can’t hear his voice over the commotion of the market and the clamor of bells. When he reaches for the sky and his brown sleeves slip to his elbows, she can feel his yearning for God. Aleys has no idea who this man is. But if she’s to leave home for the unknown, better this mystery than the certainty of damp breath and sweaty paws.
Friar Lukas sees the girl at the edge of his sermon, feet square on the cobblestones. The marketplace is veiled with delicate snowflakes, the gray of the stones merging with the gray of the sky. He’s been preaching on this corner for years, yelling over the constant rumble of carts on the cobbles. He has to compete with hawkers and jugglers and street players, but where better to preach truth to commerce? Lukas once brought a tambourine to get attention, but the people wanted him to do a jig. Christ suffered mockery, he told himself, but no one asked him to dance.
The morning started like any other. “Vrouwen ende mannen!” He waved his arms. “This very house”—he gestured behind him—“is a nest of devils!” As he spoke, merchants in velvet and fur entered and exited the cloth hall, eyeing him as though he might barge in and flip over tables. They’d hired a steward to fend off the beggars, but Lukas knows the man is too afraid of hell to shoo away a friar. The paupers figured this out, too. They use Lukas as a screen to get close to money. He forgives them; he just hopes they absorb God’s word as they pick men’s pockets. Maybe there is a lenient corner in purgatory for half-enlightened thieves.
“Pity these men you see coming and going. They are like foxes who chase pheasants, though the honeycomb lies broken open at their feet. They pursue gold and neglect the treasures of heaven at their fingertips.” He extended his fingers as if heaven could be glimpsed in his palms.
A few people gathered, the regulars. Aside from the pickpurses there were the widows, rapt at his words no matter what. He could read the city charter aloud, and the elderly would gaze upon him with their insatiable appetite for the young—or, in his case, the not yet old. A few others stopped to listen. They stood in a half ring, shifting their weight. Some drifted away almost immediately, looking for better amusement. Well, it’s truth he was offering, not entertainment. A pair of workmen paused and put down their heavy sacks. Lukas raised his voice in his most fervent tone, cupped his hands and lifted them: “God grant us the gift of poverty!” He opened his arms in a gesture to shower the congregants with God’s love.
The larger of the workmen slapped his thigh. “You can keep your gift, Friar!” he shouted. “I have all the poverty I need!” The smaller one tossed his hands toward Lukas. “Here, take mine, too!” The crowd laughed. Lukas’s arms sank to his sides. He had no retort. His throat tightened about his silence, a thick plug in his chest.Lord, give me words to answer the mockery. None came. One of the widows shook her fist. He hated when they came to his defense. It made him feel like a child. The workers bowed like players, flourished their caps, hoisted their sacks, and waved as they retreated toward the harbor. The noon bells began to toll.
“The end is upon us!” Lukas shouted. He’d lost his crowd. The paupers peeled off toward the money changers, hands outstretched like dowsers for water. He needed to say something, anything. “The date is known only to the Lord, when the pure shall rise and the wicked shall tumble.” It was only the widows left. His voice petered out as he cried, “How long, O Lord, until thy judgment?”
That’s when he saw her. She came from nowhere, alighted in the middle of the plaza, bright snowflakes like stars on her maroon cloak. Something wild in her eyes that he recognized, a hunger as clear as water. He thought of Ezekiel. He thought of the gate through which the Lord entered creation. And he wondered for the first time if Mary had been odd in this way, if she had seen right through the world around her. If the angel Gabriel had glimpsed the burning bushes in her strange prophet’s eyes and thought, Yes, this is she.
The girl approaches now. “When will it end?”
He frowns.
“The world. You said the world would end.”
He smiles. “Soon,” he says, looking up to the belfry. “Any moment.”
“Yes, I have seen it,” she replies. “The apocalypse of every stroke.”
He looks deep into her eyes and sees that she, too, is made of prayer. That she belongs to God.
“Father,” she says, straightening, “you don’t know me.” Though I do, he thinks, I do recognize you. “I’m an apostle, willing and devout.” She lifts her chin. “My heart is Franciscan. I want ...”
He squints at her. “What are you asking, child?”
“I want to join your order.”
It comes to him. “I saw you. When I preached in Damme.”
