She follows Friar Lukas over the bridge. He never told her that she’d be a novitiate, like the new girl at a nunnery. What if she fails? She can’t go home. Her stomach clenches. Not even a convent would take a failed Franciscan who ran away. She adjusts her robe, rubs her arms to calm herself. She will hold her head high as she enters this arena. The beguines aren’t wild beasts, she tells herself, just wild women.
They pass through the entrance and the sound of carts and commerce falls away. Aleys stops short at the scene before her. Within the contained court, all is white and green and breeze. A ring of whitewashed homes, maybe twenty or thirty, each capped with red-tile bonnets, hugs a large grassy yard lined with tall trees strung end to end with linens. A faint smell of brine gusts over the rooftops.
They’ve stepped into another world. Papa once brought home a decorated egg; you peered through a small round window in the shell, and beheld inside a miniature scene of the nativity, perfect and complete. Aleys had wanted to enter that world, to dig her fingers into the sheep’s wool, to gaze into Mary’s eyes, to lift the infant from the cradle and sniff its milky skin. Papa let her keep the egg on her altar for a week before he returned it to the sailor he’d met on the wharf. She mourned its loss. Aleys would have crept inside that egg and never come out.
The wind shifts, a change in tempo, and the sheets on the lines begin to rise and fall in waves, a billowing ocean of snow, and Aleys imagines she could swim from one end of the courtyard to the other, where a gray stone church rises like a headland. The breeze shifts again and the sheets snap like the wings of gulls rising from the sea. She can’t tear her gaze from them.
“Sister.” Friar Lukas is speaking. “Aleys?” It seems the sheets have a message for her. What is it? What is God saying? Lukas should stop interrupting.
All falls silent. The spell is broken. The linens settle back to their lines. Cloth alleys appear between trees. Between them, brown-stockinged legs kick a ball. Giggles rise from the bleaching.
“Ach! Don’t you muddy my sheets with that ball!” Across the courtyard, an exasperated young woman stands from her stool and waves bristled paddles at the children, fine strands of wool trailing down her wrists. She and two others are carding outside one of the houses, a black cat stretched on the sill behind them. The rhythmicscritch scratchhalts as all three look at Aleys and Lukas. The giggling stops. A ball rolls from the linen alley as if presenting for punishment.
One of the carders pushes aside a blonde braid with the back of her wrist as she looks up at Aleys. The third woman elbows the first: “Look, see? That must be her.” Aleys is suddenly conscious of her monkish robe, her smudge of brown amidst the green and breeze. They are staring at her, three young women in simple dress and aprons, judging Aleys in the strange robe with the thrice-knotted belt. I’m wearing linens underneath, just like you, she thinks. You don’t need to stare. Aleys lifts her chin. She will be as brave as Perpetua entering the arena.
Then the church bell rings, the three turn in unison toward a house, a door opens, a tall woman exits, the cat hops down, and Aleys feels gears whirring, like she’s stepped inside a well-tempered clock. She half expects the woman in the doorway to chirp the hour. Instead, the woman pauses to kick the ball back to the children. Small hands show under the sheets, grasp the ball, throw it down the linen alley. The children are off again. Laughter resumes from the laundry. All is set right, the hour resumes. Straightening, the woman notices them.
“Friar Lukas. I thought we might see you this morning.”
The woman’s bearing is elegant and brisk, her eyes clear and intelligent. In a simple white veil and wimple over a plain gray dress, she could pass in town for a widow. A happy widow. Her face bears the creases of contentment.
Friar Lukas places his hands inside his sleeves, gives a small bow. He has obvious regard for this woman. “Magistra.” He turns to Aleys. “I introduce to you the magistra of the Wijngaerde, Grand Mistress Sophia Vermeulen.”
The magistra inclines her head. “Introductions are unnecessary, Lukas. Your young sister is the woman of the hour.” Her eyes rest on Aleys’s face. “Everyone is talking about you.” She seems more amused than shocked. Raising an eyebrow, she inclines her head toward the women who’ve set down their carding paddles and are drawn into a knot, simply gaping. “It’s not every day someone runs from her betrothed to join a band of friars.”
“I didn’t run from him.” Even as Aleys blurts the words, she wonders if they’re true. “I was running to God.” Lukas shifts, embarrassed, like she’s said something indecent.
Sophia regards her with a steady gaze. The moment stretches, the older woman studying the younger one. Finally, the magistra nods. “Yes, child, I think you were.”
Sophia shifts her focus to Lukas. “You would have her stay with us? Your brown—what do we call her? Nun?”
“I’m not a nun.”
“Friar, then?” Sophia purses her lips to hide a smile.
Lukas interrupts. “Sister will do.”
“Certainly. We are all sisters here.” Then, as if she detects Aleys’s reluctance, “This is your wish? To live with us?”
Of course not, Aleys thinks, but Lukas’s stare binds her like a commandment. She nods.
Sophia’s cheeks hollow slightly. “Of course, you’ve heard tales about the begijnhof.”
Aleys feels a blush rise to her cheek. Here, in this crisp courtyard, the rumors seem implausible. She’s heard strange things about these women. People say beguines are not just immoral in the regular ways, vice and lust and wickedness. They’re immoral in ways no normal person would even want. They pray at the bedsides of the dying, for nothing. It’s too virtuous, such charity. A priest will mumble last rites and leave with your coins in his pocket. The beguines will stay at your deathbed and pray in low voices, ushering you from your last breath in this world to your first breath in the next. People call them the midwives of death. Claus used to stumble about the yard, pretending to be a beguine, arms outstretched like the reaper. Henryk claimed their prayers were as potent as those of virgins, but he still wouldn’t want to touch one. Only Papa thought it unfair that the healthy were quick with their insults but quicker still to call the beguines to their deathbeds.Oh, Papa. You never imagined me here.
Sophia sees her blush. “Yes, I can see you’ve heard about us. People will sow rumor like spring seed. They need better stories.” She presses two fingers to the edge of her eyebrow. “The truth of the begijnhof is too plain for a good tale. We commit to three things: simplicity, charity, and chastity. They’re not formal vows, nor lifelong ones, but we pledge them to each other. And we support ourselves, so of course we value industry.” She looks at the carding women. “More industry than gossip,” she says loudly, and waves the back of her hand at them. The three resume carding, though not without frequent glances their way. “You’ll join us in work, as well as worship?” She raises her eyebrows at Lukas.
“Sister Aleys will do what you require,” he answers.
Aleys bites her tongue. She can’t fail her vow of obedience on her first day. But she left home to pray, not card wool. He’s presenting her like a draft horse. He might as well have a switch in his hand. The magistra looks pained. As she starts to say something, they are interrupted.
“Friar Lukas!” Behind them, a large woman in gray strides through the arch, a leather purse slapping against her thigh. The chink of coins accentuates her step. As she bears down on them, heat lifts from her in waves.
“Lukas, how could you do this to us?”
She stops just short of Sophia. The two women are of similar age, but where character has written grace on Sophia’s face, it has chiseled indignation into this one.
“Magistra, this morning I had a meeting with Pieter Mertens. Or should have had”—her jaw tightens—“to set the summer wool price. Then the van Bruyk daughter, from Damme, this one”—her hand chops at Aleys—“jilts him.” She glares at Lukas. “To become one of yours. That’s what they’re saying.” She appeals to Sophia. “Pieter’s in a foul mood. He’s a laughingstock from here to the sea. And Lukas would deposit her in the begijnhof?”
