The voice resumes. “Sister Beatrice prays to Our Lady. She does penance, she fasts for days. ‘Release me from this temptation!’ she cries. But it doesn’t work. She loves him still. And then one evening, she’s in the cloister alone, gathering roses to set before the Virgin’s statue, and the knight breaks in. He seizes her and lays kisses upon her, and her veil falls off at the foot of the Virgin, and then he rips off her habit and covers her in silks and furs and jewels and puts her before him on his horse and rides off with her!”
“Pffft. This story’s not true. You can’t just tear off a habit.”
“It is true, wait, there’s a miracle in it. The knight and his lady go to a new town, and there they live happily as man and wife. Then, at the height of their happiness, the knight is struck down by fever. In the morning he kisses her. By noon, he’s dead as a doornail. She’s left alone in a strange place.”
“She’ll have to go to the brothel,” says Cecilia.
“Get your mind out of the gutter.”
“Well, what choice does she have? She can’t return home and she can’t go back to the convent. Even if he was a knight.”
“She ends up in the brothel. But through it all, she prays to the Virgin daily, the seven hours of Our Lady.”
“Even Matins? She wakes up for midnight prayers?” Clearly, Matins is the height of piety.
“All of it. Every day. And her carnal sins? No lust. She does it in the brothel without any lust.”
“It’s not mortal if you take no pleasure,” says Cecilia.
“The devil ceases not. Who told you that?”
“The butcher.” Ah, thinks Aleys, it wasn’t the butcher’s son, it was the butcher himself. No wonder he couldn’t marry Cecilia: He already had a wife.
“Finally, after seven years, the lady can’t even remember all the vile acts she’s done or whom she’s done them with. ‘Mother of God,’ she cries, ‘take pity on me for my sins. Let me return home to my sisters.’”
“She expects the convent to take her back? They’d never.”
“Wait. She drags herself back to the town. A widow living beside the convent takes her in out of charity, for the night.
“Beatrice asks the old woman, ‘What news, mevrouw, of the convent?’
“‘Ah,’ says the old woman, ‘the nuns there are pure and stainless, and their rosaries are a blessing for the town. None have given cause for criticism.’
“‘Not even the nun who eloped, seven years ago? The bell ringer. Her name was Beatrice.’
“‘What say you? Sister Beatrice, eloped? No, do not slander that good lady. Listen, there she is now, tolling Vespers. Sister Beatrice, the most devout of sisters.’”
One of the carders gasps. “How is that possible?”
“But it is. That night, Sister Beatrice has a dream. One of those ones that seems as real as waking?”
“Ja, I had one of those the other night, about a pudding.”
“Shhhh. Let her finish.”
“In the dream, Our Lady comes to the sister and says, Faithful Beatrice, I have heard your prayers and I have interceded for thee. Go to the cloister, the door is open. You shall find again your veil, where you dropped it at my feet. And cowl and shoes. And habit.”
“And?”
“And she goes there and discovers that the statue of the Virgin has come alive and has worn her habit and rung the bells every hour of every day for seven years. And none of the other nuns, not one, noticed it wasn’t Beatrice.”
“That is a miracle,” breathes Cecilia.
“I told you.”
And then, in reality, the begijnhof bell rings, and the carding stops and so does the talking and they rise to go to chapel, where they will contemplate Saint Mary or Sister Beatrice, or, quite possibly, the finger touch of a knight at evensong.
Aleys whispers, “Dear God, what have I done? How will I find you here?”
