Aleys
Aleys sits beside Cecilia at supper, simple broth and bread, silent but for the muted clink of wooden spoon on wooden bowl and Sister Katrijn’s prayers in strident Latin from the front of the room. The words, about lilies of the field, appear to be wasted on this audience. Aleys wonders how many beguines understand them, if any. She’s impressed that Katrijn reads Latin. Not many women do. “She hired a Latin tutor from her very own earnings,” Cecilia whispers, “back when Katrijn’s business with her husband started to turn a profit. Katrijn loves scripture.” You wouldn’t know it to listen to her read. Katrijn’s rendering sounds like she’s pounding the milk to punish the butter. She bludgeons the psalms.
Aleys glances to her right at a taciturn young woman, small as a swallow, with dark hair and black eyes and the sobriety of someone much older. Aleys thinks her name is Ida, but maybe-Ida’s severe countenance forbids even a whispered question. It’s not like Aleys can just lean over and whisper, “You look like you’d enjoy a life of prayer. Care to join the friars?”
Aleys finishes her soup quickly and looks up to find the beguines taking measured sips from their spoons. She’s still hungry. She thinks of her family at home, the boys forking second helpings of lamb, Griete laughing, Papa leaning back in his chair and stretching his stomach with his hands to make more room. At least, during the good times. She pushes the thought of them away and watches the beguines consume their meal prayerfully, seemingly grateful for each spoonful. Even Cecilia sips quietly, one with the silent communion.
When Katrijn stops reading, the women set down their spoons and rise together. They file out behind Sophia. Cecilia glances back to beckon Aleys before she turns the corner. Aleys is alone. She grabs a half-empty bowl and downs it, the salt broth sliding down her throat. She reaches for another. Marte limps into the room with an empty tray. Aleys sets the bowl down quickly.
Marte grasps a heel of bread left on the table, hands it to Aleys.
“You’re hungry,” she says. It’s a simple statement. Aleys feels a shock of shame to be offered food. It’s one thing to ask for alms, but no one’s ever held out a bread crust like she’s a pauper. She backs away. “No,” she says, “you keep it.” Marte shrugs and puts the bread on the tray and starts gathering up spoons. Aleys hurries out after the beguines.
She finds them gathering around the hearth in a nearby room, shifting chairs here and there, though it’s clear everyone has their own place. She hesitates at the door. Is she meant to join them? Atop each chair sits a workbasket full of skeins and spindles. The women nestle baskets at their feet as they settle. There’s an air of intimacy in this close room, a shift in key from the starched meal. Some of the beguines stretch their legs straight out before them in a way that’s mildly shocking. Aleys looks around, but no one seems to notice.
Katrijn is seated at Sophia’s right hand, beside the hearth. All Aleys can think of is the chink of that coin purse. She knows they pledge simplicity, not poverty. Still.
Katrijn stiffens when she sees Aleys. “Magistra.” She leans over to Sophia. “Is this wise?” Several women stop talking and look up.
“She’s one of us, Katrijn.”
“But she might—”
“Sister, we do not love in parts.”
Katrijn looks as though she wants to protest but thins her lips and bends over her mending. Cecilia waves from the far side of the hearth, where there’s a chair and a stool beneath an oil lamp on the mantel. As she weaves a path through their workbaskets, pulling close her brown robe, Aleys feels the women’s eyes like dozens of pinpricks of curiosity. Lukas told her to impress them with her faith. How is she supposed to do that?
A sheaf of parchment lies squared upon the chair. Cecilia smiles shyly at Aleys as she picks it up. “It’s my turn to read tonight.” She has the air of a child about to recite her alphabet. Aleys is sure Cecilia wasn’t taught to read on the farm. She assumed the beguines’ schools were just for children. Maybe they teach their own.
Cecilia gestures Aleys onto the empty stool beside her. All around, women have resumed chatting amiably, pulling work into their laps. Aleys folds her hands, hoping to disguise their idleness. They’re still watching her, though they hide it well. Sure enough, a middle-aged beguine reaches over. “Sister,” she says, thrusting a needle through some mending and handing it to Aleys. At least it’s work she’s being offered, not bread. She examines the men’s cap in her hand. A mouse has chewed a hole in it. How is she meant to close that? Sew around the edges and gather it in like a hay bale? Or stitch across the hole and leave a scar? Aleys looks at the quick hands of the other women and knows her work will be wanting.
As the magistra offers the evening prayer, the women pause to bow their heads and cross themselves. As a test, Aleys searches for dust motes above them, but the air is flat. She’s not surprised. God wouldn’t flirt with her in this place. Does he even know she’s here? She sighs and knots the thread and slides the needle through the fabric. Around the edges it is.
Cecilia takes a deep breath and begins haltingly. “As she stood behind...behind him ... weeping she began to wet his ... his feet with her tears.”
Aleys looks up, needle poised in midair. Cecilia is reading scripture. In Dutch. She looks over, and sure enough, the words are plain on the parchment, in text any schoolboy could read. Aleys raises her eyes to find Katrijn’s gaze hard upon her, daring her to object. Aleys doesn’t object. She’s just bewildered. It never occurred to her that a psalm on a page could be as simple as this. The words are simultaneously so native and so foreign that it takes Aleys a moment to recognize the story of Mary Magdalene, the disciple who needed Christ most and loved him best. Aleys knows this gospel to heart, in Latin, has envied Mary the chance to touch his feet, has imagined the bowl of warm water, in Latin, the alabaster jar,alabastrum, her copious tears,lacrimae, the fragrant ointment filling the room with nectar and balsam. His fond gaze upon her. But never in Dutch. Aleys closes her eyes to listen to the story as Mama might have read it, if Mama had known how to read.
Except that Cecilia jolts from word to word like a cart between ruts.
“Then she wiped them with her hair ... kissed ... them and ... and poured oil on them.”
She is making a hash of the sacred passage. Aleys wants to grab the parchment from her, to read it as it deserves to be read. To savor the story in her own language, how it would roll off the tongue, so easy and free. It would burst with meaning into the air like the head of a dandelion. The wind could carry the seeds anywhere. It would be so beautiful. But Cecilia lumbers along, her finger jabbing the page.
“Jesus said to Simon the ... the ...” Cecilia scowls at the word.
“Pharisee,” inserts Aleys. Immediately, the beguines look up from their work. A small disapproval ripples through the room. Aleys is right, of course it’s the pharisee. Needles hover. Cecilia raises questioning eyes to the magistra.
“You were about to get it, Cecilia,” says Sophia. “Please continue.”
Cecilia glances around the room, takes a deep breath, and bows her head to the paper. “Jesus said to the ... pharisee. See you this woman? I entered your house, you ... gave me no water for my feet. But look, this woman has ... bathed my feet with her tears.”
Katrijn’s cold stare cuts through the hazy room. Aleys feels she has transgressed, but she was just trying to help. And maybe to impress them.
Her gaze slides to the fire, where Marte is adjusting smoking logs with a poker. The spring night is too warm for the chimney to draw properly and smoke is wafting into the room, already hot with all the bodies crammed in. The beguines wear light wool. Her own robe is coarse and heavy. Sweat beads in the small of her back.
Aleys remembers the mending in her hand, tries to focus on that and not on Cecilia’s butchery of the gospel.
“You gave me no ... kiss but she has not stopped ... kissing ... my feet.”
