Aleys can hardly bear it. She accidentally stabs her thumb with the needle and a drop of blood stains the cap, which now has a bunched hillock instead of a hole. She looks around. Everyone is listening appreciatively, pausing to turn a piece of work or nip the end of a thread.
Even Marte is listening, paused with one hand on the mantel, leaning toward the chimney. Old sweat stains at Marte’s collar point down her back. Those would be from the farm, she supposes. Marte is nodding along with Cecilia’s words. When she bends to rest the poker against the wall, her hip hitches and the poker falls to the hearth with a clatter.
Cecilia starts, her finger slipping down the page.
Marte scowls and bends to retrieve the poker.
“Cecilia, go ahead and finish the passage,” says Sophia. “I do love this part.”
Cecilia reads on, now from the wrong place, gaining momentum. “Her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much.”
She’s skipped the part about the debtors. She’s missed the point.
“And he said to her, ‘Your sins are forgiven.’” Cecilia looks up from the text, cheeks pink, eyes round. “Just like that!” She has the wordverghevenpinned beneath her finger like it was about to take flight. “Right here, it says so. He forgave her, in front of all those men.”
“But you skipped half of it!” Aleys protests.
Katrijn makes a disgusted sound, throws her work into her basket, moves to stand. Sophia stays her with a glance.
“As we see, Cecilia has understood the words and their meaning,” says Sophia. “Well done, Cecilia. You’ve read it for yourself.” Cecilia beams at her praise, and Aleys sees that the girl has found forgiveness, twice over, once in the text and once in the eyes of Sophia.
Outside, a mist rises from the courtyard, so that each beguine appears in her own pillar of smoke as they separate to their homes, bobbing lanterns casting faint halos of rainbow. Aleys didn’t think to bring a lantern to supper. She’ll have to feel her way to the dormitory. No one waited for her. Even Cecilia, buoyed by fresh revelation, was carried off by her friends and forgot Aleys. She stands in the dark, feeling the mist slick her cheek. Doors close around the begijnhof and lanterns glow, one by one, in the windows.
Aleys thinks of Candlemas, of the village girls dressed in white, bearing candles to the church to be blessed. She remembers shielding the flame with her hand as she walked carefully, tending it, watching the flame falter on the black wick, pausing to let it revive like a little resurrection. Griete beside her, hair in ribbons. Griete loved red ribbons for the holidays. Claus used to steal them from her hair and tie them on Farrago. Mama would pin Griete’s silky blonde braids up like a crown. Aleys imagines Mama behind her now, quick fingers plaiting her hair with firm tugs. Mama would smooth the stray ends into the braid, then give two brisk taps on her shoulders when she was done. It leaves a hollow feeling, the thought of home.
“Sister Aleys.” It’s Sophia, closing the door to the reading room behind her. “If I might have a word.” She steps forward and the aura of her lantern envelops them both. Sophia’s face emerges distinct from the dark veil and the black night.
“Of course, Magistra.”
Sophia lets the silence settle around them. Above the trees, the dormitory windows show as lit rectangles, silhouettes of girls passing between them. None of them are Griete. None of them understand her. Neither did Griete, Aleys reminds herself.
Sophia’s lantern burns a small break in the weather. Aleys wants to reach out to warm her hands above it, imagines leaning in so far that she would tip into Sophia’s arms and be held for a moment. Just a moment. She wonders if Sophia could plait her hair, then remembers she’s given that up, too. She slips her hands within her sleeves, grasps cold wrists with chilly fingers.
“Aleys, what you heard here tonight.”
“The reading?”
“We don’t speak of it outside these walls.”
“But where did you get the translation?” She imagines monks in their scriptoria, penning Dutch and adding red capital letters and other flourishes. She imagines Finn leaning over a desk, translating the Song of Songs into Dutch. But the parchment Cecilia held was crude, the letters plain. Hardly abbey quality.
“Translators have had trouble, elsewhere, so we keep our source secret. For their safety.”
She wonders what Friar Lukas would think of reading the gospel in Dutch. She could ask him whether Franciscans are allowed to read translations. The friars are almost as unconventional as the beguines. But she doesn’t want to point a finger at Sophia. In this moment Aleys only wants the magistra to plait the hair she no longer has.
“It’s beautiful, Magistra, in Dutch.”
“Even from the mouth of a beginner?” Sophia arches an eyebrow. “You know Cecilia’s just learning. It’s not easy for her.”
Aleys feels a wash of shame. She shouldn’t have corrected Cecilia. It’s obvious now.
“I won’t do that again, Magistra.”
The magistra closes her eyes briefly in a small nod.
“Aleys, would you consider a piece of advice from an old beguine?” There’s a touch of irony in Sophia’s voice. Aleys feels her hackles rise. She doesn’t answer to Sophia Vermeulen. She is not one of them.
“I don’t—” she begins.
