Abruptly, the cot disappears, the entire bed fallen away, and she opens her eyes and finds that all has changed.
The ward has receded like an echo into the blue-gray haze. Around Aleys, around her knees, around the boy, who stands before her, a honeyed light drapes and pools, bathing them in warmth and grace. A humming sound, of bees, fills her ears and her heart, as if they float in a midsummer meadow. The smell of death has vanished, and a verdant scent, of fern and moss and soil, fills the humming, and the boy smiles. She can see inside his chest, which holds neither organ nor bone but three sparrows, hovering, silver shining through trembling feathers. They soar from his chest and she watches in wonder as they circle to a blue dome above.
When her eyes descend, the vision is gone, and she sees again the injured boy on the cot, only he has turned his head and is looking at her with eyes like a clear stream. She can see pebbles, brown and green and blue, through the water.
Rise, she says, though she does not know why, and he does. He sits, and the bed linen comes with him, stuck to his wounds, so that he appears for a moment to be winged. When the sheet falls away, it bears only a faded shadow of his wound. Her fingers are ice cold, sparking like crystal flint. She is suspended in confusion. The boy looks as surprised as she does.
A man moans from the next bay. “Touch me, Sister.” The voice startles her, breaks her reverie. What did they see? And then the voices rise and merge, from around the bed, from around the ward. “Heal me, Sister.” A whispering murmur spreads like contagion. “Sister, Sister. Touch me, nurse me, bless me, Sister.” Aleys stands, but in the time it takes to cross to the next bed, the marvel in her hands is gone, and she can only collapse and weep.
Has Christ answered her? Is this her gift?
Outside, the storm gathers and lepers inch their way to the begijnhof gate.
News of the miracle settles upon the town like a snowfall in August. Flurries of whispers float from the hospital entrance. “Did you hear?” Through alleys, the words eddy and swirl, and the people look up. Zephyrs of wonder dust steeples and sills. Priests gaze from their windows and raise their eyebrows at the swollen flakes and ask themselves, “Is it? Could it be?”Sailors in port feel the wind shift and cross themselves. The rumors reach the marketplace and become a blizzard.There’s a saint in the city.Beggars rejoice and barren women fill with hope. News of the miracle drifts and piles. Chickens lay double yolks and gamblers triple stakes. Blind men dream of blue. In the taverns, tankards are raised to Sister Aleys. Bread and coins, salt and flowers, rabbits’ feet and squirrels’ tails pile up outside the begijnhof gate and the swan pond grows foul with offerings. Only the children are unimpressed, for they see miracles everywhere.
They must have carried her back to the begijnhof. When Aleys wakes, she’s in the infirmary. Old Agnes is the only other one there, asleep, her clawed hands clutching the sheet. Aleys tries to rise but cannot. Her head splits with questions as she struggles to recall what happened, as one does from a vanishing dream, grasping at fragments. A meadow, and sparrows, and ... a boy with limbs of light. A beam of remembered ecstasy breaks through the film of pain.
She must find the boy. Aleys runs into the hallway in her nightshift, her shorn head bare and prickling. A young beguine carrying a basin drops it with a clatter, and cold water spills over Aleys’s bare feet. The girl bends to dry them with the hem of her dress, and Aleys pushes her away. She doesn’t care about her feet. Sisters emerge from every door. Seeing Aleys, some cross themselves, some bob a curtsy, one falls to her knees. She sees herself in their faces. How she must look to them, disheveled, half naked. They see a wild-eyed John the Baptist, a Moses stumbling down the mountain waving tablets of stone. They think she is lit with revelation, that she has just risen from lying with God. The senior beguines clutch each other. They’ve been waiting for this since they were children.
“Get up,” says Aleys to the girl on her knees. She isn’t a prophet.
The girl doesn’t rise.
“Where is he?” Aleys demands. “The patient, what happened?”
“Sister,” says the matron, “he is healed; it is marvelous.”
“No, I want to—I must talk to him.”
“But Sister,” says another, “he collected his bag and walked whole from the ward. It was a true miracle.”
She doesn’t know about that. “You didn’t stop him?”
No. They shake their heads. It didn’t occur to them. One adds hopefully, eyes wide, “We saved his linen?”
Aleys feels more alone than she has in her life. There’s no one to corroborate, no one to help her remember the details. None of them saw what she saw. She knows only that it was ... glorious. Like the moment the roof lifted from the beams and an angel whispered in her ear. A dream more real than reality.
But still, a dream?
Aleys retreats to the empty infirmary, sits on the edge of her bed, looks at her hands. She bites into the pad of her thumb, gnaws at the flesh. The boy lived, they say. She believes that much. He wouldn’t be the first to rise from a deathbed. Her teeth find a hangnail and rip it off, and she is glad of the sting. A pink stripe, the color of coral, is laid bare beside her nail. It begins to well with dots of blood.
Aleys throws herself back across the cot, her head hanging over the edge, and covers her face with her elbow. It was magnificent, she should be grateful. But what was it? What is she left with? Her head pounds. Her hands begin to throb. Her entire heartbeat is in her fingertips. She has no idea what is happening. Maybe Friar Lukas will. She is sure of only one thing: People are hungry for miracles.
25
Friar Lukas
Friar Lukas hears the news from his brothers. They are back from collecting alms and have gathered to observe Sext. They enter in silence from the friary yard and assemble in the chapel, each one to his place. For years, twenty of them have gathered here to observe the hours, eight times a day. They know each other’s subtle signs. A cough, a sigh, that when Brother Baldric rubs his nose it means his devotion has drifted, the trouble brewing when Brother Albert scratches his neck. Today, though, there is something in all of them. As they chant theKyrie, Lukas senses a restlessness in their limbs, and not just the young ones. He sees eyes dart, one pair to the next, as they hold the notes. Even Hervé is shifting from side to side like the floor is hot. Something is up. They file out, their hands clasped before them as always, but once outside the doors, hands are flying everywhere. They’re acting like they’re from Florence, not Flanders.
Lukas goes to his most trusted source. “Hervé, what is it?”
“You haven’t heard? Our Sister Aleys. She has healed someone!”
He pauses. “She works in a hospital.”
“The youth was close to death. Some say he’d already passed. He rose from his deathbed. There are witnesses.”
“Our Aleys? Hervé, you’re sure?”
