Aleys pauses at the head of the alley, watching Marte limp between basket and line. A bee, one of the small hard ones, hovers beside Aleys like a silent chaperone. Another joins, so that Aleys has a bee at each shoulder. She doesn’t brush them away.
Can she do it? Aleys looks around. Except for the bees, they’re alone.
“Marte, come here.”
“Miss.” Marte bobs from a distance. She seems wary.
“It’s all right, Marte. It’s just me.” Marte scratches her shoulder, deciding. “I won’t hurt you.”
Marte approaches reluctantly, one hand on the laundry line, her awkward gait making the line dip and rise. Aleys doesn’t want to frighten Marte, so she begins the prayer internally. Aleys feels the bees settle to her shoulders like she’s a winged creature. Marte’s feet leave uneven green prints behind her in the silvered grass. She stops before Aleys, her face closed. When Aleys drops to her knees, Marte starts, but she doesn’t pull away. Aleys places her hands on Marte’s bad foot. Marte inhales sharply. Aleys can’t tell if anything is happening. Then she feels the faintest coolness in her fingertips, followed by a rush of triumph. She knows it’s God’s will. But this time it also feels like it’s hers.
When Aleys rises, Marte simply nods.
“You won’t want to be late for prayers, miss.”
“Thank you, Marte.”
“Thank you, miss.”
“We won’t speak of this.”
“No.”
She watches as Marte returns to her work. The limp is gone. Or is it? She’s not quite sure.
When she turns back to chapel, Katrijn stands outside, watching.
That night, Katrijn herself takes the reading chair, stained fingers drummingthe parchment. Cecilia tries to coax some vigor from the desultory fire with the hand bellows. Marte stands guard in the courtyard. Aleys looks towardthe window and yearns for the cool of the water’s edge. Even Sophia seems distracted, fingering a slub in a strand of yarn that will have to be smoothed or sacrificed. She reaches for scissors, then changes her mind and sits back, clasping the back of her neck. Katrijn stands to rub Sophia’s shoulders. The magistra gives Katrijn a grateful glance and a small, pained smile. Aleys thinks, Only Katrijn can do that. Katrijn won’t allow anyone else to touch Sophia. The other day, Aleys rounded a corner and found them standing close beneath the eaves, sheltering from a sudden downpour. They were laughing at their sodden headdresses. Sophia raised Katrijn’s wet hand to her lips. Their foreheads touched, and Katrijn whispered something that made Sophia close her eyes and nod. Then they parted.
Now Katrijn moves from Sophia’s shoulders back to the reading chair. She clears her throat: “He went to Nazareth,where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue.” Christ has come home. Aleys imagines the elders’ eyes following young Jesus as he strides to the front, sandals worn thin with travel and the hem of his robe in need of washing. Jesus pulls the prayer scarf over his head and reads: “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
Right here. This is the moment that Christ claims it.The Lord has anointed me.
To the old men of the synagogue, the elders, he claims to be the foretold Messiah. It is so bold. So incredibly bold. They’ve heard crazy rumors—loaves and fishes, healings, walking across a lake—but isn’t this just Joseph’s son? Joseph the carpenter?
“Show us,” they say. “Medice, cura te ipsum.”Physician, heal thyself. Heal us. Raise our dead of Nazareth. Show us these miracles you claim. Prove it.
But that’s not what happens. Jesus refuses to heal them. “‘Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in his hometown.’” Will not or cannot heal them? How Aleys wishes she could ask. There’s so much she wants to ask.
Katrijn raises her voice: “The people were furious. They drove him from the townand up the hill to throw him from the cliff.”
Katrijn slaps her hand onto the parchment, and the women look up from their work, startled. Their eyes go first to Katrijn, then to Aleys. They all hear the barely veiled threat: We don’t tolerate fraud.
“But that’s not what happens, is it, Katrijn?” Sophia says quietly. “That’s not what it means.”
“Here’s what I don’t understand,” says Cecilia, puzzling out loud, the bellows dangling from one hand. “If he wasn’t ever going to help them, why did Jesus go home to tell them he wouldn’t? It seems prideful.”
“No,” says Sophia. “I do not think it pride. Christ is telling us that we must be open to wonder if we hope to witness it.” She looks around the room, her gaze skipping over Katrijn. The magistra brings her fingers to the arches of her eyes, presses hard. “I’m sorry. I have the headache tonight.” Sophia draws her hands down her face. When she lifts them, Aleys sees something uneven about her mouth, something broken in her smile. She’s in pain, thinks Aleys. I should heal her.
Then Sophia seems to recover. Even under duress, she is a teacher. “What, my friends, is the opposite of pride?”
At once, two answers. From Cecilia: “Humility?” From Katrijn: “Shame.”
There is a silence as the women weigh these words. One as plain as bread, the other with the bite of mustard, but they are kin, somehow. Handiwork settles into laps as the women consider. A log collapses into the fire with a murmur of sparks.
Finally, it is Ida who speaks into the quiet: “Neither. The opposite of pride is love.”
An hour later, Katrijn accosts her, storming up the stairs to the landing between their rooms. Aleys is in her chemise, about to turn in to her chamber, bearing a candle. She’s too tired to deal with Katrijn. Tomorrow is another day in the hospital. She turns to face Katrijn. The landing is small.
