Sophia’s bedchamber is lined with candles. They must have brought every beeswax taper from the church stores. Aleys sees, surprised, that the walls of Sophia’s bedchamber are painted a golden mustard. The wavering half-light casts shifting pools of amber and ochre. So the magistra allowed herself this one luxury. No lace, no tapestry. Just this cocoon of warm light. Something in that thought makes Aleys glad. Her hand travels to the small rectangle of the psalter she wears beneath her dress.
Katrijn is bent over the bed, her strong back flexed taut as a bow. Just inside the door Lukas is murmuring prayers. Her heart sinks. He has delivered last rites. He raises his eyes. They are bloodshot and troubled. He shakes his head.It’s bad, his eyes say.
Katrijn cradles Sophia’s head with one hand, strokes her brow with the other. There’s a great tenderness in the gesture. Sophia’s form disappears beneath the blanket. Katrijn twists to look at Aleys. Her eyes are desperate.
“You have come,” she says. “Finally.”
“Yes.”
Katrijn can’t bear to relinquish Sophia. So Aleys waits, her hands folded, breathing vinegar, which stings a throat already raw from the torches on the bishop’s stage.
Katrijn bends to press her brow against Sophia’s, and Aleys can tell she is trying to pull the affliction from Sophia’s body into her own, like drawing a splinter from the flesh. Finally, Katrijn pulls herself away and stands to face Aleys. “Please,” she whispers, “please.” Katrijn’s anguish is plain on her face, a naked despair that is willing to bargain.Heal her, and I will believe you. Heal her, and I will do anything.
Aleys holds her breath as she approaches Sophia. The magistra is childlike against the pillow, pale and hollow, perfectly still, waxy but for the spot of color on her forehead where Katrijn has pressed her own. Her hair is spread out like a silver corona. Has she already passed? Then Aleys sees, with a bolt of horror, the magistra’s eyes wheeling toward her with the terror of a frightened horse, overshooting Aleys’s face.
“She still can’t see,” says Lukas, “nor move. She couldn’t take communion.”
Katrijn moans. She hugs her elbows to her waist and bows her head, a gesture that belongs to another woman.
Aleys leans toward Sophia. “Magistra, can you hear me?” Sophia’s eyes train on her voice, latching to a rope thrown down a well. “Yes, Mother, I think you can.” She concentrates on her hands, strains to feel the spirit within them. She thinks back to the evening the magistra brought her the lamp in the church. Nights when she woke racked with pained spirit, to find Sophia at her side.He asks too much of you. Aleys bends to her ear and whispers, just for her, “Magistra, I will pray for you as you taught me.”
And so Aleys removes herself to Gethsemane, to the garden, and she prays his word so quietly that only Sophia can hear, over and over again. One word to animate her frozen body, one word to bring her home, one word to bring her back: “Abba. Abba. Abba.” She hears Christ’s anguish over the valley and she feels his wonder and she tries, she tries, to let the magistra feel what she feels. Into that word Aleys pours all her desire so that it channels a route; she carves with that word like a pickaxe, “Abba,” flint and pull and rock and mud, “Abba,” and the beguines’ prayers quietly fill the canal until it swells and spills over its banks. She can see the way, opening to the sea; it is ahead and it is light, and she takes Sophia’s still hands and warms them and murmurs, “We are there, Magistra, it is just ahead.” She can feel the miracle descend. They will save her, this cup of suffering will pass. And then ... nothing.
The vision dissolves and Aleys is back in the room with the cloying scent of rosemary and the magistra’s eyes now closed, and there is no safety, she knows, because the world is flat again. Her hands do not tingle, her spirit is damp. She is empty of miracles. The beguines’ prayers have watered fallow ground.
Katrijn covers her face, stricken. She knows.
Aleys has failed.
Sophia issues a rattling sound and Aleys pulls back. She feels a weariness in her bones.
Sophia opens her eyes, searching. “Katrijn,” she murmurs.
From the corner, Katrijn lifts her head. “Sophia?” She pushes Aleys aside, takes Sophia’s hands.
“Katrijn?” It is a hoarse whisper, barely audible. The two women lock gaze, hazel eyes searching brown, as if in this moment, they both see each other. Then Sophia closes her eyes, exhales, and it is over.
Katrijn stiffens. She does not move for a long while. No one does. Silence expands to fill the room.
Then the beguines begin to sing. It is Ida first up the stairs, then Cecilia, then they are all there, around the bed. They singAve Maria. Their dresses are spotted with raindrops and they smell like wet wool, but their song opens the shutters and Aleys feels Sophia slip out the window.Do not go.But it is too late. Katrijn sobs quietly, her broad back heaving.
Aleys looks around the room at the tearstained faces. “I’m so sorry ...” she begins, speaking to Katrijn’s shoulder.
“Get out,” says Katrijn, never moving her gaze from Sophia.
“I tried—”
“Get out,” she repeats louder, turning. Her eyes blaze. “You fraud. Sophia believed in you, thought you were something rare, like some kind of”—she spits out the word—“angel. It was all about you. Since the day you arrived it’s been all about you. And you didn’t even save her.” Katrijn nearly chokes. “You didn’t deserve her.”
None of us did. “Katrijn, I love her as you do.”
Katrijn shakes her head. Her eyes are raw.No one loves her as I do.And Aleys sees it is true.
“Get out of here,” Katrijn whispers. “You are no saint to us.”
There is a shocked pause in the song as Aleys pushes her way from the room and stumbles down the stairs. Below, Marte raises her head from gathering the sodden poultices. Silent tears wet her ruddy cheeks. The sight of Marte crying pierces Aleys as nothing else can.
Aleys runs. She races across the dark courtyard, through the arch, pushing open the double doors and passing onto the bridge. A thin thread of cobble is visible through the offerings, mush and glistening cabbage heads. Flower petals float below in a browning pink and yellow quilt. A quiet rain is falling into the small square outside the begijnhof, empty in the dead of night. Somewhere, the bell of Matins rings. She is startled. Sophia is gone. Time should have stopped.
