OMNES
All
It is Marte who discovers Aleys crouched and shivering on the delivery dock, clad only in her shift. “Help!” Beguines come running from every corner through the dew-slick yard. Marte had roused them to search for Aleys, sure that the girl would return to the begijnhof. Where else could she go? It took them only minutes to find her.
Katrijn follows the commotion, her stride cutting a path straight to the dock.
“What happened?” the women ask. Aleys can’t speak, but Marte knows. She nailed the belt to the door. She never trusted that man.
Katrijn stands back as they crowd around Aleys. When she speaks, her voice is grave; for once, her hands do not slice the air. “The Church will want to excommunicate her,” Katrijn says quietly. For a moment, Marte wonders if Katrijn will shove Aleys from the dock. The enmity between them is no secret. Then the magistra bends to gather the girl in her arms and carries her through the courtyard, up the stairs to the bed in Sophia’s room.
A hush descends on the begijnhof, a crouched waiting. There is debate. Should they hide her here? Should they spirit her away to the countryside? As long as she’s alive, the Church will hunt her. They will cut her off. Afterward, she’ll be a pariah, worse than any leper. No one will take her in. No one will feed her, not even pig scraps.
Someone speaks up. “Why did she leave her hold?”
Marte stares. “Friar Lukas broke in. I found his belt on her floor. What do you think happened?”
Their own friar. It seems impossible that the man to whom they confess would ...
“We need to ask her,” says another.
“No,” says Katrijn. “Sister Aleys will have trials soon enough.”
Willems confirms the girl is in the begijnhof. The bishop orders him to marshal a group of armed men. They’ll surround the place, put the women under house arrest, rotate guards at the door. Then they’ll begin the trial. Jan can pluck the beguines away, one by one, for questioning. He wonders if he’ll be able to tell them apart, all those women in gray. It doesn’t matter. He has plenty to work with.
When Willems reports back, he says he can find no men for hire.
“What? Have they beaten all their swords into ploughshares?” That’s what comes of friars preaching peace and forgiveness on every street corner.
“That’s not it, sir.” Willems raises a subtle eyebrow. “It’s the wives. They’re angry.”
At what?the bishop is about to ask. Then he remembers the belt. So word has spread. He thinks of the tongue-lashing the brown friars will receive when they hold out their begging bowls to the women of Flanders. Those men should fast for a few days.
He also thinks, Now I will have to defend Lukas.
Jan sends Willems back out to find men without wives, the sort no one wants, the type too eager to invade women’s homes. In any town, there are always men willing to threaten women.
Lukas sits on the bed hung round by curtains. He hasn’t slept since Jan turned the key in the lock. “For your own good,” his brother said. Lukas hardly notices the wound in his side. He’s focused on his fingertips, raw with splinters of hemp. He’s spent the hours, Lauds and Prime, humming and picking apart the knots of his vows. The rope frays out from obedience, in a thousand directions, spread like a sun on the bed.
Aleys wakes in the chamber with mustard-colored walls. She thinks of Sophia’s spirit rising through the window to the heavens. She gets up and pushes open the shutters, blinking. Too bright. Below, women cross the courtyard. She shrinks back. So many people. She closes the window, retreats to bed.
Midmorning, Marte brings a bowl of barley and milk. Sophia once put such a mug in her hands and from the window they’d watched Marte feed a cat from kindness.
When Marte sets the bowl on the table, Aleys catches her hand and brings it to her lips. Marte starts, pulls back.
“You were there for me. Always.”
“Of course.” Marte frowns.
“Every day, and I never—”
Marte interrupts, “Miss Aleys, are you ... ? I know he entered your cell.”
Aleys turns toward the window. The Midsummer sun rims the shutter like the devil’s torch outlined her parlor window. Is she all right? She shakes her head, though whether she means yes or no, she’s not sure. He didn’t ... but she feels his key in the lock, his hands on her skin, his hot breath in her face. The man forced her to abandon her home. She was violated the moment he entered the anchorhold.
“I want to wash,” she says.
Marte brings water and a towel. The water is warmed. Marte cracks the shutter, allowing a beam of light to strike the basin.
