Alone, Aleys strokes her cheekbones, presses her fingers into her jaw. It’s easiest to touch the hard parts first, those backed by bones, the dependable ones. Her wrists. Her elbows. She wraps her hands about her upper arms and holds herself, still. Then she squats before the basin and reaches into it to fill her palms. The pooled water sparkles. She raises her hands to her temple and breaks the water over her head in baptism. The water trickles down her face, her throat, leaving rivulets of cool in its wake. She chants the cleansing words of Job to herself.Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white assnow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.
God tested her. She doesn’t know if she succeeded; the choice was no choice. She has a moment of pity for Abraham. His impossible, terrible test. How do you know whether you’ve passed God’s trial? But maybe that’s the wrong question.
Raise a tent of your failures.They came to her in the night. She knows it. That was no mere dream. It was a message.
What matters is now. It’s what she chooses next.
She opens the shutters fully. When her hair dries, Aleys braids the strands and finds them softer than wool. When she rests, she sleeps on the balsam of hidden cathedral.
They have not abandoned me, she thinks. In my failure, they came. In my night.
Before the sun will set, this very day, the authorities will sever her from the Church. They will try to shame her.
She laughs. She remembers Sophia’s voice.What is the opposite of shame?
And Ida’s response.The opposite of shame is love.
She no longer seeks absolution from the hand of man. She has all the love she needs.
The first surprise is Katrijn. The new magistra, for Aleys can hardly bear to think of anyone but Sophia as magistra, appears in the doorway later that morning. The year has aged her. She looks, Aleys realizes, careworn. There’s a slump to her shoulders and shadows under her hazel eyes, as though the burdens of leading the begijnhof have been literal weights pulling on her. And of course, Sophia’s death. Katrijn’s has been an angry mourning, not a gentle one, Aleys senses. When they were last together, it was in this room, over Sophia’s body.Get out, Katrijn hissed.You are no saint to us. Perhaps Katrijn has come to remind her.
“I never thought to see you again.” Katrijn is direct.
“Nor I.” Aleys sits up in bed.
“Marte has brought you food.” The statement is plain. It’s hard to know what to make of the changes in the woman before her. Aleys might as well be frank.
“You’ve given me refuge. Why? I know you don’t like me.”
“No.” Katrijn folds her arms. “But you’re pursued by the Church.”
“So you offer me shelter.”
“It’s what Sophia would have done. She protected me, and I’ll protect you. You know the bishop threatens to excommunicate her, too.”
“Sophia?”
Katrijn laughs bitterly. “Don’t you understand? They’ll hunt us all. The Church wants to silence difficult women. They’ll use any means at their disposal. The bishop says he’ll charge her with translation.” She looks away. “He’ll have Sophia burn in hell.”
“But the translations are yours.”
“Some of them. There are new ones circulating, too, that aren’t mine.” Katrijn flicks sudden tears from her eyes. “There’s nothing I can do. I can’t stop a bishop.” She sags to the edge of the bed, and a small, frightened sound escapes her. “Sophia will suffer for my faults.”
“Katrijn, no matter what the Church does, God won’t punish her.”
“How do you know that?”
What can she tell Katrijn? A year on her knees in a cell? Her conversations with God? “Trust me. Sophia is safe.”
Katrijn takes a deep breath. “You’ve seen this?”
“Yes.” Sophia has always dwelt in grace.
“I want to believe you.”
“It’s not your fault, Katrijn. None of it is.”
The sounds of industry, the scritch of carding, the clunk of a laundry paddle, come through the window. “They don’t like me,” says Katrijn abruptly. “The women.”
