“The heresy,” she says, “is mine.” She straightens, concentrating her will inside her. “I claim it.” Eve did what was necessary. She took the fall.
You must bear the truth, said Mary.
All is one. It doesn’t matter where the truth comes from.
“I wrote this,” says Aleys. “I ordered my maid to hide it in the begijnhof until she could take it to the Markt for me.”
“Then she is guilty of distributing heresy,” says the Dominican.
“How is that possible? You can’t blame her for harboring a heresy she can’t read. The woman isn’t lettered.”
It’s a betrayal. Marte looks at her, stricken. All their hours together, every letter that birthed a sound that spelled a word that formed an insight. Every new understanding, committed in ink. All of it, betrayed. But the lie will save both Marte and the begijnhof, and Marte knows it.
The legate looks searchingly at Aleys. She knows he seeks to understand, that he wants to understand. He must, however, represent the Church. He sees no choice. Rewriting Eve, rewriting the very nature of sin, goes too far.
“You swear that this work is entirely yours.”
“I do.”
“You understand that you must deny these words or be guilty of heresy.”
She bows her head.
“And you do not recant?”
“No.”
He looks to his left and right. Both men nod. “Then we are in agreement.” He addresses the clerk. “Record this: By this present writing, this court excommunicates you and imposes on you the sentence of excommunication.”
Aleys lowers her head and nests one hand inside the other. In the end, after all, she has no need to meet their eyes. Theirs is not the mystery.
“In grace and kindness, I grant you a delay from the present time until the ninth hour; a second delay from Nones until Vespers; or in our last and peremptory patience, until Compline at the day’s end. I pray that in that time you humbly admit your error, and in our presence abjure it and all heresy, so that you may deserve to be reconciled and reunited with the Church.” One hand of the legate wipes the other. “After sundown, if you have not recanted, we will decide your punishment.”
64
Aleys
The jail cell is no bigger than an anchorhold. High up, a square window opens above the main canal; outside, men hawk herring and eel at twilight bargains. Moss grows over the sill, mold creeps down the wall. The corner smells of piss. Someone has tacked a crude wooden cross on the wall.
Aleys thinks back to the first moments in her hold, the dense silence, how she spread her arms and spun around, how she knew she was not alone.
Beloved, are you here?She approaches the plain cross. She will speak plain truth.
“I’m so afraid.”
The first visitor, at Nones, was the bishop. He made it clear that, were she to recant, he’d be forced to charge Marte with heresy—“Someone has to die for this,” he said—and to shut down the begijnhof, to put the women on the streets.
At Vespers, the clerk came. He nodded soberly. “They said you wouldn’t.” He turned as he left. “I am truly sorry.”
Her last chance will come at Compline, after darkness has fallen, when her resolve will be at its weakest. Even now, her thoughts travel ahead, to a stake in a plaza and a torch that wavers slick and invisible under midday sun. The hour of crucifixion, the hour with death in its soul. Tomorrow. The tunnel in her mind is dark and cold and its exit so bright and impossible. Her pulse is in her throat.
“Beloved, I need you.”
She opens her hands and looks at them. Perhaps, she thinks, perhaps tomorrow I will understand. She hopes she’ll understand it all, on the other side. Maybe Mama will be there.
Or maybe she’ll recant at Compline. She can feel the weakness in her, the desire to escape pain. I might die tonight, she thinks, here in this cell. Maybe the fear will grow in my lungs like chokeweed and squeeze the breath from me and I will escape the flames. Yet she knows that won’t happen. She will need a courage she doesn’t have, a martyr’s heart.
“Help me.”
