“Oh, that?” says Aleys. “Never bother.”
Ida, she thinks, Ida might say yes. Every evening, Ida gathers the parchment of the reading with great care. She loves the psalms like Aleys loves her psalter. Someone that serious about scripture might be open to a life of prayer. But Ida is dedicated to her work at Sint-Janshospitaal. Aleys doesn’t want to follow her there. Hospitals are magnets for demons; everyone knows that. Aleys imagines invisible leathery creatures with fast, rank breath that hover over the dying, waiting to snatch their souls. Aleys was afraid to face them in Mama’s chamber when she was thirteen. She’s not sure she can now.
But Sophia assigns her to work in the hospital, and so she must follow Ida there. People narrow their eyes as Ida passes. Aleys remembers how her brothers said that beguines speak with demons, that they negotiate with the devil’s agents as they pray the dead through purgatory. She didn’t know whether to believe them or not. Aleys looks sideways at Ida as they weave their way through the city. Does she talk to demons? Unlikely. Ida hardly talks to humans.
It’s a short walk past the brewery and over Maria Bridge. Sint-Janshospitaal dominates its square, an imposing building of ruddy brick, its roof a series of steps that meet above the entrance like a double stairway to heaven. Ida jerks her head toward the large doors. “Sister, go ahead. I’ll be right behind you.”
But Aleys has no intention of entering alone. She watches as Ida crosses the square, dwarfed by the large basket she carries on her small arm. Halfway across, Ida turns back to shoo Aleys toward the hospital. Odd behavior from the woman who chided Cecilia not to venture out alone. What’s Ida doing? Aleys sees her enter a shop. Aleys waits. When Ida emerges, she’s rearranging the cloth on her basket. Aleys ducks inside the hospital doors.
Inside is a vast space with enormous leaded windows that soar to a vaulted ceiling. You could fit a lot of demons in here. The ground floor is split into two sections, lodgers to the left and patients to the right. The section for travelers is boisterous with the buzz of hearty men. Cecilia had warned her to steer clear of the merchants who use the Janshospitaal for lodging, wine purveyors from France and traders from Germany, mostly. “Quick with a feel, they are,” she said. “And anyway, we’re meant to serve in the infirmary.” Now that she sees the clear barrier separating the sinners from the sufferers, Aleys wonders how it is that Cecilia discovered that the healthy men are so handsy.
Cots disappear into the shadow of the infirmary. On that side it’s quiet, except for a man moaning softly. Beguines in gray move between bedsides, bearing trays and pitchers. The air is thick, a humid fug pierced with an unholy smell. Aleys breathes shallowly.
Ida joins her. “Are you all right?”
“It’s a hospital.”
“You’re afraid of blood?”
“No,” she whispers, looking up to the vault, “spirits.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” says Ida. “The devils don’t want you. Only the patients.”
Maybe Ida does speak with demons.
Aleys stops beside an old man with skin so pallid he could be a marble effigy, but for pearls of sweat that dot his brow. Aleys can’t tell if he’s breathing. An elderly woman sits by his side, shredding a kerchief in her hands. “Sister?” she says. “Can you help?”
Aleys looks up for Ida, but she’s bent over the next bed, unwrapping a bandage.
“Please, Sister.” The woman’s voice cracks in desperation. Aleys has no idea what she should do. She should leave. She doesn’t belong here. She doesn’t belong with the beguines, she doesn’t belong with Ida, she doesn’t belong in the hospital. The look on the woman’s face is naked supplication. Aleys feels tears of frustration prick her eyes. “I don’t know, I ...”
Ida grabs her wrist, wrenches her around, whispers fiercely, “Don’t you dare cry. If you weep, what will they think?” She takes a cloth from the basin, wrings it out, hands it to Aleys. “It’s God’s will, whatever happens. Make yourself useful.”
“But I don’t know how—”
“Then pray. Isn’t that your specialty?”
Aleys considers a retort, something sharp about being called to worship, not washcloths. She bites her tongue. Ida looks pointedly at the rosary on Aleys’s belt, watches Aleys unloop it. Ida waits. Aleys crosses herself, searches her memory for a prayer for the sick. She can think of none. Her mind is entirely blank. She stands there, her rosary drooping from her hand. The prayers she knows by heart are joyful, they speak of union, they are ecstatic and entirely wrong. She bows her head.
“Aloud,” says Ida. “We need to hear you pray.”
Then simple words jump into her chest, and with a rush of relief, they flow through her tight throat: “Lord, have mercy on us. Lord, have mercy on us ...”
“That’s better,” says Ida. She touches the shoulder of the old woman. “Come, Mother, pray with us.”
As Aleys watches Ida bring comfort to the hopeless, she knows she’ll never recruit her. Ida has found purpose right here in the hospital.
By Midsummer, Aleys despairs of recruiting even a single beguine. They’re too content. Happy in work and worship. They’ve not been schooled in a convent, but every evening they gather to consider what the psalms ask of them and what they give to them. There’s Cecilia, who holds her head a little higher since her reading; Ida, asking questions; Sophia, pushing them deeper.As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.They pause in their stitches to contemplate the meaning.A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.The verse knits the women together. Their hopes, their labor, even their disagreements, are all strands in a single weave. Aleys sees that. It’s just that she wants to be more than another thread in the cloth.
Aleys has learned to slow herself at meals, to mete out her soup and tear her bread into morsels. She prays with them, attends their readings. It’s all so muted. Where’s the ecstasy? Where are the trumpets? Aleys left home to fly. The roof is bolted solid over the begijnhof. It’s not going anywhere. These women seek, but it seems like a trudging sort of seeking.Dear Lord, she prays.You called me, but did you mean to call me here?
Aleys sighs. Tonight is the solstice, but this evening will be like every other. The summer nights have infused her bones with restlessness. The voices of children playing in the courtyard vault the sill and land in the reading room. She’s had the urge to run out and join them, to climb trees and race along the canals. At home on Midsummer, they’d had bonfires and merriment. What are Griete and Claus and Henryk doing this solstice night? She hasn’t dared ask how her family has fared. She’s afraid to.
But tonight, even the beguines are restless at supper. Cecilia whispers something to Ida, and Ida whispers back. Katrijn seems in a good mood, smiling benevolently at them all. After the meal, instead of the reading room, they move as a group to the church. Aleys considers slipping to the dormitory. She wants to pray on the problem of how to tell Friar Lukas that she’s recruited exactly no one to their order. But Cecilia beckons, and Aleys is curious, so she follows.
Inside the church, the beguines are scraping the benches to the walls. They’ve placed a few stools before the altar, where a middle-aged woman is settling a lap harp on her knees. Beside her, another wets her lips and pipes a few notes on a recorder. Someone has a small drum. A fourth beguine enters with a clipped bang and shiver of tambourine. What is this?
Aleys stands aside as the youngest women, those not yet pledged, gather beside the musicians. The color is high on their cheeks. Aleys is unsure what is happening. A tambourine in a church—it seems like it shouldn’t be allowed. Where is the magistra? Sophia is smiling at the musicians. There is a mounting undercurrent of excitement. The girls are stirring, removing their headscarves. She looks up to the crucifix. Does Friar Lukas know about this? Just how many secrets do they keep from him? Aleys feels she should leave. She shrinks against the back wall.
