“You think I’m the only woman in Brugge who’s lettered? There are two others in the begijnhof alone who read Latin.”
He chuckles. “Their psalters, maybe. Nothing more.”
“You find it impossible that a draper and a magistra could be so accomplished? Sophia Vermeulen and Katrijn Janssens are both fluent.”
He raises a single eyebrow. “Ah, well, the world is changing.” He sweeps his palm toward the wharf crane. “Wonders abound.”
“Aleys!” Katrijn’s voice cuts through the crowd.
“It seems you are summoned, Sister Aleys.”
Aleys rises on tiptoe to find Katrijn and Ida huddled together at the far side of the plaza. They look exposed, two women in gray, surrounded by men. Aleys feels a prickle of guilt. Maybe she shouldn’t have spoken of begijnhof matters to a stranger. She was only repeating what Cecilia told her. When she looks behind her, the man in the black cap has vanished.
Aleys slips sideways through the crowd. Near the stalls, the sour smell of fleece is strong. Katrijn gives her a scalding look. “You can’t even manage to keep up.” She gives a huff, then turns to the trader behind a wooden slab erected as a counter. Ida remains facing the square, watching the crowd, hand clamped over the basket.
“Sister Aleys.” Katrijn snaps her fingers. “Pay attention.”
The trader speaks a graveled jumble of English and Dutch syllables. He leans toward Katrijn, his eyes bright, full of mevrouw and milady as they argue over the cost of long staple. He nods to a group of sacks in front of the stall. Take your pick.
“Aleys, test the cores for britch.”
Some of the Dover packers hide nasty nests of coarse hind clippings in the heart of their sacks. Aleys sinks her hands deep inside, knowing she’ll come out smelling of pasture. She’ll have to wash her sleeves out with lye. Sure enough, buried beneath the soft long staple is a hard ball of short, curly fibers that would be impossible to spin. She’s withdrawing her hands from the sack to tell Katrijn to find another vendor when she sees Ida step away from the stall. Katrijn’s hand shoots out to grip Ida’s forearm.
“Ida, no,” murmurs Katrijn. “Look. Over there.”
Aleys’s eyes follow. The man with the velvet cap is across the square talking with a carter, but he’s only half listening, his gaze trailing a third man, a shopkeeper fast approaching the fleece stalls. Ida quickly turns her back to the square and hugs her basket close. As Aleys straightens, she sees the shopkeeper frown and veer off. The pale man tracks where he was heading. His eyes land on Ida. He starts over.
“Aleys, keep your head down,” Katrijn hisses. To Ida, she says, “It’s the man I told you about. Who’s been buying up translations.”
“The bishop’s spy?” Ida goes rigid. She shoots her eyes at Aleys. “You were exchanging words with him. By the wheel.”
Katrijn turns on Aleys. “You spoke with the bishop’s man?”
“I didn’t know who he was!” Aleys protests. “I didn’t say anything.”
“Ida, draw close.” Katrijn slips her left hand into Ida’s basket, extracts something that she slides up her right sleeve. She closes ink-stained fingers around her cuff. Katrijn glances coolly at the English merchant, who studiously looks the other way.
“Can’t trust a friar to judge wool,” Katrijn announces, pushing Aleys aside with her hip. “I’ll just have to do it myself.” She plunges her hands deep into the bag of fleece, then rises and dusts them off. “These will do,” she says. “Here, take this.” She lifts the sack and thrusts it at Aleys and grabs another. “Let’s get out of here.”
They walk briskly from the plaza, their gray cloaks sweeping the cobbles. Aleys follows, her cheek against the burlap, her beating heart only inches from a piece of parchment that she knows is sacred, Dutch, and illegal. When she looks back, the man in black has paused in front of the crane. Behind him, the children in the treadwheel change direction. His eyes never move, trained on the backs of the beguines.
20
The Bishop
From his barge, the bishop admires the mayor’s glass windows set into his three-story timbered mansion on the main canal. The upper panes capture the image of the harbor crane, never at rest. Jan would like to outfit his own windows with glass, imagines them reflecting the shiny weathercock atop the steeple of Sint-Salvator. He’d need more funds for that. Besides, he hopes to be long gone before glaziers could finish the project. He’s one heretic shy of Rome. With Willems’s new information, he’s getting closer. He need consider only theopticaof the angles, how his choices bounce off city, guild, church.
Willems bangs the oars against the gunnels. He’s no boatman, though he plays one well enough to mingle in the mayor’s kitchen and sample the scullery gossip. The bishop regrets that his barge isn’t more kingly, but it’s long enough that he can recline under the canopy that bears his sapphire and gold crest. As they approach the landing, the mayor’s men open the boathouse doors and Willems manages to slide the boat into the open bay. Willems makes a joke with the servants and saunters off to the kitchen. Jan mounts the curving stairway. At the top, the mayor greets him with open arms. His round chin and polished cheeks are topped by a peaked hat that makes him look like a jovial acorn. Bite that nut, though, and you’ll break a tooth.
“Come in, come in! We’ll walk in my garden. The cherries are ripe.”
It’s a tidy city garden, with herbs outside the kitchen and fruit trees lining the back wall. A child’s swing hangs in the apples. The mayor has many children, six from his wife alone. Willems says there are three younger ones hidden around the city.
The mayor slaps the bishop’s shoulder, then winces and cradles his elbow. “Ouf. Gout.”
“The disease of kings,” says Jan. “It’s all that French wine you import. You should drink less and sell more, my friend.”
“You sound like my apothecary. He says Bordeaux taxes the joints. I tell him it’s what fills the city coffers with levies.” He chuckles at his own joke. “No matter. He says brandewijn will cure it.” The mayor nods down the central path, between ornamental shrubs. “Jan, how did we get to be so old? I’d swear that yesterday we were playing knucklebones.”
