Aleys stands there, on the bridge, in the rain. Behind her, above her, the begijnhof bell begins to toll. The first stroke rises sudden, swells, fades into a watery echo. Then the second. It will be Ida ringing the bell, pulling with all her small solemn might on the thick rope. Over and over, clapper strikes metal. Peal after peal is born and dies. It is so senseless. Aleys begins to cry, there on the bridge, among the offerings to her worthless gift.
A man exits his home across the way, wiping sleep from his face, looking up at the steeple. The bell tolls on and on, and with each clang, another person enters the square. Their eyes graze Aleys, then rise above her. Aleys sees the wondering in their faces: Death has chosen a beguine. Which one?
The best. Death took the best.
A small girl in the hand of her mother is watching Aleys, brown eyes under a white cap. All the adults are gazing upward. But not the girl. Her eyes glint with recognition, with the triumph of young children who have found the right word. The girl mouths it.No, thinks Aleys,don’t. Please do not say it. Not that. Not now.
But the child speaks her claim: “Sint.”
The mother looks at Aleys. Her eyes spark with the quick flint of opportunity. She drags her child forward and presses the girl’s shoulders until both are kneeling before Aleys, demanding her blessing. Can’t they see she’s not a saint? If she were, the bell would be silent. Sophia would be alive. Aleys looks down at the woman.You throw sheep knuckles onto the ground for a scrap of luck. You require miracles to feed your faith. What in God’s name do you believe in?
Aleys opens her empty hands and looks up into the rain.I have nothing for you.
The mother grabs Aleys’s wrist and twists it to place it flat on her daughter’s head. Aleys pulls away, but it’s too late. The crowd has noticed them. Murmurs of “Sint!”rise from around the square. Aleys feels the people closing in, like she’s a magnet drawing sharp filings toward her. She pulls back, but the woman already has a handful of her robe, and then there are more, more voices, people slipping on the bridge as they push to be near. She glances back at the begijnhof door, but there is already a man behind her with a gray beard and tearful eyes.“Sint,” he says, touching a finger to her shoulder.Don’t touch me, she thinks. But the sibilant hiss of “Sint!”surrounds her, until it licks across her palms and kisses her ear. They claim her with the intimacy of ownership, like she’s a lucky rabbit’s foot. They have encircled her now, on their knees in the offerings, hands clasped, heads bowed. Their desire coats her limbs like ointment.
And then, from behind, hands grasp her hem. A tug, another tug. Her dress slips down her back until the front grips her throat. She claws at her neck to pull it away.
“Stop!” she gasps. But there are other hands now, scrabbling over her. They pull her robe away from her until it is extended like a bell. Cold rises from the cobbles up her thighs. Before her, a man on one knee grabs a knife from its sheath, and with two flicks, nicks off a bit of cloth. He folds it into his fist and brings it to his heart. “Sint,” he murmurs. “Sint.” His eyes are closed. The rip in the fabric is enough. Other hands begin to tear at it, yanking, pulling threads, grabbing handfuls from her garment. They seize her belt, and it tightens around her waist like a vise until it too falls away, severed, and a small crowd fights over the knots.
When they look at her, their eyes are blank. They are breathing hard now, chanting “Sint! Sint!” and she feels their wildness. She pushes, but there are hands on her arms, fingers around her ankle.
“Stop!” she yells, but no one hears. Her heart can’t keep pace with her shallow breath, it’s all too fast. She’s engulfed by the crowd.
A knife nicks her shoulder and slices a ribbon from her sleeve. She feels someone else run a knife through the other so that both sleeves are rent into brown wings that hang limp down her back. Her arms are naked now, her legs exposed. The drizzle is chill against her skin, hands hot where they slide along her limbs. The people grab at the wings. She slips on their offerings and falls backward. Fingernails bite into her calves. A fishwife is wringing her ankle as if to unscrew it and she realizes: They will tear me apart for my blessing. A large man grunts as he pulls hard at her arm and she feels her shoulder skip its socket with a quietpingand her back torques in pain. Panic sharpens her thoughts. She struggles, but there’s nothing she can do.I’m only seventeen. I don’t want to be martyred.
Then she’s groping air as they lift her above them. Her sandals have vanished and her feet dangle far from her as they raise Aleys like a rag doll. They will carry her somewhere—perhaps the cathedral, perhaps a bonfire—she knows not. She is in the grip of something animal and frenzied, a wild sacrament.
Then someone slips and Aleys is falling, from their hands, from the bridge, and as she strikes the surface of the water, she knows no more.
32
Friar Lukas
Lukas feels himself split. One piece is at Sophia’s side. “Go forth, faithful Christian,” he intones, commending her to the saints and angels. But another piece of him is already following Aleys, to stop her flight, to demand, how—how did you do that? For this is what he saw: He saw Sophia’s features soften as Aleys prayed over her trapped spirit. He saw Sophia’s spirit set free from its cage of flesh, in the moment when her eyes met Katrijn’s, and he knew that she could see, though she’d been blind moments before. The women, all three of them—Katrijn, Sophia, and Aleys—were paused in tableau, captured in unconscious glory. Though it was not the miracle they sought, nonetheless a holiness had descended upon them. Or had risen from Sister Aleys, for she was lit with grace. His eyes are wet. As the bell tolls, Friar Lukas is shaken with grief and wonder. And as Sophia’s sisters lay out her body and begin the prayers of purgatory, he takes his leave of them.
Outside, he shoulders his way through a crowd gathered on the bridge and all around the shore of the begijnhof pond and down the canal. The bell stops tolling. The crowd is strangely hushed, everyone facing the island. The moon hides behind racing clouds, so it takes him a moment to understand what he sees. In the center, there’s a mound of brown wool. Then he realizes it’s Aleys, collapsed. Swans surround her like guardians. Her robe is torn, her sandals and belt gone. Even her veil has disappeared. With her hair half grown in, brown and spiky, she looks like a street urchin. When he wades into the waters, mud sucks at his sandals and an animal smell wafts up; he is wet to his thighs. The swans part. He lifts Aleys easily, gathering her in and tucking her head against his chest. As he wades back, his robes trailing, he knows he holds a living saint in his arms. The crowd surges toward him, but he shouts, “Stand back!”
Some of them clutch scraps of brown wool in their fists; he wants to hit them. He reins in his wrath and storms across the bridge. The people give way. They look ashamed.
At the begijnhof entrance, Ida has one hand on each of the enormous doors. She shakes her head no. Her eyes say she’s sorry.
“I’m to stop you,” she says.
“She needs attention.” Ida is birdlike, he could easily force his way in.
“Katrijn doesn’t want her here.”
“The magistra promised her shelter.”
“Sister Katrijn is the magistra now.” Ida backs through the doors and closes them. He hears her slide the bolt.
33
The Bishop
Jan swirls the burgundy in his goblet, admiring how it glints like dark gems. He’d been too exultant to sleep when he returned from the Markt, had called for his finest vintage to savor with his victory. Might as well drink it all. He’ll be heading to Rome after this triumph. Willems has dispatched couriers to carry the news of the miracle to Rome posthaste. The actors were superb. That boy with the crutches, genius.
After the demonstration, notables—abbots and counts and the mayor—gathered around to congratulate him, as if it were his own merit that caused God to grant a miracle worker in his diocese. The only one who stinted on praise was a squint-eyed Dominican from the university in Paris. “The pope’s men will want to test her,” he said. “Independently.”
