Aleys wakes with a start, a crawling sensation all over her limbs as she surfaces from nightmare. Slowly, her eyes focus. She’s in a dim chamber with slot windows that admit vertical bars of yellow light. It must be midday. She has no idea where she is or how she got here. She’s been laid out like a corpse on a bed canopied with heavy hangings. She forces her breath to slow. She is, for now, alone. She grabs fistfuls of the blanket beneath her.
Her psalter. Where’s her book? She fumbles and finds the twisted cord beneath her shredded robe, follows it around her waist, tugging to get at the pouch wedged beneath her. The ruby silk is water stained. Carefully, she extracts the psalter. Oh, thank God. The book is intact, its leather cover smooth and familiar. Her fingers trace the embossed vines. She presses one hand on her prayer book and the other into her stomach.
The loss hits her like a millstone falling straight through her core. “Sophia?” Her voice is swallowed by stone and fabric. No one answers. Aleys feels the cracks open within her, the edge of the great howling void, the abyss she knows too well. She squeezes her ribs to make it close, but she can feel it there just beneath her skin. It feels like losing Mama all over again.
Aleys rolls over, buries her head between pillows, and breathes in her own darkness. She bites the pillow for something solid between her teeth, a predictable, trustful thing. A sob forces its way through her chest.
Take my gift away, Lord. Please take it away. I failed.
Aleys cries hard into the pillow until she can cry no more.
She rolls over, wipes the snot from her face with the remains of her sleeve. She’s tired of being a vessel. She feels brittle as a pot, as if her body were made of cheap clay, expendable. Maybe it is. Maybe she’s not meant to last. This strange grace that has inhabited her for a month has made her fragile. Aleys knows this: She can’t go out there again. The crowd will kill her.
She needs to be alone.
Beloved, what do you want from me? Where does this end?
Aleys presses her psalter to her forehead until she feels its clasp indent her skin. Though she’s not sure she trusts, though she feels anger scrape against hope, she opens the book to find the answer.
The psalter falls open to the illustration of the spreading oak. Every branch bears a bird: scarlet cardinals and black crows, brown wrens and yellow finches. Mama’s tree. From the bottom margin, an auburn fox peeks from a dark den. Aleys reads the text that Mama never could.The foxes have holes and the birds of the air nests: But the Son of Man hath not a place to lay his head. It’s Christ warning his apostles.It won’t be easy for you if you follow me, he warns them.
But what does that mean, now, for her? That she must go back out there, when what she needs is shelter?
35
Friar Lukas
Friar Lukas watches as she descends the stairs in a dress, some fine green thing. Her hair is short and bristling. She is a changeling. The dress restores her as female, abruptly, violently, before his eyes. He can hardly look at her. He wonders how his brother owns such a gown, but he knows better than to ask. He cannot object, not when her robe is in tatters. She is not herself. She does not seem Franciscan. She gives his brother the coldest look he’s ever seen anyone dare give a bishop.
When Jan suggests, in his oiliest tones, the anchorhold, Aleys looks up to the ceiling and laughs. She says, “You mean a fox den?” When she looks back at them, she is wiping tears from her eyes. “Or a bird’s nest?” Lukas wonders if the violence of last night’s mob has deranged her.
“Tell me,” she says, “about it.”
He needs to talk her out of this. He’ll find some other solution. His brother is pressing his case, adorning the argument. Jan tells her she will live thevita angelica, the life of God’s favored angel. Her prayers and meditation will rain blessings upon Brugge.
“Like last night,” she spits at Jan.
“You will be a recluse,” says Lukas. “For life.”
“Yes, I understand.” She nods, too eager. “I am willing.”
Lukas cannot believe she understands. “You’ll never leave the anchorhold. Not for illness, not even for madness.” She may already be mad. “You’ll be interred.”
“Symbolically interred,” corrects Jan.
Lukas presses. “You will be permanently enclosed in the cell. You’ll never come out. You’ll never touch another person. Your family, your friends ...”
“They can visit through the window,” says Jan.
Aleys regards the bishop with a look of disdain. “I gave up that life already.”
“If you set foot outside the anchorhold,” Lukas warns, “you’ll be excommunicated.” He wants to command her to remain in the brotherhood, though he knows it’s not a viable alternative. Jan has backed him into this corner. Still, he wants to order her to stay. If he could change her into a falcon and tether her to his wrist, he would. His urge to demand her obedience is strong and irrational. He has no counteroffer, yet he presses.
“Excommunicated, Sister! You would be denied the sacraments if you left.”
“If I leave the hold, I will be banished from the Church,” she says calmly, “and society. I understand perfectly. I would be a pariah. But what need will I have to leave?” Lukas feels her tense, ready to fly.
“Friar Lukas will be your confessor,” says Jan, “and your hold has a squint onto the cathedral, so you can watch him celebrate Mass.” Lukas knows it’s a concession to let a Franciscan preach in his church. “You will receive communion from his hand.”
