There is a stirring at the back of the church, a wave of rustling as the people turn. Framed by an arch, Aleys appears. At her elbow is her sister, as if Aleys must be borne up the aisle. It is tradition, scripted. Not that Aleys needs support; Lukas knows her resolve. He is awed by her resolve. In confession, at dawn in the bishop’s garden, surrounded by daisies with browning petals, Aleys’s voice was full of gratitude, not fear. He’d asked, again, for the hundredth time, “You’re sure?” She’d turned to him with bright, impatient eyes. “Father, do you keep me from God?”
The sisters start up the aisle. The crowd bows heads as they pass. They move in unison; you cannot mistake the resemblance in their forms, the upright bearing, the long necks. Griete’s fine sleeves sweep the cathedral floor as if she were a countess. Beside her, Aleys is a child bride in a black dress, carrying a burning candle in each hand. Her face glows bright above the flames. Her eyes, this time, are fixed on Christ over the altar. This time, she doesn’t run up the aisle. This Aleys is not a breathless bride. She is the wife now, and Lukas cannot help but feel that she carries Christ within her, that the miracles have filled her with knowledge of him. The air between Aleys and Christ seems richly alive, as if invisible rays pull her toward him. Lukas must stop himself from running into the channel that crackles between them to—to what?—to keep them from fusing?
He has the key to her cell; she is the key to his God. He will lose them both today.
At the altar, Aleys hands the candles to Griete. He wonders at the dry-eyed sister. He wants to shake her. Don’t you know how precious Aleys is, that you will never see her again? That this is her funeral? This is the end.
Aleys lifts the hem of her dress to lower herself, and her eyes brush past his, unreadable. Then she is prostrate on the ground, forehead to stone, arms spread wide so that she is become a black crucifix upon gray flagstone.
“Lord our God,” Jan thunders in his best stage voice, “you summon this woman to the mountaintop of contemplation. You have raised her from the toils of Martha to the sweet tears of penitent Mary, and she shall at last come to rest in that best part, which will not be taken from her.”
Lukas barely hears the Mass. His eyes are on Aleys, who doesn’t move. She will be taken from him. Stop it, he chides himself. You are meant to rejoice.
His brother reaches for the holy water, which he will sprinkle over her. Aleys rises to her knees and looks at Jan. “No,” she says quietly. “Not you.”
Jan freezes.
She whispers so that only the three of them hear. “I don’t seek your blessing.” She turns to Lukas. “It must be you.”
Jan frowns. But he is agile and alert to appearances. He swivels quickly and presses the holy instrument into Lukas’s hand. Lukas looks at the filigreed handle with the pierced orb. She’s asking him to perform her last rites. He doesn’t want to, but he can’t deny her the sacraments.
He steps forward. He sprinkles holy water on Aleys, and she spreads her palms open. The bishop hands him an alabaster bowl brimming with sacred oil. Aleys lifts her face. Lukas feels disturbed. To utter the benediction of death over this glowing girl is hideously wrong. And yet gloriously right. Lukas forms the shapes of the words with his lips, ofmisericordiam, ofDominus.“May the Lord pardon the sins you have committed by sight.”He touches the oil to her eyelids with his thumb. The words feel both familiar and strange; Lukas has uttered them most weeks and just days ago over Sophia. But never has he applied them like salve to a creature so radiant with life. He smears the oil on Aleys’s ears, her nostrils, her lips, pardoning crimes of the senses. He strokes the oil into her palms and forgives her the sins of touch, and thinks he is unworthy to touch her. Then he circles Aleys, bends to stroke oil down the soles of her feet: “May the Lord forgive you your faults in every step.” It is a gesture so intimate that it sends a shock up his spine. Then it is done. Sister Aleys is faultless and prepared for death.
Somehow, he feels he’s contaminated an angel. He resists the urge to raise her to her feet. He feels she would continue to rise and would hover over them, half in life and half in death. But Jan is already moving on, making the sign of the cross over Aleys. He sings out, “Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison. Kyrie eleison. Pater noster.”
Her cheeks glow with sunbursts of orange. Lukas smells flowers. In the midst of the frankincense, an aura of marigold surrounds the shriven Aleys. She looks up to the cross and he would swear Christ meets her eyes.
Look my way, he thinks.Look at me.
The bishop leads her, head bowed, to the door in the wall. Lukas bears the key. They form a small procession. The crowd follows them with their eyes. That’s when he hears a cry. He looks back to see Griete sobbing into her hands. At the door, Aleys seems to stumble, to hesitate, but Lukas knows this too is part of the ritual. She would run to the cell if she could.
The bishop intones in full theater, relishing the drama, “If she wants to enter, then let her enter.”
There’s a pause. There is no sound but for Griete’s sobs.Turn back.Stay with us.The crowd leans forward, and he feels their fascination at her sacrifice. Their breath is fetid with desire; they are eager to see a virgin entombed. Lukas wonders if it was thus, when Christ bore his cross through Jerusalem and the people lined the streets. The lust for death and spectacle, as if dogs have been set on the chained bear and blood is to be expected. It makes him angry. No one knows his private anguish.It’s not too late. She can still change her mind.
But then Aleys nods her assent. It is her will. Lukas inserts the key in the lock, slides the bolt. He opens the door to her tomb. He stands back.
There is one last gesture. The bishop reaches into a velvet pouch hanging from his belt and exhumes a handful of dry soil. He throws it over Aleys. She raises her face to meet it. Dust to dust. She is dead to them now.
As Jan turns back to the congregants, triumphant, Lukas cannot take his eyes from Aleys. His last look. He tastes the dirt in his mouth. She steps into the cell, and he wants to grab her wrist, to stop her. Inside, she turns to face him. Framed by the door that will never again open, her eyes are calm.Close the door, they say,leave me with my lover. The dust has mingled with the oil on her lips, and somehow the sight is both ghastly and holy.Bury me, Father.And so Lukas closes the door, slides the bolt, and fastens the lock.
39
Aleys
Gone crowds. Gone words. Gone men. Gone children. Gone stars and moon and sky. Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone far beyond, gone to the distant shore. Aleys is free at last on the open sea.
Liber Tertius
40
Aleys
Aleys wakes to the sound of someone rapping sharply on the window between her room and the parlor. She pulls back the curtain and unbolts the shutter. The other curtain is drawn open, but the parlor appears empty. It reminds her of peering into the decorated egg of Mary in the manger, the parlor plain but for an embroidered cloth on the side table and straw on the floor. It occurs to her that she’s the one in the egg. If you looked through this window into her cell, you’d see fireplace, prie-dieu, cot. Anchoress.
The parlor door is half open and she can make out a wedge of cobbled street and, opposite, a wall. They appear oddly flat, like pieces in a puzzle. She dips her knees, craning to glimpse a slice of sky.
Marte appears suddenly in the window, startling and three dimensional. Aleys jumps.
