Hervé watches him with furrowed brow. Hervé puts extra rations in his bowl, observes that they go untouched. Hervé interrupts an argument between two young friars. Take that outside, he says, glancing at Lukas, who merely stares into the fire.
“You’re not sleeping,” he says gently.
There are demons in the night, Lukas wants to explain, but can’t, because he leads these men. He can’t speak of the fiends that crouch in the corners of the friary; how they whisper to each other in susurrus and go quiet when he looks at them. In the darkness, they slide between the cots, always toward him, toward him. He wakes with a start and knows he’s not dreaming. The ash stirs in the grate and orange eyes wink from the cinder.
Hervé offers him wine and dishes of lamb. Lukas has no idea where he got such fare, what compromises he made to obtain it. Food has turned bitter on his tongue, and he knows its cause. He shakes his head at Hervé. There is no cure for his envy.
Lukas prays for days on end. Instead of joy, a beastly greed creeps into his penance. He fasts until his stomach screams. Nothing. He applies the strap to his back, opening wounds, so that something, anything, will hurt more than this. Nothing. He feels his obedience like a plug lodged in his chest, starving him of blood, of the pulse of matter, the flesh of passion. His tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth as if to a starched cathedral. He tastes the wafer, always the wafer. He thirsts for wine.
Lukas returns to the glade of his vows. He lifts his robe and sinks his bare knees into the dirt until the cold mud cups his bones. He flattens the tops of his feet against the ground. He will not move until he gets an answer.
My Father, who art in Heaven, you are the word, the rule, the beginning without end.
I am but your servant.
Help me understand.
Show me a sign.
He thinks, The girl’s very desire, her lush desire, draws God like a magnet. Lukas reaches inside for his own passion, but it crumbles like dry leaves. He tries to recall what it felt like to be young, to be fresh as a sapling, to turn toward the sun. He wants to say,You could have at least told me that my way was wrong. You could have told me there’s another way.
Let me feel, Lord. Make me feel alive, he prays.
He waits. There’s no answer, save a breeze that rattles the bare limbs. He regards his hands. His palms are dry, his wrists dry, his fingers dry. If he were to cut himself, would he even bleed? He imagines drawing a knife over his wrist, the long slow slice parting his skin, pressing deep to find nothing but desiccated meat to the bone.
Finally, he speaks. “You made me, Lord. You made me a creature of reason.” He is so frustrated. “Why do you require passion?”
He waits. A quiet rain begins. A drop here, a drop there, upon the ground, whispering as they strike the leaves. He doesn’t look up. He bows his head. He waits for a sign. The patter intensifies; the rain is all around him now. The droplets are sprinkling his shaved head, running down his neck. Perhaps the skies will part, the rain will cease, he will be given a sign. But the water just keeps coming, until it’s a steady hushed wash, until his hands glisten with it, until his robe is soaked. He doesn’t see that every drop holds answers.
Then he thinks of her, in the begijnhof courtyard, face tipped back to meet the rain.
It occurs to him then. She is the sign.
There is an antidote to the daytime poison he drinks. The source of sickness is the source of cure. Only Aleys can heal him.
44
Marte
Marte passes tied birch bundles through the window, then live coals in a bucket, so Aleys can rebuild her fire.
“You’re lucky, miss, with the bishop providing so well for you. He doesn’t stint on your keeping. You’re warmer than the beguines, that I can tell you.”
“You don’t keep the fires burning in the begijnhof?”
“Well, miss, money is tight.” What with the new regulations on the begijnhof wool, they barely make ends meet. “There’s firewood for the cooking. And we keep the reading room warm. Though—” Marte breaks off.
“Though what?”
“It’s just that it’s never the same since Mistress Sophia passed. And Mistress Katrijn has stopped, well, you know. We have no new stories. We reread the old ones, over and over again. They’re good, sure, but it’s not like new ones.”
“You want more.”
“That’s what I’m saying, miss.” Marte can see Kat on the ledge of the horn window, eyeing the parchment on the desk like it might escape. “Maybe you could read me that?” She points at the scripture.
“In Latin?”
Sometimes Miss Aleys’s head is too much in her prayers. “No, miss, I can go to church for that. I mean, maybe you could tell them to me in Dutch?”
