Lukas could get himself into real trouble with the papal visitors. Jan knows the reputation of these inquisitorial boards; they have a tendency to hang the messengers. Or burn them. He can just see Lukas, red-eyed, hand on his heart, repeating heresies he’s heard from the odd girl in the cell.
“Look, Lukas, maybe someone else should minister to her.”
“No.” He raises his head, alarmed. “I’m her confessor.”
“I think it could be for the best.”
“Jan, I must hear the showings. I must. I beg you.” Good God, he might throw himself to his knees in the middle of the Markt. “Please. You’re my brother.”
“All right, all right.” He feels like warning Lukas, but about what exactly, he doesn’t know. “For now. Just be careful.”
Lukas smiles through tears. “Jan, she says it’s unspeakably magnificent, that heaven is on earth, before us, if only we can see it.” His voice cracks. He sounds like he might sob in earnest. “Jan, it’s hard to bear sometimes, I try ...” His hands tremble as he grips Jan’s sleeve.
The bishop puts an arm around his brother. “Steady, Lukas. You need to pull yourself together. The inquisitors are coming. We have work to do.”
Far to the south, through the pines of Rome, the pope’s legate leads the delegation through the city gates. The men are seated on fine horses with white papal reins. They feel the sun shines for them.
47
Aleys
Aleys wakes with cramps and nausea. Marte brings her tea of fennel, removes her bloodied cloths. Marte never comments, just returns the fabric clean and folded. Aleys revives the fire and hangs a pot so she can wash. While it warms, she curves her body around Kat, whose fur glints cinnamon in the firelight. She scratches behind his ear, and he pushes into her hand. There’s such pleasure in making another creature happy. Kat flips to expose the white diamond on his belly. Aleys strokes his silky fur and Kat traps her hand, scrubbing it with his gritty tongue as if cleaning her palm is of utmost urgency. His paw pads are pink like the insides of shells.
After Terce, Aleys rises from the prie-dieu and smooths her black dress, careful not to dislodge the linen strips she’s drawn tight to catch her flow. Her eye snags on the cross on the wall. She sighs. She should pray for Lukas, too. For relief from whatever it is that’s torturing him. There’s something on the fringe of her awareness, a flick of a black tail in the dark, a shiver. She dismisses it. Friar Lukas is her advisor. She returns to her knees and asks God to give the man peace.Just, she adds,keep his hands out of my cell.
Marte raps lightly on the shutter to let Aleys know the first townsfolk have arrived. There might be a girl seeking advice about joining a nunnery or a laborer praying for his wife to be delivered safe from childbed. Her favorite return visitor is an old man who simply sits with Aleys in silence, his wheeze measuring out each moment. She’s come to enjoy these visits. The showings have left her heart so full that it’s a relief to pray with others. Like a new mother swollen with milk, she needs to share the blessings.
Friar Lukas’s midnight visit, though, has left her uneasy. It’s too much for him, she thinks. I should have held back. But what choice do I have?
“There’s a monk outside,” announces Marte. “A young one.” Aleys can tell Marte doesn’t approve. It’s one thing for the wandering friars to give sermons on street corners, she says, but monks should stay where they’re put, same as nuns in their convents.
“Let him in.” Aleys laughs. “He probably wants me to bless the abbey pigs.”
Marte huffs, snapping shut the curtain. “I’ll be headed to the Markt. Don’t let him linger overlong, miss. You promised to read me the flood and ark today.”
“Then you shall have Noah and every creature, two by two, when you return.”
“Least he saved the females that time,” Marte mumbles. For a believer, thinks Aleys, Marte is shockingly irreverent.
Aleys takes her seat and listens to Marte’s retreating footsteps. A scrape of the parlor door, exchanged words—Aleys sits up. She knows that voice. Her heartbeat quickens as new footsteps come closer.
“Finn?”
“Aleys.” His voice is deeper, but still familiar. She pictures his lean frame, the flop of sandy hair. Of course that’s gone; he’s tonsured now. She restrains the impulse to rip the curtain from its rod to see.
She runs her hands into her own hair, dark and thick and uncovered. “What are you doing here?”
“I had to see you.” He corrects himself. “To speak with you.”
It comes flooding back to her, the hornbook, the meadow, the grasses with their miniscule globe raindrops. She’s vowed never to let herself think of him—and she hasn’t, not often, not here in the hold with her true beloved—but abruptly she’s back in the apple tree. Finn’s long fingers tracing the written lines as he reads. His gray eyes flecked with honey, looking up, astonished. Aleys leans into the window and inhales, despite herself, a faint scent of leather and earth. His breath stirs the curtain. She leans in farther and grips the sill like a fence on a cliff edge. “Speak to me about what?”
“I was at the bishop’s demonstration.”
The platform, the blinding torches, the stink of tar. Itwashis voice.
“I saw a performance,” he says, “of players.”
She stiffens. “You accuse me of acting?”
