Be careful? About God? She doesn’t know how.
It comes over her suddenly. She’s not sure if it’s love or obedience, right or wrong, but her hands are certain when they move. Aleys slides back the curtain so Finn can see the truth in her eyes. So he can see that there’s no caution in simplicity.
And there he is, larger than she remembered, strange with shaved head and sandy fringe, but with true gold in his gray eyes. “What they’ve shown me, Finn—the good, the bad—all is love. All of it.”
He leans in. Their foreheads meet, framed in the window, their bodies braced against the wall. Their lips are so close they could touch. Through the stone church, from the top of the spire, she feels the brass steeple cock turn in the breeze. Anything might happen. They might kiss, they might pray. They could fumble their hands together; he might run his tongue along her neck, she might grab his forearms. She shivers.
“All is love,” he breathes.
“Yes,” she replies.
There’s a knock at the door. Another visitor. Startled, they pull apart. The moment passes; Finn turns away, and Aleys draws the black cloth.
That night, Mary returns. Aleys is at her prie-dieu when her prayers twist the air.
“Mother,” she says.
Mary is before her, flat bellied and full breasted, larger than a man.Come, daughter.
Mary reaches to Aleys, gathers her into her arms. Aleys feels herself entirely enfolded. They will keep her safe. There’s nothing to fear. She rests her head in the crook of Mary’s elbow, her weight cradled in Mary’s broad hand. The Holy Mother strokes her brow and Aleys sinks into a weightless joy.
She feels something warm splash onto her lips. She reaches for Mary’s breast in the presumptuous glory of infants and opens herself to receive the communion of honeyed milk.
Mary slaps her hand away and spills her to the ground. Aleys falls hard, still reaching, mouth stretched open like a fledgling shoved from the nest.
Mary stands. Her dark eyes burn. She is enormous, filling the cell. Her hands are slick with ointment, which she spreads over her breasts and smears roughly across Aleys’s lips. It is bitter aloe, sharp as lye on the tongue. Aleys’s eyes water; she cannot swallow.
You have been suckled long enough, says the Mother.It’s time to walk the unmarked path.
When Mary vanishes, she takes it all with her. Father, Son, Mother, gone.
Aleys knows it immediately, as if a presence has left the house. The way you sense, from signs and sounds, that someone is in the next room—you have only to rise and call out their name. The thrum of their presence and the sudden silence of their absence, the quick dropping away, the knowledge that you are completely alone.
The dust motes settle to the ground. Aleys reaches over to stir them up, to make them dance. They sift to the floor as the light in the amber panes dims, too fast.
Is this because of Finn? She doesn’t think so. Why would they abandon her now, when she needs them, when the Church is coming to try her?
I always need them, she thinks.
She waits, hoping, hardly breathing. He must be here. His presence is subtle and pervasive as air. The hand cannot grasp it, as one cannot clasp the wind. She has merely to feel it, to empty herself like an open field beneath an opaque sky. He will show himself in the smallest blue gap.
Except he doesn’t. The gloom descends like a blanket upon her, around her, and there is no shape in the gray.
He will return, she thinks. But she doesn’t believe it. This time, she can feel, is different. This time, she knows, they test her faith.
48
Marte
Friars. Monks. A bishop. What next? Marte shifts the basket on her hip as she crosses the begijnhof bridge. Even the pope is sending a delegation to poke their noses in Miss Aleys’s business. Why they don’t let her be, Marte can’t understand. Men. Always pissing outside their chamber pots.
This morning, Marte brought dried red currants that she’d been saving since she gathered them from the edge of a willow grove last summer. Miss Aleys has hardly eaten since the showings stopped. It’s as though, having feasted on visions, she’d rather starve than eat material food.
Aleys pushed away the fruit. “Gravel,” she said. “Everything tastes like gravel.”
“What is it, miss?” Marte was at her wit’s end. “What can I do?”
“Nothing. There’s nothing you can do.”
