Marte doesn’t know what it means for a panel to judge a holy woman. She supposes Miss Aleys doesn’t either.
In the courtyard, Marte pauses to test the sheets that she hung at dawn. They were damp; now they’re damp and cold. Friar Lukas should be protecting Aleys from the Church’s meddling. He’ll be in the reading room, hearing Lent confessions, else she’d have draped the sheets in there, where they still keep a fire. The beguines like Lukas. But there’s something about the man that Marte doesn’t quite trust, the way nothing is ever enough for him. She once said that to Ida.
“But Marte,” Ida said, laughing, “do you trust anyone?”
“Hmphph.” Marte isn’t used to people thinking about her. It’s best when they don’t.
Ida emerges from the reading room into the courtyard, her cheeks bright. Marte wonders if Ida’s ever confessed that she distributed Dutch scripture around town. Though that’s stopped, now that Katrijn’s no longer translating. There are no new stories to spread since they last took confession, what, four months ago? Ida can’t have much else to tell the friar. She’s not like Miss Cecilia, who must have entertained him for hours before she up and married.
Marte went to confession once. She was unimpressed. The village priest gave her the same penance he gave Dagmar, and Lord knows, her husband was a committed sinner. People say confession can heal body and soul, but it didn’t cure her black eye. And it didn’t save her daughter.
That afternoon, Marte asks permission.
“To read?” Katrijn doesn’t hide her surprise.
“Miss Aleys taught me.” Katrijn’s brow furrows. Marte adds hastily, “It never kept me from my work.”
“Very well,” says the magistra, “you may choose from the translations what you like.”
So Marte takes the chair by the lamp. The reading room is an oasis from the heavy spring rain. The beguines scooch their stools closer to the fire. Even old Agnes has been carried from the infirmary for the warmth. She sits, nearly folded over in the chair, her chin resting on her breast.
Marte begins. She reads in a slow farmer’s voice that recalls the smells of hay and clover, of manure, of the remembered scent of simple things. She reads of Abraham, whose wife was barren, aged beyond hope of a child. God beckoned Abraham from the tent and told him to look up to the heavens.
The women tilt their heads and imagine star-strewn skies.
“‘Count them, if you can,’” reads Marte. “‘So plentiful shall your offspring be.’”
Marte’s heavy voice tethers the lofty words, so that the women think of their own constellations of children, of nieces and nephews, of grandsons and daughters, of the young ones laughing in the courtyard.
Katrijn is scowling at the page in Marte’s hand. “Marte? Where did you—”
“Magistra, please,” interrupts Ida, “let her finish.” The women are nodding. They’re eager for story. Katrijn purses her lips.
Marte reads on through Genesis, to Sodom and Gomorrah.
The women freeze when Lot offers his daughters to the men banging on his door. They look at each other, frowning. It makes no sense. Each one of them understands the fate that awaits those children. The hands of the crowd, pinning the girls to the walls of Lot’s home, to the dirt in the plaza. No father, no good father, would serve his children to a mob.
“The priests read this?” one asks.
“Wait.” Marte continues: “Lot’s family follows the angels into the dawn hills as the Lord rains down a sunset of fire behind them.” Then Marte pauses and looks up. “I will read the truth now.”
And Marte begins a new tale.
Marte reads: “Lot’s wife had a name. Her name was Irit. As they ran from the town, Irit felt pity for her neighbors and turned to look back. When she saw the roofs on fire and the people screaming, she fell to her knees and wept. Her daughters turned and cried out—all four of them—for Irit had marched to their homes, had pushed past those raving men in the public square, had pounded on her daughters’ doors and shaken sense and warning into those girls until they followed. Irit is angry, so angry, at Lot. She’d have left him in town, tethered like an ass under flaming skies, if those wingless angels hadn’t muscled into her business.”
The beguines have set down their darning.
Marte continues, “As his wife and daughters wept for the bakers sliding morning bread from the ovens, for their neighbors at the well, for the children just waking to a sky raining fire, Lot looked to the angels for praise, for he was sure of his righteousness.” Marte raises her gaze from the page. All eyes are on her. “The Lord turned Lot into a pillar of salt.”
“What?” cries Katrijn, standing and spilling her work to the floor. “That’s wrong. It’s Lot’s wife who is turned to salt. For disobedience.”
From the corner, old Agnes lifts her head and rasps, “I like this version better.”
“But it’s not true!” exclaims Katrijn.
“Maybe,” says a beguine, “one is true but the other is truer?”
Katrijn, outraged, snatches the parchment. “Where did you get this? It’s not mine.”
