For a moment, Aleys isn’t sure herself. She doesn’t want what Griete wants. But she does, in this moment, think of the sky. “Are there clouds today?” She knows she shouldn’t ask. It is temptation. “Rain clouds? I think I smell them.”
Griete tells her about the flat gray slabs edging in from the north. She falls quiet. For a moment, there’s only the two of them. “I miss you,” Griete says, finally.
“I miss you, too.”
Griete is wed two weeks later. The hired minstrels lead the parade to the cathedral, fife and drum, a motley fool throwing painted pins—Aleys parts the curtain and sees through the parlor, where Marte has pinned open the door to the patch of road. “See, miss, your sister marrying! That should give you cheer.”
“You don’t believe that.”
Marte shrugs, turns to the door. “At least there’s jesters.”
The day is festival bright, the wedding party large and shivering with the sound of bells. Aleys’s father and brothers ride by on their mounts, bearing shields with the family crest. She can see only their patterned stockings through the door. Claus leans down as he passes, doffs his cap and waves its red feather at her with a grin. Griete follows on foot and Aleys catches a glimpse of embroidered sleeves, the flash of fancy buttons.
Aleys smooths her hair, which has grown to her shoulders. Yesterday, she found a silver strand on her gray blanket and wondered for a moment whose it was. Her body has changed, too—it’s more angular, her knees larger, the meat of her thighs less. Aleys washed this morning in a cold basin. If she’d been at home, they’d have drawn her a full bath and dressed her hair and attired her in furs for this day. If she were at home, she’d be married with an infant in arms.
The bells and drums fall quiet as the procession stops before the cathedral doors. The jester will be tucking the pins beneath his arm. Passersby will pause to admire Griete’s sleeves and the colors of the party. The congregants are waiting in the street for the vows to be said before the Mass in the cathedral. She pictures the bishop waiting outside the doors to greet the wedding party, gathering in a half circle around him, Griete and Pieter stepping forward.
The bishop will perform the formalities, ask their consent, whether the banns have been properly cried through town three times. Aleys wishes it were someone else marrying them, someone less cynical. Griete will be looking up at Pieter as he says the vows. Whether she has a blush on her cheek or is bold, Aleys doesn’t know. Pieter will place the ring on Griete’s finger. And then she’ll be married. Her little sister, a wife. Aleys sighs. She moves to the squint and observes the empty church. Christ looks away from her. “Beloved,” she whispers. “Return to me.”This day would be joyful if only you were beside me.
Then the cathedral doors open, the light on the altar shifts, and the bishop strides into view. People find their spots for Mass. It is loud; though she can see no more than a slice of the altar, she can hear the cathedral filling and the happy hum of people expecting a feast to follow. Mertens hired boys and put them in his household livery to raise a canopy of red velvet over the altar; the boys look toward the doors and Aleys knows that Griete and Pieter, husband and wife, are proceeding up the aisle. Which she, Aleys, last traversed for her own wedding. Funeral, she corrects herself. I am dead to them. Though not to Griete.
If she sits back and lets her vision blur, the squint becomes a mosaic of bright and shifting fragments. Griete comes into view, on her husband’s arm, erect and pale. She glances toward the squint, her eyes troubled. Aleys wishes she could reach out and take her hand for a moment. She would hold Griete, comfort her, whisper to her that all will be well. Her life will be full. There will be feasting, and children, and dancing. Everything Griete ever wanted. For a moment, Aleys envies her desire for attainable things.
She imagines the bridal banquet, noisy with laughter. Claus will rise from the bench, his words slurred, raising a teary toast to their sister. She will miss it. As she’ll miss Griete’s first infant, wrapped in softest wool and smelling of lavender and milk. She will never hold that child, feel its fierce grip. From the anchorhold she misses the simple things, the everyday things. Farrago would meet her at the gate. She could sit in the garden and watch the birds in the hawthorn. Not just shadows of birds on her windowsill. The wondrous color of birds.
Aleys moves to the door that is no door. Only this panel separates her from that world. What keeps her here? What really keeps her here if God has left? Aleys curls her hands into fists, concentrates all her will not to throw herself forward. Not to hammer against the door. Slowly, she rubs her clenched fists against the wood, making circles, leaning into it.
She imagines the door swinging wide. The crowd gaping at her, curiosity and horror on their faces. They would back away from her, the fallen saint. She’d be excommunicated. She’d be a pariah. She’d destroy her family. Again. The bishop was clear. The conditions were plain. If she leaves the cell, she abandons God. There will be no blessings, no communion, no consolation. No heaven. And no showings.
But, she asks herself, does she have any of that now? Confession is hollow when he doesn’t listen, communion turns to paste on her tongue. She might as well be excommunicated.
Aleys spreads her hands flat and presses her forehead into the door’s surface until she feels the grain mark her brow. She feels a profound fatigue, a heaviness. She wants to scream.
And yet. She breathes into the door. And yet. She still wants him. In the depth of her bowels, the ember burns. Even if he is turned away, she wants him. Even if she is now widow, she yearns for him. She wants to know the world entire, heaven and earth, from inside her cell. It’s an unfinished story. The only story she cares about.
The bishop’s voice comes through the squint. “For our Lord God Almighty reigns.”
She won’t break her covenant with God. She removes her hands from the door.
“Alleluia.”
53
Friar Lukas
Lukas weaves on his feet. The day is hot, the bodies are close, they hold him up. Hervé is at his side. Jan is at the altar. The curtain above the couple is magenta, the petals at their feet are rose. The virgin wears blue, her golden hair swaying against her velvet shoulders.
The heat in the cathedral is making his head swim. He glances at the squint. Does Aleys pray within, as he instructed her?
Yesterday he visited the grove. He needed, once more, to return to the origin, to his covenant with God, to find it there in the damp soil. He cinched the sacred bloody strips against his arms until his hands tingled.Come to me, Lord.
Hervé grasps his elbow. The bride before them sinks to her knees to be blessed. The bishop places his palm on her head and she becomes Aleys. No. He is confused. Aleys was not wed here. She was buried here. He remembers the dirt upon her oiled lips.
His head swims back to the grove. Shafts of light cut through leaves and patches of moss glowed emerald in pools of sunlight. There was no sound, save the tap of droplets on the forest floor. Lukas bent to remove his sandals. He took off his belt, then lifted the robe over his head and cast it aside.Even this, he thought,even this you may have. A breeze sifted the glade and he shivered, his skin turning gooseflesh. Lukas was naked before God, but for the stained cloth biting his arms. He felt himself rooted in place, as if something pulled him into the ground, his knees, thighs, cock, chest, sinking into the loam.Make us one, he prayed. He unwound the strips from his arms and knotted them together and passed the length back over his shoulder and up between his legs, spreading the fabric over his crotch and winding it slowly, a holy dance, twisting it over his heart and around his chest until he was bound, like a Templar, with a maroon cross dark against his white skin. He spread his arms and looked up. Passion sang through him like lightning. This, this, was what was demanded of him. “Lord,” he cried, “take me now.” The trees shook water onto his shoulders, his back, his arms. He felt their cool kisses and knew himself blessed. Prepared. He donned his robe and touched his lips to his belt.
As he walked back to the cathedral, the light picked out objects and presented them for his attention, clear and beautiful and singular.
The bishop raises the wafer. The cathedral air shivers with symbols. The scarlet and blue, red teardrops on linen, the wine and wafer merging—union, God, Christ, Mother, Son. It is all one, she says.
