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Chapter 1

Katharina Martens

Lendelmolen, Flanders

It had been two months now. Two months since my eyes had betrayed me. The darkness had come upon me so gradually that there had been no fear, no panic. Even now I could still discern shapes and colors. Though the details and textures of my lace were lost to me, my fingers told me what my eyes refused to convey.

I had spun an endless pattern of roses and leaves intertwined, bordered by a path of scrollwork. Every day I had lingered between those blossoms and lost myself in the maze of those scrolls. Every day for over three years. It took time to fashion a lace as long and as fine as this one.

I wriggled my toes within my clogs. At least I thought I did. I could no longer feel them. They had gone numb from autumn's chill. I shifted on the bench, hoping it would bring some life back into them. If not, they would waken with a tingling in the time it took to walk from the workshop to the chapel. By the time I finished with prayers, they would be well again. In winter it was worse. They woke from their sleep with a hot, dull ache.

Autumn.

Winter.

Spring.

Summer.

I had cycled through the years in much the same way I cycled through my bobbins and my pattern. One season, one set of bobbins, one rose after the other, and in the end, I found myself back at the beginning. As a child, cast upon the good graces of the abbey, I had been a fumbling novice at my craft. But now I was a skilled lace maker.

Lace is created from thread. Threads. Many of them. Twisted and crossed, looped and whorled, knotted and woven. But lace is formed from the absence of substance; it is imagined in the spaces between the threads. Lace is a thing like hope. It lived, it survived, and it was desired for what it was not. If faith, as the nuns said, was the substance of things hoped for, then lace was the outline-the suggestion-of things not seen.

Lace was my life. My solace. It was lace that gave my life meaning. And in the working out of my intricate patterns, I had also worked out my salvation. Twenty-five years I had been making lace. Twenty-five blessed years.

•••

As I sat there with my pillow in my lap, the threads performed their intricate dance, leaping and jumping in a counterpoint about their pins. Each group of bobbins clattered to their own rhythm before I dropped them to the pillow to pick up the next. With a twist or a cross, more than two hundred threads danced around the circle before I dropped the last group and started once more with the first.

It amazed me, as it always had, that I should sit with my bobbins, day after day. And that they should perform their dance with so little help from me. Like the fairies my sister used to speak of, they completed their magic seemingly undirected and undeterred by human hands. Except, I did direct them. I did move them. In fact, they moved only at my command. But once I set them into motion, they seemed to dance alone. I used to watch, breathless, every day, waiting to see what they would create.

I knew, of course.

They would create the kind of lace they created every day, the lace that was named for the abbey: Lendelmolen. That was the only kind of lace we had been taught to make. We'd seen the other kinds. Sister had showed them to us so we could understand how superior our patterns were. But this lace, this length, was different. It was to be fabulously long. Six yards. The exquisite scrolls and roses and leaves had been inscribed by a pattern maker upon a parchment. Pins now marked that design, securing the pattern to my pillow.

But there was a difference between knowing what the bobbins would create and watching them go about their work. It was in the watching that the magic happened.

Of course, I never spoke of the magic. Not to the nuns.

Not to anyone.

Nowhere, at any time within the walls of the abbey, could I speak. Unless it was to God. And even then, we were to speak in whispers. God was a jealous god. He needed our hands. He needed our thoughts...and our voices. They were reserved, all of them, every part of us, for him.

And why should it have been any other way?

Except...I had never heard the voice of Mathild. And I had sat beside her as we worked, for twenty-five years.

Those first years, the years of learning, had been the most difficult. Learning what was expected of us and learning what was not. Learning how to please the Sister in charge of the workshop. Learning how to avoid a beating or a whipping.

And those first whippings...they came so unexpectedly, so brutally, for a sin no greater than a dropped pillow or a missed stitch. So viciously and so cruelly, a girl would be stripped to her waist and punished right in front of us. In front of all of us.

It served its purpose, I suppose.

It goaded us into concentration. But unavoidably, I too dropped my pillow. I too missed a stitch. And strayed from the pattern. I did not think often of those times. So much sadness, so much misery. I had sought the skirts of the Holy Mother herself on one occasion, hiding behind her statue in the chapel. Once I had been coaxed away from her, I was lucky to have survived the beating I was given. But it was then, in the midst of those dim-lit days and lonely nights, that I was taught how to make myself useful. It was then I learned the secrets of lace. And how could I truly despair when I knew, every day upon waking, that in the workshop my lace awaited?

I could survive a scolding, could suffer through a beating, always knowing I had my lace. I couldn't mind stinging buttocks or a bloodied back when my fingers were left untouched for work and my eyes could still see. It was the times when they rapped our knuckles that were the worst. For then we were left bleeding and bruised, forbidden to leave the workshop, but forbidden also to work. If punishment was doled out for failure-failure to concentrate, to keep the lace clean, to master the skills-the lace itself offered its own sort of reward.

To see it created.

To watch it unfurl.

To glimpse a pattern perfectly followed, perfectly accomplished.

I would rather have been whipped to the grave than been kept from my work.

But that had been back when I could see. Now that solitary pleasure had been denied me.

•••

Perhaps in those early days, now that I think on it, I had heard Mathild speak once or twice. But I did not remember her words. To speak brought certain punishment. And so, we had avoided each other's gaze to avoid the temptation to talk. And soon we began, all of us, to sleep with an arm across the face...to ensure that, even in sleep, we would remain guiltless.

But I had seen Mathild smile.

And once, I had even seen her wink.

But speak? I could hardly remember those few words.

When would I have heard them? At prayers, we whispered our petitions to the Most Holy God. At meals, we ate. During washing, we washed. And when making lace? Making lace required everything we had. And by the time we collapsed onto our beds, there was nothing left within us. We were quickly consumed by sleep.

Of course, I had heard others talk.

The nuns spoke all the time.

I knew the voice of my teacher: Sister Maria-Clementia. She spoke very little, but when she bent over my pillow to inspect my lace, her "Well done" was like a song of a thousand words. And her "Rework this" could echo through my mind for days. There was no great need for words here. Not when so very few would do. And even when I talked to God, there was little to say. I said, "Thank you," for it was he who had placed me here. I said, "Help me, please," for who did not need help with such difficult work? But mostly, I said...nothing. For what could a poor girl say to such a great and holy God that did not begin and end with gratitude?

But...I had a secret.

I stored up words. I hoarded them, treasured them.

Words were my vice, my greatest weakness. Since I had discovered their great rarity, I remembered every one I heard.

They formed a pattern in my head, and in the spaces between them, I imagined the lives of their speakers. My one regret is how few of my mother's I remembered. But I could not have known, not while she was living, how precious few she would be able to give me.

She had talked often...so many lovely words. They came back to me sometimes in my sleep, like a length of punto in aria lace. Vast spaces of nothing, and then, suddenly, the outline of an intricate pattern. It was all the more beautiful for its spare design. Her words had the lightness of a butterfly. They were always dancing. Always followed by laughter. At least...that is how it seems to me now.

But perhaps I have distorted the pattern in transferring it to my memories. For what followed after her death was so...bleak. When she had been alive, there were words, nothing but words, in our house, and then after...silence reigned over all.

I remember only two words from my father. Perhaps he gave me more than those two...certainly he probably did while my mother was living.... but the only two I remember are the last ones he spoke to me.

Fare well.

Only those two words remain, and they are underscored by sorrow. They hang heavily in my heart. He died five years after I was committed to the abbey. Those two words are all I have left of him, but two words are not enough to make a pattern.

Fare well.

Was it a blessing? A wish? A hope?

Perhaps it was a sort of benediction. I do not know.

My sister, Heilwich...well, she has words enough for the both of us. And the words she gives me are more than enough to last the week between her visits. She speaks of her life, of the priest whose home she keeps, of her good works. Her pattern is torchon. Regular, repeating. Competent. Her design makes a sturdy lace. Not fancy, not frivolous. Respectable. Dependable.

And I imagine her life to be just that way.

But I have more than just family from whom to collect words.

I have the people walking by the workshop, past the abbey wall, on the street outside.

There is one man who walks the streets, shouting every day. He sells fish. And he does it especially loudly on Fridays. He shouts everything about them. How large they are, how fresh they are. He sells sole and plaice. Eels and herrings. Sometimes they cost more, and sometimes they cost less. And sometimes he sells something called a mussel. But only in the winter. I've always wondered what it looked like, a mussel.

But then, I had always wondered what he looked like as well.

His words were not fancy; they created an ordinary malines design. His pattern was the same, day after day, fish after fish. There were few holes, few gaps, from which to pattern a life apart from the street beyond the wall. I imagined he woke with fish and he worked with fish, and when he slept, he dreamt of fish.

It was what I did too...only with lace, of course. I understood a life like his. Except...How did he come by them? That great variety of fish? And how did he carry them? For certain by cart, for I could hear the wheels tumble across the cobbles. But...how? Tossed together in a great pile? Separated into baskets?

And where did he live?

What did he wear?

The holes in his pattern were tiny, but they were there, nonetheless. His was a life set upon a platform of a fine network of threads.

There was also a woman who shouted in the streets beyond the wall. But she didn't shout about something. She shouted at something. Was it a child? She shouted at someone called Pieter, who always seemed to be making a mess of things.

But what kind of mess was it?

Was he a child who rubbed his hands in the ashes of a fire...and then spread the soot about the house? That would make a mess. The worst kind of mess I could imagine.

She also shouted at someone else called Mies. And Mies always made her late.

But late to what? Where was she going, this woman who seemed to have nothing to do but walk the length of the streets, shouting all day? What was Mies doing to make her late, and how could Mies do whatever it was all day long, every day? And if it was always the same thing Mies did, then why did the woman not stop it from being done?

There was a pattern to this woman that made no sense, huge holes in the design of her life. Hers was a lace made of cutwork. Not dainty, not fragile. Without subtlety, it was bold in the extreme. A pattern without any elegance at all, and one which kept repeating. That lace was one of my least favorite kinds.

There were others out there on the street besides. I could hear them walking and running. And hear the sounds of their voices talking. But those people did not shout, and so I knew nothing of the actual words they said.

There were babies who cried.

And once, there had been a shriek. A howl.

The wordless sound of grief: black lace. The worst kind to make. The kind I made as a child, new to the abbey. After being dyed its dark color, it would not show soiling. We could make it imperfectly, for the color hid our sins. We made it fast, though never for commission. It was for immediate consumption. For who could know when a soul might die?

No one thought of black lace-no one wanted to think of it-but somehow, we never seemed to be able to make enough of it. But to make a lace no one ever wanted? Those days, those laces...they were sad. And so was that howl.

So at times, I suppose, one word...one wordless sound...could create a pattern. It could tell a story...but some laces are not worth imagining.

Far better, far better, to keep my thoughts to what I knew. And what I knew best, the only thing I knew at all, was lace. The abbey had been kind enough to take me as a child from my motherless family, even though I knew how to do nothing at all. They had fed me; they had taught me. They had allowed me a chance to redeem myself. To prove myself worthy of the life I had been given. And so I worked, I labored, as one who would not be ashamed. Nee: one who could not be ashamed. When God looked down on what it was I had done, I knew the only thing he could say was this: well done.

My eyes strained through the darkness, trying-and failing-to discern one thread from another. In a short time we would be allowed a candle, but for now, my fairy dance continued, unaided, unfettered, by my lack of sight. As we worked, we waited. Waited in anticipation, just as we waited in the chapel to receive the Host.

Soon, Sister placed a single candle on a table before us. And then she began positioning the condensers. Clear glass balls filled with water, they focused the candle's light and then sent it forth. Around the table she went, adjusting each one so it cast a narrow beam of light upon each pillow.

With much gratitude, we repositioned our work into that light.

When I could still see well, it had been more difficult to work after the shadows of night fell. The pillow had to be constantly adjusted to follow the flickering of the candle's light. Now, it didn't matter. I could work in darkness as if it were the brightest of noondays. I had memorized my pattern. But still, I had to concentrate.

Think too much, and I would muddle up the bobbins. Think too little, and I would lose my place in the pattern. In my head, I sung a little tune the sisters had chanted when I was a child. And quick as that, the dance regained its rhythm and its grace.

I sung it to myself over and over, again and again. Who knows how many times I sung it, until at last, Sister said the word: Done.

My prayers that night were wordless.

My supper, tasteless.

My sleep, dreamless.