Jubilee Year (2021 Editor's Choice Fiction)

After a week of traveling through the woods, Mathilde and her mother have  finally gotten within view of the abbey. It is a monstrous thing, weather-worn stone,  dark and foreboding, protruding from a hillside somewhere between Cologne and  Ghent like an unwelcomed growth. Mathilde follows her mother up the hill toward  the building with a mixture of relief and trepidation. She knows this is the last time  she will see her. She watches her mother’s back as she walks up the hill, this sturdy,  solid woman, this woman who had borne seven children, four of them dying at birth,  the remaining two, aside from Mathilde, dead now of the disease that also killed their  father and that plagued their entire village over the last year. She wants to study her  mother’s shape, burn it into her memory. She has heard that in the next world there  are no fathers or mothers, husbands or wives. She has heard that people turn into  light-forms, shadows. She wants to be able to find her mother when she sees her  again, so she watches her back sway all the way up the hill, her brown-gray hair blowing in the breeze, her chapped hands gripping tightly to a basket of provisions that is  to last her the whole way home. 

There is no lengthy goodbye. The Abbess, a gaunt woman with a face like parchment, watches silently as Mathilde’s mother bends her gray face close and kisses Mathilde’s forehead. She asks Mathilde to pray for her. I will try, Mathilde wants to say,  but instead she says, “I will.” And then her mother turns the mule around and retreats  into the forest.  

*** 

After informing Mathilde of the daily schedule of prayer— Matins at two a.m.;  Lauds at dawn; Prime, Terce, and Sext between six a.m. and three p.m.; Vespers in  the evening; and Compline before sleep—the Abbess instructs four sisters to show  Mathilde to the dormitory so she can change into a tunic and veil. It will be some  time before Mathilde takes her vows, the Abbess says, but in the interim she would act  as if she is already part of their order. 

The sisters are, at first glance, identical: pinched faces under brownish-gray veils.  Upon closer inspection, though, Mathilde begins to see differences. There are two  sisters whose faces show them to be much older than Mathilde. The third sister is  small and chubby and quite young, her voice high as a child’s. The fourth sister, Else,  is about the same age as Mathilde, an age that in other circumstances would be considered marriageable. Else gives Mathilde a small, secret smile, and Mathilde smiles  back. It feels strange on her face, so long has it been since she has done it.  

In the dormitory, the sisters place upon Mathilde’s straw mattress a tunic and  veil matching their own and then, without speaking, leave the room. Mathilde pulls  the tunic on quickly and then tries to cover her hair with the veil. Her hair—nut brown, braided in one thick rope hanging down her back, bearing the memory of her  brother who tugged it and her mother who combed it—is too long to fit completely  under the veil, the bottom of it waving behind her like a tail when she finally follows  the sisters to the refectory for dinner. 

Mathilde sits beside Else on the long wooden bench. As the sisters pass bowls  around the table, Mathilde follows Else’s motions by spooning herself one ladle of  stew and tearing off a small hunk of bread. Spooning the broth into her mouth, she  is struck with the memory of her mother’s stew. It was thick, full of meat they would  pull out with flesh hooks and eat on the side, while the broth would thicken with  grains and vegetables. On cold days it would warm her whole body, and her mother  never put a limit on how much Mathilde could have, even if it meant that she herself  would go hungry that night.  

Dinner is passed in silence. About halfway through dinner Mathilde realizes that  the women are communicating through sign language. Across the table, the young  chubby sister makes a circle with her thumb and forefinger. The girl’s skin is pink, and  she has white, almost invisible eyebrows and eyelashes. Compared to the gaunt, gray  faces of the villagers Mathilde left behind, this girl resembles a well-fed pig. Mathilde  does not know what the girl is signing until Else reaches over, grabs the bread basket,  and passes it across the table.  

Mathilde finishes before the other sisters, so she puts down her spoon and sits  silently as they finish. Outside, it grows dark. The windows are open, letting in cool night air. Mathilde watches the moon slowly rise above the fields, and she thinks of  home, the same moon rising above her family’s hut. Her family, mostly gone now. Is this to be her new one? 

There is a clatter across the table. A bowl flies past Mathilde’s head, breaking on  the wall. The young piggish girl had thrown it. Now she begins shrieking, hissing,  climbing on the table. She points at Mathilde, calling her a witch. Mathilde recoils.  The Abbess and the rest of the sisters continue to eat while a large-boned, middle-aged  sister named Grede rises slowly from her seat and walks over to where the girl is  thrashing on the table. Grede looks at Mathilde sharply, clearly angry with her for  something, and then she pets the girl’s head. This calms the girl, who now climbs off  the table and snuggles into Grede’s arms, rubbing against her, purring. And then, with  a firm grip around the girl’s torso, Grede leads her out of the room. The sisters clean up  the mess calmly, saying nothing. Else picks up Mathilde’s spoon and replaces it on the  table face down. After they leave the room, she explains to Mathilde that the sisters  believe if a spoon is left face up, the devil can enter through it. That’s why the girl— Agnes—had an outburst. 

The bells ring for Vespers. As the sisters walk through the glass-walled cloister,  Mathilde watches two shapes moving in the night: Grede and Agnes. Grede opens  the gate to the pig pen and Agnes enters, crouches on all fours, and mills among the  animals. She will stay there until her spell is over. 

This, Mathilde soon learns, is just part of their routine.  

*** 

Witch. The word is all-too familiar. Mathilde was born with a veil over her eyes,  her face cocooned within a caul. This rare occurrence, her mother told her, would gift her with second sight. And she was right: Mathilde could see things, sense things  before they happened. Not always, and not with perfect accuracy, but she knew, for  instance, when the disease visited their village that it would kill many. She could  smell death in her dreams. A hilltop turned into a heap of bodies for a moment, and  then back into a hilltop. She tried to warn them, the villagers, but they turned on her, accusing her of witchcraft, proclaiming that only God knew their future, and God  would protect them if they were pious. 

He didn’t.  

Mathilde watched as her neighbors, friends, brother, sister, and father all perished, and there was nothing she could do. She prayed, but He did not do anything  either. Still, the accusations of witchcraft continued, even as Mathilde helped tend to  the sick, prepare the bodies for burial, dig the graves. This accusation is what prompted her and her mother to leave their home after they had buried the last of their  dead. Although there was another abbey closer to their village, her mother chose this particular abbey because, she said, she wanted Mathilde to be as far away from the  pestilence as possible. By the grim smirk on her face, Mathilde knew her mother was  referring not to the disease but to the people of their village. And she knew, too, that  this would be the last joke her mother would ever tell her.  

*** 

The days have a rhythm like the plainchants they sing during Mass. Every  movement is in a single key; there are moments of rest and silence, and moments of  vigorous chanting; there are hard syllables and soft syllables and round vowels that  open up space in their throats and echo off the high ceilings like the voice of God  calling back to them.  

With the first light of dawn, Mathilde and the sisters walk to the church for  Lauds. After Lauds, the priest arrives from a neighboring village to hold Mass, his voice  muffled behind the wooden screen. To receive communion, the sisters approach the  screen and the priest’s hand emerges through a small door to drop the wafer onto  their tongues.  

After Mass, the Abbess leads the sisters to the chapter house where she reads a  chapter of rule. It is Grede who often brings violations of rule to the Abbess’s attention. One morning, Grede complains that Mathilde is not keeping her hair covered.  The Abbess notes in response that Mathilde is still a novice; when she takes her vows,  her head will be shorn like the rest of them. It is the first time Mathilde understands  the physical reality of her transformation. The long brown hair she inherited from her  mother would be gone, just like her mother was gone.  

When the meeting ends, the work day begins. Mathilde follows Grede and Agnes out to the animal pens and they spend their days with the animals: shearing sheep,  milking cows, collecting hens’ eggs. As they work, Grede looks at Mathilde with suspicion and speaks to her only when instructing her to do something. Her disposition  with Agnes is softer. When Agnes spills a pail of milk, Grede does not chastise her but  helps her clean it up. When Agnes stands in the middle of the pen among the sheep,  staring off into the distance, Grede shakes her gently, like waking a child from sleep.  

In the afternoons, Mathilde sometimes walks the cloister alongside Else. Mostly,  Else tells Mathilde stories of her childhood. She had been born into a family with too  many daughters, and it was cheaper to become a bride of Christ than the bride of a  merchant. Besides, she tells Mathilde, the thought of marrying a man was terrifying.  Her hand lightly brushes Mathilde’s as they walk, swinging their arms.  

Sometimes after supper, when they retire to the dormitory, Else combs out  Mathilde’s hair, stroking it with such tenderness Mathilde feels like crying. Sometimes in the dark, she relaxes back into Else’s arms, and a feeling comes over her that is so new, but so natural, she doesn’t know what to do with it. Sometimes Else stays in  her bed and they sleep curled together like spoons.  

Else always sneaks out of Mathilde’s bed before all the sisters wake up at two  a.m. Then Grede, holding a candle, leads the line of them down the night stair to the  church where the Abbess meets them for Matins. After Matins, they head back to the  dormitory to rest a couple hours before dawn, but Mathilde can never fall back asleep;  she thinks of her father, dead now for months, and of her mother, who has most  likely fallen victim to the disease by now as well. Praying feels hollow, like shouting  into an empty cave. She listens for God’s voice but hears only the breathing of the  sisters. Once in a while, she hears someone dream-talking. It reminds Mathilde of  how her sister would sometimes laugh in her sleep when they were young. Even after the disease came and their brother died and she got sick as well, even then her sister sometimes laughed as she dreamt. 

*** 

One night when the bell rings for Matins, one of the sisters does not rise. It is  Katherine, an old woman who had a white thin-skinned face with piercing blue eyes  and whose gnarled hands were constantly clasped in prayer. The sisters retrieve the  Abbess who confirms what they already knew: Katherine is dead.  

The Abbess tells Mathilde she is to take her vows the next morning. In order to  be classified as an Abbey, she says, they need at least twelve ordained sisters aside  from the Abbess, and Katherine’s death makes them one short. If Mathilde does not  take her vows before Katherine’s funeral, the priest would use it as an opportunity to  reclassify their order and provide them with less assistance. Mathilde does not feel  ready, but she cannot say no.  

In the morning the church is dimly lit by three candles placed around the altar.  Else, standing beside Mathilde, squeezes her hand. They chant their opening prayers,  and then Mathilde kneels in front of the altar and removes her veil. She sees something shining in the Abbess’ hand: a pair of shears. When the first cut is made, severing the long braid, Mathilde feels unmoored. The braid lies besides her on the floor  like a dead snake.  

Mathilde repeats the muffled incantations of the priest, vowing chastity, poverty,  obedience, the words exiting her mouth automatically, without conviction. I love  Christ into whose bed I have entered, she repeats. The tiny wooden door in the screen  squeaks open, and the priest’s hand emerges, barely visible in the dark save for the  small gold band he holds. Mathilde holds out her hand and the priest fumbles to find  her fourth finger until he finally slides it on.  

The priest then instructs her to lie before the altar face down as a symbol that  she is dying to her old life. Mathilde spreads her body on the stone floor, nose pressed  into the dirt. She has often wondered, over the past year, when and how death would  come to her. When she did not die after her brother, with whom she had played, or  her sister, with whom she had shared a bed, or her father, whom she had cared for in  his illness—she wondered what it would take to kill her. She tries to think of the entirety of her life: her childhood, sitting upon her father’s knee, the way he taught her  the alphabet by carving letters into apples, and how they would eat them afterward,  sweet and crisp. Is this what people think of before they die, apples? But no, she is  thinking now of her mother. Could she still be alive? 

Mathilde rises. The priest, behind the screen, says a blessing and she can see his  hands forming the sign of the cross. She repeats the motion, and with that, her bap tism into this new family is complete.  

*** 

The next morning, the Abbess tasks Mathilde with preparing Katherine’s body  for the funeral. Katherine’s body is kept in a stone room, laid out on a wooden board,  still clothed in the tunic she had been wearing when she died. When Mathilde pulls  the tunic up over the sister’s torso, the smell of death is so pungent it dizzies her, and  her vision grows fuzzy.  

In the center of this fuzzy vision, Katherine’s body transforms, and suddenly it is  the Abbess who is laid out before her. Dotting the length of the Abbess’s torso are constellations of sores, the same sores that dotted her brother’s body, and her sister’s, and  her father’s, and the body of every neighbor who died of the disease. Mathilde grabs  on to the table to keep from falling. She looks away but the afterimage of the Abbess’s  body remains. When she finally looks back at the table, it is Katherine’s body again, lying there spotless. But Mathilde knows, now, that the disease is coming for them.  Perhaps it is she who brought it? 

This thought eats at Mathilde all day, until right before Vespers, when Katherine’s funeral is to be held. Mathilde watches through the windows of the cloister as  the priest rides up in the dying pink light, and it occurs to her that perhaps it is not she who has brought the illness to the abbey; it might be the priest, and he might be  bringing it right now.  

In the silence of the cloister, Mathilde sits by each of her sisters and pleads with  them not to take the Eucharist, or if they must, take it by hand rather than by tongue.  They look at her, as she knew they would, outraged. Else asks why, and Mathilde  wants to tell her, but cannot; to do so would be to admit she knows something no one  can know. Mathilde looks at Else, hoping somehow her eyes will convey all that her  voice cannot, and then the bells ring out for the funeral Mass.  

*** 

The following Sunday, the priest never arrives. The sisters congregate in the  church, but behind the screen is only silence. The next day, and the next, it is the  same. Then, one morning, the Abbess does not show up for Matins or for Lauds or for  Prime. The sisters search the cloister and the fields, but she is nowhere. The Abbess  sleeps in a small room attached to the chapter house, where the sisters finally congregate. None of them have ever been inside the Abbess’s bedroom; to do so would be to  invade the privacy of the head of their order, the only woman deserving of her own  room. A quiet argument breaks out between those who want to enter the Abbess’s  room and those who think it unseemly. Finally, without speaking, Mathilde gets up,  rushes past the other sisters, and opens the Abbess’s door.  

Mathilde is hit immediately with the smell of rot. Despite the heat, the Abbess  is bundled under layers of wool. Her breath draws in and out in short, raspy waves.  Her eyes open as slits amid her swollen face, which is dotted with boils. Pus drains  into the corner of an eye. She blinks rapidly. When she speaks, her eyes are unfocused,  

trained on the ceiling. She asks Mathilde if the priest has arrived. Mathilde replies that he has not.  

The Abbess closes her eyes. “Last Rites,” she says.  

“I can ask Grede, but—” 

The Abbess shakes her head vigorously and grabs Mathilde’s wrist with surprising strength. “No,” she says. “You.” 

Mathilde shakes her head, wants to refuse, but how can she? She thinks of her  father, dying, pleading for Last Rites, no priests left in their village. Mathilde and her  mother prayed over him, hoping for some miracle, but none came. It was then that  she began to wonder about God’s power, or powerlessness, in their world. And if God  didn’t have the power to anoint the sick, then who did? The priests were all dead,  proving after all that they were only human. Which meant Mathilde, human too,  could become a vehicle of God’s power, of His mercy.  

Mathilde rushes out of the room, around the throng of kneeling sisters, through  the cloister, and into the church. In the tabernacle, Mathilde finds a chalice with communion wafers, leftover wine, and a vial of consecrated oils for anointment. When  she gets back to the chapter house, the sisters are arguing. Grede stands, blocking the  doorway to the Abbess’ room.  

“She is dying,” Mathilde pleads. 

“The priest will come.” 

“He is dead, too.” 

Grede pounds the wall next to the door and the room falls silent.  

“Have you cursed us?” she cries. “Before you came, no one died!” 

The sisters murmur. Else speaks in Mathilde’s defense. Agnes crouches down and crawls along the floor until she scrapes her knee and lets out a painful howl. Grede  runs to her side, and Mathilde takes this as an opportunity to open the door to the  Abbess’s room. She rushes to the woman’s bedside, but it is too late.  

*** 

Grede organizes the vote for a new Abbess. The sisters form a line, each of them  whispering their vote into Grede’s ear. On Mathilde’s turn, she whispers the name of  the oldest nun in the order. It is strange to lean so close to the sister who loathes her.  When the scent of Grede’s body reaches Mathilde, she pulls back. Rotting flesh. She  knows it may not indicate disease; it could be an open wound from a belt of thorns or  a hair shirt, or any of the other accoutrements of suffering these sisters inflict upon  themselves. Still, Mathilde worries.  

Immediately after votes are tallied, Grede announces that she has been named  the new Abbess. She tells the sisters that despite the death of the old Abbess, they  must continue on. They must do their work, say their prayers, or else the fabric of  their life would unravel. It is the one thing Grede says that Mathilde can agree with.  

*** 

The following days proceed as usual, except that in the place of daily Mass the sisters spend extra time working the fields. Even those who normally do indoor work  are outside, the growing chill making their breath more visible week by week. Then,  as they near the harvest, disease strikes again: first an older sister, one close to Grede,  dies after three days of illness; a younger sister passes away soon after. Both bear the typical boils and blisters, and both scream in pain near the end, all the silent suffering  of their lifetimes given voice in their last moments.  

During chapter meetings, Grede seems thin, tired, worn. Her eyes grow large, her  cheekbones sharp. And then, one day, as Grede stands before them at the meeting, she  coughs up blood. The sisters draw back with a collective cry, but Grede wipes up the  sputum with the bottom of her tunic, dabs at her mouth with her veil, and continues  reading the chapter of rule as if nothing has happened.  

The next morning, when Grede does not show up for Lauds or Prime, and when  she does not show up for the chapter house meeting, Agnes runs in a frenzy to find  her. Standing outside the door to Grede’s room is another sister, who blocks Agnes  from going in. Agnes tries to push past, banging on the door, scratching the sister’s  face, screaming about the Devil. Else tries to hold her back, to calm her, but Agnes  shoves her off. Mathilde approaches Agnes cautiously, explaining that Grede is ill, and  that she is trying to protect Agnes by not letting her enter the room. But Agnes will  not listen. Even as she calms down, she insists that Grede is not ill but possessed, that  demons have entered the abbey and are taking over Grede’s soul.  

Her fear is infectious. One of the younger sisters, as well as the sister guarding  the door, begin to murmur that perhaps Agnes is right, the illness is the workings of  Satan. The sister guarding the door opens it and lets Agnes enter. The other sisters  rush in behind her while Mathilde hovers beside the doorway. 

Upon seeing Grede, Agnes calms down. Grede, having heard Agnes’s outburst,  explains in a weak voice that her body is sick, but her soul is pure. She is ready for Last  Rites.  

She looks at Mathilde.  

*** 

Mathilde stands above the bed with the chalices and holy oils. She begins by taking Grede’s confession. Grede hesitates a long time before saying anything. 

“Agnes,” she says. “Is my…” She doesn’t finish.  

“I know,” Mathilde says, and when Grede looks at her questioningly: “You treat her with the tenderness of a mother.” Mathilde smiles, thinking of her own. 

Grede’s breathing becomes more shallow. Mathilde hurries to administer the  Eucharist. Grede opens her eyes and looks into Mathilde’s face, for the first time with something resembling kindness.  

“Look after her,” she says.  

*** 

The air grows colder, the sky sunless. The remaining sisters work together to prepare for harvest, but as the weeks wear on, two more of them die, Lyse and Delphine,  within hours of each other. They are down to seven sisters. There is no vote for a new  Abbess, and the sisters seem aimless. Else tries to give them purpose, direction, and asks for Mathilde’s help. Despite her doubts and anger and questions unanswered by  God, Mathilde agrees. They begin to hold meetings, praying, discussing how to keep  up with the farm work when there are so few sisters left.  

On the first day of harvest, the clouds threaten a storm, but the sisters spend  most of the day in the fields, picking and threshing and gathering. The experience is a small reprieve from death. They run through the rows. They hide from one another  like children. By the end of the night, the sisters are fatigued and red-faced. They sleep  soundly. 

They wake before Lauds to a crack of thunder. They lie in bed as the rain pours  and the shutters shake and the intermittent rumble of thunder makes them jump.  Agnes climbs into bed with Mathilde, and Mathilde tries to comfort her, singing her a  lullaby that her mother had once sung to her. Sleep, little sheep, sleep. The Lord fends off  the murdering wolf. Sleep, little sheep, sleep. 

But Agnes does not sleep, and it is clear the other sisters are not sleeping either.  Else climbs into bed with Mathilde and Agnes. She begins to say something, but her  voice is drowned out by the loudest crack of thunder yet, and then the darkness is  broken with a flash of light. One bolt of lightning, and then another, hits a tree not far  from the abbey, and the tree falls into the far end of the cloister, shattering windows.  The sisters scream. Hail pellets the roof. The sisters begin to murmur excitedly: Lightning, hail—these are all signs. The work of demons. 

 “Demons?” Agnes repeats. Mathilde tries to quiet her but she repeats the word  until she falls asleep, and when she wakes, the word is still on her tongue.  

The storm has quieted, so the sisters go to check on the damage in the cloister. It  is not bad, but through the shattered glass walls they see something worse: lightning  has scorched their fields. Mathilde and Else run outside and find the unharvested  crops ruined. When Mathilde tells Agnes and the other sisters, they conclude it is the  work of demons. Demons are hiding everywhere in the abbey, they say, in the corners  and in the shadows, ready to prey upon them.  

Another death. A quiet sister, Hette, leaves her bed at night to die in the barn  with the animals. There are now six sisters left. All besides Mathilde and Else look at  this number as a sign. The devil’s number. At first, this obsession leads them to more  pious behavior. They chant more furiously at each office, they spend their free time  praying, they take vows of silence. Some of them wear belts of thorns and flagellate  themselves. The weeks go by in this fashion, the sisters mostly keeping to themselves,  eating very little, trying to plan for the winter ahead. They have a small amount of  crops from the first day of harvest, plus animals for meat and milk.  

But then, one morning when Mathilde and Else go to milk the cows, they are  greeted by a sight that is, at first, hard to make sense of. It looks like animals are  writhing around on the ground, but it is really Agnes, an older nun named Doro thea, and two middle-aged nuns named Anna and Liphilt, crawling over the hay on  all fours, howling, naked, wild-haired. Dorothea is in the horse stall, and when she  emerges her mouth is smeared with feces. This sight, though, is nothing compared  to what Mathilde sees next. The animals—all of them, save for one horse—have been  killed, slaughtered by these four sisters, and left to rot. Their corpses are strewn about  the barn, bloody intestines pulled out, partially eaten.  

Mathilde rushes forward and grabs Dorothea first, trying to shake her into her  senses. The old woman resists, but Mathilde pulls her out of the barn and drags her  back to the cloister and finally into the church, where she lays the woman on the  stone floor and leaves her there, running back to get the others. With Else’s help,  Mathilde is able to drag all the screaming sisters into the church. The four sisters lay  on the floor, naked, their screams finally falling silent.  

The next month is a practice in self-sacrifice. The sisters allow themselves only  one small meal a day. With their hunger, their fears of the devil increase. They begin to see him everywhere, especially in the rectory during their meal and late at night in  the dormitory. Most of the sisters’ time now is spent sitting in the drafty cloister, looking out the cracked windows at the first snow. Out in the whiteness they see demons  tempting them to do things like steal food or slaughter their last remaining horse for meat, and to ward off the demons they flagellate themselves.  

As Mathilde lies in her bed at night listening to the sisters’ breathing, she is more  lonely than she has been in a long time. Else has stopped coming into her bed. Mathil de wonders if this loneliness is a sin, a recognition that God is not with her. But she  struggles to conjure Him out of emptiness. She realizes she has felt His presence most  through the presence of those she loves: the touch of Else’s body pressing against  her own, the memory of her mother’s scent, her father’s chapped hand touching her  cheek.  

Then, one cold night, Else crawls back in bed with her. Mathilde, feeling small  and childlike, asks Else why she has been distancing herself.  

Else hesitates, and then says she is afraid the disease is beginning to take root in  her. She has begun feeling feverish. And she, too, has begun seeing things. Shadows. 

Mathilde holds her the rest of the night, afraid to let her go. But Else is not the  next to die. It is Dorothea, passing in sleep. Liphilt goes next, succumbing the following week. Immediately after she dies, Agnes and the other remaining sister, Anna, run to Mathilde in the cloister and ask if they may eat Liphilt’s flesh, since they have  nearly run out of food.  

“Do you want to be next?” Mathilde cries, realizing it sounds like a threat.  The two sisters recoil from Mathilde, rolling their eyes back in their heads so that  only the whites are showing, and then they fall on the floor and contort their bodies.  

She tries to pull the two sisters up off the floor and calls to Else for help. Else  comes, out of breath. She is thin, skeletal, and Mathilde can see the sign of fever in her  eyes.  

“What do we do?” she asks.  

“We must leave,” Mathilde finally says.  

*** 

They hitch their last remaining horse to a cart filled with what little provisions  they have left. They lay Anna, sick in mind as well as body, on the cart too, hoping the  journey away from the abbey will at least calm her fears of the devil. They hope the  same for Agnes, who walks beside the cart, looking in at Anna from time to time.  

“Where are we going?” Agnes asks. Her face, for the first time in months, looks  pink and healthy in the cold December air, her eyes clear. 

Else, on horseback, looks questioningly at Mathilde.  

“There is another abbey,” Mathilde says. “A five-day journey. My mother and I  passed it on our way here.” Her voice catches on the word mother. So long since she  has said it.  

“Why did you join our order,” Else asks, “if that abbey was closer to your village?”  

Mathilde realizes that even though she had revealed much to Else, she had never  divulged how thoroughly her community had convinced themselves that she was a  witch, to the point where Mathilde herself had been on the verge of believing it. But  she does not want to speak of witchcraft while Agnes and Anna are within earshot.  

“My mother,” Mathilde finally says, “thought it best I join an order farther from our village. To be as far from the disease as possible.”  

A noise like a laugh comes out of Else’s throat. “That did not work out in your  favor, eh?”  

Mathilde looks at her and smiles. “I am glad to have joined your order,” she says,  squeezing Else’s hand. They hold hands for a few minutes, Mathilde keeping pace  with the horse. It feels a little like praying.  

When they stop for the night, Mathilde and Agnes make a fire. Else is quiet, lying  on the cart next to Anna, who has still not changed positions, though she is breathing  and her eyes are open. Anna has not eaten or drunk since the previous day. They try to  entice her by placing the last of their meat close to her lips, but she will not open her mouth. They try to offer her water, but her jaw is clamped tight.  

In the morning, they find Anna no longer breathing. They fold her hands over  her chest and place her body under a pile of brush and leave her behind. Mathilde  hopes they will reach the abbey before any other deaths befall them.  

The next days wear on, bitter. It begins to snow, their footsteps leaving behind  them a trail that is quickly covered. No matter how far they walk, the forest looks the  same, tree after tree. Mathilde begins to wonder if they will ever reach the abbey. She  begins to wonder if this other abbey even exists, if it were a vision she had conjured to  give herself hope.  

Else complains of blisters and bleeding pustules. Mathilde tries to assure her that  they will soon arrive at the abbey and the sisters there might have some salve to heal  her, but she can see in Else’s eyes that she knows the end is near.  

Upon waking on the sixth day, Mathilde is terrified she might find that Else has died overnight. She is alive and breathing, though weak. Else pleads that they should  arrive at their destination soon, not because she hopes for a cure, but because she  wants to taste the Eucharist one final time. “And a strawberry,” she says, smiling. “I  would like to taste a strawberry one last time.” 

They quicken their pace, Mathilde trotting beside the horse, the three sisters  silent throughout the day and into the dusk. Darkness begins to fall, but as they continue farther, the woods grow lighter. They are entering a clearing. They see a field full of brilliant, untouched snow. And beyond it, an abbey. 

It is large, a cathedral and multiple stone buildings surrounded by a gate, warm  candles glowing behind stained-glass windows, snow topping its spires. They run  until they reach the gate, out of breath and on the verge of collapsing. Mathilde looks  at Else, making sure she is still with them. 

“We are here,” Mathilde says. Else is silent, but her eyes gleam.  

They stand at the gate, ring the bell, and wait. As the hours draw on, Mathilde  despairs. What if, after their travels, after having arrived at their destination, they are  left to die outside the gates?  

They drift in and out of sleep. They wake sometime in the middle of the night  to a messenger arriving on horseback. When the hood is pulled down, the rider is  revealed to be a woman. She greets them and pulls out a key, opening the gate.  

Another woman, this one in white, emerges from the building and greets them  as if they are expected guests. The messenger rushes ahead. Mathilde and Agnes, supporting Else, hurry to the large building, where the woman in white opens the door  and beckons them inside.  

The room is bright with candlelight and a large fire in the hearth. Shockingly, it  is full of people: dozens of sisters dressed in white tunics, wearing wreaths of flowers around their veils. And others, too: men and women and children, whole families,  babies even. There is music, and a feast is laid out on a long table.  

Agnes rushes forward and begins gorging herself on roast goose. Mathilde, holding Else, approaches the nearest sister.  

“Sister,” she says, and she does not have to say any more. The sister takes Else’s  body from Mathilde’s arms and brings her into a nearby room, where they lay her  down on a straw bed. There is a tabernacle in this bedroom, something Mathilde has  never seen outside of a church before. Later, she will ask the sisters about it, and she  will come to know that in this abbey, many things are different. These sisters are of  the Beguine order: They marry, they preach, they have children, and they translate  the Bible from Latin so all people can read it.  

Else will never know the identity of these women in white. Soon after they place  her in bed, Mathilde administers the Eucharist, and then places upon Else’s tongue  a small strawberry she has gathered from the feast table. Else chews slowly, staring  into Mathilde’s eyes with a small smile on her face, the same small smile she gave  when they first met those many months ago. She dies shortly thereafter, before dawn,  warm in bed, Mathilde at her side, holding her hands. In Else’s last moment, her eyes  flicker with fear but also with gratitude. And although Mathilde is filled with sorrow  at the passing of the woman she loves, as she emerges from Else’s room back into the  ongoing feast, she feels something like light filling her body. She approaches Agnes,  who has stopped eating and is sitting comfortably on a chair among the other sisters.  They are asking her where she comes from, and she is answering them, chatty as a  little girl. Mathilde sits down beside her. 

Agnes turns excitedly to Mathilde and exclaims, “Pope Clement just announced a  jubilee to honor those who’ve survived the year!”  

Mathilde has lost her first family, and most of her last. But the room is glowing  with an amber light that reminds her of the hearth of her childhood, and the people— more people than she has seen in a long time—are clustered close together in groups  of sadness and celebration, some crying, some embracing, some laughing, some dancing. In the crowd of dancing bodies, Mathilde notices one body in particular, a shape  she recognizes from behind, a shape so familiar she could have found her in the dark.  Mathilde does not move but watches the woman for a long time, afraid to be wrong,  afraid to lose her again. Mathilde continues to watch the woman dance, swinging side  to side as from joy to grief and back again, and when the music ends, when the woman finally turns around, it is her mother’s face that greets her, and Mathilde rushes to  meet her in the middle of the room. 

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Jacqueline Vogtman received her MFA in Fiction from Bowling Green State University, and her work has appeared in Atticus Review, Connotation Press, Copper Nickel, Emerson Review, Gargoyle Magazine, Mud Season Review, The Literary Review, Sierra Nevada Review, Versal, and other journals. She teaches English Composition and Literature at Mercer County Community College, where she is Editor of the Kelsey Review and advises the student creative writing club, SOUL. She lives in New Jersey with her husband, daughter, and dog.

“Jubilee Year” was first published in the 2021 issue of Relief.