"But how do I stay?"

"If they don't check until Saturdays, then you're safe until this Saturday. When will they give you the new pattern?"

"On Monday."

"Then you have to pretend until then. Can you do that? Can you pretend you're doing what you're supposed to?"

If I pretended, then I wouldn't be doing what I was supposed to, would I? "I don't know..."

"Maybe...can you just...do it slower?"

"Why?"

"So they won't throw you out of the abbey! Least not until I can come and get you out myself."

"They wouldn't do that. Sister wouldn't do that. Not to me."

Her hand came through the wall and grabbed at my own. "Just promise me. Promise you'll do it."

"Fine. I'll try."

"Don't try, Katharina. Do. You must do this for me. For you."

"I...will."

"You can't let them know until Saturday, understand?"

"I guess-"

"This is important, Katharina! Until Saturday. Whatever you do, you can't let them know about your eyes."

"I won't. I won't tell."

Don't work so fast.

But how could I do my work to the best of my ability unless I worked as quickly as I could? Wasn't that being slothful? And wouldn't Sister notice? She had trusted me to finish the lace, and now Heilwich wanted me to be late.

I tried to do as Heilwich said. I truly did. But I couldn't. Not once the bobbins began their dance. Even as artlessly as I now moved them, they insisted upon keeping their own rhythm. And it was only as we headed down the stairs of an evening that I remembered my promise to my sister.

I did remember.

I just hadn't done it in time. For not two days later, I created the last of the petals and felt the last of the scrolls form underneath my fingers. I was done. The sheer exhilaration of it prickled my scalp. I was done. Done! But...what would happen now?

I set my bobbins to dancing, forming a pattern that was no pattern. They looped and dipped and twisted without creating anything at all. I needed time to think. I stayed up all night trying to decide what to do. But I had no choices. Not really. I was done with the lace. But there were still five more days before Heilwich's visit.

Chapter 16.

Heilwich Martens Kortrijk, Flanders How was I going to save Katharina? I had only a week. Less than a week if her secret was discovered on Monday. That night, after I returned to Kortrijk and after I had banked the fire in the kitchen, I sat down on my pallet and counted the money I had saved.

The coins had not grown in number since I had showed them to the Reverend Mother. I had added one to them, but then I had given one to that urchin, Pieter.

I felt a desperate panic. Which was followed by the impulse to pray the rosary. But what good would that do? How could that save Katharina?

What I needed was money.

More of it than I had.

But what could I do? How could I come by more?

I supposed...I could do what I had done for the other coins.

Sighing, I covered my head with my apron and then pressed my forehead to my knees. Had it truly come to this? To helping De Grote? After I had told him, once and forever, I would never work for him again?

My hands began to tremble as I thought on it. About how terrible it had been that first time, digging up the coffin Father Jacqmotte had buried just the morning before and opening it to hide a length of lace inside.

At least De Grote hadn't hacked up any of that body. Sometimes he ordered a corpse's chest be cut out so lace could be rolled up and placed there instead. But that first time, he'd only lifted the dead man's arm and tucked the lace inside his coat.

Such a horrible, horrible night.

The char girl caught me not once that next morning, but twice, staring into the fire at nothing at all. And when I went outside to go to market, I found I carried not my basket, but my broom. And I was gripping it with the same fingers that had helped to dig up a coffin.

I had turned around and taken the broom back to the kitchen, and then I'd sat down on a stool in the cellar and peered at my fingers in the dim light.

Opened them.

Closed them.

Tried not to remember what they felt when they had touched the dead man's coat. That feeling ate at me. It soured me. And right there in the cellar, I fell to my knees and retched. Again and again and again. I retched until I tasted only bile. And yet again until there was nothing left but a guilty conscience and a wicked soul.

If only I had been able go to confession.

But I never would. How could I confess to...to...doing what I had done? What words could I use? What could I possibly say to induce a priest to pronounce forgiveness?

I let someone else prepare Father's meal that afternoon. He wouldn't have wanted to take the food from my hand. Not if he had known.

I deserved no mercy from God. Not after that.

Domine, non sum dignus, ut intres sub tectum meum. Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldst enter under my roof. Forgiveness was too great a gift for a soul like mine.

Oh! I did not wish to do it. I did not want to go to De Grote again.

Besides, he must have found others to do the work I had done. There must be dozens like me in the city. I imagined there was one of me at each of the parish churches. There had to be. Lace was that important.

I did not want to do it. Not after I had promised myself I wouldn't.

But De Grote might be my only choice. Blind as Katharina was, she'd be no match for those men who loitered by the abbey's gate. They'd snatch her, and bed her, and what could be done then?

I made my rounds the next day, taking soup to the aged, rags to the poor, and medicines to the infirm. I cast a careful eye about as I walked. If I had to do it, if I had to go to De Grote, it would be nice to know there was a body ready to fall into a coffin. If I decided to do it, whom could I count upon to die?

There was Annen, the weaver's wife. She would drop a babe any day now, and her last two had died ere they'd had a chance to breathe.

"Annen Moens!"

"Heilwich." She put a hand to her back and stretched in a way that reminded me of a sapling. "How is Father Jacqmotte?"

"Same as always. But how are you?"

She took a great breath of air into her cheeks and then blew it out in a huff. "Sick unto death of breeding."

"But it's to come soon?"

She smiled. Or perhaps it was a grimace. "Any day."

"Make sure you send someone to fetch me." Just in case. Just in case I decided to go to De Grote.

She nodded.

I continued on to the Lievens's. They had a daughter in poor health, and the week's wet weather was sure to have set her back. Knocking once on the door, I lifted the latch and pushed through.

Elen Lievens came at me, smiling, hands extended. "Look at our Zoete!"

I looked.

"It's a miracle, isn't it?"

Truly miraculous. The girl who for so long had lingered abed was bent over the fires, stirring a kettle as if she never intended to stop. As I gazed upon her, she lifted her head. "It was the borage."

"The what?"

"The borage conserve you brought last week. The jar you said was blessed by Father Jacqmotte."

Just because I had said it didn't mean it had been true. Father Jacqmotte was too busy to bless every jar and vial I waved in front of his nose. If anyone had done any blessing, it had been me. I'd sprinkled some holy water on it while I'd been cleaning in his office. "I'm so...glad."

"Aren't we all?" Elen left my side and went to press a kiss to her daughter's forehead.

I left soon after.

I argued with myself the length of the street. But I came to no other conclusion than this: I did not want to go to De Grote. But I might just have to.

Chapter 17.

Denis Boulanger The border of France and Flanders If I only knew which people smuggled lace across the border, then I would stop them.

Men and women. Children and dogs. The very young and the very old. That was who the lieutenant said I should look for. Well...there they were, all of them, in the crowd standing before me, waiting to cross the border. Where was it the lieutenant said lace was hidden?

Loaves of bread.

I looked the crowd over once, twice, before I spotted a woman carrying a loaf of bread beneath her arm. As she saw me look at her, she covered the bread with her cloak.

I gestured her over.

Her brow furrowed as she put a hand to her chest.

I nodded.

Her cheeks paled, but she detached herself from the line. Several children followed, like goslings, behind her.

"I need to examine your bread."

"Please, sir. It's all we have."

"I'm sorry, but I have to." I took the loaf between my hands and tore it into two pieces. No lace there. But maybe...a piece of lace could be very small, couldn't it? And it didn't have to hide in the middle, did it?

I tore each section apart and then tore each of those sections in two again. As I divided the bread into smaller and smaller pieces, one of them fell into the mud at our feet. "I'm sorry! I mean...I am...truly." The bread had been torn into pieces so small it was obvious there could be nothing hidden inside. I moved to give them all back to the woman, but as I did, one of the children jostled me, and they slid from my hands into the mud.

The children stared at me with piteous eyes. One of them began to cry.

"Don't-please-"

The woman had knelt in the mire and was picking up the pieces, brushing the mud from them with trembling hands as she sent dark looks up at me.

"I'm sorry. Here. Let me help." I picked up the rest of the pieces and handed them to her. She placed them into a kind of sling she formed with the tail of her cloak.

When I rose, the lieutenant was standing right beside me. "Found any lace yet?"

"Non, chef."

"Well. You'll have to try harder, then." He nodded toward the side of the shack where an old man was standing, propped up by a crutch. "They're hollow sometimes."