The dog tried to keep up, panting and thrusting her neck forwards as though she were pulling a cart. For her Jesus slowed down on the inclines; he called her Poochkins—exasperating. Margery was thirteen years older than Jesus and she had just given birth. She felt explosions in her chest. A nimbus of gnats and horseflies wailed around her perishable face, the face of Thumbelina drawn with the burnt tip of a match. Her suffering didn’t diminish her desire for Jesus—confusion implied more life.

Near dusk Norwich rose out of bedrock, a hat on a table—its spires, walls, guildhalls, minster clock, and castle—so clean it moved towards them on the plain. Merchants and farmers streamed through the city gate; a peasant drove a pig from market with a goad, the peasant’s alcoholic face so bright with need that Margery responded with unwilling arousal; a blind man begged on the grass; a young woman stared shyly at the retreating back of a lady with coiled yellow hair—she wanted to press that lady’s low-slung breasts together and suck both nipples at once. The lady was escorted by a cavalier on whose wrist perched a kestrel with a blue-gray head and spotted chestnut mantle.

Norwich was in the midst of a summer festival. Doorways were decorated with Saint-John’s-wort, lilies, and lanterns hung to burn all night. Near the bonfires wealthy citizens set meat and drink for their neighbors. The streets were so crowded that any cranny of emptiness was immediately filled by bodies and going forwards a few yards was a victory.

Margery and Jesus breathed air dense with sweat and perfume; they felt touched by the ephemeral: they had remarkably similar takes on goods and people, the jugglers and the bear. When they last saw Poochkins she was at attention, transfixed by a rib roast on a plank, eyes misty and tail rotating behind. Jesus said, “Her hunger seems ageless.” She ignored their calls.

On Thursday a little before noon Margery entered St. Stephen’s. The Vicar wore a mantle of fine black shank. He sat down with her in the church. Coins from his purse dropped onto the back of his chair. As he stood to collect them his gloves fell out of his lap. As he bent to retrieve them his glasses fell off. Margery covered her face—she felt wind on her nipples though she was wearing a wool gown.

She was nervous. “Jesus told me to speak with you.”

“Explain that,” the Vicar said.

So Margery began telling him about the time she first saw Jesus, gaining courage as she felt the potential rise in her clear voice: her vanity, her obstinacy, her envy, her horrible temptations. The Vicar was gaining weight; he was aware of his belly bulging against his chest and his breasts drooping onto the skin beneath. He wondered if Margery was conscious of her body touching itself there or her cunt lips touching each other.