“No,” he answers, “the cost is so appalling you couldn’t stand the food.” I’m impressed by his bitterness, a moment of harmony between us. The beam picks out the hole which conveys a beckoning vitality—the rictus of a corpse announcing that the present is dead.

•

When Margery prayed for confirmation of her union with Jesus, she heard a loud rumbling. A stone and a chunk of wood dislodged from under a rafter of St. Margaret’s vault. They hovered, each rotating on its own. The stone fell on Margery’s head with a crack and the wood struck her back with a thud. His cruelty offered a breach through which to hurl herself into the fullness of life. She staggered forwards and sprawled on the floor, screaming, “Mercy, Jesus!”

Master Allyn, a doctor of divinity at Cambridge and an indexer of miracles and prophecies, arrived next day and weighed the stone: 3 lbs., June 12, 1413. (During puberty Master Allyn resented nature when it fiddled with his body: the real past under the official one.) He snatched the beam end out of the fire: 6 lbs. He pursed his lips as he measured Margery’s head, “to do a service for eternity.” She became aware of her breasts hanging foolishly.

Margery invited Master Allyn to dinner—bream from the Fens. He took a bite and looked down at a pamphlet but never finished reading a sentence because his eyes returned too quickly to the food. He was unique, a perfect example of a type. Margery laughed: there’s something juvenile about striving so explicitly to be an intellectual. Master Allyn was stiff as a board; his ponderous explanations affected everyone. Later John did an impression. “Master Allyn, Master Allyn, first you squeeeeze your asshole,” and he jerked upright.

John was happy; he couldn’t see what was in store. He wore his hair short for his class as though rejecting ambition and his smile was intense, a child’s drawing, all teeth. He put his huge arms around his wife while she averted her face like a face card and folded her hands, touching only herself. She couldn’t marry Jesus till she freed herself from John and obtained a license to dress in white like a saint.

Margery needed to be heard to shore up her own belief in herself. She and John went to Canterbury looking for people in authority to help her advance as a saint and avoid being burnt as a Lollard. The Lollards were a sect that attacked the corrupt clergy. They rejected miracles and stressed missionary work, making converts as they preached from village to village. Margery brought to the countryside only the drama of her romance with Jesus. The Lollards were a sign of the times; next year, in 1414, they would attempt a revolution.