Margery lived during the Hundred Years War, the collapse of feudal systems, and the plague. Towns had walls; at night the gates shut. At the beginning of modernity the world and otherworld lay in shambles. Margery was an individual in a recognizable nightmare: the twentieth century will also be called a hundred years war. A simpler individual, she went by her first name except once before a high court. The same individual who now disintegrates. Inner life is a kind of greed, desire a form of personal profit. She pushes out of the flat pictorial plane into personality and suspense, illusion of escape, while I go back to the ruins of overall pattern and to the somber murmur of the already known.

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Margery impressed Jesus who in turn motivated her. She challenged a monk in high office in Canterbury. “Sir, I accuse you of lechery, despair, and keeping worldly goods.” She was assertive, credible. She stood too close, depriving him of the space he needed to marshal arguments.

(Three decades earlier, some men the monk met in a latrine invited him to a party. One of them had eaten a very hot meal with a lot of pepper. He asked, “Is that okay?” The monk didn’t understand until he kissed the man, licked him, fucked him, found that every orifice was peppery, a prickly sensation, wildly stimulating. The man could twist into any position yet keep the monk’s cock in his ass, heretic in a fire. The monk didn’t know if his desire to be revealed in excitement could be touched let alone satisfied. His knees clamped together, then flew apart; his body arched backwards from his navel in a taut bow of flesh. The others stared in admiration. The odor of penetration, the serious air.)

The monk asked, “Say, with wives or single women?” He would not look at her directly.

“Neither, Sir.”

The monk was fearful and assertive by turns. He followed Margery out. “We’ll burn you, false Lollard. Here’s a cartful of thorns ready for you, and a barrel to burn you with!” They had already burnt two heretics under barrels—their muffled screams remained in the square. Other people took up the cry, running to the scene, arms raised, and two boys started pelting Margery with mud.

Margery couldn’t find John—he hated conflict. She fell to her knees and cried till her ribs hurt. “I cry your mercy, Jesus, for all my enemies, for all that are sick, for all lepers—” Sweat streaked her blue-as-lead face so the crowd recoiled in horror of disease. She prayed to keep them from everlasting damnation so they spat to scare the devil. The tide of belief was still high and few could wonder if Margery was fake. In her tears and threats the crowd caught a whiff of disaster that transcended everything.