The galley smelled like tar and resin. The sea was intense, abstract. Brutal oarsmen. A priest stole a sheet. Margery’s berth was a rectangle chalked on the boards long enough to lie down in. She woke in the noisy crowded hold with a jolt of longing so vibrant she thought she was falling. She slid her hand between her legs and found it wet there. Her love was mixed with a desire to arrive and succeed. They sailed south along the Dalmatian coast, then east through the Greek islands. Piss, rancid meat, moldy cloth, farts. The sailors’ bare feet slapped the wooden deck. A deep wind rose in the sky of her hearing. The voyage lasted thirty days. The pilgrims tormented her. “I pray you, sirs, be in charity with me, for I am in charity with you, and forgive me if I have amazed you along the way.”

•

She was riding a donkey across blighted land when she glimpsed Jerusalem, a fantastic jewel with thick walls, towers and ramparts, buildings stacked like crystals, gold onion domes weightless above the sum total of terrestrial experience, the beautiful slow time that Jesus owned. I cross intercosmic distance to embrace L. I would not cling to existence if I believed in it more. Heaven is belief in the future, endless meaning, endless narration. Two blond Germans kept Margery upright. They heard the ringing kata, kata, kata of sandgrouse but the sky was too bright to see them overhead. Intimate touch made a promise of immortality. “So thanks, Jesus, and let me see the city of heaven as well. To live forever is to live in the future.”

Jesus dropped into Margery’s ear and cried, “You will!”

Surprise almost knocked her to the ground. “Sirs, I beg you, don’t be amazed though I weep bitterly.” The Germans didn’t speak English.

The heat was a demand but each cool breeze was heavier fulfillment. This time the sun sank in front of the mountain. Dusk fell in an instant, the cloth backdrop, the palms. Shadows quickly climbed bare slopes.

The Latin kings of Jerusalem built the Church of the Holy Sepulchre three hundred years before. Saracens collected entrance fees and admitted the group at evensong, to remain till evensong next day. Inside, friars led the pilgrims to places where Jesus suffered. They all carried wax candles. At Calvary, a rocky hill fourteen feet high, a turbulence grew in Margery: she was ashamed; she wrestled with her body, holding it in as long as she could; she flung her arms apart and screamed, quick and extended as an insect shedding its shell. The pilgrims stared in horror. Some said it was an illness or that she drank too much wine; some wished her at sea in a bottomless boat.