Margery had not founded an order like St. Bridget or promoted church reform like St. Catherine. She looked for glimpses of Jesus in handsome blonds on the streets of Rome. She felt humid, tense misery when she saw beautiful men in the tumultuous streets. Was it surprising that she couldn’t answer Jesus’s father? The one whose manhood she desired said, “What do you say to my father, Margery? Are you pleased?” She covered her face and wept.

Margery’s red hair fell uncovered, a loose pillow, virginal. She wore a purple-velvet mantle banded in gold over a gown of white silk stamped with gold fleur-de-lis. Her huge bag sleeves were trimmed with strips of dagged baby-blue silk. Jesus spoke for her. “Excuse her, she is abashed and can’t answer.”

The father was loving but unsteady, an apparition that remained. He took Margery by the hand before Jesus, the Ghost, Mary, the twelve apostles, St. Katherine, St. Margaret, & many other seyntys & awngelys, as Margery wrote, whose wings were pale ocher blending into pale Venetian red with spidery feathers at the joint. St. Margaret wore red silk brocade from Lucca on which firebirds rose in fastidious elaboration. She said to St. Katherine, “Would you move over a little?” Katherine could only have an orgasm when she was completely passive; she wore a violet gown of chatoyant silk furred with marten; she stepped closer to St. Clare, who wore a nun’s habit.

Angels lifted Margery’s train. The father said, “I take you, Margery, for my wedded wife, for fairer, for fouler, for righter, for poorer. Never was a child so kind to its mother as I will be to you.” He dropped gold and silver coins in the book.

Margery made sucking sounds, trying to suppress her tears. She felt more like a human spy than a bride. The father, Mary, and Jesus were reversible; they juggled amongst themselves the conditions that defined Margery: daughter, wife, mother, her need for money, her mortality, her desire. Mary was a fractured silence, unfolding veils of cool spectral vapor. She smiled brightly to reassure the newlyweds; they leaned towards her. “. . . an orchestra played to drown her cries . . . broke all her teeth . . .” Margery couldn’t tell if Mary remembered her. The gods were indifferent to events; a disaster that pulled Margery’s body inside out like a dirty sock would have sedated Mary.

“Margery, if you wore a coat of mail, or a hair shirt, or fasted on bread and water, you would not please me so much as when you are silent and allow me to speak.” God was the grandest religious leader to ask Margery to be quiet.

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