Lace Fingers

by Sara Atwater

Antwerp, 1773

I sit facing the high table where the sisters and the others sit, chewing their meat like wolves. Their teeth glitter in light emanating from dozens of candles held in the arms of brass candelabras. They tear into rare flesh, releasing saliva and their predatory nature. The clumpy boiled buttermilk and cabbage on my plate smell rancid, even fecal. The darkness at the table where I sit with the other orphans relieves me from seeing the details of my plate. 

They watch to see if someone shows weakness. A cough is all that’s needed to humiliate one of us. And one of us means all of us, the sisters know from their own solemn unity. Today we have guests, so they will postpone retribution. When the guests leave we will receive twice the penalty for any out-of-place air that passes from our mouths during the meal—it would not be the sisters to miss a chance to punish us.

“If you slurp and cough your way through life, Anna, you will never hear God’s message,” said Sister Marguerite on my first day at Maagdenhuis. Her high-pitched voice and crooked smile haven’t changed since that first day. At home with Papa, God never cared if we coughed or burped. Papa would laugh and wink if one of us did.

The rules were different at the orphanage. It was dinner on the evening Papa had brought me and my sister to live there. No longer able to feed us and our four brothers, Papa promised to return to see us often—a promise broken so soon that it could never have been his intention.

I was five and my sister, Leen, who didn’t live to be much older, was three. A crust of bread scratched my throat. I coughed and yelped because I wasn’t accustomed to holding back my reactions to pain. Delighted, Sister Marguerite stood up, grabbed me by the shoulders and pushed me to the corner of the room where I ate standing up, my back turned towards the other girls.

The other nuns sitting at the high table whispered fervently. The youngest of the eight sisters spoke directly to me in my tongue, Flemish, instead of French, which the others had been speaking to appear aristocratic.

“You must learn how to suppress your bodily sins and channel them into needlework.”

“Amen,” the sisters whispered in unison.

That afternoon, with every girl and nuns’ eyes burning into the back of my head, I learned to refrain from tears and keep my emotions hidden.

* * *

Louize reminds us in whispers. She repeats, when Sister Collette steps out of the crowded workroom where we weave swiftly on our wooden chevalets, that it is the orphans who finance the convent. 

We earn the money which pays for the fine food the sisters eat. We pay for everything with our nimble fingers. And with our eyesight which many of us lose if we live to become old enough.

Louize is our protector. Some of us say she’s a saint but we are careful to whom we say this. She has taught us everything the sisters don’t want us to know. Many have lived at Maagdenhuis since they were infants, unable to speak. Louize appeared here one morning last year with two sisters who brought her from a convent school in Bruges claiming she was their most talented lacemaker. She was too old, they said, at seventeen—my own age—to live there anymore.

At first, Marie and Juliette and the others ignored Louize. They called attention to her coarse accent and the brazen way she spoke back to the sisters.

“She is careless and dangerous. She takes too much license with the freedom the sisters have given her because of her talent,” Marie warned one evening as we dressed for bed.

“She wants to slow us down so that she can earn credit with the sisters and eat heartier,” Juliette added.

But today, a mist-shrouded feast day of St Catherine, our lady of lacemakers, the two mayors of this glutted, over-fed city and their entourage sit before us and Juliette’s words stand corrected. The mayors claim they’ve come to see our lacework and bestow a painting to the orphanage on behalf of the city’s wealthy patrons. Their lurid smiles as we sit below them at our modest table convey that they might have other intentions for visiting.

We keep our heads down tucked into our aprons but our eyes dart across the room from time to time to steal a look at the mayors who are flanked on either side by their men and the sisters. They tower above us at the high table, chattering, all the while staring down at us like vultures carefully watching their prey.

“Bring in more candles, sisters, so we can see these girls properly,” a man’s voice calls out.

Within moments, our table looks like it will catch on fire. I can see all the diners at the high table in more detail. A young attendant sitting across from me has caught my eye and refuses to cast his gaze down even after I try to lower my eyes. I finally return his direct stare with mine own; he is older than me, close to twenty, with a crown of dark auburn curls and vibrant green eyes. He smiles and winks and my whole countenance turns red. My heart beats so loud that I think one of the nuns is going to grab my arm and lead me to the corner of the dining hall or the workroom. I would prefer it to having to remain seated across from this smiling devil whose fantasy must be working hard to make him see past the drab gray garment I’m wearing and the gaunt paleness of my cheeks. I cannot help but note that he is handsome though his arrogance nearly negates it.

It’s only the dinner bell’s shrill ring to signal a new course that frees me from his unrelenting grin. But it ushers in this foul smelling cabbage that now swims in front of me, daring my insides to project themselves back into the world. I hold my breath. How will I make myself consume it? 

The most lavish dish in the mayoral meal, pheasant soaked in dark beer gravy, is served. I breathe in its carnal scent. Its overpowering smell usurps my senses and I find myself able to lift a spoonful of the rotten cabbage porridge to my mouth. Something small and white wiggles in the milky morass as I swallow. I fight the urge to poke at it with my spoon because it’s better not to know if one is to eat maggots. 

Behind the diners at the high table hangs a portrait of Judith who, though meager and pale like us, lifts a golden tray with an unusually heavy load on top of it: the large, meaty head of Holofernes. Years ago, the mayors gifted the painting to the orphanage in a ceremony that culminated in a feast identical to this one now. My sister, Leen, was still alive then, but coughing already outpaced her breathing. Even the sisters saw her need to die lying down in peace. The sisters always make space for death’s approach.

I’ve stared into Judith’s eyes a thousand times, baffled by their defiance even though she looks vanquished. The same question always arises as I watch her try to balance the heavy tray: “Can I help you carry that?”  Of course, she never replies but I tell myself she is waiting for the right moment to pass the tray and its bloody contents to one of us so she can continue with her vengeful labor.

A squat man introduced as the mayor of internal affairs splatters dark stew on his finely stitched lace collar. The mayors’ servants and two young nuns sit at our table so we can smell the sweet steam rising from their dishes. Tableware clinks rhythmically on china the way our bobbins tap out the pattern of our days.

Louize lets out a throaty dry cough and begins speaking the best French she can. “The lace we make is valued at the highest price in all of Europe. People from near and far seek to buy our work though we never see these returns.”

 Louize pauses momentarily then continues on with composure.

“Why should we earn a fraction of what is paid for the lace we make? Our families starve and we languish while kings, queens, and noblemen model our skills.”

The clink of tableware halts and a flurry of whispers circulate among the sisters. The mayor clears his throat.

“My dear little lace fingers, I will use this affectionate term as I don’t know your name. You are right in your assessment. As the mayor for external affairs, I have seen the emperor and empress of Austria wear the exquisite work that we produce here in our city. But how can we, Mayor van den Cruyce and myself, mere subjects in the realm of the powerful, ask for more than we are currently given? The painting we brought you today is to remind you of our gratitude. We hope the warm embrace of Mary as she clings to her son at the moment of his death will be a reminder to you orphans that you are recipients of God’s parental love.”

The mayor raises his glass and the nuns, eyes wide, follow his gesture. I pivot my eyes from side to side to see how the other girls respond. A few, like Marie and Juliette, wear subtle smiles. The others stare blankly down into their empty bowls.

At the end of our table, where she was placed to symbolize her status as a new tenant, Louize peers at the mayors. Her eyes ready themselves for another round. She wears Judith’s fierce gaze as she stares at the men.

“Many of us here have never felt the comforting embrace of a mother though we know the pain of loss that is visible in Mary’s eyes. Thank you for your kind gift, sirs.”

Louize takes a moment to look around the room. 

“My suggestion is for us to be fed more and with heartier fare. The girls here struggle to work with steady hands. We require more sustenance so that we can work swiftly during the short daylight of winter.”

Sister Marguerite responds quickly. 

“Your work is important for our convent and you do it well, Louize, but there is no reason to interrupt our guests’ dinner. The sisters and I are happy to answer your questions later.”

Condensed water clings to the high arched windows which peer out onto the grand houses that line the square. Body heat converges with warmth from the old stone fireplace. The nuns sweat and twitch. Judith’s bloody tray hovers over the white powdery wigs of the mayors and their men.

Mayor van den Cruyce clears his throat. He intends to leave us with the final word.

“Sister Marguerite, we are happy to hear from our talented orphans and hope they will immediately see an increase in their daily nutrition. They have not received the stew that we have been served. Perhaps this is a good moment to start?”

Both mayors smile at the old nun and the moth-like flutter of her right eyelid increases.

“I agree wholeheartedly,” says the second mayor whose collar is now soaked in gravy.

“There is no better time than the present to remedy this injustice. Girls, take the food you require.”

At first, none of us budges. I am frozen in the same position that I was in when Louize started to speak. It’s Louize herself who is the first to go to the kitchen. She comes back with a steaming bowl of meat and gravy.

Cautiously, Louize’s neighbor stands up from her chair and retraces her table-mate’s journey. When she comes back with a full bowl the rest of us get up, one by one, to fill our own. Once our twenty-two bowls are filled with gravy soaked meat—gravy we could have only dreamed of tasting on our fingertips just moments before—Louize speaks up again, her tone more humble.

“Sirs, your generosity has filled our empty stomachs and hearts. Our small fingers will work for the rest of the day with skill and speed because we have been nourished.”

The faces of the mayors light up brightly like the candles blazing around them. My gaze falls onto Sister Collette who is sitting across from me at the high table. She is staring at Louize, her back a straight plank and her hands gently quaking. I can’t tell if it’s anger or fear making her shake.

I struggle to keep my delight from taking hold of my limbs. My hands want to grab  something—a knife, a bowl, a tray—and toss it across the room towards one of the nuns or the auburn-haired man whose gaze is no longer fixed on me but directed at Louize. I am surprised at my ability to contain the impulse. The nuns have been right all along: there is power in self-control.

Sister Marguerite covers her face with a linen napkin in an attempt to mask her expression, but her eyes have become reflecting pools of rage and the intensified wrinkles in her forehead look like bottomless crevasses of spite. 

I sense her thoughts. She and the other nuns are the only mothers I’ve known so it comes easily. Where will the money come from to feed these girls properly? Will we have to go back to eating like them so we can feed us all? Who, who on earth, does this little wretch, Louize, think she is?

Despite the rabid tension in the room, provoked further by our half-smiles, the meal ends with a quiet prayer. Sister Collette resumes her composure and takes back her position as the head of the convent by offering it.

“Jesus, lead us to you, not with wine but with water, that we may understand the miracle of your compassion. Let us trust in the LORD for our daily bread and not stir strife.”

Over the next few days, we find out how serious the mayors are. A man comes by unannounced from the city magistrate’s office to ensure that our food portions have doubled. We listen attentively as his voice trails through the main entrance of the house, the courtyard, and back to the workroom.

“I was told by the honorable mayors that the girls are to be fed like you all. Three times a day,” he says, adding, “these girls, I should remind you, are our orphans and not just wayfaring children who are stranded here. We must be generous to our own people.

The nun says nothing we can hear, but the sisters can make themselves understood with a subservient smile or a compliant bow.

* * *

We have been fed well since the mayors’ visit but the sisters expect us to work harder than before. We are used to waking up before dawn but we have never risen just after midnight.

The sisters make us earn every kernel of salt, every spoonful of butter, every last bit of joy that we taste from their tureen. Evie, the youngest, can’t keep her head up after six straight hours of work so I let her sleep on my shoulder. If the sisters catch us they will make us both work longer.

“Louize is to blame for this workload,” Marie declares.

Louize continues her work without looking up. My tired, overfed gut moves me to blurt out.

“The sisters, not Louize, are responsible for the increase in our hours.” I drop the wooden bobbins from my hands and they land next to dozens of others on my pillow. “But there is a way to make this visible to the city’s magistrates.”

I have spent the last short nights thinking about how to expose the nuns.

“It’s likely we may find ourselves in a dungeon working day and night if we follow your suggestion,” Marie says, “but amuse us with your plan.”

“We stop eating entirely and refuse the stews and meats the nuns make us eat to fatten us up for the mayors. We will shrink into our former selves and on their next visit the mayors’ messengers will report our change of state.”

“Starve, don’t sleep and work all day? That’s a pitiful proposal,” Marie cries. Louize responds.

“Anna is right. If we stop eating, the sisters will have to listen to our wishes. The consequences of not following the orders of mayors will make them.”

A timid voice finds its way forward. It comes from Evie, whose little head has found a pillow on my shoulder in recent weeks. At just barely six, what could she possibly have to say?

“We should listen to Louize and Anna. The sisters can take away our sleep and our food but they cannot take us away from each other.”

We sit in silence until we grasp exactly what she means. How many girls have lived here before us and worked like we do to feed the sisters, the bishops and the magistrates whose city thrives off lace? How many more girls will find themselves sitting on these stools braiding lace until they’ve gone blind or worse?

“We are not the first nor shall we be the last,” I say.

The timid voice from my gut has been released. The girls who’ve lived here before us and those who will take our place once we’re gone mirror our terse existence. The power of our unity will keep us alive far longer than one meal or a restful night.

No one speaks another word the whole day, not because the sisters are watching us—there are always ways to escape them. There’s an understanding that we will retain what is ours, the flash of dignity that Louize has given us.

* * *

Over the next months at Maagdenhuis we starve and work like never before. The best of us take our last breath while the sisters watch, unperturbed and silent.

Louize, like always, is the first to go. She passes out sitting on her stool. We encircle her still body and find it soaked in a strange ethereal sweat that has saturated her dress and chair. It’s as if she’s been running a race against death’s hour. Her body is with us through the night. We cover her with the soft, French linen we use to make handkerchiefs. None of us cries but a salty liquid engulfs the tiny workroom.

I wail through clenched jaws when Evie slips away. Her death is so much like Leen’s which also happened on a cold mid-December night brightened by a full moon. The stars beamed like a thousand little fingers holding flickering candles in the sky, signaling a pathway to escape. When the stars fade, those of us left behind know that we will join them soon. Our promise not to relent remains as solid as it was the moment we realized what our lace fingers can do when they work as a hand.

* * *

Green crowns have formed around the warty heads of the knotted willows that line the square in front of Maagdenhuis. I stare at those green goblin heads through the arched dining hall windows, sipping my morning milk. Cream lines my mouth and throat while thick, fresh milk slides through me. We are not allowed to talk at the table since Louize spoke out so I can’t ask the others if they see what I do in the trees—if the frightening gnarled heads sprouting vivid green tentacles appear to them too. I’m too imaginative, I know. Even as a child, before I came here, when I did not need to envision realities different from my own, my mind showed me images of heavenly scenery—children, animals, all of God’s creatures wrapped in tender clouds of light. If my mood was grim, my visions were demonic beings rolling, galloping, catapulting themselves from their world into mine.

I hear a light tapping sound. It is Sister Collette’s walking stick. She is the only nun at the high table. The others have woken up before dawn, breakfasted and started working. The sisters informed us one morning that they would take over our lace work. A special gift with the finest craftsmanship, they said, was in order for the mayors and their men, who would be visiting soon. Once again they were gifting our house with a painting despite the steep climb in the price of flour, milk, and salt, which would be more helpful offerings.  

“I must get to the workroom, girls, the other sisters are already deep in their work,” the nun says as she raises herself up with her stick.

Sister Collette lumbers out with unnatural swiftness. The sisters keep more and more to themselves and let us do as we please as long as the light housecleaning they’ve assigned us gets done. Gone are the days when we must wake up before dawn and, despite the specter of inflation that surrounds us, supper remains plentiful. We are forbidden from coming too near the workroom. The sisters say they are easily disturbed by our movements and distractions might keep them from finishing their lacework on time.

Our uneasy truce resulted from an understanding between ourselves and the sisters. The city magistrates took aim at the nuns once they caught wind of our exhaustion, or, at least, that something was causing our work to suffer. One dark morning shortly before the season changed, we overheard banging on the door and the nasal, affected voice of a young man. Passing by the front door on my way to the workroom, I saw the boy with thick auburn curls who had eyed me at the mayors’ dinner.  

He pushed his way through the front door which had been partially opened by a nun who had just joined us. I jumped out of the way to avoid his gaze a second time.

“Let me in this instant!” he snarled, skipping over pleasant salutations and introductions once he was in the entry hall. “I have come on behalf of the mayors. Why did you not open the door at once?”

“I am terribly sorry, Sir, but I am new here and we are not used to gentlemen calling at this time of the morning. Please forgive me.”

I could just make out a tear as it rolled down the young woman’s face as she tried to mollify the man.

Then I watched as he pulled a long strip of unfinished lace from his pocket and held it up so closely to the young nun’s face that I doubt she could have seen it. 

“This lace is not of the quality that this house has been producing for years. You and your sisters should be ashamed of yourselves. The girls have to wake up too early. A new report produced by the office of Mayor van den Cruyce states that lack of sleep has been observed to be the new cause of their suffering.”

From her clueless expression, I gathered the nun knew nothing about the ongoing tensions between the city’s mayoral offices and the sisters.

“But, Sir, I was told that the winter light is extinguished early so the girls have little time to work. This is why we have begun to wake them earlier—so they have more time to work in the daylight,” the young nun explained earnestly.

“Rubbish, sister. You and the other nuns here have failed these girls and their talents and left it to us to ensure that there is a modicum of quality to their work. You should all be stripped of your vows and sent back to the peasant families and filthy orphanages from which you came.”

The young inspector’s words hit like a heavy stone in a motionless sea and reverberated through the orphanage. Sister Marguerite and Sister Collette were sitting with us in the workroom. Our eyes met theirs as a sharp ray of light shot through the tall rose-colored window behind them. Their silhouettes covered us like a long awaited embrace. The careless inspector’s words reminded us of the humble pasts that we shared at Maagdenhuis, nuns and orphans alike. Sister Marguerite and Sister Collette disappeared and the young man’s loud protestations turned into silence.

Whispering under the rhythmic knock of bobbins, I spoke to the other girls for the first time in weeks.

“The boy went too far. From his station our upbringing seems uncouth but I’ve locked eyes with him and seen that he is the one who is filthy. Not outwardly but in his mind. How can someone like him, who has never known hardship, dare to look down on those who he claims to do service for?”

No one said anything but there were nods. Some of the girls’ faces were tight and their brows furrowed in anger. For the first time ever, the girls of Maagdenhuis appeared to be siding with the sisters.

By the time Sister Marguerite and Collette rejoined us in the workroom we had decided to invite the sisters to pray with us. Having become the spokesperson of the group after Louize’s death, the others asked me to recite a prayer to signal our support for the nuns.

“Pray with us sisters,” I said before they sat down. To my surprise they remained standing so I began:

“Maria, heavenly mother of God, we offer ourselves to you that you may guide us through suffering caused by great men for the sake of greed and vanity. Our sisters show us the way towards salvation and mercy. Stich by stich they lead us from temptation and protect us from evil.”

I wasn’t sure the prayer made sense but the sisters and the others responded with a unified and resolute amen. The pushy town hall villain had unleashed our shared suffering with his insult. The sisters, I knew, would handle things their way in the future. 

* * *

The banquet hall is almost identical to how it looked when Louize started our silent uprising. The high table where the mayors, their entourages, and the older nuns sit is covered in an intricate lace tablecloth that will not survive the gravy stained mayor. Silver spoons, forks and knives of various sizes once again lay before them and crystal glasses are filled with purple wine. I search out the impish green eyes of the man who unknowingly brought our house together, intent on staring him down without fear, but find he’s gazing at another girl. She’s blushing like I was, hoping that he unlocks his gaze and lets her eat in peace. She escapes at the chime of the dinner bell, his appetite easily harnessed by a new distraction.

Unlike the last dinner for the mayors, the roast, tenderly simmering in a light brown broth, is ladled into our soup bowls right away. A nun stands at the end of the high table in front of a bone porcelain tureen. A rich perfume of blood and fat meets my nostrils, making my much widened stomach groan in anticipation. The nun holds a dazzling carving knife in her right hand. Sawing through the meat, the focus in her rust colored eyes reflects off the polished silver and for a moment she is Judith, sawing off the head of Holofernes. I’m so used to Judith hanging across from me that I still feel her spectral gaze upon me, although the painting was removed earlier in the afternoon. A new painting which stretches across the long chalk white wall of the dining room has been hung in its place.

“What could be a more appropriate gift for the house,” Mayor van den Cruyce says, “than a painting by one of our local masters of Christ’s last supper.”

The nuns smile their crooked smiles. Their clever eyes gleam. After the meal, Sister Collette stands up and makes a request.

“To repay you for your kindness to our orphanage, dear sirs, we sisters have made you and your attachés gifts to restore your faith in the quality of goods our house produces. May we use this moment to present you with the gifts?”

“Of course,” says the messy mayor of internal affairs. “We are honored to accept your work, especially since it has been made by the sisters.”

With that, four nuns disappear from the room and return within seconds carrying the most beautiful lace ever weaved at Maagdenhuis. Each sister comes back bearing a collar, carefully folded over a towel covering their wrists. I’m reminded momentarily of the wax covered gloves the sisters insisted on wearing in the workroom, but my attention is pulled back to the collars. Each one has a distinct and elegant design which I have never seen before.

“Please, dear sirs, we have designed each individual collar for you with your size, shape and character in mind. Please allow us to place them around your necks,” Sister Collette says. 

The nuns take their time demounting the collars which already adorn the men’s clothing. Fastidiously they attach the new collars to their supportasses, then stand back to admire their work once they are finished.

The nuns’ insistence that they work by themselves have distanced us from the lace work on the collars as does their technical perfection—they are far better than our best pieces, even Louize’s.

“Aren’t they the most splendid lace collars you have ever seen, Mayor van den Cruyce,” Sister Collette says in a moment of uncharacteristic pride.

“I must say, I don’t think I have ever seen a collar with such an exquisite lace trim. You have certainly gone out of your way.”

Sister Collette bows slightly and we imitate her gesture. The act finalizes the offering of our gift. Without a further word of thanks for the meal or their new accessories, the mayors and their attendees gather their things and leave the orphanage.

* * *

Sunlight spills through arched windows as we butter our bread and drink our morning milk. Hesitant knocks distract us from our meal. Ears align and eyes angle towards the front door. A male voice, one we’ve never heard before, becomes distinct.

“Yes, a strange plague. First it was Mayor van den Cruyce. It is said that he complained of stomach pain and vomited much. He developed abrasions on his skin. His death was not sudden nor without pain. The others followed with similar symptoms. You must take precautions here as this was their last social call before they became ill. You will have to quarantine in the convent for a month or longer.”

“Oh, sir, what terrible news. We have not had even a sniffle here let alone signs of a plague,” says the young nun, adding, “we will pray for the mayors and their attendants so that their souls might reach salvation swiftly.”

We peer at the sisters sitting at the high table. Their eyes remain lowered but, curiously, their crow’s feet fold upwards and the tips of their lips raise slightly in the distinct shape of a smile. 

I look around the room, nervously at first, but I see the other girls are starting to smile too. And for the first time since the deaths of Evie and Louise, I let go of my composure. As I do, my cheeks rise up to make room for my lips which curl upwards towards the sky. The dining hall, strict and somber, is ablaze with the grinning faces of us all. 

About the author

Sara Atwater lives and writes in Brussels, Belgium. She has a Bachelor’s degree in English and German from UC Berkeley. She completed an MPhil in Education at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom and taught secondary school English and German for a short lifetime. She is currently finishing an ethnographic PhD on feminist comedy and cabaret in German speaking countries at the University of Maastricht. Her literary work has been published in the 16th Edition of the Delmarva Review and the Argyle Literary Magazine (forthcoming). 

About the illustration

The illustration is a photograph of Flemish lace, early 18th century. In the collection of The Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, USA. In the public domain.