Excerpt from Mirabilis by Susann Cokal, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Of course the magistrate took Agathe's breasts anyway," I continue as I hand over a flagon of that water, "and he served them to her on a platter, before stripping off the rest of her clothes and rolling her on a bed of hot coals. But then God sent an earthquake to scare the magistrate away before lifting Agathe into heaven."

There is a scraping sound. Wordlessly Marie passes me her chamberpot, an earthenware basin sticky on the outside with the mist's humidity. I catch the wet gleam of Marie's eyes in the darkness and think that if she were capable of making a joke, this would be it. She's saying, This is what I give for your notions of holiness, Bonne Tardieu.

Almost laughing, I finish my story: "Now the blessed Agathe, virgin martyr, protects women who breast-feed--none of whom, I promise you, can lay claim to her chastity." It is my own way of jesting, a joke on myself.

I look into the basin. Three days' excretion amounts to a splash in the bottom, nothing more. This shallow chamberpot, as my mother once explained, is the measure of Marie's sin. When the recluse was first sitting in her cell, watching the walls grow around her, she told the crowd that when she's clean in spirit God will stop moving her bowels. She expects, perhaps, that then her basin will brim over with roses, as another bowl did for a Hungarian queen who was later sainted. But Saint Elisabeth was giving table scraps to the poor--offering what might enter the body rather than what surely leaves it.

In silence Marie puts her hand to the slit, and I lean forward. Then suddenly there's a great splash! in the bowl, and the front of my dress is soaked.

"Pox!" I can't help but shout. These are my best clothes.

Marie has tossed me a toad, the one I heard croaking just now. His long legs thrash the mucky water, but he can't do any worse. Holding my breath, I fish him out.

"You've given us both a bath," I say to Marie, quite calm; and then, to the toad now quietly trembling in my hand, "You called and called, but what you fell into was somewhat less pleasant than air."

Marie offers nothing further. I set the toad down and watch him hop flail-limbed away.

I have to empty the basin off holy ground, so back through the atrium I tiptoe with it, feeling frozen earth through the new hole in my shoe. Before me, on the walls of the old priests' residence, images of pain and death mock my careful journey. The patients of ten years ago carved a danse macabre wherever there was wood--a line of staring skulls and twisted bones that cover the cross-timbers and lintels and sills. Perhaps each man who could hold a knife hoped his work would trick fate--postpone the buboes' bursting, the brain's burning, the helpless convulsions that were the model for carving. The bones of those long-ago patients sometimes reach up through the soil, and when they do I sort them into piles; but there are none today. Beneath my feet I feel the bones instead pull back in resentment of me, the bastard. They ask who I am to be walking here on two healthy legs with my bowl of sin.

Now that I'm safely far away, Marie speaks again. "When God grows tired of winter's sheath, he grinds the ice between his teeth. He breaks it down and in his pain he sends it forth in pouring rain . . ." From somewhere, the toad croaks again.

Then comes a crack! that shakes the earth. Suddenly I'm on my knees. The sky is tearing itself open, white light slashing from side to side, crackling, burning, while thunder roars like Judgment Day. There's a taste of blood in my mouth--I must have bitten my tongue--and I realize I've dropped Marie's basin to cover my head with my arms.

I shout, "Holy Virgin!" and the air shimmers silver.

Cold and shining, at the cross between ice and water, the white rain pelts me drop after drop; glints over cloak and skirt, bounces on hard earth before melting a path inside. It drips off the bone piles like sweat. It drips from the walls like tears. The thunder meanwhile shakes into my marrow and lifts me onto my feet.

Reprinted from Mirabilis by Susann Cokal by permission of Blue Hen, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. Copyright (c) 2001 by Susann Cokal. All rights reserved. This excerpt, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.