In 1298, Bishop Jan Smet of Tournai reviews his situation with his accountant. Crusade revenues are poor, and relic sales are dubious; one buyer demands a refund for a relic that failed to cure his gout. Jan dismisses the complaint, instructs the accountant to swap the item for one of several kneecaps attributed to Saint Ursula, and orders him to tax moneylenders through indulgences.

Jan reflects sourly on threats to his authority: A rising merchant class now questions the Church; wandering friars, led by his younger brother, Lukas, stoke popular piety; and unsupervised beguine communities have become a menace to his authority. He hopes a promotion to cardinal in Rome will remove him from these problems. He summons Willems, a former actor hired after Jan watched him play Lucifer, who now serves as his spy and enforcer. Willems has obtained a psalm that has been translated into Dutch and that was circulating in the city market. Jan orders him to gather all such documents and identify the translator. He plans a public burning impressive enough to secure the pope’s favor.

Cecilia shows Aleys the plain dormitory—a shared room with a cot, chair, and bare kneeling stand for each woman—and Aleys despairs of finding a private place to pray. Cecilia, who arrived after her father expelled her from home, asks why Aleys would abandon a wealthy marriage. Aleys deflects. Cecilia introduces the communal servant, Marte, a weary woman with a bruised cheek and a limp who fled an abusive husband. Now, Marte works to earn her keep.

After Cecilia returns to her duties, Aleys listens to the other women tell the legend of Sister Beatrice—a nun who eloped with a knight, spent seven years in a brothel while praying daily to the Virgin Mary, and returned to find that Mary’s statue had filled her place and performed all her duties undetected. The begijnhof bell rings for chapel just as the story ends and Aleys is left feeling entirely alone, wondering how she will ever find God in this place.

Lukas visits his brother, Jan, at the bishop’s manor to request a house for a new Franciscan sisterhood, with Aleys as its first member. The bishop mocks him and declines to meet Aleys but offers a conditional deal: If Lukas can introduce him to two women converted to the Franciscans by Aleys, he will consider providing them with a house.

During a spare supper, Katrijn reads scripture in Latin while the beguines eat in near silence. Aleys notices a severe, quiet young woman nearby: Ida. After the others leave, Aleys takes broth from an abandoned bowl; Marte catches her and offers bread, which Aleys refuses from shame.

In the workroom that evening, Cecilia reads aloud from a parchment written in plain Dutch. It’s the story of Mary Magdalene washing Christ’s feet. Shocked to hear scripture in her own language, Aleys can’t stop herself from supplying the word “Pharisee” when Cecilia stumbles. The correction draws quiet disapproval. Later, Sophia finds Aleys alone in the dark courtyard and warns her that the Dutch translations must never be mentioned outside the compound—the translator’s safety depends on secrecy. She then gives Aleys a single piece of advice: Try to be simple. Aleys finds it insufficient.

On a June day, Bishop Jan receives a papal legate in Brugge, hoping the visit means a promotion to cardinal. After Mass, the legate immediately produces a Dutch translation of the Gospel of Matthew purchased openly in the city market. Following a silent signal from Willems, Jan feigns ignorance. The legate warns that translations seed heresy and momentarily drops his composure, asking whether anyone truly can communicate directly with God, before recovering and ordering Jan to identify and prosecute the translators. A bishop who cannot suppress heresy in his diocese, he warns, becomes expendable.

After nearly two months, Aleys has recruited no one. Marte refuses her approach immediately, and Cecilia proves interested only in Rolf, the brewer’s apprentice, rather than religious life. Sophia then assigns Aleys to work at Sint-Janshospitaal with Ida. Inside, Aleys freezes when a desperate woman begs for help. Ida rebukes her sharply and tells her to pray aloud. While watching Ida minister with calm competence, Aleys accepts that she will never recruit her.

By Midsummer, Aleys finds the beguines’ steady faith too restrained. On the solstice evening, the women gather in the church with musicians; the younger beguines dance while the older women clap and shout encouragement. Afterward, the usually silent Ida stands and sings in a pure voice, performing a call-and-response from the Song of Songs with Cecilia. The beauty overwhelms Aleys. She understands that the beguines yearn for God just as she does and that she has gravely underestimated them.

On a Sunday, Lukas celebrates Mass and asks Sophia about Aleys’s progress. Sophia directly says that Aleys is well educated but lacks charisma. After the service, Aleys confirms that she has recruited no one and proposes preaching in town like the friars. Lukas forbids it. When Aleys invokes Saint Clare, he corrects her: Clare was enclosed in a convent, not a wandering companion of Francis. While watching her glance with longing toward the other beguines, Lukas fears he may lose her to them. He urges her to hold fast to her Franciscan calling and promises to pray for guidance.

Aleys asks to read at the evening gathering. As Katrijn hands her the parchment, Aleys notices stained fingernails and a writer’s callus on Katrijn’s right hand and immediately concludes that Katrijn is the translator. This explains both her wariness and her close, protective relationship with Sophia.

Aleys reads the parable of the mustard seed while Katrijn listens intently. Afterward, Ida explains Katrijn’s motivation: She produces three copies of each translation, one for the community, one for circulation among townspeople, and one for her deaf father so that he won’t be cut off from scripture before he dies. Aleys then asks Sophia’s permission to help translate. Sophia refuses: The Franciscans are already under papal scrutiny, and involving them would endanger the entire order. When Aleys presses about her own purpose, Sophia counsels patience, saying that God will call out her gift when the time comes.

Katrijn takes Aleys and Ida to the canal quay to buy English fleece. A pale man in a black velvet cap approaches and, upon learning that Aleys is a Franciscan sister, condescendingly questions whether she intends to lecture women in Latin. Stung, Aleys reveals that both Sophia Vermeulen and Katrijn Janssens read Latin fluently.

When Katrijn calls her away, the man vanishes. Shortly after, while inspecting a sack of wool, Aleys spots him across the plaza tracking a shopkeeper who seems to be approaching their stall. Katrijn identifies him as the bishop’s spy who has been acquiring Dutch translations. Realizing that Aleys spoke with him, Katrijn quickly removes a piece of parchment from Ida’s basket and conceals it up her own sleeve. She then forces Aleys to carry the purchased sacks as they walk briskly from the plaza, with the spy watching their backs.

Jan visits the mayor at his city house and secures a convent place for the mayor’s daughter, creating a debt of favor. He then raises the matter of Dutch translations, saying that the pope has ordered him to find the source. The mayor, initially feigning ignorance, warns that trials and executions would be bad for trade. When Jan suggests that the beguines are responsible, the mayor names Katrijn directly and then warns that she’s a protected member of the drapers’ guild, so harming her would cost Jan significant guild and city revenue. Jan agrees to leave Katrijn alone but implies that another woman in the begijnhof could serve as an example instead.

Lukas finds the beguines visibly frightened during Mass. Sophia, Katrijn, and Ida tell him afterward that the bishop’s man has been trailing them. Lukas knows the cause: He has tolerated and even privately admired the translations, giving only token penances for them.

He confronts his brother, who makes the transaction explicit: Hand over one person as a heretic in exchange for a house for the Franciscan sisterhood. Lukas refuses. Jan states that he cannot touch Katrijn because the guild shields her, but unless Lukas selects one of the two other educated women in the begijnhof—Sophia or Aleys—Jan will take both.

The begijnhof operates under heightened caution—Marte stands watch, and readings are shortened but not stopped. Aleys, permanently assigned to the hospital, grows to deeply respect the beguines’ matter-of-fact approach to the dying. A gravely ill girl resembling Aleys’s sister, Griete, arrives, and as the child fades, Aleys witnesses a moment of profound clarity in the girl’s eyes—a wordless certainty of the soul’s continuance.

That evening, Sophia joins Aleys praying alone in the chapel and speaks of her own early intensity of faith. This has now settled into something quieter. Sophia tells Aleys that loving God requires also being willing to suffer with him. Alone again, Aleys enters deep meditation and follows Jesus through his last night in Gethsemane. She feels his grief, his physical fear, and his love for all created things and understands that his love and his vulnerability are inseparable. For a moment, through the opening of that fear, she glimpses the full scope of the divine.

Lukas walks to the shore to contemplate his brother’s ultimatum. The choice between Sophia and Aleys feels impossible. He dwells on Judas: If the betrayal was foreordained and woven into God’s design, he wonders whether Judas—or he himself—ever truly had a choice.

At the hospital, Aleys is left to pray over a boy who is dying from an infected head wound. She repeats the Ave Maria until the words carry her into a trance. She sees a vision of the boy standing in golden light, with three sparrows rising from his chest. When it clears, the boy is sitting up and alert, his wound nearly gone. Other patients immediately cry for her help, but the sensation in her hands has gone.

News moves through Brugge that a healer lives in the begijnhof. Crowds gather at the gate. When Aleys wakes in the begijnhof infirmary, she has only fragments of memory and learns that the boy dressed and walked out before anyone thought to stop him. Alone, the strange power in her hands has been replaced by a painful throbbing. She concludes that the city is hungry for miracles.

Lukas hears from his fellow Franciscans that Aleys healed a dying patient. While walking through the Markt, he’s surrounded by a crowd demanding to see their new saint, feeling simultaneously envious of the attention she has drawn and desperate for the miracle to be real.

At the begijnhof, he summons Aleys to the church and confronts her—ordering her to deny the event while privately hoping she won’t. She says that she doesn’t know what happened. He loses control, grabs her, and shakes her. When he forces her clenched fists open, he feels an intense buzzing centered where crucifixion wounds would be; a shock travels up his arms, and he releases her, now fully convinced. He shouts in joy. Aleys weeps because the sensation is gone.

Lukas reassures her that grace will return and dismisses her question about choice. As he considers the need to manage her doubt, he realizes that the miracle may resolve his dilemma with Jan. He ends the encounter with a command: It is God’s will, and Aleys must believe.