Never, Giulia thought, turning her face away so Madre Damiana would not see what was in her eyes.
“You are welcome among us, Giulia Borromeo, by God’s grace.” Madre Damiana reached out her right hand, the one with the signet ring, and placed it briefly against Giulia’s cheek. “My door is open to you always, as it is to every sister of this community.”
She left the dormitory, back straight, staff tapping.
Giulia waited a few minutes, until she was sure the abbess was gone. Then she reached under her gown and pulled out a sheaf of drawings, the ones she’d brought with her from Milan. She’d removed them this morning from her mother’s cedar box and secured them against her body with her belt. From her belt-pouch, she took the talisman, the little pouch with her horoscope fragment, and her sketchbook, full of the sketches she had done on the journey.
She looked around. Where could she hide everything? Inside the mattress? At the bottom of the Countess’s trousseau chest? But there might be snoops among the novices, and for all she knew the nuns prodded the mattresses and searched the chests on a regular basis. Maybe a loose floor stone? She scuffed about, but the flagstones were solid. The whitewashed plaster walls were equally unhelpful—no holes, no cracks.
That left only one possibility. She crossed to the fireplace, swept clean of ashes for the summer. It was large enough for her to crouch inside. She reached up, feeling with her hands, trying to dislodge as little soot as possible. After a moment she found something, a spot where the brick had crumbled, making a kind of shelf that was large enough to hold the talisman, her horoscope fragment, and the sketchbook. She hated to be parted from the talisman, even briefly, but there was no other way.
The hiding place would be good only for as long as summer lasted. But that doesn’t matter, she told herself firmly. Come winter, I’ll be gone.
She ducked out of the fireplace, cleaning her sooty hands on the inside of her skirt. That left the sheaf of drawings from Milan. She undid some of the stitching at the head of her mattress, knotting the severed threads so the hole wouldn’t open farther, and stuffed them inside. It wasn’t ideal, but it was the best she could manage.
She took the sheets from the trousseau chest and made her bed as the abbess had ordered. She got the sandals out as well, placing them on top of the pile of novice clothing. She tried not to think of the cedar box with her mother’s things inside it, given away or thrown away, gone forever, like the topaz necklace. She had nothing of her mother now, except her memories and the drawings hidden in the mattress.
“Oh Mama,” she whispered.
Her throat ached with unshed tears. But she was afraid to cry, afraid that if she yielded, even a little, the awful panic would return and swallow her whole.
Since there was nothing else to do, she sat down on the bed to wait. The hateful walls pressed in. Silence sang inside her ears.
It’s not for always. Soon I will be free.
CHAPTER 6
False Oaths
“Giulia. Giulia Borromeo.”
An unfamiliar voice was calling Giulia’s name. She bolted upright in sudden fear. For a moment she couldn’t remember where she was. But then she saw the white-robed nun, standing at the foot of the bed, and realized that, without meaning to, she had fallen asleep.
“Come, girl. Get up, get up at once.” The nun was a slender, middle-aged woman who might have been pretty if not for her tight-pursed mouth and the frown lines between her eyes. She stood pillar-straight, her black veil falling in symmetrical folds, her hands tucked into her wide sleeves. “We do not sleep during the day at Santa Marta, indeed we do not. The night is for sleeping and the day is for working, and we don’t confuse the two.”
“I’m sorry.” Giulia stood.
“What on Earth have you done to your novice clothes? Pick them up, pick them up at once!” Somehow, the garments had fallen to the floor. Giulia bent to gather them. “No, no, no! Not like that, all wadded up! Fold them properly. When we make order with our hands, our minds follow, and an ordered mind is a door closed on the devil. I’m Suor Margarita, the novice-mistress,” the nun continued. “I’ll have charge of you for the next year and a half, until you take your final vows. We will get on well, you and I, if you remember that a novice’s first duty is to learn, and her second is to obey.”
“Yes, Suor,” Giulia murmured. She had finished folding the clothes, and held them, with the sandals, clutched to her chest.
“Good, good. Now, here is what you may expect at your ceremony. Madre Damiana will ask you your name, which you will tell her. Then she will ask why you have come to Santa Marta, to which you will reply, ‘For God’s grace and my salvation.’”
Suor Margarita pursed her lips and waited.
“For God’s grace and my salvation,” Giulia repeated. She felt numb, as if she hadn’t woken.
“Next she will ask you several questions, which you will answer honestly, in fear of God Who sees and hears all. Then you will be clothed and sworn. After that, you’ll have time to get acquainted with the other girls. There’s an hour of recreation before bedtime. Novices must keep the Little Silence during the day—that is, they may not speak unless spoken to—and all of us keep the Great Silence at night, when speech is entirely forbidden. But during the recreation hour, conversation is allowed.”
“Yes, Suor. Suor, may I ask a question?”
“You may.”
“Will I have to cut my hair?”
The nun’s brows shot up again. “I can see you suffer from the sin of vanity, Giulia Borromeo. We shall have to do something about that, indeed we shall.”
“I’m sorry, Suor, it’s not that, it’s just…I’d like to know what to expect.”
“A novice who aspires to perfect obedience need not trouble herself with expectations,” Suor Margarita said, but then seemed to relent. “No, at Santa Marta we do not cut our novices’ hair. Not until they take final vows and receive their religious names.”
Well, that’s something, anyway. Giulia had thought of this while she was waiting, a horrible possibility she hadn’t considered before—for what man would want a shorn-headed wife?
“Ready now? Good, good. Come along.”
Suor Margarita led the way briskly out of the novice wing and along the torchlit corridors. They arrived at last in a paved courtyard with a fountain at its center. Beyond the fountain, a little chapel was tucked against the wall, its door flung open. The sun had begun to set, drowning the court in shadow; against the dimness, the chapel’s candle-shimmering interior glowed gold.
Suor Margarita entered the chapel without pausing, but Giulia halted on the threshold, astonished yet again by unexpected beauty. The chapel was like a jewel box, with a glossy marble floor, walls paneled in polished wood, and a gleaming gilded ceiling. A crucifix hung above an altar draped in gold-embroidered velvet; nearby, a pedestal supported a life-sized wooden sculpture of Madonna and Child, dressed in real garments of silk and cloth-of-gold. The fat white candles burning in silver candelabra made the whole space slippery with light.
“Come, girl.”
Suor Margarita gripped Giulia’s arm, urging her toward the altar, where Madre Damiana stood waiting, her crooked staff in her hand.
“Welcome, postulant.” The candlelight was kind to the abbess’s hawkish features. “Set down what you carry.”
Giulia laid the novice clothing by her feet.
“Before God, postulant, declare your name.”
“Giulia Borromeo.” It came out as a whisper.
“Before God, why have you come to this house of prayer and contemplation?”
Because I was forced to it. “For…for God’s grace and my salvation.”
“Before God, are you free of bond, debt, or obligation to another?”
“Yes.”
“Before God, are you free of madness, melancholy, or disease?”
“Yes.”
“Then today and in the sight of God, we will effect your entry into the novitia
te of Santa Marta, receiving your vows and bestowing on you the habit of our community. Who stands witness to this sacred passage?”
“I do,” Suor Margarita said.
“Postulant Giulia Borromeo, remove your clothes.”
Giulia obeyed, unfastening her shoes, unbelting her dress, pulling her chemise over her head. She folded each garment neatly as she took it off, piling them all beside the novice clothing. She stood exposed and naked under Madre Damiana’s unblinking regard. Instinctively, she crossed her arms over her breasts.
“Kneel,” Madre Damiana said.
The marble was hard under Giulia’s knees. Though it was not cold, she was shivering.
“O mighty God,” Madre Damiana said, “accept this girl who seeks to pledge her life to You, to become the bride of Your holy Son, Jesus Christ. She has put off her secular garments and comes to You in her skin, for naked we are born into the profane world, and naked we must be when we are reborn to the sacred world. Giulia, give me your hands.”
The abbess laid her staff on the floor and reached to take Giulia’s icy fingers in her own.
“Giulia Borromeo, do you swear yourself to poverty, chastity, and obedience in the novitiate of Santa Marta?”
“Yes,” Giulia said through chattering teeth, because it was not possible to say anything else. But inside herself, with every ounce of will, she cried No!
“Do you swear yourself to work, prayer, and contemplation in the novitiate of Santa Marta?”
“Yes.” Oh, God forgive me, no, no, no!
“It is well.” The abbess released Giulia’s hands and reached into her pocket, producing a small silver flask. “I mark you now with consecrated oil as a sign of your pledge.” She moistened her thumb with the contents of the flask and traced a cross on Giulia’s forehead. “Rise, novice Giulia, and put on your new clothes.”
Giulia stumbled as she got to her feet; Suor Margarita steadied her. With shaking hands she pulled on the coarse linen chemise and the rough gray dress, kneeling again to tie on the sandals from the Countess’s trousseau chest. Suor Margarita helped her with the white kerchief, wrapping it around her head and knotting the ends so that no hair showed.
“You are welcome among us.” Madre Damiana drew Giulia close and set a kiss upon her cheek. “Go now to your duties.”
Giulia followed Suor Margarita into the convent’s kitchen, a cavernous space crammed with stoves, racks of pots and pans and crockery, and several long tables where white-veiled nuns, their sleeves tied back and their habits swathed in aprons, were preparing food. It was as hot as an oven, but the smells were delicious, and Giulia remembered that she hadn’t eaten since the morning.
“Sit there.” Suor Margarita pointed to a bench in the corner. “I must go sing Vespers and then bring my novices to supper, but I’ll be back to fetch you after that. I’ll see you’re brought something to eat.”
She bustled off. One of the nuns brought over a bowl of lamb and olive stew and a hunk of fresh bread, offering it silently but with a smile. Giulia devoured it. Watching the busy scene before her, she thought miserably of the false oaths she had just sworn, in sight of God, before the Cross. Another lie to add to the many she had told since she learned she was to be sent away, another sin to increase the ones she already carried. Through the scents of the kitchen, she could still smell the oil with which the abbess had marked her, heavy-sweet and musty. She pulled the hanging sleeve of her novice habit over her hand and scrubbed at her forehead, scrubbing and scrubbing until her skin felt sore.
By the time Suor Margarita returned, cauldrons of water had been set to boil, and the kitchen workers were bringing in trays stacked with dirty dishes. Giulia followed the novice mistress through the maze of corridors. The day seemed like a long nightmare that would not end.
The sound of voices rose as they neared the dormitory. Inside, in a flicker of candlelight that made the space no more cheerful, girls sat in groups on the beds or stood at the windows, talking, laughing, playing games.
“Girls, girls!” Suor Margarita clapped her hands.
The talk ceased. They all turned to look: ten pairs of eyes in ten watchful faces, ten bodies clad in identical gray gowns, ten heads wrapped in identical white kerchiefs.
“This is Giulia Borromeo, all the way from Milan. I know you’ll do everything you can to make her welcome and help her learn our ways. Give Giulia a nice greeting, please!”
“Hello, Giulia,” they chorused. Giulia, uneasy under so many eyes, nodded.
“Good, good. Now go in, Giulia, and meet your new friends.” Suor Margarita gave Giulia a little push. “Alessia, you are in charge.”
“Yes, Suor Margarita,” said one of the girls in the group by the window.
The novice mistress’s brisk footsteps receded down the hall. Most of the novices were already turning back to their interrupted activities, but the girls by the window still stared, their expressions unwelcoming, as Giulia crossed to her bed.
On the neighboring mattress, two novices were playing some sort of game.
“Hello,” said one of them, a pretty girl of about sixteen, with dark curls escaping from her kerchief. The other, the same age or perhaps a little younger, covered her mouth and giggled. “Watch out,” she whispered, her eyes moving beyond Giulia to something at her back.
Giulia turned. The girl Suor Margarita had put in charge of the dormitory had detached herself from her friends.
“I’m Alessia,” she said, her tone conveying the extreme importance of this information, and her extreme condescension in providing it. She looked older than the others, perhaps nineteen, with a prominent jaw and crooked teeth. She stood with her hands folded into her sleeves, like Suor Margarita. “I’m the senior novice here. By God’s grace, I take my vows at year’s end.”
“And we can’t wait,” one of the game-players muttered.
Alessia shot her a dagger look, then returned her attention to Giulia. “Are you to be a choir nun, new girl, or a conversa?”
“I’m sorry,” Giulia said. “I don’t know what those are.”
“A choir nun is a noblewoman,” Alessia said in a patient voice, as if Giulia were a small and very stupid child. “We wear the black veil, and say the Holy Offices, and hold the positions of authority. A conversa is a commoner. They wear the white veil, and do the servants’ work.”
“I don’t know which I am. No one told me.”
Alessia sighed. “Surely you know whether you’re noble or common.”
Giulia felt the stresses of the long day flare abruptly into anger. “My father was Count Federico di Assulo Borromeo of Milan,” she snapped. “My mother was a seamstress in his household. So why don’t you tell me, if you can, whether I am noble or common?”
“Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it.” Alessia’s lip curled. “I knew you were too coarse to be noble, with that big nose of yours.”
“My nose is from my father. That’s one part of me that is noble beyond a doubt.”
A flush had risen to Alessia’s cheeks, visible even in the dim candlelight. “You’ll have to do something about your pride, new girl, if you want to get along here. We don’t like girls who have ideas above their station.”
She turned on her heel and stalked back to her friends. Beside Giulia, the game-players were snickering.
“Coarse indeed,” said the one who’d said hello. “She should talk, with her ugly horse-face.”
“You’re in for it now,” said the other. She was as homely as her friend was pretty, with small mistrustful eyes. “She’s not used to being talked back to.”
“I’m Isotta,” said the pretty one. “That’s Bice. We’re conversae too.”
“I’m Giulia.”
“We know,” Isotta said. “You can join our game, if you want.”
Later, after Suor Margarita had returned to supervise the removing of habits, the saying of prayers, and the blowing out of candles, Giulia lay on her back, staring up at the shadowed ceiling. The window shutters had be
en opened to let in the cool night air; if she tipped back her head, she could see, through the window above her bed, a slice of sky dusted with pinpoint stars.
Exhausted as she was, she couldn’t fall asleep in this unfamiliar place. For nearly all her life, she’d felt alone among the people who surrounded her. Now she was alone in a different way—alone among strangers. She had always felt she did not belong at Palazzo Borromeo, but at least it had been home. At least there had been two people who loved her. She pictured Annalena’s face, and Maestro’s. She thought, as she hadn’t for a long time, of the way her mother used to smooth her hair back before she slept.
The tears she’d fought all day came at last. She buried her face in her hard pillow so the others wouldn’t hear.
CHAPTER 7
A Small Blue Flame
The bell for Prime began to ring just after dawn, joining other bells in monasteries and nunneries all over Padua. Prime was the third of the eight Holy Offices, or prayer services, that gave structure to the monastic day, but at Santa Marta the nuns had a special dispensation to combine it with Matins and Lauds, the two night Offices, so they weren’t forced to get up twice in the middle of the night.
The bells brought Giulia awake, and to the knowledge, like a stone pressing on her chest, that four weeks had passed and she was still a prisoner at Santa Marta.
She got out of bed. Around her in the half-light of early morning, the other novices yawned, stretched, and rubbed their eyes. Suor Margarita came bustling in, clapping her hands, the signal for the girls to line up at the washbasin. Alessia, closest to her final vows, was first, while Giulia, the most recently arrived, brought up the rear. Not much water remained by the time her turn came, the other girls having splashed much of it out onto the floor. She washed her face, neck, and hands, then returned to her bed and took her scratchy novice dress out of the trousseau chest where she folded it at night.
Pulling it on over her chemise, she was aware of the talisman against her skin. She had retrieved it, along with the pouch that held her horoscope fragment, the night after her arrival, counting slowly to a thousand after the candles were blown out, then slipping out of bed and creeping to the fireplace, dreading all the while that one of the girls would wake. She could wear the pouch and talisman in safety, for they were hidden by the high neck of her chemise. There was no danger of anyone glimpsing them when she was undressing either—except for the vestition ceremony, no one at Santa Marta ever saw anyone else unclothed. A novice slept in her chemise, washed without taking it off, and changed it once a week by putting a new chemise over her head while unlacing the old one and letting it slip over her shoulders and fall at her feet.
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