by Sarah Dunant
She opens her mouth a little, moving her tongue around her blistered lips. No, she did not escape, did not find a way to get free after all. She looks at Zuana, then out across the room. They are all here, this family with whom she must now live until she dies, until the white hairs grow on her chin and her skin shrivels up like old leather, each and every drop of juice squeezed out of her.
Except she is not dead yet.
“I saw Him,” she says, so softly that the voice barely reaches those inside the room. “Yes, I do think I saw Him.”
“Oh, but it is a miracle.” In contrast, Suora Umiliana’s voice carries far out into the courtyard beyond.
PART THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
IN THEIR RESPECTIVE cells, Zuana and Serafina sleep their way through the first days of Lent. The cleansing of the city continues around them. It rains so much that the gutters and the gargoyle mouths cannot keep up with the flow, and the cloisters run with filthy streams. The water seeps under the doors of the cells, and the hems of the sisters’ habits grow sodden as they walk. Even the convent cats retreat indoors, curling themselves inside the warm wood of the choir stalls, to be shooed away at the beginning of every office.
The Murano glass goblets and the ceramic plates are packed back into their dowry chests; the dresses, boots, and wigs are returned to their owners; and the sounds of the stage being dismantled are nowhere near as thrilling as those of its construction. In the kitchens the roasting and the baking pans are shelved, and the sisters contemplate their first fasts, encouraged, no doubt, by the prevailing aromas of boiling vegetables and watery soups.
It is a time for quiet contemplation and considered abstinence. Yet no one is downhearted. Far from it. While Lent usually brings a sense of anticlimax, this year it has been replaced by a bubbling excitement. In the aftermath of the revelation in the novice’s cell, something is happening in the convent. Everyone, novices as well as sisters, is praying more (what else is there to do?), and there is a building anticipation toward the coming chapter meeting.
The girl is cared for by Letizia and her old conversa, who clean the cell around her and, on the orders left by Suora Zuana, hang the leftover pomades from the refectory to freshen the air. When she finally wakes, too weak to walk, Federica brings the kitchen to her. Novices are not required to fast during Lent (it is not recommended for any nun under the age of twenty-five), but though Federica has saved tidbits from the last of the feast, Serafina eats almost nothing. The illness has hollowed out any appetite, and it would be better if she took some sustenance, but she is adamant and refuses everything but liquid. When visited by Suora Umiliana, she begs that she may be allowed to take confession in preparation for the host. The novice mistress, in turn, speaks to the abbess. It is hardly a request that anyone can deny her. As she is clearly too ill to go to Father Romero, he comes to her. It is a while since he has set foot in the cloisters, and the abbess sees to it that he has a flask of wine to sustain him on his long journey. He stays inside her cell for some time. It is a matter for conjecture whether or not he remains awake for all of it.
As he leaves, Madonna Chiara stands watching him pad across the cloisters, a conversa holding up a covering to keep him from the worst of the rain. Whatever he has just heard, he cannot tell and she will not ask. She wonders how long it will be until he dies. He barely remembers any of the sisters’ names, anyway.
The abbess folds her hands and gives a little sigh. She has a busy few weeks in front of her. Whatever work Carnival entails, there is always more to be done afterward: account books to be checked, outgoings to be set against offerings, supplies to be reordered, and letters of thanks to be written. Her attention had been elsewhere when the “wondrous event” in Serafina’s cell took place, so that by the time she arrived it was already over and she could only hear about it secondhand.
She has no illusions, however, as to its possible importance. Lent is a period when traditionally the convent falls back on its own resources, spiritual as well as material, and any abbess must be alive to the undercurrents and tensions that might surface. Having lived for thirty-seven of her forty-three years inside Santa Caterina, there is not much about her convent and its sisters of which Madonna Chiara is not aware, and even without the extended drama of the novice or the reemergence of Suora Magdalena, Umiliana’s challenge to her authority has been building for some time. With the outside world taken care of— relationship with the bishop good, the benefactors fed and entertained, and a good list of requests for new entrants, with dowry offers to be negotiated upward if demand continues to be so healthy—it is time to look inward.
IN HER CELL, given dispensation to miss the morning offices, Zuana finally wakes during the afternoon work hour. Her sleep has been deep and dreamless. She washes in a bowl of warm water, which one of the converse has delivered outside her door along with a new pad of rich-smelling soap and a fresh washing towel. As her own dowry is not sufficient to fund such regular luxuries, she understands this to be a gift from the convent stores and is grateful for it. The smell of the girl’s bodily expulsions still clings to her and she washes herself vigorously. She takes special pleasure—yes, she accepts the word—in lathering up the soap on her head. Her hair has grown during the winter months and she likes the wet weight of it, the shiver of massage as her fingers move over her scalp. She leaves her head bare as she uses the cloth to wash her arms and then her body under her shift.
Working as she does in the infirmary, she is less of a stranger to women’s bodies than most nuns, but in general she takes little interest in her own. Of course there have been moments in her life when she has wondered what it is she will never feel, even once or twice explored her own dark sweetness, but her battles with the flesh have proved to be, at most, passing cravings, absorbed and subdued as much by the challenges of work as the discipline of prayer.
The soap is soft on her skin and lathers up like sea foam. She can detect a hint of almond and calendula within it—perhaps it comes from the abbess’s own stores—and registers a quiet delight in the way the smell and the softness complement each other.
She understands that the fight with the flesh is not always so easy for others. Serafina is far from the only young woman to have brought her virginity to Jesus while in the grip of desire for a more carnal husband. Of course there are ways to earth such lightning bolts. Over the years there have been nights when, unable to sleep because of some problem or remedy she has detected a sudden wind of rushed breathing and moaning sliding out from under one cell door or another. Sometimes it is hard to tell the pain from the pleasure; but either way it is a sound that can ignite yearning in those who hear it, and Zuana has become adept at increasing the volume of her own thoughts to blot it out. It is not up to her to damn or save the souls of others.
She rinses and dries herself quickly, rubbing her hair until it sticks out like a spiked halo around her, though with no mirror in her cell she will never see the effect.
If, or when, such transgression becomes obvious—and in the end it always does—the induced confession will be a private matter, the sister or sisters finding themselves subject to penance and regular discipline. Either it passes—the excess of energy transmuted into the love of Our Lord—or they become better at concealing it. Amid the filth of heretic propaganda, the most popular scandals are those of priests and nuns scaling the walls or squeezing their way through the confession grille to reach one another. The idea of women sinning with themselves or each other is too poisonous even for those who would wash away the structure of the church along with its sins.
She dresses herself in a clean shift and robes and kneels by her bed. She has missed almost two days of offices and is long overdue on prayer, but her mind fills up fast and it is hard to stem the flow of thoughts. She does what she can with words rather than contemplation and then makes her way into the cloisters to check on her patients.
Back in her own cell, Suora Magdalena lies like a corpse on her pallet,
the bones of her head so prominent as to seem already half skull. Her sleep is so deep that Zuana has to put her ear next to her mouth to discern any breath at all. It seems inconceivable that this—this wraith—could ever have found the strength to get up and walk to another cell, let alone sing and pray over a sick girl. Well, it is gone now, drained away along with her life force. Whatever she may be seeing behind her eyelids, Zuana prays it is a landscape full of light and joy, for there is nothing left for her here. She moistens her patient’s lips with water and changes her position a little to ease the worst of the bedsores. She can do no more.
Inside Serafina’s cell there is more to celebrate. The air smells of fresh herbs, and by the bed there is bread and vegetable pie, along with a single bright-green marzipan pear. The girl is asleep between clean sheets, her body washed, her hair brushed and flowing around her. Zuana wonders if she should wake her to check on her progress, but her pulse is steady and after such a powerful purging sleep is often the kindest remedy. There is a stillness in the cell, a sense of peace almost, but whether it is the relief that comes with the cessation of suffering or something more she cannot tell. She thinks of Suora Magdalena crouched by the bed, transfixed by her vision of Christ…
Her vision—but not mine, thinks Zuana. However much she might wish it differently, the cell had remained empty for her.
And what of Serafina? What had she seen when she first opened her eyes? Zuana understands her medications well enough to know that anyone in the grip of poppy and hellebore would already have been careering between heaven and hell. In such a softened state, Suora Magdalena’s intensity may indeed have reached inside her, for everything is close to the surface when body and mind melt into each other.
The girl’s skin is pale and there are hollows under her eyes. She will need feeding up if she is not to find herself permanently weakened by the viciousness of the evacuation. How could she not have noticed such loss of weight before? Though convent robes conceal all manner of sins, surely the novice had not been so gaunt when they had last worked together. Was this the result of love sickness, too? Ah, it seems so obvious now. Had Zuana been so preoccupied by work, or so much in need of a younger companion, that she had missed what was in front of her eyes? Would it have been any different if she had known? If the abbess had taken her into her confidence earlier—whenever that might have been, for she has no idea when she found out.
No. She glances around the cell. It had been here all along, everything she needed to know. The fury and the lushness of that young body as she carried her to bed that first night, the love madrigals hidden away in the breviary, the man’s voice singing behind the walls, that single Brava after Vespers, the way the girl’s eyes had grown large as she recited the poem found in the scriptorium manuscript. Tell me, little sister, do you have a fever or are you in love?
Oh, yes, this conflagration of the flesh had been there from the beginning, burning fiercely enough for Serafina to risk everything—disgrace, social exile, even death—to find a way back inside its flame.
Zuana looks down at her. A slight frown flickers over the girl’s forehead. What will she do with all that fire now? All the despair and shredded dreams?
Love. There is no illness like it, or anything in her herb garden or her notebooks to address it. No, this disease must be left in God’s hands, to kill or cure as He sees fit. Instead of comfort, the thought sends a shiver through her. She bows her head in prayer, but the bell for chapter interrupts before she can find the right words.
As she crosses the courtyard she passes Umiliana, her novice flock trotting behind her. A few of them stare openly across at her, a mix of admiration and curiosity on their faces.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“WITH GOD’S GRACE we gather in this the first chapter of Lent to prepare ourselves for the beauty and discipline of abstinence. But before we speak of what we will give up, let us for a moment celebrate what we have.”
The abbess rests her hands lightly on the carved lions’ heads and looks out over a sea of eager faces. The room is full to capacity—choir, nuns, novices, even converse—all in their place. The only ones missing are the old and the infirm, most notably the oldest and the most recently ill.
“In the last days I have received letters from guests and benefactors thanking us for our hospitality. To read them all would spark a contagion of pride that would take another period of Lent to address.” She smiles to allow the humor to penetrate. “However, a few words, I think, are in order. They come from no less a personage than the duke’s sister Leonora, who rose from her sickbed to attend with members of her family.”
Clearing her throat, she lifts her body a little higher in her chair. The small touches of flamboyance encouraged by Carnival are put aside now: the full petticoats have been removed, her wimple is severe, with no lace trimmings to it, and a plain silver crucifix is substituted for the jewel-encrusted one. She looks for all the world like a woman who can take care of her flock.
“To all the holy sisters in your care, please convey the joy and deep spiritual sustenance felt by myself and my companions during your Carnival concert and theatrical performance. We left the convent gates secure in the knowledge that our beloved city is in safe hands with such loving and holy women interceding on our behalf.
“It goes on with the same glowing sentiments, before ending thus: I must also say that while my soul sings, my lips are still rosy with the taste of wild strawberries. If it does not take you away from your duties to God, I would be grateful for the recipe, so I might instruct my own kitchen to deliver such delicacies. Suora Federica, I believe that is directed to you.”
The kitchen mistress, however, is less than delighted. “Must we tell her? She has a niece at the convent of Corpus Domini. If the recipe goes to her, it will also go to them, and by next year everyone will have it.”
“In which case perhaps you might modify it a little to ensure our primacy is retained.” The abbess gives a small tinkling laugh, and the room answers in kind. Zuana glances toward Suora Umiliana, who is watching the others though not joining in herself. She is handling her impatience gracefully.
“Meanwhile, Suora Scholastica, I am to send two copies of The Martyrdom of Santa Caterina to sister convents in Venice and Siena who have heard that we were performing a new work. And Suora Benedicta, I have received a letter from Rome, from no less a figure than Cardinal Ippolito d’Este.”
In the second row, the choir mistress’s face lights up like a star.
“It seems that news of our settings for Saint Agnes’s feast have reached his ears, and he is sending as a gift to the convent a score for The Lamentations of Jeremiah, commissioned from the renowned Giovanni da Palestrina, with the hopes that we might perform it during Easter week.”
Benedicta shakes her head, but whether in disbelief or to tease up some new threads of music it is hard to tell.
“In terms of donations received and promised, assuming that the new dowries come in on time, I can now confirm that we will be able to start work on The Last Supper for the main wall of the refectory next winter.”
Someone claps her hands and a few of the younger nuns actually cheer. It has been almost forty years since a fire caused by a candle left burning after supper wiped out the original frescoes. This will be an opportunity for Santa Caterina to have a great work in the fashion of the day, along with the excitement of a fashionable artist installed behind screens for the time it will take to complete it. Zuana is less enamored of the latest style of painting, which seems to her to be interested more in exploring the violent contortions of the body than in finding the anatomical truths beneath. Nevertheless, she cannot help but be impressed. Such large-scale commissions are expensive. She finds herself wondering what might have happened if Serafina had not survived the treatment. The death of a novice before taking her final vows would trigger the return of a proportion of her dowry. A successful escape, however, would surely render it all forfeit. It is not something Zuana has
thought about until this moment.
Perhaps she is not the only one to note the connection between the girl’s health and the fresco; a couple of the choir sisters have been glancing toward the side seats where, amid the row of novices, a small space marks her absence. The abbess, who is better at reading minds than souls, lifts her hands to recover everyone’s attention.
“Finally, before we move on, we should pay tribute to another sister to whom we owe particular thanks. As you will know by now, following the success of the concert and the play our youngest novice, Serafina, was taken suddenly and gravely ill with fits and fever. Without the intervention and vigil of our dispensary mistress, it is likely that we would have lost her. The art of healing is one of Our Lord’s greatest gifts, and Suora Zuana’s expertise and devotion enrich all our lives inside Santa Caterina.”
This is remarkable praise indeed, and the room responds with a rustle of appreciation and smiles. Zuana is so taken unaware that all she can do is smile and drop her eyes.
The abbess, however, has picked her moment well. All present—choir nuns, novices, and converse—are happy to acknowledge their dispensary mistress. The fact is that even before Carnival, Zuana’s star had been rising. Her part in taming Serafina’s rage and delivering her to the choir, her handling of the contagion—including her own illness—and now the drama around the novice’s illness, ending, as it did, so theatrically, all this has naturally brought her to prominence. After years of seeking ways to fit in unnoticed, Zuana has unwittingly become a player in the drama of convent life. And, it would appear, an acknowledged favorite now of the abbess herself.
“I think it is time to go on to the rota for Lent fasting. Yes, Suora Umiliana?”
“Madonna Chiara. If I may?”
In the middle of the second row Umiliana stands, hands clasped together, and turns to address the choir sisters behind her.
