by Sarah Dunant
Zuana smiles. When it comes to the glory of music, her reputation for having cloth ears is well known, and over the years she has grown used to the teasing. “I still don’t understand. Was her father hiding the truth? Was she really expecting marriage and not the veil?”
“If she was, I have heard nothing about it.” The abbess gives a sharp sigh. While her information is extensive in church matters, Milan is a long way away when it comes to domestic gossip, and clearly she is worried that she might have missed something. “There is another daughter, younger. To marry them both he would need a fortune. Eight hundred is a fine dowry for a nun but it wouldn’t buy much on the Milan marriage market. What? You look surprised.”
“No. I …I was thinking how much my father’s estate paid.”
“Ah, well, that was a long time ago and you came cheaply,” the abbess says bluntly, but with good humor. “ Good family over bad fortune, I think was the phrase.” She smiles broadly. “Though I recall you had reservations enough when you first arrived.”
Reservations. It is a cunning thing, convent language, full of words that smother as they try to smooth. Zuana, bred on the precision of her father’s use of words, has never adapted well to it. “Yes. A few.”
No doubt they are both thinking of the same moment: a great trunk deposited outside the main convent gate, so packed with a famous father’s books that the servant sisters could not carry it inside without help from the city porters, who, in turn, were not allowed to cross farther than the entrance. And alongside the trunk his one and only child, a young woman, her face disfigured with grief, refusing point-blank to take a step farther without it. Such was the impasse that a small crowd had gathered to watch. The drama had been ended only by the intervention of the energetic, newly appointed assistant novice mistress, one Suora Chiara, who suggested that they push the trunk half in and half out of the gatehouse and then unload the heaviest books into wheelbarrows brought from the gardens.
It had been nobody’s fault directly. The truth was that there had been no time to arrange anything. Her father was barely cold in his grave, yet his house was cleared and she, as part of his estate, was being walled up for her own protection. What other option was there? A single woman living on her own in a house with no immediate family to absorb her? Impossible. Marriage? Which man in his right mind would take on a twenty-three-year-old virgin with a dowry of forbidden knowledge and hands stinking of the distillery? Even had there been one willing, she would have refused him. No. This young woman wanted what she could not have: her old life back, the freedom of her father’s house, the satisfaction of their work, and the pleasure of his company and knowledge.
How long do you think it will take for the maggots and the worms to regenerate my body, Faustina? I would very much like to know that. It is the greatest pity I did not train you as a gravedigger. You could have eavesdropped on the process for me.
Sixteen years next All Saints’ Day; surely his body would have given birth to a commonwealth of worms by now.
“Still, you are well settled now.”
She says it as a statement rather than a question. The fire cracks open a log in the grate, and the wood spits a shower of fireworks into the air.
“In fact”—the abbess pauses—“there might be some who would almost envy you—would see in your way of life things that are not so easy in the world beyond the walls.”
They have not referred to this for a while, the two of them: how when the wind of church reform blew into Ferrara, it brought trouble even to those within the university; instances of men, scholars who sat at her father’s table or taught alongside him, who had been forced to make choices between certain books and the purity of their faith. Zuana has often wondered how he would have dealt with it, the many ways he would have convinced them, for in his world there was nothing in nature that was not part of God’s divinity and vice versa, and he had never done anything to offend or deny either. As it was, he had been saved the ordeal. A rich life and a timely death. They might all wish for as much for their tombstones.
“You are right, Madonna Chiara, I am as fortunate as I am content.” She pauses. The civic atmosphere is milder now. Nevertheless, the chest under her bed remains heavier in response to the stories told, and there are some books that she consults only while others are asleep. “And as diligent.” What is not known about cannot be taken away—or cause distress to those whose job it might be to prohibit it.
“I am pleased to hear it.” The abbess smiles, sitting more upright and smoothing her skirts. It is another gesture that Zuana has come to recognize: the abbess drawing attention to her own authority. “So: how was the rest of the convent last night?” Even her voice is changed. Whatever closeness there has been between them is ended. “Suora Clementia was in good voice, I heard.”
“She …she is eager for Our Lord’s coming and seems convinced that it will happen during the hours of darkness.”
“So I gather. Last week the night-watch sister says she found her roaming the second cloisters singing psalms. Perhaps we would do better to restrain her further during the night.”
“I fear that would make it worse. If you allow it, I will keep a closer watch on her.”
“Just as long as you do not interfere with the watch sister. I have better things to do than adjudicate territorial squabbles.”
“Also …I stopped by Suora Magdalenas cell.” Since they are back to convent business, Zuana has her own flock to take care of. “I think that, given her condition, she would be more comfortable in the infirmary now.”
“Your charity is exemplary. However, as you know, Suora Magdalena made her views clear some time ago. She has no wish to be moved, and it is our duty to respect that.” Her tone is a little sterner now. “Anything else I should be informed of?”
Zuana sees again the novice’s sheaf of papers tucked fast into the breviary, also the limping figure emerging from a cell that is not her own. She hesitates. The line between gossip and necessary information has never come easily to her.
“I broke the rule of silence and squandered words,” she says, deciding on her own misdemeanor rather than those of others.
“More than was necessary for the bringing of comfort?”
“I—perhaps a few.”
“Then it is just as well that you were about God’s business.” The abbess, if she has registered the hesitation, says nothing about it.
“I also came to chapel without my breviary.”
“Did you?” Her surprise sounds convincing enough, though they both knew she noted it at the time. There is a pause. “Anything more?”
Zuana hesitates. “Only the usual things.”
“You still spend as much time talking with your father as you do with God?”
Though her tone is gentler, Zuana registers the question almost as an intrusion. When they were sisters together, rather than abbess and choir nun, such confessions had come more easily. “Maybe a little less. He …he helps me with my work.”
The abbess gives a sigh, as if deciding what or how much more to say. “Of course it is your duty to honor him as any child would a parent—indeed, more so since he was both your mother and your father. But it is also your duty to honor the Lord in front of and above all others. Forget your people and your father’s house. Remember the vow you took? For He is the font of all life on this earth and the next, and it is only through Him that you will find a true and lasting place in the mercy of His infinite love.”
For the first time, the silence between them has an edge within it. Zuana finds it strange how she speaks like this sometimes. While it is an abbess’s business to care for her flock, there is something in her manner these days, as though God’s counsel were a quality she now receives firsthand through the grace of her position, naturally, effortlessly, like a young plant rising up toward the sun. While everyone accepts that her elevation to abbess was more about the influence of her family than the state of her soul, recently even her opponents have been he
ard to speak of a growing humility. Knowing her as well as she does, Zuana has assumed it is politics, the need to appeal to the whole convent and not simply to those who naturally agree with her. But there are moments now when even she is not sure.
“You must live more in the present and less in the past, Zuana. It is for your own good. It will make you a better—more contented—nun and bring you closer to God. Which is what we must all strive for.”
“I shall work on myself and take my faults to Father Romero,” Zuana says, dropping her eyes to hide her irritation.
“Ah, yes, Father Romero. Well, I …I am sure he will be able to guide you,” the abbess says coolly.
The fact is, they both know Father Romero could not guide a mouse out of a goblet of wine. With the storms of heretic propaganda about lascivious priests and nuns poisoning the air, such confessors have become almost fashionable in recent years: cautious bishops recruiting the most elderly into convent service, men in such advanced stages of decrepitude that they are oblivious not only to their own desires but also to any that might seep out from cloistered women, some of whom might appreciate, even seek out, a little male attention.
Father Romero avoids any such temptation by being asleep most of the time. In fact it is a current joke among the novices that, when he is not propped up in the confessional box, he spends his life upside down in the church rafters, so great is his resemblance to a shrunken bat.
“I believe he is at his best in the early morning,” the abbess adds quietly. It seems the joke has reached her ears, too.
Zuana bows her head. “Then I will make sure that is when I go. Thank you, Madonna Abbess.”
The audience is ended. She is halfway to the door when Chiara calls her back. She turns.
“You did the convent a fine service last night. Your remedies are their own kind of prayer. I am sure Our Lord understands that better than I.” She pauses, as if she is unsure of what she is going to say. “Oh, and speaking of remedies, I have an order from our bishop for lozenges and ointments. The festivities around the wedding have taken their toll on his voice and his digestion. Can we dispatch him some within the next few weeks?”
“I …I am not sure.” Zuana shakes her head. “The convent is drowning in winter phlegm and the melancholy of black bile. To do so I would need to put his care above those in my own.”
“And if you could be excused a few of the daily offices over the coming weeks?”
Zuana appears to consider the offer. While it takes a particularly rebellious nun to cross her abbess on spiritual decisions, it is accepted that each convent officer has her own sphere of expertise and must defend her territory when she sees fit. In reality, such negotiations are part of the responsibility of command on both sides. How else would a good abbess hone the skills of arbitration required to keep a community of almost a hundred women living together in peace and harmony? Over her four years, Madonna Chiara has developed considerable talent in this area.
“If that were the case, then yes, I think it could be done.”
“Very well. Take the time you need, but leave word of when you will not be in chapel so it will not be noted as a fault. I wonder, do you think she could help you in this?”
“Who?”
“Our troublesome novice,” she says, ignoring Zuana’s deliberate slowness.
“I …I have no need of help. It would take me much longer to instruct someone than to do it myself.”
“Nevertheless, she must be put to work in some way, and you and she have already established some connection.” The abbess hesitates, as if this is an idea that has just come to her and is only being thought through as she speaks. “Once I have seen her I shall send her to you. You may show her around the convent and then find her something useful to do in the dispensary. She is bright enough and may even find some pleasure in the instruction.” And now there is a ghost of smile on her lips. “Or you in the giving of it.”
Zuana thinks briefly of the drawings on her desk and the notes needed on the varying strengths of the drafts, not to mention her coveted solitude, which allows her father’s voice as her hidden companion. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. She bows her head. “This is my penance?”
“Not at all. No, this is a gift rather than a penance. For both of you. For penance you will forgo dinner tonight and eat scraps from the table. There. I think that completes the matter.”
They hold each other’s eyes for a moment, and then the abbess turns to the brushing of her gown again.
CHAPTER THREE
OH, SWEET, SWEET Jesus, is this how it will be? Day after day after day, is this how it will be? Because if it is, then surely she will die here. There has not been a second when she has not been prodded by or spied on by somebody, starting from the moment they had shaken her awake that morning, and she had felt so sick and dizzy she could barely focus, her head filled with tumbling nightmares, and she had opened her eyes onto this fat bearded woman’s face, thrusting itself into hers, telling her to thank the Lord for bringing her safely through the night, and glory be to Him for this, her first day in Santa Caterina.
And as soon as she heard those words she was back again: the same prison hole, only dark now, straw and debris everywhere, and another mad black-and-white magpie in front of her, but this one with a voice like a velvet cloak, trying to get her to drink something from a poison vial. She knew she shouldn’t have taken it; that it was giving in and would not—could not—help. Her kindness—for she was kinder than the rest—had made her want to howl and scream and howl again until the very pillars in the cloister started to shake and the whole place came smashing down around them. Only by then she was so tired, and suddenly she couldn’t cry anymore. So much sorrow, so many tears, had come out of her these past few weeks that her very insides were hollowed out and there was nothing left. She had almost been grateful when the drink had made her quiet. It was as if everything around her was going on behind a gauze curtain. Even the stone walls were no longer hard anymore, and when the magpie had opened up her dowry chest, waves of scarlet and gold light seemed to flow over and out of it.
And the woman had been so gentle. She had sat and talked to her, picked her up and held her—yes, she had done that; she had held her—so that she had felt the warmth of another body seeping through the robes, and it had reminded her of …and then she had wanted to cry all over again, only she was too muddled and too tired.
After that there had been nothing, then too much of everything, an avalanche of awesome, awful dreams, so vivid they were more real than life itself, ending in one in which she was half buried in a lake of liquid stone, so that every time she opened her mouth to sing, molten rock poured in. She was so frightened that she started to scream, only then the stone poured in even faster, until she couldn’t breathe.
That was when she had been shaken awake by the squashed-faced crone spitting and babbling about God’s grace. And though it was morning and she was no longer drowning, she was still in a cell in the convent of Santa Caterina in the city of Ferrara, while everyone she loved was far away, leaving her at the mercy of an army of gargoyles, all so stuffed with piety they can no longer remember what it is like to be living, breathing women.
Of course she cannot say that to them, or show it, or even think it. Because they are cunning, these pious, pecking birds. Oh, yes, already they are trying to get inside her thoughts. Not all of them. Not the fat, warty servant one who dressed her this morning, so angry and clumsy that her face now hurts from the tightness of the ugly headscarf strapped and pinned around her. But the others: the hairy-faced novice mistress and the abbess— oh, especially the abbess, she with the girlish curls and the kind-but-not-so-kind manner. Inside all her understanding words about how hard it is to be so young and lovely and plucked from the world (and what would she know about it?), or how Our Dear Lord Himself did not expect her to find it easy, but that in His loving mercy He would guide them all to help her …inside all that caressing had been a constant str
eam of questions: “How old is your sister?” “Is there promise of marriage for her?” “When did you start your menses?” “How often did you have confession?” “Did you both have singing and dancing lessons?”
Of course, she hadn’t told her anything. In some ways she didn’t even mind the poking; it meant her mad behavior the night before must have had some impact, since the abbess was clearly worrying that she might have been sold a fake. In fact it had made her feel better to say nothing. Or, if she did speak, just to hold to the same phrase she had used with the dispensary magpie, though her voice came out scratched from all the howling the night before: “The words came from my mouth, not my heart.”
It had made the abbess angry, her refusal to talk. Not that she showed it, not directly. Instead she had put on a pious face and emphasized how the bishop was such an important, busy man and the shame of scandal, the ruin of the family… After a while she had stopped listening and started singing songs silently inside her head instead, until the abbess became impatient and finished the interview abruptly. And while all the concentrating on not concentrating had made her head ache, she had felt pleased with herself. Because she had been in this stinking prison a whole twenty-four hours, and it had not dented her resolve one bit.
Now, as she walks across the cloisters—how cold the stone is all around her, truly like the inside of a crypt—alone with her thoughts for the first time that day, on her way to meet last night’s magpie, she promises herself that she will not be so scared or mad anymore but, instead, will use her wits as much as her fear. Yet even as she thinks it she feels a great rush of fire inside her, such a combustion of fury and panic that she wonders if it might consume her before it ever reaches the world outside.
No, no, she cannot stay. She cannot. A whole year before anyone will even listen to her! Three hundred and sixty-four more days of poking and prodding and dead time full of endless prayer. Even if she could hold to her resolve, it would kill her. No, she has to get out. Though such a thing might bring down a storm of scandal on her father’s house, she will do it. Well, he is not so blameless. He lied to her, locked her up, betrayed her. In such a case, a father is no longer a father, and she is no longer his daughter. Only now the flame of panic flares up again, and she feels sick to her stomach and has to stop as she walks to spit the bile out of her mouth.