Sacred Hearts

by Sarah Dunant

  Zuana suppresses a smile. “I see you have come from instruction with the novice mistress.”

  She scowls.

  Suora Umiliana’s nickname is common knowledge. There is even a debate among the choir nuns as to how many years have gone by since the novice mistress last saw herself in any kind of mirror. To which they might fruitfully add, how many more of them would be like her if the rules against vanity weren’t so easily ignored?

  Zuana can still remember the time, years ago now, when an old bishop with a new broom set out to ban reflecting surfaces entirely from the convent. It took barely a week for the first silver tray to arrive under a relative’s skirts, during which time a number of the nuns had spent their resting hours poised like Narcissus over the surface of the fishpond. The overzealous confessor recruited by that bishop didn’t last much longer. After six months of confessions where a queue of nuns kept him busy from morning till night with a litany of misdemeanors so trivial as to be unpunishable—except to the ligaments in his knees— he begged to be transferred to another convent. The day before he left they sang specially composed Vespers and slaughtered three chickens for supper. All in his honor, of course.

  “It is an interesting question: what, if anything, smooth chins have to do with smooth souls. You might be surprised to find how quickly some women here start to feel a certain prickling under the skin.”

  “Ho! You think I’m going to grow a beard as well as everything else?”

  “Not necessarily. I think God has better things to do with His miracles. As I’m sure you have noticed already, we make room for both kinds here: smooth and hairy. Which means you will be able to choose.”

  The girl stares at her for a moment, as if still teasing out the meaning from under the words. Zuana turns her attention to the worktable, arranging the pots into which they will put the congealing liquid from the pans to cool. She knows it is risky, saying such direct things, even indirectly, to a novice. But the girl has been given into her care by the abbess, and if she is to help her, then it can only be in the way she has helped herself: by telling the truth of how it is, alongside the wonder of how it might be for others.

  Once she is back at work, the girl’s bad temper does not last long. They are halfway through the process of scooping the liquid into the pots when she makes it her business to ask about the bishop’s next remedy.

  “His Holiness suffers from sore throats. So bad at times that he can barely swallow, let alone preach. We make him lozenges and syrup. Boiled treacle and honey, mixed with cinnamon, ginger, and lemon. Plus a few secret ingredients.”

  “What are they?”

  Zuana pauses.

  “If I am to be your assistant, I should know. Unless you are worried I’ll sell them around town as soon as I get out.” There is possibly a touch of mischief in her voice now.

  “Very well. When the mixture is simmering we shall add angelica, mithridate, pennyroyal, and hyssop. I doubt they mean much to you.”

  “Why are they so secret, then?”

  “Because as long as we are the only apothecary that uses them, the bishop’s physicians must remain faithful to us. A little diplomacy is needed here. The fact is, the bishop suffers from a third ailment—one of which he himself is unaware but that wounds others deeply.”

  “What is it?”

  “He has venomous breath.”

  She snorts. “Did you tell that from his pee also?”

  “You may laugh. But it is a serious affliction in a man who speaks the word of God. When the inquisition needed to get the old Duke d’Este’s French wife, Renata, to take communion as a test of her commitment to the true faith, he was one of the priests they brought in to persuade her, so that in the end she would give in just to stop his talking.”

  “Is that true?”

  “Why would I risk penance for your amusement? If you want to know more, next time you sit with Suora Apollonia at recreation, ask her about when the bishop came for his first inspection and she was one of the nuns who met him at the gates. She thought she was going to die from the experience.”

  She sees it again as she tells it: Apollonia and Ysbeta, staggering their way into the infirmary with hands over their faces, fanning themselves like madwomen, making so much noise that the novice mistress of the day finally had to come in to hush them.

  The disbelief on Serafina’s face gives her sudden pleasure. It is generally accepted that a little gossip can be as vital as prayer to the settling of a recalcitrant novice—well, accepted by everyone but Suora Umiliana, who is so immune to its contagious properties that most of her news is ten years out of date. Alone in her dispensary, Zuana suffers somewhat from the same complaint, but she can still dredge up a few tidbits when called upon. It has been a surprise to her, these last few days, how much she has enjoyed imparting them. But then she has never had such a vital young mind working alongside her in the dispensary.

  “When I was young, my father had a fellow teacher at the university—a brilliant man by all accounts—whose breath was so foul that his students could not stand being in his lectures. When my father examined his mouth he found his gums were half eaten away with yellow pus and rot. Yet in other ways his humors were dry rather than moist. He lived on nothing but meats in sweet sauces and strong wine, so my father put him on a diet of fish and vegetables and water. After three months his gums stopped suppurating completely. But by then they were so shrunken that most of his teeth had fallen out, so the students could barely make out a word he was saying anyway. And thus does brilliance go to the grave unnoticed.”

  “And your father.” The girl’s expression is once again a mixture of horror and fascination. “I mean …he thought it was …good to teach you things like this?”

  “I don’t know that he thought about it much. At the beginning they were more stories than lessons.” Was that how it started? she wonders. A hunger grown from listening? Or had it been that she had always wanted to learn?

  “Well, I was never, ever told such stories. And certainly not by my father.” The girl shrugs. “But if your remedies for bad breath are that good, you should dose the old crone they have put me next to in chapel. Every time she opens her mouth, it smells as if something has died in there.”

  Ah! The weapon of Maria Lucia. When kindness fails, the temptation to punish takes over. Zuana skims off the last of the ragged surface of the ointment, ready to move the pots to the outside ledge of the window for the cold to congeal them. It is time to move from gossip to the business in hand.

  “I’m afraid I can do nothing for Suora Maria Lucia. Her gums are already rotted beyond my skills. However, there is one thing you could do.” She pauses. “Start singing. The minute that happens, you’ll find yourself moved to sweeter air fast enough.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  SHE HOLDS HER hand steady and tilts the candle a little more to the right over the folded edge of the paper. The thin hot wax dribbles onto it, and she presses the two sides together quickly. They stick for a few seconds, then spring open again. The failure makes her want to scream, but instead she closes her eyes and tries again. The same thing happens once more, only by now the paper is filthy with the grease stain. The problem is the wax; it is tallow, cheap and runny. The cell already stinks of its smoke, sour and fleshy, like the animal parts it comes from. It makes her eyes water and stuffs up her nose.

  At home, she and her sister said their prayers to the smell of scented beeswax: two candles in silver candlesticks by the bed, with the satin sheets turned down ready, the clay bed warmer folded in at the bottom. Their knees rested on the thick weave of a rug, and when they were finished the maid would brush their hair a hundred and fifty strokes, until it gleamed, warm as a cloak, around their shoulders. Yet here when the foul Augustina unpins and pulls off her headscarf, her hair hangs in rat tails, abandoned and filthy. She hears that some of the novices pay their conversa to wash and even brush it dry. But for that she must find herself another conversa and she is not willing to do
what is needed to make that happen—in the same way that she will not take the rug from her chest and lay it over the stones, even though the floor would be less unforgiving on her knees— because it would be admitting in some way that this was now her home.

  She would dearly like a little comfort, though. Sweet Jesus, she has never been so tired. It is more like being imprisoned within a Greek myth than a convent, one of those stories where the gods’ punishment is fashioned as an endless repetition of the same horror. For days on end she has done nothing but the crudest, cruelest manual labor: no rest, just another scrubbing brush on another surface, and then always more. Her limbs throb from all the rubbing and scouring and cleaning and lifting. Some mornings she is so exhausted that all she can do is cry; some nights so numb that there is not even enough energy for tears. Inside the workroom there have been times when the panic and fury have grabbed her by the throat and she has had to clasp her hands together to avoid smashing every bottle off the shelf. But if the magpie Zuana notices, she pretends that she doesn’t and just keeps on with what she is doing.

  She has come close to refusing outright. “If you want it scrubbed cleaner, do it yourself.” She even said the words, under her breath though loud enough to be heard. But nothing came in return, only the sound of the older woman’s brush moving back and forth across the wood.

  Stupid silence. Stupid rules. The only consolation is that at the end of every day before the bell sounds, she—the magpie— makes up this special tea, and they stop and drink it together (the nun is clever enough to know that unless she tasted it first she wouldn’t touch it either). And it is good—so good—like a river of spices moving warmth and sweetness down into every part of her body until even the worst of the tiredness feels soothed away.

  Warmth. Sweetness. Love like the penetration of a sword blade. From scrubbing to praying. Prayer is a blade of goodness that will pierce to the very center of your being, filling you with mercy and grace.

  As if the work wasn’t bad enough, every day she has to suffer the inquisition of the novice mistress, hairy chin and squashed face, eyes like burning pebbles, trying to pry her open for the entrance of His love.

  Talk to Him. He is waiting for you. You are His child as well as His betrothed bride, and He is always listening for your voice. He hears before you speak, feels before you have felt it yourself. Each prayer, each silence, each office that you offer Him brings you closer to comfort, to the great joy of His love and the final wondrous embrace of death.

  Huh. The more she talks, the more you can feel your insides squirming. But you cannot not listen. You can be angry sad, desperate. You can fear her, laugh at her, even hate her, but you cannot not listen to her. Some of them are already turning. She can see it, see them getting teary-eyed with the prospect of so much joy. But when you are tired all the time, even the word comfort makes you want to give in, and resisting further seems more than it is possible to bear.

  So it has gone, day after day. There are nights when she has been asleep almost before she lies down. Then, what seems like minutes later, they are hammering on the door to get her up for Matins. She sleepwalks into the chapel, props herself upright against the wood (if there is indeed a whole city at her back, she is far too tired to look for it), and moves her mouth over the words: no understanding, no thought. She might even be asleep. Others are. Yesterday one of the novices fainted—just heaved a great sigh and keeled over. What was it? Had she seen anything? Been pierced by some vision or some sign? That’s all they wanted to know. Ha! The poor girl probably just saw a feather bed by the altar or a plate of roasted pork rising up within the candle smoke, and the smell of it overwhelmed her. She herself has barely eaten anything for weeks, the food is so foul. Wait until the feast days, they all say. You will taste heaven then. But for now there are just fatty meats and watered wine. And cabbage. Sweet Jesus, if she has to eat any more cabbage she will surely start passing green water. Maybe the dispensary magpie would have a remedy for that, too. Certainly she would be able to diagnose it. God knows she can diagnose and cure everything else.

  Oh, but she is a weird one, this Zuana bird, in some ways the weirdest of them all. Kind and fierce. Sweet and sour. And clever—there are times when she barely understands what she says, it has so many layers to it. She is a law unto herself. She makes a fuss about rules of silence and work and abstinence, and then a few days later breaks them all by serving ginger sweets and telling all manner of outrageous stories. All that stuff about beards and souls, heretics and bishop’s boils and poisonous breath. Even the novices when they are alone together do not gossip in such a way.

  Of course, she is trying to coax her out of rebellion, just like the rest of them. Using stories in the way her father did (oh, he must have been a lunatic to teach his daughter such things), so that you can almost feel your eyes widening with surprise, and before you know it you are interested in what comes next. No piercing with swords of love here, just God’s great plan through herbs and clumps of filthy roots. No wonder she ended buried in this tomb. Who else would ever have had her?

  She tilts the candle again, and now the wax moves too fast and the flame almost drowns in its own juice. She steadies her hand. Once it has gone out, it can’t be relit until the watch sister comes around at Matins with a taper. Even then you have to be careful. If she sees you have no candle left it will be clear you’ve been awake later than the appointed hour and you might be liable to penance for disobedience.

  Not all those who disobey are found out, though. She’s not so tired that she hasn’t worked that one out. The last few nights when she’s opened her door a crack—the watch sister’s rounds are regular enough to be circumvented if you have the concentration to time them—she’s been able to make out flickering lights under two or three of the others. One belongs to Suora Zuana, but she has dispensation for working late (though she, too, must be dropping with exhaustion, for during all the days of cleaning she never stopped, either), as does the fat-faced sister from the scriptorium, because it seems she is writing some play or other for Carnival.

  Suora Apollonia, though, has no such permission. But then to look at her you would think she is at court still, all those lacy collars and silky skirts, not to mention the hours she must spend on her toilette. Really! She has the whitest skin and the most perfectly plucked eyebrows. She must have a source for extra candles, too, since at Matins she always seems to have the same amount left as everyone else. As the supply is controlled by the chief conversa, who oversees the storerooms, there has to be a black market operating. Again, it depends on which conversa serves you, so for now there is nothing she can do; alongside her brutality, Augustina has proved incorruptible when it comes to bribery. She barely speaks, and appears—or pretends—to understand nothing that is said to her.

  Well, until she gets another servant she must make do with what she has. It could be worse. When she takes the time to curb her panic, she can see that. Yes, this place is foul beyond words. But had it been a convent in Milan, the abbess would have known the family, no doubt have heard the gossip, and alerted them to the fuss she was causing. Here she was still an ordinary rebel rather than one with the mark of Cain. They have even given her work in the one place where she might learn something useful, if she keeps her wits about her. She is lucky that way, for she has always had a good memory. He had only to sing a melody once for her to have it. Not that anyone else cared. Certainly not her father. He had only had her voice trained as a complement to her dowry, to go with a pretty face and a docile temperament. Like her sister. Her sister—ha! — who was so “shy” her eyelashes couldn’t help but flutter whenever a man who was not her father looked at her.

  She gets up and rolls the blanket back against the bottom of the door to block any sign of candlelight. It is almost time for the next watch round. When she returns to the table the candle is sputtering again, the wick curling over into the thin lake of hot wax. She tries to lift it up to save the flame but it spits once, twice, th
en goes out. She gathers up the drops around the wick, fast to avoid the burn, trying to flick them onto the paper while still molten, but in the dark it is useless. She can feel tears at the back of her eyes as hot and angry as the wax. Self-pity. Self-pity born of tiredness, that is all the tears are, and she will not give in to them. She lies down on the bed and curls the blanket around her. Once the watch has gone by she will get up again.

  She has promised herself that in between watches tonight, with or without the candle, she will move out of the cell and time how long it takes her to get as far as the gardens and back, so she can start the routine.

  But by the time the sister passes her door, she is deeply asleep.

  ZUANA REGISTERS THE watch sister’s footsteps and looks up from her books, stretching her spine to counteract the ache in her lower back. The candle on the desk is half burned. It is well past the hour of retirement, but all this caring for the novice has left her no time for other work, most important the condition of young Suora Imbersaga in the infirmary, and she has asked for, and been given, permission to stay up a few hours later. The geranium and willow compound she tried had stemmed the bleeding for a while, but that morning the young woman passed another clot of blood, and she has become weaker since. When Zuana checked on her after Compline her face had been ghostly pale, though her pulse was stable.

  The woodcut diagram in front of her shows a view of a body’s intestines. The face is blank, with arms and legs crudely drawn, but from the stomach down there are a mass of diagrammatic lines, with arrows coming out of each and every area. As far as she can ascertain, the problem in the young woman’s body is coming from inside the womb. In her experience once a woman starts flooding outside of her moon cycle, the problem can quickly become grave; it is as if the womb somehow loses the will to stay healthy without children growing in it. But what if it is not that? What if the bleeding comes from some tear or obstruction within her kidneys? It would certainly explain the pain; her father often spoke of stones being expelled through the urethra and how as they passed down from the kidney men would writhe and cry out in an agony worse than any torturer’s screws. Yet if that is the answer, why has the only expulsion here been liquid and not mass?