by Sarah Dunant
She closes her books and kneels to say her final prayers. Her knees crack as they reach the ground. She will be forty years old soon, too old to spend her days scrubbing floors and worktops, though remembering the last few days and the novice’s newfound curiosity, she does not regret it. Before it can start to bring comfort, the discipline of service must first take its toll. In this she and Suora Umiliana would no doubt agree. She thanks God for her health and prays for His help in allowing her to continue her work. She asks Him to guard and take care of young Sister Imbersaga, in pain in the infirmary, and for all the other nuns within these walls, both sick and well. She prays for the souls of her mother and her father and for all those who continue his work helping and training others; for the benefactors of the convent and all their families; to hold them within His love and guide their journeys through life and, where necessary, to lessen their stay in purgatory. And finally she prays for the journey of the novice, who, while still angry and confused, seems—with His infinite love and mercy—to be showing signs of a willingness to settle. God be praised.
When she finishes, she gets up and goes quietly to the door, opening it and stepping out into the corridor, from where she is able to make out any crying or distress from the infirmary below. But everything is still and quiet.
She stands for a moment taking in the atmosphere of the convent asleep around her. Out in the silence, from somewhere on the other side of the walls, comes the sound of a man singing—as he rolls home from a night in some drinking hole, no doubt. It is a fine voice: light but full, an edge of longing in its rises and cadences. The language of love. The song ends, and in the quiet that follows she hears the trill of a night songbird, indignantly protecting its territory from all intruders. As she stands there listening to its bright and insistent voice, her tiredness falls away and a feeling of sudden well-being floods through her: the sense of man and nature interlocking, the order and the beauty, both within God’s plan. And she here now, hearing, receiving it.
Matins tonight will be a cause for special celebration, even if Christ’s body does not move for her on the cross. She wonders if she should look in on Suora Magdalena. Letizia, her conversa, has reported that she has been agitated recently, but she is mindful of the abbess’s exhortation to keep herself free of the watch sister’s jurisdiction, and she does not want to meet her on her rounds.
Around her, the convent is in total darkness, no telltale candle glow from anywhere. Matins will come fast enough now and she should sleep. As she closes her cell door another man’s voice lifts up, this one deeper and darker but equally fine, offering up a swooping run of notes, as if in playful competition with the bird. There is always something to show God’s wonder. She smiles. It will need a fat rook or a crow to rival this one.
CHAPTER TEN
“I DON’T SEE why we cannot at least ask.”
“Because it would not be fitting, that is why.”
Half an hour into chapter, and the convent factions are already happily at one another’s throats.
A watery twilight filters in through a row of high-set windows, and despite the weather the place is warm from the heat of so many bodies. Gathered together they make a strange tribe: novices on one side, converse on the other, and in the middle a great swath of choir nuns, with the abbess on a raised dais at the end, immaculate in her newly pressed robes. Zuana looks out over the great room. There are times when she feels as much sense of community here in chapter meeting as she does in chapel. A stranger coming upon them now might see only a flock of identical black-and-white birds—magpies is the most common joke—but for those with sharp eyes the differences are there as soon as you start to look.
The most obvious are the deformities. As in many cities, Ferraras marriage market is cruel; it is easier to find a camel going through the eye of a needle than a cripple or a humpback being serenaded into her wedding bed, and Santa Caterina has its fair share of the rejects. Yet as they become familiar, are they really so monstrous? Consider Suora Lucrezia, sitting two rows in front of her. The first impression would shock anyone, since she was born with a gaping cleft where her upper lip should be. But if you could stop gawping long enough to lift your gaze from her malformed mouth to her eyes, you would find yourself drowning in pools of deepest lapis lazuli. Then there is Suora Stefana, whose peach-down skin and perfect Cupid’s-bow mouth might have poets outversing themselves, if it wasn’t for the fact that they would have to negotiate their way around the great question mark of her spine in order to find her assets.
But the ones who twist Zuana’s heart are the twin sisters, Credenza and Affiliata. It appears their love for each other was so great from the start that they could not bear to leave the togetherness of the womb. Credenza was pulled out first, and the newfangled tongs they used—though they saved her life—left her with such a mangled right leg that she walks like a listing ship. Affiliata, who came five minutes later, might win an army of suitors on the sweetness of her smile alone, except that after a while one senses an unnerving vacuity behind it: not surprising, perhaps, since it was her head that the tongs squeezed to get her out. Put together they would make a whole woman and a good wife for some great nobleman. As it is, in lieu of better offers, they are wedded to Christ and each other.
Zuana finds herself smiling as she looks at them, sitting together as always, robes spread generously to hide the fact that their hands are linked. Like the rest they are busy watching and listening. In the refectory everyone must keep her eyes on her plate, and in chapel they must address themselves only to God. But in chapter—oh, in chapter! — they may look at and talk with whomever they wish. And the greatest freedom of all is to be able to disagree.
“But why is it not fitting? Everyone wants to hear him, and there is still time within our Carnival calendar for such an event.”
“Really, Suora Apollonia! Do you think Our Lord would approve of such a thing?”
In the front row, Umiliana is in fighting form. With the city still reeling from the d’Este marriage and the climax of Carnival barely six weeks away, she has much to get agitated about. While Ferrara does not go as mad as some cities (Zuana’s father would tell tales of how in Venice, where he grew up, they slaughtered pigs in the main square, covering half the assembled government with blood), still the possibilities for mischief are manifest. Soon the streets will be packed with revelers, and everything, including convent rules, will bend a little to incorporate them. The convent itself will perform a short theatrical piece on the martyrdom of Santa Caterina, written by their wordsmith copyist Suora Scholastica, in front of a specially invited audience of women benefactors, and there will be a special concert in the parlatorio for families and friends of both sexes. Meanwhile, some of the city’s best-known musicians will pass by or even stand inside the portico of the main gates so the nuns can listen to them.
The talk this year is all of the new singer the duke has brought back from Mantua, a man with a voice so high and pure that every woman who hears him bursts into hot tears of envy. He has had to lose his manhood to achieve it, but according to Suora Apollonia’s aunt, herself a regular at the duke’s most intimate soirees, he is happy enough with his state. While such men have been talked of before, this is the first time one has ever been in the city, and such is the excitement that the convent is in debate as to whether, given the curtailed state of his manhood, he might be allowed to visit and give a recitation of his artistry.
“I don’t see why not.” Suora Apollonia raises her artfully plucked eyebrows in feigned innocence. Still a creature of the court as much as of the cloister, she can always be relied upon to fight for her—and others’—pleasures. “I mean, since he is not even a true he anymore, as long as he—or whatever he is—is a good Christian and comes with Suora Standini’s family in attendance, surely it does not infringe on any rules that we are bound by.”
A murmur runs like a breeze through grass. A castrato in the parlatorio? Whatever next? The novices, who attend chapte
r and can even speak if they have the courage, though they are not yet allowed to vote, can barely contain their enthusiasm at such a level of drama. Zuana locates Serafina among them. She had started out the meeting with her usual closed expression, but even she is visibly interested now.
“I am against it, Suora Apollonia—as you should be— because our duty is to serve God humbly and quietly without worldly distraction, not be blown off course by each and every scandal or petty novelty. And Carnival is a living source of such temptation, as this convent knows only too well. It is bad enough that in the lead-up to such debauchery we will have to suffer every would-be minstrel of Ferrara parading around the walls, serenading chaste women who do not want to hear them.”
Protecting her novice flock from the contamination that she sees seeping like rotten damp through the convent walls has become Suora Umiliana’s lifework. Certainly, without her, chapter would be a more mundane, even boring affair.
“Oh yes, indeed. In fact it has started already.” Where the novice mistress goes, Suora Felicità is never far behind. “Surely I am not the only one who was kept awake last night with the noise? Two of them, one with a voice as deep as the chapel bell, marching up and down, howling like lovesick puppies. But at least theirs were proper men’s voices, created by God, not the barber’s knife. Our novice mistress is right. Such a ‘half-man condition is an abomination of nature. Wouldn’t you agree, Suora Benedicta?”
“Oh, dear. Oh, I simply cannot say, for I have never heard one of them.” Zuana has to drop her eyes now, she is so close to smiling. Caught between her passion for new voices and the desire not to have her choir’s thunder stolen by some foreigner who has given up his genitals in the service of court employment, Santa Caterina’s radiant choir mistress is floundering. She sighs. “From what I hear, they have the ability to reach and sustain the highest notes with miraculous ease, but whether they can deliver the passaggio or the subtlety of decoration of a good soprano— well, those who witness them all say different things.”
Zuana glances toward Madonna Chiara, but the abbess’s expression gives nothing away. She sits with her fingers curved perfectly over the ends of the carved mahogany arms of the great chair, her head bent to one side, then to the other, the better to follow the discussion. The more seriously she is seen to take each and every opinion, the less those who lose the argument might feel they have not been listened to.
“Then how wonderful if we might be able to make up our own minds. It is Carnival, after all. We cannot pray all the time and can hardly avoid hearing what goes on in the streets.” Suora Apollonia is so excited there is a hint of color spreading through her whitened cheeks. “If seeing him is so corrupting, he could just come to the gate and we could stand inside and listen.”
“I agree.” Suora Francesca from the embroidery room is already aglow with the prospect of so much cleansing joy and laughter. “Other convents go much further than this. Everyone knows that last year when Corpus Domini performed their Carnival play they ‘accidentally’ left a portion of the main door open so that half the men in the city could see in.”
“Hargh!” In the silence that follows Umiliana’s strangulated bark, everyone waits for the intercession of the abbess. A series of glances move like crosscurrents through the room. Zuana seeks out Serafina again. Oh, yes, now her eyes are shining. It suits her, she thinks, such unguarded pleasure.
The silence grows. One, two …Zuana finds herself counting. Three, four …She is good at timing, is their spiritual leader. Five, six …
“You are absolutely right, Suora Francesca.” The voice, when it comes, is deep and commanding. “Corpus Domini indeed did as you say. And ended with a severe reprimand from the bishop for their pains—and the imposition of a penance that means this year they will perform no play at all.”
She pauses to let the words sink in.
“When it comes to music, I have no doubt that this ‘creature’s’ voice would be most interesting, though from what I have heard, Suora Benedicta is right and what he gains in range he gives up in subtlety. However, in this matter I think we should be led by our most reverend novice mistress. We would not want to be seen to be so eager for praise that we seek out competition from such a dubious source. I do not have to remind you that it was not so long ago that the good bishops at Trento ended their Herculean labors of purifying the church in the face of the grossest heresies by directing their attention to convents.” And here she looks directly at Suora Apollonia. “While we are blessed that our own dear bishop has seen fit to protect us from the fiercest of their restrictions, it would be unfortunate indeed if some ‘misdemeanor’ on our part drew attention to that which should be beyond reproach.”
While the words are mild, the message is clear. Apollonia’s perfect eyebrows meet now to form a perfect frown. But she bows her head and holds her tongue. When one is outmaneuvered in chapter, it is better to give in graciously.
“Besides,” the abbess says, more lightly now, “I have it on good authority that his Carnival calendar is fully booked. I daresay the only people outside court who will hear him will be those passing the open windows of Palazzo Schifanoia.”
A few stray titters rise up from the room. Palazzo Schifanoia is notorious for its great salon filled with paintings of pagan gods and goddesses enjoying the world—and at times each other. Though the rule of Saint Benedict is clear on the corrosive nature of careless laughter, it is also true that a healthy convent is a delicate mix of the sweet with the sour. It is a skill the abbess excels in, Zuana thinks: offering tidbits for those who thirst for novelty while at the same time supporting those who disapprove of it.
In contrast, Suora Umiliana remains stony-faced, seemingly unmoved by her victory. Recently she has started to find public fault in every chapter meeting. While the abbess has both the power and the strength of character to overrule her, she seems to be giving more ground than usual.
Zuana glances around the room. How many others, she wonders, are aware of the change? If the last election had not been a foregone conclusion, based as it was on the power of family factions within the city, it is conceivable that Umiliana might even be abbess herself now, for she is not without a following. Had that happened, Felicità would no doubt be her novice mistress, and together they would be tougher on all the souls in their care. There are a few, no doubt, who might be brought to a deeper comfort by their rule. But for the rest, all those noblewomen for whom these walls were never a free choice, it would be much harder.
As it was, Madonna Chiara had won with an indisputable majority, and the post of novice mistress had been Umiliana’s consolation prize. While no one had expected it to silence her, in a well-run convent it is better to have opposition inside rather than outside the fold. Zuana has begun to wonder if Madonna Chiara would still agree with that.
“Well, if that covers the entertainment, perhaps we might discuss the refreshments. Suora Federica, as cellarer, perhaps you will tell us your requirements? You will be needing to order extra stores, I think.”
“Oh, yes, indeed.” Federica, a florid-faced woman who runs the kitchens as if they were her own vassal state, has been waiting patiently for her moment. “For the cakes and puddings we will need two sacks of flour, extra sugar, vanilla, and at least three dozen extra eggs. Those expecting more than eight visitors must supply eggs from their own birds, as the convent chickens will be hard pressed to lay enough.” She directs this remark to Suora Fortunata, who keeps half a dozen hens in and around her spacious ground-floor cell and has a reputation for being insufficiently generous when it comes to donating their produce. “Also I will need more coloring dyes for the marzipan fruits. Suora Zuana?”
Zuana bows her head. In the years since she has been given an extra room to house her distillation equipment, Santa Caterina’s Carnival fruits have become famous around town for the veracity of their colors as well as their taste. “I will look through my stores for you.”
“Most particularly the red.
The strawberries disappeared in no time last year.”
As much into the mouths of the nuns as the visitors’, Zuana thinks uncharitably. “I will do my best, but that dye comes from the bishop, not the distillery, and I have almost none left.”
She catches Serafina’s eye. They have already spoken of this in the dispensary: how in the outside world the cochinilla dye is a prized possession from the New World, traded at exorbitant prices by the Spanish: so expensive it is only since the convent took over as the bishop’s apothecary that Santa Caterina can rely on an occasional “gift” from the palace. Its reputation is well earned, for it turns everything it touches—from cardinals’ robes to women’s mouths—the most vivid shade of red. Federica, no doubt, has her head too much in her own ovens to notice how those nuns who gorge on her marzipan strawberries enter the first days of Lent with lips the same color as those of court ladies.
Such transgression is not lost on Umiliana. But for now, at least, this is too trivial a battle for her to fight. She frowns at Zuana. She regards her as her enemy in this, and she is right, though for the wrong reasons. Zuana is as eager for the dye as Federica, but that is because she has recently come across accounts of remedies that use it—in particular, one for breaking fevers—and until she has the opportunity to try it she is loath to give up her remaining stock for the sake of a few Carnival delicacies.
“Can’t we get more?” The kitchen mistress addresses the remark to the abbess. “It would be worth whatever extra trouble it took.”