by Sarah Dunant
When questioned, first by the novice mistress and then by the abbess, she refuses to say where she has been or what she has done. In absence of a confession, a more serious penance is imposed. She is confined to her cell for two days with only bread and water. Before she returns there the room is searched by Augustina and another conversa and certain papers are removed from her trunk. That night, her howling reverberates around the convent again. Zuana sits in her cell over her books, listening but unable to do anything. She, like every other nun, is forbidden to go near her. When the sisters move in procession through the cloisters at Matins, they hear the girl fling herself against her door as they pass her cell, raining blows against the wood until you might think either it or she must splinter from the force. The other novices glance nervously as they pass, and one of them starts crying. But when they emerge from chapel later, the banging and the yelling have stopped. From then on there is silence.
On the afternoon of the second day, Suora Umiliana spends an hour with Serafina in her cell and then accompanies her to dinner in the refectory, where the girl sits alone on the floor, her plate of leftovers thick with ash and bitter wormwood. The lesson, read by Suora Francesca with a slight quiver in her voice, is a teaching from Saint John Climacus, one of the desert fathers, who talks of repentance as the voluntary endurance of affliction, the purification of conscience, the daughter of hope, and the renunciation of despair. It is beautiful in its way, and a number of the nuns find their hearts lifting within them. When the meal finishes, the abbess instructs the girl to lie down in the doorway while the others walk over her, not all of them as carefully as Zuana.
To make matters worse, the next day is convent visiting.
It is not the first time Serafina has had to sit in her cell while others entertain (novices are forbidden outside contact for the first three months, a rule with some kindness in its cruelty, since meeting loved ones too soon can rip raw the wound of missing before new skin has had time to grow), but the growing excitement over Carnival gives this visit a special energy. The day afterward is the Feast of Saint Agnes, when there will be a special meal and a court audience for Suora Benedicta’s new psalm settings for Vespers. The parlatorio is full: almost two dozen nuns gathered in separate small groups, playing host to mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, nieces, aunts, and cousins, with such a noisy exchange of gifts and gossip that the casual passerby in the street might think they were eavesdropping on some court function rather than the visiting day of the holy order of Saint Benedict. Zuana, working alone in her cell (what little family she has left is in Venice and has long since left her to her fate), can make out individual sisters’ laughter, and even after the gates are closed and the convent is silent again, those who have played host to the outside world seem lighter, a little more radiant than the rest.
That night, somewhere on the other side of the walls, a perfect lone tenor sings of a woman with hair like a cloud of gold and cheeks like rose petals. The serenade lasts only a few verses, followed by the trill of a nightingale, and then the night silence returns.
• • •
THE DANDELION TEA is already brewing in the pot as the girl walks, eyes down, limping slightly, into the dispensary. Zuana pours out a bowl of it and puts it down next to a spiced ginger ball at her place on the workbench.
“Welcome,” she says brightly, keeping her voice matter-of-fact. “Sit and refresh yourself. We have a lot of work to do today.”
The rules of the convent are clear on such things. Penance, once over, is nobody’s business but the penitent’s and her spiritual adviser. And, of course, God. It is not to be referred to and certainly not to be pitied or commiserated over.
The muscles in the girl’s jaw tighten as she tries to swallow, and Zuana knows she is on the edge of tears. It would be better if she did not cry, and if she did, it would better if Zuana ignored it. “Drink the tea and eat the ginger,” she says quietly. “I have added extra herbs. They will address the stabs of hunger and give you some energy.”
Serafina takes a breath, picks up the ball, and takes a bite. Zuana imagines the honeyed spices oozing into her mouth, counteracting the leftovers of the wormwood plant, which can linger for days. When her father had first shown her the spiky leaves and made her chew an edge to taste their foul bitterness, he had told her of the entry in the Book of Revelation when the third of the avenging angels throws a star called wormwood from the heavens to earth, poisoning the rivers and fountains so that men died of drinking from them. That such an instrument of destruction might come from a simple plant had amazed her then. She wonders if she should remind Serafina of that story now, but the girl is too absorbed in her misery to be distracted.
The tears start to fall as she chews, but it is clear she has not given them permission and she sniffs angrily to try to pull them back. After a while, as she moves out her other hand to take the bowl, Zuana notices her wincing.
She takes a small clay pot from the back of the worktop and puts it down next to the drink. “Here.”
“What is it?” The girl’s voice is flat and thin.
“It is an ointment for flesh that has been pinched or crushed. It will bring out the bruise fast and lessen the soreness.”
“I thought penance was meant to hurt.”
“It is meant to help. At the beginning the two are not always the same thing.”
“Ha! Tell that to Suora Felicità.”
Zuana drops her eyes. While one is not meant to acknowledge the nuns who step hardest, of course everyone knows who they are.
The girl finishes the drink and pushes the pot away. “Was it you?”
“Me?”
“Who told them about my poems.”
And now they are trespassing into dangerous areas. Zuana says nothing, the shake of her head almost imperceptible.
“Who, then? Augustina can’t read.”
“No, she can’t.” She pauses. “However, she has a good nose for secrets…” She trails off.
The girl nods. Nothing more needs to be said.
“Here.” Zuana takes an apron cloth from the side and hands it to her. “Finish your drink. We have a lot of work. I prepared the ingredients for the syrups, but you are to do the mixing this time. That way, next time you will be able to make the whole remedy yourself.” She is aware of the implication in the words but she does not flinch. “Be careful, though. Boiling treacle sticks to any flesh it touches and can take a layer of skin off with it.”
The girl looks at her, finishes the drink in one gulp, and takes the apron.
Over the fire, the mixture thickens as it boils, but once she gets used to the weight she stirs it well enough. They work in silence, as they have so many other times over the last weeks, and it comes as a relief to both of them. On the worktop the spices sit, grated, chopped, and measured, alongside a small vial of brandy waiting to be added at the right time. As the ingredients fold into the treacle, the smell of caramelizing sugars suffused with cinnamon and cloves wraps itself around them. They are so much the aromas of Zuana’s own youth that if she closes her eyes now she can almost imagine herself back in her father’s company even down to the sound of his shuffling and clattering as he goes about his work on the other side of the room.
You must live more in the present and less in the past, Zuana. The abbess’s words move through her mind. It is for your own good. It will make you a better—more contented—nun and bring you closer to God.
She opens her eyes to find that the girl is staring at her. She moves her attention back to the mixture. A few moments pass.
“Those things you said about me. It was kind of you,” the girl says quietly a mumble almost, keeping her eyes on the pan as she does so. “I am sorry. I didn’t …I didn’t mean to let you down.”
The apology takes Zuana by surprise. While it is her duty not to feel any resentment toward the young woman, she has needed no effort to resist it. Neither—now she comes to consider it—has she felt any irritation or even impatienc
e. On the contrary, there has been something about the girl’s presence over these weeks—her very refusal to be comforted or managed— that she has almost …what, enjoyed? No, that cannot be the right word. Sympathized with, perhaps? Or at least understood.
It is our duty to serve God humbly and quietly without worldly distraction, not to be blown off course by each and every scandal or petty novelty.
Now it is Umiliana’s voice she hears, coming back to her from the chapter meeting. Could this be what is happening to her? That she is being seduced by the novelty, the drama of it all? It is true that these days she wakes every morning wondering what the work hour will bring, even perhaps looking forward to its challenges. The idea disturbs her. It has been a hard-fought battle, the cultivation of serenity through the years, and she would not have it unwittingly undermined. Out of the corner of her eye she sees Serafina watching her again. “Keep stirring,” she says, a little sharply. “It is important that it stays moving at all times.”
The girl returns to the task. But after a few minutes she looks up again. “I …I need to ask you a question.” She pauses. “What kind of man is the bishop?”
“The bishop?” Zuana shakes her head. “It would be better for you to forget the bishop. He cannot help you.”
“He is the abbess’s superior,” she says stubbornly. “I think I have a right to know who he is.”
Zuana sighs. What were Madonna Chiara’s words on his appointment years before, when she was still a sister rather than the abbess? “As ugly as he is holy. But we will have to put up with him. Rome has had its eye on Ferrara ever since the last duke’s French wife, Renata, was found to be hiding heretics in her skirts.”
No doubt she would phrase it differently now, but the conclusion would be the same. Zuana is careful with her own words: “He has a reputation as a godly man and a reformer.”
The girl frowns. She is, of course, far too absorbed in her own troubles to appreciate the magnitude of the shift taking place all around them: this war within the faith in order to defeat the heresy outside it, bringing with it endless rules and definitions as to what is true thought and what is not. As yet, the nuns of Ferrara have been spared the worst of it (thanks be to God for the bishop’s ailments), but the future remains uncertain. It is better, perhaps, that she does not know the truth, for it would only make her journey harder, her passage to quiescence longer.
“He is also”—Zuana takes a breath; ah, well, she is long overdue a confession with Father Romero, asleep or awake— “exceedingly ugly. Possibly the ugliest bishop Ferrara has ever seen. Keep stirring. It must not be allowed to set until all the spices are absorbed.”
The girl moves her hand but the stare continues. I know what lies behind that look, Zuana thinks: she believes herself too lost and angry to find anything in the world worth enjoying or delighting in. But she is wrong. Oh, how she is wrong!
“You think I jest? Believe me, I do not. The bishop of Ferrara is as fat as a wild boar, with jowls like slabs of pitted rock and a skin as thick as that of a rhinoceros.”
“A what?”
“A rhinoceros. You don’t know this animal? Oh, it is a remarkable creation: a kind of overweight cow, with plates of gladiator’s armor for skin and the single thick horn of a unicorn coming out of its skull. I am amazed that you and it have never become acquainted.”
“You’ve seen it—this thing?”
“On the page, not in the flesh. It is to be found in only the wildest parts of the Indies, though I believe they once brought one back on a boat and showed it in Portugal.”
She watches Serafina’s eyes widening. Her father used to say that the world was full of young women with their heads clogged up with fabric and frippery, ignorant of the wonder of God’s universe everywhere around them—and he would not have his daughter wasted thus. Well, he has done a good job. When had she first learned about such creatures? Young enough that he had made her put her nose close to the page to catch the smell of the ink he claimed was still rising off it. This book left the printing press in Venice yesterday and has journeyed by boat all night and day to get to us. Imagine that, carina. Imagine that.
But she had cared less about the freshness of the printing than the pictures themselves: page after page of the most fantastical plants and creatures as recorded by men who had voyaged to the very edge of the world to catalog God’s creation. In contrast, her father’s interest in them had been as a source of medicine more than wonder; that great pointed horn from the rhinoceros was rumored to have miraculous healing properties, as potent as the unicorn’s. Years later, when she had caught sight of the bishop’s profile during service—the mass that accompanied his visit was endless, so that even the most saintly drifted off at times—the similarities had been immediate, even down to the horn of his miter sticking out from the top of his head. She had shown the image to Suora Chiara that same night, and they had laughed over it together. It had been barely a month later that the old abbess had taken to her bed with a running fever and the family factions had started gathering in anticipation of the next election.
“I daresay you have never heard of the lamia either.”
“Lamia? No.”
“Ah, if the accounts are to be believed, this is the most astonishing creature. Half tiger and half female, a woman’s face and breasts inside the fur, so that those who come across her in her natural habitat of the jungle don’t see the tiger until it is too late. Besotted, they rush toward her until they are close enough, at which point she leaps from the undergrowth and embraces them in her claws. You really know none of this? What did they teach you, your tutors in Milan?”
“I was taught well enough. Poetry. Music. Song.” And her tone is suddenly fierce. “The most beautiful things in the world.”
It is the first sign of a vivacity not bred from rage or desperation that Zuana has seen in her. Poetry, music, song. No, most certainly not bred for the veil, this one.
They work in silence for a few moments. The bait, however, has been too rich.
“You say you saw these animals in a book?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have it still? Is it in your chest?”
“In my chest?”
“Yes. Your father’s books that you brought with you when you came.” She shrugs, glancing up at the shelves where the herbs and remedy books that she uses most often are kept. “Everybody knows that was what your dowry was made up of.”
While the girl may not be sharing her own secrets in recreation, she must be listening avidly enough to those of others.
“Will you show it to me?”
Zuana, of course, is caught now, since the thing she must say truthfully must also be a lie. Such images, wondrous or not, are no longer the stuff of a good dispensary sister’s workshop.
“Even if I had such a book, Suora Umiliana would certainly not approve of its study.”
“Oh, she approves of nothing. Except prayer and death!” The words explode out of her. “Really. That is all she talks about: how the flesh decays and how we must be ready, praying every moment, for we may be taken at any time. I tell you, if she had burning nodules or gums full of pus she wouldn’t come to you but welcome them in as God’s messengers.” She shudders. “She makes me feel as if my insides are already being eaten by worms.”
She is not the first novice to find herself gripped by such images. Partly it is their age: girls around puberty taste everything more sharply, and though she might condemn poetry as the wordplay of the devil, the novice mistress, Zuana has noticed, is not above using some of its tools when it suits her, especially if she has smelled the poison of physical desire leaking out somewhere. Of course it is a great and honorable tradition within salvation: the elevation of the spirit through the vanquishing of the flesh. What were Tertullian’s words to converts to the cloth? “If you desire a woman, try to conjure up an image of how her body will be when she is dead. Think of the phlegm in her throat, the liquid in her nose, and the contents of her b
owels.” He would have made a good doctor, as well as a great scholar.
“I know Suora Umiliana can be fierce sometimes.” Zuana picks her words carefully. “Yet she has a great flame of faith inside her, and she cannot help but want others to be warmed by its heat. I am sure once you give yourself up to her you too will feel it.”
But the girl does not want to hear this. She turns back to the pans, and the moment between them is lost. After a while, across the courtyard the choir voices begin.
Zuana watches how, despite the resistance within the girl, her head and upper torso lift instinctively to greet the sound. To mark the celebration of the feast day of the blessed virgin martyr Saint Agnes, there are special chants, and Benedicta’s new psalm settings must be perfected in time for Vespers that evening. The abbess had her sights set on this service to introduce her songbird to the city, and certainly the setting is lovely, even to Zuana’s less discerning ears. Such young saints usually go down well with novices, for there is always a kernel of rebellion inside their godliness, and while Serafina may not share the saint’s proclivity for martyrdom, it is clear that the drama of the music is already inside her.
By the time she was her age Zuana could recognize the tastes of most major herb ingredients within a given remedy and identify each of their various healing properties. It would not surprise her if the girl was singing every note inside the silence now. Certainly she is listening hard enough. The haunting antiphonal chant ends and the psalm setting begins.
“You know, I wonder why you choose to continue to give yourself such pain. It must be one of the greatest joys of life to have a beautiful voice.”
The girl shakes her head, staring down into the treacle. “Songbirds don’t sing when they are kept in the dark.”
“That is true …except for the ones whose songs bring on the dawn.” She pauses. “I have heard a nightingale recently whose voice has the sweetness to ease an ocean of agony,” she says, thinking back to the moment in the cloisters when she had felt so at one with the world.