by Sarah Dunant
Serafina glances up sharply, as if the words have stung her in some way. The gesture causes the spoon to jump in the pan and a fat gob of boiling treacle spits up at her.
“Oh!” She yanks her hand back, dropping the spoon inside, her face contorted with the burn.
Zuana moves swiftly, grabbing her by the wrist, ripping the burning treacle off her skin, and pulling her over to the water butt. “Put your hand in!”
She hesitates, so Zuana does it for her, and she yelps again, this time at the fierce cold. “Keep it there. It will stop the pain and hold off the burn.”
Back at the fire she sets about rescuing the wooden spoon, while behind her she registers the sound of the girl’s weeping. Once started, she is not able to stop.
Zuana finds herself remembering a winter afternoon in the scriptorium, so long ago. A young woman, furious and desperate by degrees, she sits staring at her own tears splashing onto the page she is copying. And as she tries to wipe them away before they cause damage to the paper, she finds herself studying the great illuminated letter O that begins the text, inside and around which, following the curve of the gold leaf, she can make out painstakingly tiny written words: once read, never to be forgotten.
My mother wanted me to become a nun to fatten the dowry of my sister. And to obey my mother I became one.
She repeats the words now, accentuating the patina of verse inside them.
Yet the first night I spent in a cell I heard my lover’s voice down below, and rushed down and tried to open the door.
Behind her in the room, the crying has stopped.
But the mother abbess caught me. “Tell me, little sister, do you have a fever or are you in love?”
She turns to the girl. “You are not the first, you know, to feel so angry or abandoned.”
“Ha! You wrote that?”
The incredulity on her face makes Zuana laugh out loud. “No, not me. My quarrel with these walls was different. But another novice—just like you.”
“Who?”
“Her name outside the convent was Veronica Grandi.”
“Was? Is she gone?”
“Oh, yes, it was a long time ago. When I first came— a novice like you—I was apprenticed to the scriptorium. I found the words disguised inside one of the illustrations in a psalter. There was a name and a date: 1449, a hundred years before me.”
“What happened to her?”
“How is your hand?”
“I can’t feel anything.”
“Then you can take it out.”
As the water drips off her fingers, Zuana can see a small welt of angry red skin. The numbness should stem the pain until the blister forms.
“Later I looked for her record in the convent archives. She took her vows a year later and became Suora Maria Teresa.”
“Oh. So she never left.” Her voice is hollow with the realization.
“No. When she died thirty years later she had been the convent’s abbess for nine years.” She pauses. “Her entry in the convent necrology tells of her great leadership and humility and how on her deathbed she sang the praises of the Lord with a wide smile on her face. I think it possible that she had forgotten whoever was waiting by the gate by then, don’t you?”
Zuana watches as the girl struggles to digest the wonder and the horror of it. If there had been someone waiting outside the gates for her, how much longer might it have taken? A dead father was an acceptable person to miss; even the sternest of confessors and novice mistresses found it hard to punish an excess of filial grief. But those who came with darker, more suspicious memories would have to keep them secret. It is not her job to ask. When the door closes behind a novice, her past remains outside. Yet sometimes it helps to have someone listen.
“I cannot …” The girl stumbles. “I mean, if you—”
But whatever she is about to say is interrupted by a hammering on the door.
“Suora Zuana! Suora Zuana!”
The conversa who enters is young and plump, her face glistening with sweat.
“You must come—please—now. It’s Suora Magdalena. I …I think …I don’t know …I can’t wake her.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. I–I was crossing the courtyard with laundry when I heard voices coming out of her cell. It was work hour, but I thought—well, maybe one of the sisters was in there with her. There was laughter.” She stumbles over the words. “Girls’ voices, laughing. Then suddenly there was silence. So I opened the door …and there was no one there. The cell was completely empty. Just Suora Magdalena on her pallet.”
Zuana is already reaching for the pot of camphor crystals.
“I am coming, Letizia.” As she turns she sees Serafina’s face, alive with curiosity. “Um …you are excused the rest of the work hour. Go back to your cell and wait for Vespers.”
“Can’t I come with you?”
“No.”
“But …I am your assistant. That’s what the abbess said. That I was to help you.”
“Yes, and the help I need is for you to go back to your cell. Letizia, find a conversa to come to take charge of this liquid until I get back.”
“But I could do that,” Serafina protests. “I have studied the remedy. I know how and when to put in the herbs.”
Which is true enough, except that the rules forbid leaving a novice in an unattended dispensary. There are too many ingredients that could cause damage to others. Or herself.
“You are risking the charge of disobedience, Serafina. Go to your cell. Now.”
And whatever good work has been done between them is wiped out by the fury in her eyes. She pushes roughly past Letizia, and the door slams behind her.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE WORK HOUR is still in force and the cloisters are deserted as Zuana makes her way swiftly across the courtyard. The choir has stopped but a few excited voices slip out from the embroidery room above, a dancing inflection inside them. This must have been the laughter that Letizia heard, she thinks; sound moves strangely through winter fogs, and while it is not as dense as some days the air is still gauzy gray around her.
The door to Suora Magdalena’s cell is half open, as if waiting for visitors. She feels a strange prickling down her neck as she walks in.
Before her eyes have had time to adjust to the gloom (even in daylight it remains murky in here), Zuana is struck by the smell. She has prepared herself for sickness, even the telltale scent of death, but this is different: light, fragrant, like a wave of perfume—roses or even frangipani—summer smells in winter. It is almost as shocking as the sight that greets her on the bed.
Magdalena’s pallet is on the floor against the back wall, next to a water jug and a plate, a bucket for excrement nearby. Recently, Letizia has reported, there has been almost nothing in it to empty. But then the less one takes in, the less there is to evacuate, and over the years, in her relentless quest for God, Suora Magdalena has been waging a steady war of attrition on her body, training it to survive on almost nothing.
When she entered the convent the century itself had been young, and there are no other sisters left alive from that time. Everyone, though—Zuana included—knows something of the story: how as a humble novice from the poorest family she had been able to go for weeks on end with only the host to sustain her, and that while she was in such a blessed state her hands and feet bled in sympathy with Christ’s own.
Such godliness had been all the fashion then and Duke Ercole, a man with an appetite for holy women, who collected piety as others collected china or antiquities, had found her in a nearby town and installed her in Santa Caterina, where he and his family would visit, bringing members of the court to hear her prophecies—for sometimes she would go into ecstasies for them.
Rumor was that she had been small even then—some said she weighed so little that it wasn’t hard to believe she could lift herself off the ground. It had been the time of the French invasions and the northern wars, and every city was searching fo
r a way to protect itself. Such humble, uneducated women—living saints, as they were known then—who found God through prayers and their own goodness were talismans of purity in a world of corruption. But once Luther and his dissenters started lighting their fires of heresy across the mountains, such untutored salvation became suspect. After Ercole died the royal visits dried up—and so, it seemed, did Magdalena’s stigmata.
By the time Zuana arrived, she was a forgotten figure who, by her own request, never left her cell, and even those who might have shared her hunger for God were wary of her reputation. Successive bouts of fasting had left her too weak to attend chapel, and over the years convent confessors had proved either too tired or too forgetful to bring God’s food directly to her, so that for some time now she had lived without the host. Her cell door remained closed, and gradually even the memory of the memories had started to dry up. Since she had become dispensary sister, it had fallen to Zuana to oversee her care, which she did as best she could, making sure that her food was delivered and interceding in the appointment of a conversa who would not be cruel to her. There was nothing more anyone could do. Magdalena’s self-inflicted pariah status was a fact of convent life, unquestioned and secure. The rest was up to God.
It seems He may have spoken now.
Her body is so wasted that Zuana can barely register the shape of it under the blanket. Her skullcap has fallen from her head, and the stubble of white hair sits like frost on hard ground. But her face—oh, her face is vibrant: her eyes are fixed open, bright and shining in a sea of wrinkled skin, and she is smiling, a wild exuberant smile, lips apart, as if she has seen something so wondrous that she has taken a gasping breath in anticipation of laughter, only to find it caught in her throat.
Zuana uncorks the camphor salts and passes the bottle under her nose.
She remains transfixed, not a flicker of response.
The room grows dark again as Letizia’s form blocks the doorway. “Oh, sweet Jesus. He has taken her, hasn’t He?”
“Is this how you found her?”
“Yes, yes. Oh, but you should have heard the laughter.”
“Move from the doorway. I need more light.”
The old nun’s right hand is clasped over a crucifix, the knuckles bone-white. Zuana moves under the blanket to find the left hand; it lies loosely by her side, cold to the touch. When she brings it into the light she sees skin so thin and bruised and veins so pronounced they look like membranes on an animal’s stomach. She searches the underside of her wrist for any sign of a life pulse.
“Oh, Lord Jesus, take her soul. Lord Jesus, take her soul.” Behind her, Letizia’s moaning prayers fill the room.
Under her fingers she feels a faint fluttering beat. Then another. Slow, but there, surely. She slides a hand under the back of the old woman’s neck to try to lift her up, and her fingers register a run of vertebrae distinct as standing stones in a graveyard. But the body is rigid and will not move. Rigor mortis with a pulse? She looks back into the eyes, staring, unblinking, bright, with no film, no dullness at all. Dead, but with eyes that are still alive? She bends her cheek to her nostrils. Closer, the strange perfume seems stronger from the open mouth. And then, soft but unmistakable, she feels the heat of an exhaled breath.
“Lord Jesus, take her soul.”
The cell becomes gloomy again.
“Move, I said. I need more light.”
“What’s wrong with her?” But it is Serafina’s voice she hears now, harsh with fear. “Is she dead?”
“What are you doing here?” Zuana does not take her eyes off the old woman’s face.
“I heard someone running. And laughter. I …I was scared, alone in my cell.”
If it is the truth, it sounds disingenuous in her mouth. Such disobedience will mean penance if Zuana chooses to report it, but there is no time to think about that now. Somewhere she knows that she would have done the same thing, the spice of curiosity overwhelming the blandness of prudence.
The light returns as the girl steps in closer. “Oh, the smell …what is it? Is it death? Is she dead?”
Zuana picks up the jug by the bed and, lifting it high, splashes a thin stream of water on the old woman’s face. Nothing. Except this time, as the breath leaves her body, there is the faintest aah.
“No, she’s not dead.”
“What is it, then?” Serafina’s voice is as hushed as the room. “What’s happened to her?”
“I think she is in an ecstasy.”
“Oh! Oh, I knew it.” The conversa lets out a new moan. “You should have heard the laughter. It was as if Our Lady and all the saints and angels of heaven were in here keeping company with her.”
“That’s enough, Letizia,” Zuana says harshly. “Go and fetch the abbess. Tell her I need her here now.”
In the silence that follows Letizia’s exit, Zuana can feel Serafina’s fascination behind her. Maybe this disobedience has purpose after all. Even the most recalcitrant novice cannot help but be moved by the white heat at the center of the flame.
“Come.” She turns to her. “Since you are here, you had better see for yourself. There is nothing to be afraid of.”
“I’m not afraid,” she says boldly.
Zuana makes room for her by the pallet. And, of course, as soon as she sees the old woman’s face Serafina cannot take her eyes off her.
“Ooh, she looks so …so joyful. And the smell—”
“It happens sometimes. It is the scent of flowers, but more than flowers.”
“How do you know she is not dead?”
“Here, take her hand. Don’t worry; she doesn’t feel anything. Under her wrist where the great vein is …feel it? Feel the beat. Try again. Got it? Now, see how slow it is. Remember how fast it was in the sister with a fever.”
“But doesn’t that mean she is dying?”
“No. If it’s like the last time, she can stay like this for hours.”
“The last time? You have seen this before?”
When had it been? Seven—eight years ago? Maybe longer. Summer. As hot as hell itself. Suora Magdalena had been upright on the pallet then, her arms bent in front of her as if she were cradling a baby, her head flung back in what seemed like a paralysis of joy.
Of course Zuana had heard about such things—who had not? — but this was the first time she had ever seen it. As the newly appointed dispensary sister, she had been instructed by the abbess of the time to stay with her until it passed, so she had sat in the cell watching over her. Not that there had been much to see, unless you counted the fly that kept landing on her face, picking its way over her eyes and lips, even into her mouth, while all the while she remained oblivious. How long had it lasted? An hour, maybe less. But the journey had been longer for the old nun. She had been so dead to the world that when she first came back she could not understand where she was; not the time, or the place, or the day. But the wonder as to where she had been, and the sadness that she was no longer there, was painful to behold. With such sustenance for the spirit, what need does the body have for food?
Next to her, Serafina reaches out a hand toward the old woman’s staring eyes, but hesitates as she gets closer.
“Don’t worry. She can’t see you or hear you. You could stick a needle into her flesh and she would not even flinch. She is not here.”
“So where is she?”
“I don’t know. Except I think she has reached a place where her soul is as powerful as her body. So that she is able to move from one into the other for a while. To find herself with God.”
“With God!”
With God. Of course she would not know what that means. But then, who does? With God …When Zuana first came, the novice mistress of the day, a kinder though paler force than Umiliana, would talk of the journey toward Him as a path that could be followed by everyone, as if obedience and prayer practiced regularly would bring on divine love as surely as a dose of figs might regulate the bowels.
Except that it had never happened. Not to
her or, it seemed, to anyone around her. Oh, there had been souls who had grown gentler and more humble over the years, even a few who had come in like spitting cats but grown gradually into lambs, albeit with less spring in their steps. There were some who accepted suffering without complaint and overexcited ones who might swoon occasionally in night chapel. Yet such elevation, whatever it was, was short-lived and, to Zuana’s eyes at least, always had the quality of a self-imposed state rather than sustained transcendence.
After a while it had been a relief to stop trying. Her books and her work brought their own rhythm, at times their own temporary loss of self. Still, one could not help but wonder at the idea: to be so consumed, so transfixed by joy… She glances at Serafina beside her, staring down at the old woman’s face, and knows she is feeling it too. Whatever the dangers within it, Suora Umiliana might do better to talk to her novices about ecstasy rather than contamination and decay. Such words would surely hook deeper into rebellious young hearts.
“What has happened here?” Madonna Chiara’s voice from the door is clean and matter-of-fact. “Is she transported?”
“It would seem so, yes.”
The abbess gives a small sigh, as if this is yet another unwarranted problem she must deal with in a busy day. “How long?”
“I don’t know. Letizia said she heard voices, but when she came in she was alone.”
“Who is that next to you?” Her tone is sharp.
Serafina starts, half turning her head.
“What is the novice doing here?”
“I …I asked her to help.” Later, Zuana cannot remember deciding to say this before the words came out.
“Well, this is not her place. Go back to your cell, young woman.”
Serafina moves immediately in response. “Ah!” Then stops. “I can’t …I cannot move my hand. She is holding it too tight.”
It is true enough. Zuana can see it now. Where before the girl had hold of Magdalena’s wrist, searching for a pulse, now, suddenly, the old nun’s hand has twisted to clasp hers back, claw-thin fingers pressing so tight they seem embedded in the younger woman’s flesh, the worst pressure over the burn where the skin has been starting to rise.