Sacred Hearts

by Sarah Dunant

  “Aah!”

  Serafina’s pain and fright are apparent as the abbess moves across the cell toward her. Only as she does so, the figure on the bed starts to move too. Suddenly, it is all happening at once; even the smell in the air seems to be changing, the sweetness turning sour, as the old nun’s face comes alive again.

  “Hahahaha.” The laughter that has been held inside for so long is pouring out of her, high and girlish, full of pleasure and wonder, far too young for such a dry, wrinkled form.

  Zuana tries to soothe her. “It is all right. You are safe. You are here with us, Suora Magdalena.”

  But her words are lost in the rolling moan that follows. The old woman, with unexpected strength, is trying to lift herself from the mattress, yet she still has hold of Serafina’s hand and cannot lever herself up. Zuana instinctively supports her until she is sitting upright, her body thin as a stick of wood. Her eyes blink hard in the gloom as if she is trying to expel some fleck of grit from them, and her mouth opens and closes like a fish, her lips making a dry slapping sound. Zuana lifts the jug carefully to her mouth and slowly she sips, coughs, gasps for breath, then drinks again. Water runs like spittle from her lips down her chin. Serafina, next to her, is whimpering slightly but whether from fear or from the powerful grip on her fingers it is hard to know.

  “Suora Magdalena, can you hear me?” The abbess’s voice is full and powerful, like the convent bell. “Do you know where you are?”

  The old woman seems to turn her head upward toward the speaker, but she never makes it as far as Chiara’s face—because now she sees Serafina.

  “Oh, oh, oh, my dear one, it is you.” The voice has returned to its fragile, cracked age but the words are clear enough. “Oh, oh, come closer.”

  The girl throws a frightened glance at Zuana but moves forward anyway. Perhaps she has no option, for Magdalena’s arm, a stick with a flap of crêpe flesh hanging off it, seems to have remarkable power. When she has Serafina close enough, the old woman puts out her other hand and touches, almost caresses, the girl’s cheek.

  “Oh, welcome. Welcome, child. I have heard you crying and I knew you would come. You are not to be sad. He is here. He has been waiting for you.”

  Serafina looks to Zuana again, panic in her eyes. But there is something else too, a kind of wonder. How could there not be? Zuana nods slightly. The girl turns back to the old nun, and a great smile breaks out on the ruined face.

  “Oh, don’t be afraid—you must not be afraid.”

  “Suora Magdalena!”

  “He said I am to tell you that, whatever comes, He is here and will take good care of you.”

  “This is Madonna Chiara, your abbess, talking.”

  “He will take good care of us all.” And she laughs again, the pearly, girlish sound echoing around the cell. “For His love …oh, His love is boundless…”

  “Can you hear me?”

  It is clear Magdalena cannot. She sighs, her eyes closing as she finally loosens her grip. As Zuana helps her back onto the bed, Serafina slides her hand away, but her eyes never leave the old woman’s face.

  Over their heads, Zuana and the abbess look at each other in the gloom.

  Outside, the bell starts to ring for Vespers.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  IT IS ONLY much later that Zuana comes to appreciate the power of the timing of that afternoon.

  Certainly, if there was a “right” moment of the day for such a thing to happen, it would have been at Vespers, since Vespers is the only office when the choir nuns can be heard, though not seen, by anyone who chooses to enter the public church. And as everyone knew, it was no ordinary Vespers they sang that day. As the feast of a virgin martyr, the service was marked by specific settings and prayers; indeed, for those who knew their saints calendar—and the city was full of them—the celebration of Saint Agnes was considered to be particularly affecting, so that devout men of business as well as great families at court with young daughters of the saint’s age might make the journey especially that afternoon in order to be blessed by the heavenly sounds that flowed out through the grille behind the altar.

  Even the weather played its part, for while the day had been foggy, miraculously—as the bell rang and the sisters started to make their way across the cloisters—the sky cleared, with a few rays of weak sunlight breaking through the clouds.

  Then there was the impact of the afternoon’s commotion on the choir sisters themselves.

  Inside the cell, Letizia took her place by the old woman’s pallet, and the abbess, the dispensary sister, and the novice waited with her behind the closed door while the choir nuns passed into the chapel. Madonna Chiara’s injunction to the three of them was instant and severe. “What has taken place in here this afternoon is for Suora Magdalena and God alone to know. Is that understood? Any further mention of it to anyone apart from myself will bring down on the offender the strictest penance.”

  But, as she no doubt knew, it was already a lost cause. Though the convent had been at work when it happened, there were those who claimed afterward that they had heard the wild laughter, while others said they had followed the rushed footsteps through the cloisters, even down to one who, looking out from high windows, was sure she had spotted the open cell door.

  All this certainty, though, comes much later.

  At the time, with the bells ringing out over the city and the nuns gathering in chapel, there is only a sense of slight confusion, as if something has happened to agitate the surface of the water, but no one can tell what it is. With the doors shut in readiness for the beginning of the service, the nuns glance around them to see who, apart from the abbess, is missing.

  This is the moment when Zuana and Serafina slip in quietly, heads down, eyes to the floor. As they enter, the girl grabs a breath, as if she might be about to cry, but her face is hidden from Zuana. The choir mistress, Suora Benedicta, is already seated at the small organ to the side from where she can both play and direct the singing, and the curtain is pulled aside to reveal the great grille that runs along the length of the wall, through which comes the soft glow of candlelight from the greater church beyond.

  There are some convents where the nuns sing from a choir loft suspended over the nave of the church, so that sharp eyes might spot the odd movement or shaft of color from below through the slits between the wood at their feet. But inside the choir stalls in Santa Caterina, while the singers can see little they can hear everything: the shuffling of bodies, the clearing of throats, the odd raucous male cough or low chatter of voices. That evening they make out more unrest than usual. Santa Caterina’s reputation and the fact that the city is still celebrating the d’Este wedding mean the church is full, with many arriving early to find good seats and restless now for the service to begin.

  From her place at the end of the second row Zuana tries to keep Serafina in her sight. The girl is still in shock. She is deathly pale and has not said a word since being freed from the grip of Suora Magdalena. Even before she had walked into the old nun’s cell she would have been light-headed from the lack of food and sleep, but now her disorientation is obvious. She sits stock-still, staring straight out at everyone and no one. Next to her, old Maria Lucia, she of the toxic breath, is hunched over her breviary, her chin trembling in anticipation.

  At last the abbess enters and quickly finds her place. She nods to Benedicta and they both rise, the body of nuns following them. The rustle of cloth alerts the rest of the church, and beyond the grille the congregation quiets in readiness for the music.

  Discounting the few sisters who are too simple or—in the case of Suora Lucrezia—too physically damaged to sing, some fifty earthly angels now stand waiting to bring glory to God and, perhaps, a little to themselves. The diminutive figure of Benedicta raises and then drops her head as the sign, and the voices lift into the air, the words of the order clean and clear, plunging the audience immediately into the drama of a young woman’s martyrdom.

  “Blessed Agnes, in
the middle of the flames, spreading her hands wide, prays …”

  In the beat of silence that is her cue, the choir’s best songbird, Eugenia, head held high, draws a breath, ready. But before she can open her mouth to let it out, the voice of Agnes herself, ripe with youth and sharp as a golden spear, soars up from the fire into the air and out through the grille.

  “O Great Father. Respected. Worshipped. Feared. ”

  In the choir stalls there is an involuntary turn of heads toward the novice. Zuana registers a skewering in her stomach, though whether it is shock or pleasure she cannot tell. Serafina’s face remains pale, her eyes still focused somewhere in the middle distance. But she, or that other she that has been hidden for so long, is here now. The novice has found her voice.

  “Through the power of your great Son, I have escaped the threats of a sacrilegious tyrant. ”

  Within the great equality of God’s love, it is not considered healthy to pick out the single from the several, the particular thread from within the weave. The very purpose of convent life is to iron out the sense of the individual, to blend the one into the many and, from there, the many into the sublime Oneness of God. And nowhere is that ideal more powerfully realized than in chapel, where the voices of the choir meld into one coherent, seamless sound, praising God and His infinite bounty.

  “I have crossed over the filth of the flesh And lo—I am left undefiled,”

  There are, however, moments. And there are voices. And when the two come together it can be impossible, even undesirable, to resist.

  “Behold, I come to You:”

  As the phrase dies away in preparation for the next, Zuana watches the abbess secure Eugenia’s silence with a single glance, though the poor girl is so stunned it is unlikely she would have tried to take back her place. She closes her half-open mouth and drops her eyes. Whatever lesson she is learning now is made more potent by the fact that, in that instant, even her humiliation is irrelevant.

  “You, my Lord, whom I have loved, have sought, have longed for—always. ”

  Many of those present will talk later of it as a small but perfect miracle. On both sides of the grille they will search for words to describe the sound of the voice they heard, likening it first to the concentrated sweetness of the honeycomb or warm grain inside the wood, then contradicting themselves to speak of the burning flash of a comet, the purity of ice, even the shining transparency of heavenly bodies. But those who will do it most justice will speak not of the voice itself but of how it made them feel.

  The old and the pious will speak of a piercing of their heart, so that they found it hard to breathe—a penetration which, though painful, unleashed a flow of love like Christ’s blood, gushing under the centurion’s spear, or the joy of the Virgin Madonna as the words of the angel Gabriel enter her breast. In contrast, the young will recall feeling it most powerfully in their gut, which is where another kind of love resides, though they will claim the arrow entered through the heart; and both young and old will, without noticing, hold their hands to their hearts while recalling the moment. And once they have tried to outdo each other in hyperbole they will sit back exhausted, quietly satisfied that their city is indeed a musical paradise, so much so that God sees fit to send new angels into its midst to guide its citizens on their way.

  None of this word-spinning will mean much to Suora Benedicta. Though she might be a visionary in her compositions, she is also a choir mistress with a pragmatic understanding of the tools of her trade. The exuberant sweetness she has heard before (and can make good use of, for there can never be too much purity in a convent choir), but what she could never have predicted is how such a young body—still a girl’s as much as a woman’s—might produce a voice of such extraordinary range and control. How her lungs might hold so much within a single breath. How she might encompass so many registers, from the icicle point of a soprano to the chestnut honey of a tenor, or move between them so effortlessly, betraying no hint of strain or even the smallest of impurities with which the onset of menstruation can often infect the vocal cords. And then—most of all— how, when the choir reaches the new psalm settings in four or even six block parts, this single voice can know and travel between them all with equal assurance, though she can only have heard the notes once, or at best twice, through half-closed windows.

  By the time the service ends, Benedicta is already halfway in her composition of the next, her mind filled with a voice that seems to be writing its own parts.

  And meanwhile, what of Suora Zuana in all of this? Zuana, who remains as ignorant of the subtleties of vocal technique as she is impervious to the poetry of exaggeration. Zuana, who has been bred to observe and consider, to make sense of what her senses tell her. Except that everything her senses tell her now seems wrong. In front of her she is seeing a novice, apparently suffused with joy, singing her heart out to the glory of God and the joyful sacrifice of a virgin in the fires of martyrdom. But who is she, this girl? How can such a transformation have taken place? How can the strong-willed, recalcitrant, rebellious, angry young woman that she knows—a figure of much power but dubious spirituality—have disappeared so entirely, to be replaced by this new creature: absorbed, distilled, so consumed by the music she is making that she seems not even to be aware that any change has taken place.

  Surely at some level she must know what she is doing. What, in effect, she has already done.

  THE SERVICE MOVES triumphantly to its close. Yet as the last notes fade into silence—Serafina’s voice now plaited into, though not lost within, others—no one on either side of the grille moves.

  The abbess, whose rising will mark the sign for others to do so, still sits in her seat. Around her the choir is caught, some looking down as they are instructed, others watching for the sign, a few staring more openly at the novice, who has dropped her hands and eyes and looks only at the floor.

  The silence in the choir stall is matched by that in the body of the church. Not a sound can be heard through the grille now, no clearing of throats, no coughs or whispers. The good citizens of Ferrara are either unable or unwilling to accept that the experience is over.

  Then, out of the silence, comes a man’s voice, clear and loud. A single word: “Brava!”

  The shock of it runs through them all, so that now the abbess is spurred into movement and quickly the others follow.

  And the girl? Well, for a moment the girl does nothing, just stands staring at the floor. But as those around her start to move she lifts her head up and for that second her eyes meet Zuana’s. What is it the elder woman sees there, exhilaration? Satisfaction? Even joy? Certainly. But also the unmistakable flash of triumph.

  It is this last that Zuana registers most powerfully, for though the girl has reason to feel gratified by the impact she has made, she must surely also understand that she has pronounced her own life sentence. Because, whatever happens, they will never let her out now.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE SMELLS FROM the bakery are almost overwhelming. It has been building up over the last few days, this assault on the senses, from when the first trays of ginger biscuits, followed by cakes and herb breads, went into the ovens, releasing their yeasts and sugars through the cloisters. Some sisters have even confessed to salivating as they pass by the kitchens (winter meals can become sparse and repetitive), but their confession only makes others more aware of the sin in themselves, and impatience is the mildest of transgressions. They will all be allowed to taste the results soon enough.

  In the kitchens, Suora Federica has been excused the more exhausting of the daily offices, as she and her cohort of nuns and converse struggle with the extra work needed to produce the specialties that will feed a small army of visitors. Packages are delivered to the gatehouse every other day, and the chief conversa in charge of provisions is run ragged with journeys to and from the river storerooms to collect deliveries and further supplies. That very morning two barrels of wine have arrived from a new benefact
or. One is to be opened and decanted, the other put into storage. The abbess has sanctioned the use of Suora Ysbeta’s private store of glasses. As a nun from one of the great families she has a passion for Murano glass, as well as small dogs, and came with a dowry chest full of it. There has been the annual discussion in chapter as to how far the use of such luxuries might count as ostentation or even vanity, with the vote going—though less smoothly this year—in favor of the demands of hospitality. As a consolation to the novice mistress and her followers, it is decided that the glasses will be used only to serve benefactors and the highest rank of visitors, and that should there be any breakages the convent will not be responsible for replacing them.

  Soon the gilded goblets will be sitting next to full jugs of wine on the covered trestle tables along one side of the parlatorio. The room has been transformed: the small organ has been moved from the music chamber into one corner, with two high-backed chairs placed nearby for the lute and harp players and space for the choir. There are candles (beeswax of the highest grade, from the stores) on spiked stands, and branches of evergreens with winter berries have been woven together with garlands of herbs across the ceiling, and fumigants in metal pomades hang suspended, ready to be lighted, the air already fragrant with their scents. The room gives off such an appearance of a great domestic salon that those sisters who entered the flock late enough to recall feast-day gatherings with their families are flooded with memories as they stand in the entrance and marvel.

  One end of the refectory has been cordoned off, ready for the construction of a platform stage upon which the martyrdom of Santa Caterina of Alexandria will be performed before a specially invited female audience, and a storeroom nearby has been opened to hold props and costumes. Some are being made by the nuns themselves, but the more exacting—doublets and hose for the emperor’s courtiers, boots and swords for the nun soldiers, and the wheel itself, which must appear solid only to be broken by divine intervention before Santa Caterina can be tied to it—have to be brought in from outside, courtesy of the nuns’ families. Those sisters and novices involved in the play can often be found during recreation walking briskly in the garden or around the cloisters reciting their lines, either to themselves or to one another. Santa Caterina herself will be played by Suora Perseveranza, whose habit of self-mortification does not prevent her from the pleasure of occasional performance, to which, everyone agrees, she brings a tender verisimilitude. In years past her portrayals of such shining saints have brought tears—and flowing donations—from many of the female benefactors who have seen them.