by Sarah Dunant
Under the light she puts the pad on the table and presses the nail of her index finger deep into it. The surface gives a little to take the imprint. When she lifts it off, the shape of her nail is etched perfectly, even down to the slight ridge of skin around the cuticle. She rubs hard to make it smooth again. Then from under her shift she pulls out a silver medallion of the Virgin on a chain around her neck. She takes it off and embeds it facedown into the ointment, pressing it heavily, equally on all sides. When she pries it loose, the image of the metal face in the candlelight is clear, each line and the curve perfectly reproduced.
Thank God for the bishop’s pustules and the mad correspondences of figwort and pork fat. It can indeed cure all manner of things.
He has come. He is waiting. They will find a way.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
WHEN ZUANA MEETS the abbess in her chamber that afternoon it is the first time since Suora Magdalena’s ecstasy that the two women have been alone together.
Inside the old nun’s cell, the routine of prayer and sleep has returned and she has been largely forgotten again. Whatever the initial excitement, the rumors of some kind of transcendence have been extinguished by the lack of firm facts plus the drama of Vespers and the death of Suora Imbersaga, with no less a figure than the abbess herself encouraging the distractions. Letizia still keeps her fed and watered as before and reports to Zuana that though she grows weaker, there are times when the old woman will close her eyes and rock to and fro, suffused with what seems like quiet joy, after which she often asks about the young novice and how it goes with her. But when Zuana visits, as often as her duties allow, there is no such excitement. Instead, Magdalena lies silently on her pallet, her expression dreamy, as if she is only half present. Her flesh is now so paper-thin that Zuana is almost afraid to touch her in case bits of it might peel away in her hands. If the decision were hers she would move Magdalena to the infirmary now, for a soul so close to death deserves better care. She wonders if, when Suora Scholastica comes to inscribe this particular entry in the convent necrology, her life might warrant more or different words.
The abbess welcomes her in and seems pleased to see her. The formerly errant curls are now scooped back under the wimple, but then she has hosted a number of eminent visitors recently and is always careful to fit her style to their differing expectations.
“I am glad you are come. I have been concerned that the work might be proving too much for you. I had wanted to see you earlier, but the passing of Suora Imbersaga and the communication with her family took up my time, along with everything else. You did a fine job of tending her.”
“I did nothing except fail to stop the bleeding. It was Suora Umiliana who eased her passage into the light.”
“You are hard on yourself. You have also been managing an onslaught of fever. We are grateful to you for your dedication.”
“I would do it better if I had my assistant back.”
“I am sure. And I would be the first to send her to you if the demand from the choir mistress was not so great.”
“Does it take so long to learn a few psalm settings? She has an excellent memory.”
“You are very forthright today,” the abbess says mildly. “Would you like to sit down? Or take a small refreshment of wine, perhaps?” She gestures to a decanter that sits on the table, its ruby color lit up by the firelight. “It is from the duke’s own vineyard.”
“No. Thank you.” Zuana bows her head. “I am sorry for my open tongue, Madonna Abbess. My mind is somewhat beset by problems.”
“I am sure it is. And let me assure you if it were only Carnival I would give the novice back to you now, for you did a wondrous job with her.” She pours herself a glass, then holds it up before taking a sip, as if raising it in Zuana’s praise. “But as you know, after Carnival comes Lent and then Easter. We will have full churches for quite a while and Suora Benedicta is up all night scribbling.” She pauses. “Sometimes I wonder if God has somehow singled Santa Caterina out—unworthy as we are—for special responsibilities: Suora Scholastica with her writings, Suora Benedicta with her passion for music, you with your pursuit of dispensary knowledge.”
It is a subtle reminder—which Zuana does not fail to register—that not every convent offers such freedoms. But while the words are humble they are also fat with pride. How could they not be? Following Saint Agnes’s Vespers her chambers have been filled with visitors: relatives come to share the triumph (any accomplishment of the convent is also a success for the family that runs it), benefactors from the court, representation from the bishop, even a wealthy father from Bologna who had been visiting friends and is thinking of where he might place his second daughter—a young girl whose voice, he assures her, is as sweet as her disposition. Then the letters start arriving, from other abbesses and more notably from her own brother in Rome, secretary to Cardinal Luigi d’Este, rich with church gossip and congratulations to his little sister for keeping such a wondrous songbird in hiding until the perfect moment for her debut. In this way, Santa Caterina has stolen a march on all the other convents around. With each appearance at Vespers the story grows. For a city that prides itself on its musical sophistication, the talk now is more of the simple wonder of God’s instrument than of the novelty of men with no balls. And through all this, Madonna Chiara must keep her feet on the ground, though she must surely be allowed a little pleasure.
“While I appreciate your plight—and will, as soon as I can, find you another conversa to help with your nursing—my first duty must be to the interests of the convent. I cannot allow the novice to risk infection or wear herself out with other work as well as all the extra hours in the choir room.”
“And the interests of the convent are also the interests of the novice herself?”
Zuana intends this as a statement, though the question is there for both of them to hear. She surprises herself with her own forthrightness.
“Ah! I am indeed a blessed abbess. It seems, as well as our great bishop to watch over me, I have been given two other consciences to supervise my decisions. No less figures than the dispensary and the novice mistresses.” While her tone is amused it does not preclude a certain tartness. “I think, Suora Zuana, it might be better if you sat down after all. Please.”
Zuana does as she is ordered.
The abbess pours another glass of wine and hands it to her.
“It was sent explicitly for all the choir nuns of Santa Caterina, with the duke’s compliments. You may drink less of it at dinner if you feel unfairly honored now.”
Zuana puts it to her lips. There is a flavor of rich berry underneath its smooth surface. How strange, she thinks, that it has taken the life of a nun to teach her such secrets of the grape; but then her father’s knowledge of wine was more about the remedies he mixed within it than the pleasure to be savored in its own right.
“So. I wonder if your fears for the novice are the same as Suora Umiliana’s. Is it the effects of pride on such a vulnerable young soul? Or perhaps the lack of time for proper prayer and instruction now that her choir duties are so demanding? Suora Umiliana is exercised by both. Though it is possible that neither of you appreciates the discipline that comes from using one’s voice in chapel to sing the praises of the Lord. As our great Saint Augustine said, ‘To sing is to pray twice.’ ”
Of course, Zuana has thought about this—how far her concern about the girl is born of her own selfishness. For yes, she has missed her company, more than she expected. More than she finds it easy to admit. But it is not only that. Watching from the outside, there is something about the girl herself, an almost fevered energy in the way she seems to hurl herself through each and every day—as amenable as she was once intransigent—that makes Zuana think of illness rather than health.
“It is not so much her singing that worries me as the sudden perfection of her behavior.”
“Hmm. First she is too bad and now she is too good. Our novice mistress mistrusts her motives for starting to sing a
t all. She thinks she is using it as a way of gaining privilege and that underneath she still remains resistant to God’s love. I have wanted to know for a while what you think.”
The wine has a slight metallic aftertaste. Zuana cannot tell whether it is pleasant or not. How much there is to note, even in a single mouthful of liquid. One lifetime barely scratches the surface of experience.
“I think …I think she would have started singing earlier if that was the reason. She could have saved herself a lot of trouble.”
“So why did she choose to do so when she did?”
Zuana is silent. It is something to which she has given a good deal of thought over these last weeks, like the study of an ailment whose cause she is struggling to understand.
“Let me ask you another question. How far do you think your tutelage may have helped?”
She shakes her head. “I simply taught her how to make lozenges and ointments.”
“Ah, Zuana, if you have the temerity to accuse your abbess of the sin of pride, you would do well to address the mote of false modesty in your own eye.” And now for the first time they smile. Sitting closer to her, Zuana can see the pull of sallow skin under her eyes and the furrows across her forehead. With all the triumph she is not without worries. “It’s clear that some kind of bond developed between you. I had wondered if perhaps she came to identify something of her own journey within yours.”
“Mine? Oh, no. I was never so …so accomplished. Or so eligible.”
“No, but you arrived with a similar anger and resistance.”
“Is that why you sent her to me?” she says quickly.
“I think you know why I sent her.” The reply is equally quick, almost brusque, in its tone. She gives an impatient shake of the head, as if to deny the inferred intimacy of the comment. “A good nun learns as much as she teaches.”
Zuana drops her eyes to her hands, which are folded in her lap, the correct position for a choir nun when in the presence of her abbess. Behavior. Order. Hierarchy. The power of obedience and humility. How many times must one learn the same lessons over and over again?
“I did what I could to show her how she might make a life here for herself, how resistance was”—she is at a loss for the word for a moment; futile, though it nudges around her tongue, will not do—“…was …fruitless. But I didn’t expect …I mean, that afternoon in Vespers I was as taken aback as anyone. Except for—” She stops.
“Except for what?”
“Nothing. It is a matter that is not to be discussed.”
“Ah! We are talking of Suora Magdalena?”
Zuana nods. Though she can make no sense of this, she has found herself returning to it: the look of awe in the girl’s face as she watches the old nun’s sublime joy; the way those talonlike fingers flick over and embed themselves in her flesh. And those words: “He told me you would come.” As if the novice had in some way already been marked out by Him.
“Has she spoken to you about it?”
“We do not work together anymore.”
“No, but you have seen each other.”
“Once.” Once, if one does not count the glances across the refectory table or the passing of the other in the cloisters.
“Suora Zuana, if you know something that I don’t about what happened in Magdalena’s cell that afternoon, I need you to tell me. Despite this new …humility, the girl is still highly strung and, while I thank God constantly for her newfound energy toward life here, with Carnival coming the last thing we need is further trouble.”
“She did speak of Suora Magdalena when we met, yes.”
“What did she say?”
“She asked me who she was and why we could not talk of her outside that room. She was concerned that if it was indeed an ecstasy, people should know of it. I told her that all those who needed to know—God and yourself—already did. And that it was our duty to obey your instructions.”
“It was well said.” The abbess smiles, leans over, and refills Zuana’s glass.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
WHILE ZUANA HAS answered the question honestly, as is her duty under the rules of obedience, she is aware that there are things she has not told. The fact is that the one meeting between her and Serafina had not been an easy one, though how much that was to do with the girl and how much herself, Zuana does not fully understand.
On the surface it had simply been another work hour in the dispensary, the task in hand the finishing of the bishop’s lozenges. However, given that it had come the day after the drama of Suora Magdalena and Vespers, with Madonna Chiara already in strict conference with the choir mistress and the novice mistress over the novice’s future, they had both been aware that it might be their last together, at least for a while.
All morning the convent had been alight with excitement over the girl’s voice. She had sung sublimely in both of the early offices, eyes bright, manner open, the transformation so complete as to be almost miraculous. Yet when Zuana had turned to find her standing in the doorway, the young woman who greeted her was reserved, almost shy, unsure how to behave, dropping her eyes as she came in quietly and took her place at the workbench.
The table had been laid in readiness for the final stages of the lozenge making, and initially neither of them referred to what had gone before, busying themselves instead with slicing the cooled treacle and fashioning it between their fingers into mouth-sized bits, which they then rolled in a sprinkling of sugar and flour to make them more palatable and stop them from sticking, ready for packing together in the rough wooden box.
They worked quickly and efficiently but whereas at other times the silence would have stilled them, now it felt messy with unspoken words. Zuana could not work out to whom they belonged, for though the girl was clearly nervous—edgy almost skittish, as if her heart were beating too fast—she could feel a tension in herself, too. As the lumps of treacle grew into a hill of smooth sugared balls, they caught each other’s eye and the contact served to break the ice. It was Zuana who spoke first.
“So, you have found your voice at last.”
The girl’s responding smile was small and hurried—“Uh, I …yes”—the words half swallowed.
“The convent’s night songbird may be struggling with feelings of jealousy today.”
“Oh, the night songbird!” She laughed nervously. “Singing to bring on the dawn, yes?” She ducked her head back to the treacle. “You were right. I am grateful to you …for telling me to sing. It has eased my turmoil, helped me to find some peace being here.”
Though there was more agitation than peace in her as she said it.
“It had nothing to do with me. The Lord has worked within you. It is His love and His mercy that we should praise.”
“Yes …yes indeed,” she murmured, her fingers moving restlessly over the balls of treacle.
For the first time Zuana found herself almost uncomfortable in the girl’s presence. The realization troubled her more than she cared to admit. How could it be that all the spitting fury and rebellion, all the pain and tears, were easier to bear than this newfound harmony? If, indeed, harmony was what she was feeling.
Zuana was fashioning some form of question that might go deeper without seeming to intrude when the girl spoke again.
“I …I need to ask you something.”
When she had used those same words less than twenty-four hours before, they had found themselves in a jungle of fabulous animals and the poetry of disobedience. It already felt like a lifetime ago.
“That old woman in the cell. Who is she?”
But this Zuana was ready for. “She is a humble nun intent on her journey to God.”
“So why is she hidden away as if in prison? And why did the abbess forbid us to speak of it?”
“I …I think that is for the abbess to know.”
“But what happened to her yesterday …the ecstasy. I mean, it was an ecstasy. You said so yourself.”
Mindful as she must be now of Madonna Chiara’s in
junction, Zuana hesitated. “She was transported in some way, yes.”
“Then shouldn’t other people know about it?”
“The only ones who matter know already. As Madonna Chiara said, it is no one’s business but her own and God’s.”
“But those things …that she said to me. I mean, if she was in ecstasy, then …”
Of course. Who would not have been affected, alarmed even, by such prophetic testimony?
“Serafina, there is nothing to be frightened of. The things she said to you were full of love, her own and God’s. Of that I have no doubt. And neither should you.”
For a second, Zuana saw what she would swear was a look of anguish pass over the girl’s face before she clenched her jaw (a gesture that recalled her rebelliousness) and gave her attention back to the lozenges.
They returned to work, side by side, their hands moving swiftly over the table, cutting, rolling, finishing.
“I do feel …more loved.” The girl’s voice was quiet but firm as she pushed another sugared ball toward the box. “As if I am …am looked after.”
“Then let us pray that feeling continues. Thank Him for His infinite mercy.”
“I should thank you, too.” The words came out in a rush, though she kept her eyes fixed on the bench, her right hand palm-down on the wood. “I mean, for all that you have done. You have …well, you have been good to me.”
“I have only done my duty through God’s love.”
“You say that—but I think you have done more.”
Zuana said nothing, for there was nothing to say. They stood silently their hands close together, resting on the wood of the workbench. Tomorrow she would be here alone, the room her own domain again. The things she had grown used to over these last weeks—the girl’s quickness and curiosity, the unpredictable, unexpected companionship that had developed between them— all this she will grow used to being without again. That is how it must be.
The girl flexed her palm downward so that her fingers splayed out across the wood. There was a dusting of flour on them at points where the treacle had stuck and acted as a glue. Despite the work they were still lovely, fine and tapered, the nails smooth and pink, with perfect pale crescent moons rising out from the cuticles. In contrast, Zuana’s own fingers looked more like newly dug vegetable roots, thick and stained. Staring at them side by side, it made her think of the youthful moistness of the girl’s cheeks, as she had loosened her headscarf the first morning, and the plump softness of her body as she had supported her from the floor to the bed that first night. Though there was less flesh to her now (an excess of emotion and the repetition of convent food had sculpted her more finely), she was still lovely. Yes, along with the clubfooted and the squinty-eyed, Our Lord takes the most luscious young women into his care to keep them from the defilement of the world beyond …the spiritual treasure of virginity. The words of Saint Jerome came into her mind: If you walk laden with gold, you must beware of a robber. We struggle here on earth that elsewhere we may be crowned. For those novices who enter yearning for God, it was an inspiring text. Though why Zuana should have thought of it now she did not quite understand.