Sacred Hearts

by Sarah Dunant

  Thank God, Zuana is safe from it, though. Unquestioning obedience is the greatest discipline a nun can aspire to. And the instruction of one’s abbess is the instruction of God Himself.

  “The last time I tended her, the good sister was quiet in her cell.”

  For that second, the disbelief in Umiliana’s eyes is so naked that Zuana is startled; more so as she watches the tears starting to flow down the plump slopes of the sister’s cheeks.

  “Oh, oh, I know you have a good soul, Suora Zuana. I see it in the way you treat the sick. Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself was a healer, and you have been given a gift from Him in your work. But I fear we have failed you by not training your spirit to find His great love through prayer. I would have given much to have had you as my novice.”

  “I …I would have liked that, too,” she says, and suddenly it feels as if the words have been wrenched out of her heart, which now feels as hot as her forehead. It may be that she even sways a little.

  “Are you all right, sister?”

  “Oh, yes, I am fine. I—well, I just have much to do to help the sick.”

  Umiliana regards her solemnly, as if wondering how much more she should say. The tears now reach the deep creases around her mouth, slipping down toward the pitted pores of her chin. Zuana watches them, half mesmerized. She is so lovely and so ugly. If Suora Scholastica were to compose a play about the birth of Christ, surely the novice mistress would play the part of Elizabeth, her withered old womb filled by God’s grace…

  Enough, enough. I must concentrate, Zuana thinks again.

  “I am trespassing upon your work hour. God needs you for other things.” The elder nun takes a step back, but the gaze remains. “I thank you for this …this talk between us. You are always in my prayers. I hope I have not disturbed you too much.”

  “No, not at all. I …I will come to Angelica soon.”

  But she makes a dismissive gesture with her hands. “Do not worry. I will let you know if you are needed. If the prayers do not help. God be with you, Suora Zuana. You are precious to Him, and He is watching your journey.”

  “And with you, Suora Umiliana.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  AS SOON AS she is alone again she mixes up the vinegar water and rue and moves on to some fresh eau-de-vie and basil. Though she knows she is ill, she is determined at least to finish the work hour.

  How many batches of these remedies has she made up in this room? Twelve, thirteen years’ worth? How many more to come? What will be her allotted span? Fifty, fifty-five? Certainly there are nuns who live that long. Even sixty. Sixty years …She thinks of time almost as a weight. She sees a set of scales, with the years like bags of salt on one side, balanced on the other by good works and prayer. Perhaps when the two are in perfect harmony she will be ready. But how does one measure goodness? And does all time weigh the same? Surely not. Days spent in prayer or sacrifice should be worth more than those taken up in watering plants or distilling juices. Perhaps the point is not balance after all but the tilting of one side in favor of the other?

  She wonders if this is something she already knows but has simply forgotten because she feels so strange. Yet she cannot shift the thought that recently her progress has seemed so slow. Sister Imbersaga was barely twenty-two years old when she was taken. On the surface she had been just another nun, in truth rather ordinary. So why her? Unless it was that very ordinariness that had made her the chosen one.

  Chosen. Even the word smells of carrion these days. That is what heretics believe: that God has chosen some and not others, and that His choice is more important than a life of good works or a convent full of nuns interceding for your soul. Of course they will burn in everlasting fire for such thoughts—though hell must be overflowing now, for the sickness is still spreading, crossing mountains, seas, and borders, taking villages, universities, towns, even nobles and princes with it, almost as if it is another form of malevolence moving through the air. No wonder the true church grows so nervous for its flock. What had been the abbess’s words? They would even restrict letter writing as not conducive to the tranquillity of our state. Yet how could they do that? Such enforced isolation would surely start another kind of fever.

  The basil and eau-de-vie is barely mixed when she hears footsteps and turns to find a young conversa, whose name she cannot remember, in the doorway, a package in her hand.

  “I …Madonna Abbess sent this for you.”

  The girl steps forward hesitantly. She is new to convent life and finds the infirmary the strangest place of all, inhabited as it is by mad crones, with the dispensary sister, flush-faced and sweating, suddenly the maddest of them all. Zuana holds out her hand but the girl ducks by her and leaves it on the workbench, moving away so fast she knocks against a table as she goes.

  The package bears the bishop’s seal, though it has been broken. The abbess will have already checked the contents: no doubt some flowery message from His Holiness, thanking the worthy sisters for their kindness and offering them this gift of cochinilla in recompense for their goodness. Inside the cloth wrapping is a small burlap bag. Zuana holds it in her palm, weighing it up quickly. Ten grams, maybe more. Together with what she has put by, enough for both the kitchen and the dispensary. She pulls open the strings and lifts it to her nose. There is a dusky quality to its scent, of something grown and dried in great heat a long way away. How far has it traveled to get here? Carefully she pours a small quantity of it into her hand. The small granules are a dark dull gray. You would never think they could contain such fiery color. Red gold: that is what people call it. What little she knows of it comes from one of her father’s books, a history of New Spain written by a doctor who had followed the army there. He told of how the dye was made from worms that sprouted out of a cactus, grown in a desert somewhere where they had never heard of the Garden of Eden or Jesus Christ, but where the color produced was strong enough to paint His blood as if it had been shed for them that very day. The book had shown a drawing of the plant, soft and spiky at the same time, but not the men who cultivate it, so she has to imagine what they look like: naked, painted skins, or lips stuck out like plates into the air, as she has seen in drawings elsewhere.

  It worries her that she is offending against modesty by even thinking such thoughts, and she moves on instead to the contemplation of how, with the help of God’s missionary fathers, these men—and women—would have found Jesus Christ by now. Some of them, she has heard said, are even taken into the church as monks and nuns themselves. Thus does the glory of the Lord bring light into dark places, especially ones where nature has fashioned an entirely different prism of wonders. What would she give to have seen some of those wonders herself?

  Oh! But the illness is making her thoughts run wild. In her palm she sees that the edges of the granules are moist from the sweat on her skin, leaving a dark mark, and when she brushes her forehead with her other hand she finds it burning to the touch.

  I wondered if you had thought of using the cochinilla.

  Of course she has thought of it. To be taken to break a fever. That is what her father’s notes had said. But although she remembers him writing about such a remedy in theory, he left no measurements, for he had never had his hands on the dye, and therefore she has no way of knowing how strong would be too strong or what too strong might mean when taken internally.

  She knows very well what her father would have done had he had the opportunity. The only thing to be aware of is that for such an experiment it is well to err on the side of caution and always be sure to note each and every step, so that when you look back you can mark its course with certainty.

  His voice seems so close in her ear now that she turns her head to see where he might be standing, only to find her vision blurred by the speed of the gesture. I am more ill than I realize, she says to herself. I must be careful how I do this.

  She moves slowly, notebook open to the side with a new heading, date, and time, while she measures out a portion of the granu
les into a clay bowl before wrapping up the rest and securing the bag within a drawer, ready for delivery to Suora Federica during the afternoon. Then she takes a measure of hot water and slowly mixes it into the grains, noting the proportions in her book as she goes. The resulting liquid is too dark to distinguish what depth of color it might be making. It occurs to her that this may mean it is too strong, but the work hour is almost over and if she wants to have time to test this it would be best done now. What does not occur to her is that she is so feverish that she is no longer capable of deciding what is and what is not best for herself.

  She takes a few sips. Under the heat of the water the mixture is bitter to the taste. The shelves in front of her look strange suddenly—as if something is wrongly placed or missing, but she cannot think what. Her head is spinning. As she drinks the rest she wonders if it will stain her lips in the same way as the marzipan strawberries and, if so, what Suora Umiliana will make of her newfound vanity as they sit opposite each other during the midday office.

  BECAUSE SO MANY of the choir sisters have been struck down in the last days, Suora Zuana’s absence is not immediately noticed in chapel. It is not until everyone is settled and the office has begun that the abbess, counting her flock and duly marking the return of Suora Ysbeta, pale but clearly better, seeks out her dispensary mistress to communicate her silent congratulations on the recovery, only to find that she is not there.

  In her place amid the sweetest-voiced, sweetest-breathed choir sisters, it takes Serafina longer to notice, for she is caught today between her singing and her thoughts, which are still wrestling with the problem of how to get into the cell of the chief conversa. As soon as her eyes fall on the gap at the end of the second row, however, she knows straightaway what must have happened. She glances around surreptitiously to see who else has spotted it. But the abbess has her eyes on the crucifix and seems, at that point, unaware of her flock.

  When the office ends she files out of the chapel into the courtyard with the others, then loiters a little as the rest disperse to their cells. The midday service is followed by personal prayer. Given her newfound compliance it would not be fitting for her to be found guilty of disobedience at this stage. But among the many things she owes to Zuana is her silence on a matter that might even now have had her incarcerated on bread and water. Anyway, if the dispensary sister is ill, it would surely be better if it is known about sooner rather than later.

  In the infirmary Suora Clementia is fast asleep, her snores reverberating around the room as intermittent growling. She does not wake even when a few moments later the abbess herself enters, walking swiftly between the beds, her shoes clipping fast across the flagstone floor.

  As she opens the door into the dispensary the sight that greets Madonna Chiara makes her forget momentarily that she has a duty to note at once the transgressions of any of her flock. In the middle of the room the novice Serafina is kneeling by the body of the dispensary mistress, who is slumped on the floor, blood dripping from her mouth.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  FOR A WHILE now it feels as if time itself changes its form, becoming liquid as opposed to weight, moving faster for some than it does for others. And for Serafina it moves fastest of all, so that there are moments when it seems to her as if God Himself must have taken a hand in her well-being, so powerfully and smoothly does she find herself negotiating the rapids, anticipating, reacting, her eyes fixed on the horizon ahead regardless of the tilt and trembling of the world around her.

  “What’s happened?” The abbess’s voice has none of its usual velvet nap. “Suora Zuana …can you hear me?”

  “She has fainted. It’s the fever.”

  “But the blood …look at the blood.”

  “I …I think she has vomited it up.”

  “There must be a wound inside her.” The abbess’s hand touches close to Zuana’s lips and her fingers come back bright with what looks like the reddest of blood. “We must get her to bed. Help me.”

  But Serafina is staring at her own hand, equally stained from where it has come into contact with the liquid on the floor. She gets up quickly and moves to the workbench. She notes everything: the empty vial on the side (so she does have a supply!), the clay bowl next to it, its insides dark with a leftover mixture, and, nearby, the open notebook. The last entry marks a time: a half hour before Sext, followed by some figures, but the writing is too small to make them out. She puts a clean finger into the remains in the bowl. It comes out a fierce crimson. She lays it on her tongue, grimacing at the taste, then looks back to Zuana’s body and the red stain around it. If you didn’t know you might think she was indeed dying in a lake of her own blood.

  “What are you doing, girl? Either help me or get a conversa here now.”

  Serafina has a sudden image of herself turning back to the abbess, her mouth wide open, her bloody tongue flashing out like a viper’s. But instead she is already at the sink, finding a cloth and dipping it into the bowl of mint and rue vinegar water Zuana must have been mixing when the fit took her. Back on the ground, she lays the soaked material across Zuana’s forehead.

  “Are you mad?” Madonna Chiara’s hand snaps out to take the cloth. “That is no use. She is bleeding to death.”

  “No, Madonna Abbess, I think not.” As she says it she thinks how calm her voice is compared with that of her superior. “I think she has swallowed some grana and it has reacted badly with the disturbance in her stomach.”

  “Grana?”

  “Cochinilla. It is a remedy made from the bishop’s dye. She spoke about how it might work to bring down high fevers. Look—that is what is staining her lips.”

  Now the abbess is catching up with her, seeing herself filing away His Holiness’s note in her leather ledger where she keeps all the testimonies of the convent’s benefactors, before sending the package off to Zuana, who she knows has been waiting for it. “Oh! She has tried it on herself first,” she says, because of course she knows her dispensary sister’s ways better than most. “Do we know how long it takes or what it can do?”

  “No, though I think she must have known or she wouldn’t …” She trails off. “Anyway she still has the fever, so the vinegar and mint will help.”

  The abbess moves her hand back from Zuana’s face. The girl is right. Though the skin is flushed she looks quite serene, not like someone who has vomited up her own insides. Chiara pulls herself up, her composure regained. “We must hope you are right. Go and get a conversa so we can carry her to her cell.”

  Now that she is back in control, there is no opposing her. Serafina rises meekly from the floor.

  “And when you return you will tell me what you were doing in the dispensary in the first place.”

  But Serafina is not so easily disconcerted. “I came to bring back a book of remedies that Suora Zuana lent me to read and which she had need of now.” And she points to the notebook sitting obviously on the workbench, as if it had just been placed there.

  As she moves by the unconscious Zuana she slips it quickly back onto the shelf.

  IN THE SECOND cloister, the laundry room is belching steam into the courtyard, but inside there is only one conversa at work and she is as old and gnarled as a dead tree, barely able to lift a wet sheet, let alone a sturdy nun. Moving to the kitchens, Serafina finds Letizia shedding tears over a mountain of half-chopped onions. Suora Federica howls when she thinks she is going to lose her, until she hears the reason.

  “God in heaven, what a day! First the chief conversa, now Suora Zuana. I will be cooking for a convent of corpses if we are not careful.”

  “Don’t worry. We will bring them both back to health soon enough.”

  And such is the young novice’s certainty—even joy— as she delivers this prediction that Federica marvels at the transformation that has taken place in her over the last few weeks and wonders if she had, perhaps, been a little heavy-handed with the bitter ashes she had mixed into her penance scraps.

  As the two young women
move swiftly back across the courtyard into the main cloisters together, Letizia glances at Serafina with an undisguised curiosity.

  “What is it? What are you staring at?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Then keep your eyes to yourself.”

  Back in the dispensary, they lift Zuana off the floor and move her through to the infirmary. The intention is to take her to her cell, but as they go Serafina says, “Madonna Abbess, perhaps we should put her in one of the beds here? That way, whoever takes over the dispensary can also keep watch over her. And as she recovers she will be able to advise and help. She would not want to be separated from her patients.”

  Possibly because it is a sound idea, or maybe because the body is so unwieldy and heavy (knowledge must weigh more than flesh, Serafina thinks as they struggle to carry her), the abbess agrees.

  They move her to the nearest bed, the one left empty by Imbersaga’s death.

  As the abbess returns to the dispensary, Letizia makes a move to tend to Zuana but Serafina elbows her out of the way, covering the inert sister with the thin blanket and dabbing her forehead with the cloth.

  “Dear Mary, Mother of God! What is happening here?” In the doorway the novice mistress is a sudden wind of anger. “Novice Serafina. You are meant to be at silent prayer. This is—” Then she catches sight of Zuana on the bed and, at the end of the room, the abbess emerging from the dispensary.

  “Do not disturb yourself, Suora Umiliana.” Madonna Chiara’s voice makes it clear that the situation is under control. “Suora Zuana was taken ill and the novice is helping, as she knows the cause of it.”