Sacred Hearts

by Sarah Dunant

  “I meant what I said in chapter yesterday, Zuana,” the abbess says, as they go. “You are a beloved sister of this convent. Your work enriches all our lives. As do your obedience and loyalty.” She pauses, as if to decide whether to continue. “In that spirit I would like to share with you some news I have received— disturbing news. It seems that Bishop Paleotti in Bologna has sent notice to all the convents in the city that there will be no more public performances of theater, for fear of contamination between the nuns and the outside world. And, in Milan, Cardinal Borromeo has forbidden any musical instruction between nuns and musicians from the outside world and is threatening the removal of all musical instruments other than the chapel organ.”

  This is indeed shocking information, and though Zuana might question the abbess’s motives for telling it now, there is no reason to doubt its veracity. She sees Benedicta and Scholastica’s faces, shining with the pride of their achievements. No more plays and no more orchestras? It is unthinkable—except perhaps in a convent run by Suora Umiliana.

  “You really think such things could happen here?”

  “It is happening already in quiet ways. As Benedicta starts to arrange her ‘gift’ of the Lamentations, she may find that the music that delights Rome these days is a good deal starker than that which pours out of her soul. For the rest, though, we are not yet lost. Our bishop may be a reformer, but he is also of an excellent family and will be open to the entreaties of others. It is, however, essential that we give him no cause for concern.”

  They continue silently for a bit. At the cloister entrance they pause, the abbess turning to her and smiling.

  “Given the circumstances, you understand, I am sure, how it will be better for all concerned if Suora Magdalena remains confined inside the infirmary until she dies…”

  Rather than wandering the corridors having revelations everywhere she goes.

  The words are there, even though they are unspoken. Zuana sees the demented Clementia straining her arms against the night straps on the side of the bed. A decrepit old woman, unconscious and covered in bedsores, strapped down like a prisoner. Is that what she is being asked to do? For the good of the convent?

  She bows her head but cannot bring herself to speak. Please God, it will not come to that.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  THEY MOVE SUORA Magdalena that evening before the office of Compline. Zuana makes up a stretcher from garden poles strapped to a mattress, and she and three of the convent’s strongest converse lift the old woman carefully from her pallet bed onto it. When they pick it up and start to walk, her eyelids flicker a little as her sores rub against the stretcher, but she does not protest.

  In the infirmary, Clementia is muttering as usual but falls strangely quiet at their entrance. They slide Magdalena onto the newly prepared bed and Zuana administers a poultice of calendula to the worst of the bedsores. The abbess comes to pay her respects, joined almost immediately by Suora Umiliana, who kneels and prays at the bedside. From across the room, Clementia’s singsong voice joins in the prayers.

  Later, while the convent sleeps, Zuana stays at Magdalena’s bedside. In her experience more souls are taken by God during darkness than in the light, which makes the infirmary a potent place to be at night. There are deaths when the end comes in such agony that not even her potions can soothe, when the night candle on the altar seems barely strong enough to keep the darkness at bay. But not tonight. Tonight the room is safe and sweet-smelling, as if the perfume of the fumigant is stronger than usual. Magdalena’s deep sleep seems to affect those in the beds around her. In contrast, Zuana herself feels wide awake, as if she could sit there forever. She keeps vigil until the Matins bell and, when the divine office is finished, checks one last time before allowing herself to sleep.

  The morning finds the shadows gone and all her patients still aslumber. From then on, when she is in chapel she has Letizia sit with the old woman so that she is never left wholly unsupervised. There will be no straps and restraints here. She has made her decision about that, whatever the cost.

  ON THE SURFACE at least, convent life returns to normal. The weather remains clement as the daily offices of Lent unfold, with their prayers of abstinence and repentance. After so much excitement, the reestablishing of rhythm comes as a balm to all.

  In accordance with the abbess’s injunction, Zuana does not see Serafina. While this causes her anxiety, she accepts it. The abbess’s words are not without wisdom. If the girl is to forge any life for herself here, she must find her own way to God like every other novice. And to do that she must make peace with herself. While Suora Umiliana may not be the gentlest of guides, nor the abbess’s greatest ally, it had been she, out of all the nuns, who remained the most skeptical about the novice’s earlier false goodness, and with humility and discipline as her credo she will surely be an honest and steadfast watchdog over any young soul.

  As for the fasting—well, it is a route they have all taken at some point in their journeys toward God, and as long as the girl is careful not to exceed the penance she should not be too damaged by it.

  AS THE BODY grows thin, so by as much the soul waxes fat.

  The lump of stale bread is delivered to the cell every morning, along with a jug of water mixed with a few spoonfuls of wine. Like everything in Santa Caterina, fasting is encouraged in moderation, and the daily ration is designed to prick hunger, not cause starvation.

  Serafina, however, is not interested in moderation. Her hunger, curled inside her stomach like a great tapeworm, lies in wait for the delivery. She drinks some water in slow sips, feeling it move down her throat, then tears the bread into a dozen small pieces, arranging them carefully on the wooden plate. She eats a single piece, washed down by more water, then places the plate in the center of the cell so that it is always visible wherever she moves, as a reminder of temptation. At some point during the day she will perhaps take another of these pieces and break it into even smaller bits, a few of which she will put into her mouth, letting her saliva work on it until it is soft enough to swallow. At the end of the day, whatever is left she secretes somewhere around her cell, to hide it from the nun who brings the next day’s ration and in case she might need it later, though she never does. This much is her choice, in her control.

  It is a cause for some wonder, how quickly this change has taken place: the way the fasting, the idea as well as the fact of it, has become her life. She carries the hunger with her every moment of the day. When she is praying she prays to withstand it, and when it is at its most acute it moves her toward prayer. The only time she does not feel it is when she is asleep. And yet—and here is the strangest thing—she is not in anguish over it. Instead, this concentration, this absorption in the act of not eating, is so strong that it has begun to wipe out all other feelings and thoughts that might pursue her. There is no room now to pine for voices reciting poetry or to yearn for the touch of a hand upon hers. No time for fury at her incarceration or the indulgence of despair. Even the music that used to soften the silence in her head has stilled. She is too busy with the business in hand, decisions to be taken, challenges to be faced: how many sips of water, when and how many slivers of stale bread, how many times each mouthful must be chewed to make it last, whether at the end she will swallow it or perhaps spit it out. And though there may be setbacks, there are also triumphs. The simple fact of controlling what she does or does not put into her mouth gives her a strange sense of power. It also makes her feel less alone. For in this struggle another voice is becoming louder.

  As the body grows thin, so by as much the soul waxes fat.

  The novice mistress’s words have become her poetry now. While Suora Zuana was intent on pushing bread into her mouth, Suora Umiliana understands the satisfaction that comes from crushing one’s own resistance. Suora Umiliana, who has always offered her cold comfort, is now kindness itself. Each day she gives up her recreation hour to sit and pray with her. Her instruction, which once seemed so joyless, becomes full
of substance and meaning.

  “Give it up to Him. The struggle, the temptation. Your weakness and your unworthiness. For no one can do it alone.”

  It is as if the novice mistress has been waiting for this moment, to see her so reduced and defeated that she can be rebuilt. Her voice, once so harsh and prodding, has grown gentle in this companionship.

  “Hoard your hunger, taste the ache, feel the emptiness. Give it all up to Him, Serafina. He has felt it all and worse. If you are truly humble, He will not reject you. Ask Him for His help. I am not worthy, Lord, but be with me now in this fight. Fill me with emptiness. For You are my only food, my only sustenance. Purge me so I will be ready for You”

  MY ONLY FOOD. My only sustenance. When she is not thinking of the stale bread she is thinking more and more about the host, constructing the moment, wondering what it might taste like on a clean conscience. Even as a child, when she tried to be good she was often distracted by small sins of thought, itching like fleabites on her soul. But it is different now. Now, with nothing else in her life to long for, she begins to long for this: the sacrament, laid out like a banquet in her imagination, the tang of the wine, the incomparable melting sweetness of the host on her tongue. But only if she keeps herself pure for it.

  So the days begin to blur together, and under Suora Umiliana’s tutelage she waxes fat while she grows thin.

  Meanwhile, through the parlatorio come mangled rumors of visitations, changes, and troubles inside other convents in other cities, so that many nuns bow their heads in prayer and give thanks to God that here in Santa Caterina they are not so oppressed.

  Many nuns …but not all.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  ON THE THIRD Sunday of Lent, after two weeks of confinement and penance, the novice Serafina is given leave to attend mass and take communion, and so rejoin convent life.

  Zuana takes her place early in the chapel. She has not seen her former assistant since the morning of her recovery. The girl arrives supported on the arm of young Suora Eugenia. Even at a distance Zuana is disturbed by what she sees. The girl is hunched and withdrawn, eyes to the ground, each step small, considered. Beside her Eugenia stands slender and proud. Like a number of the younger nuns, she has been much affected by the story of the illness and semi-miraculous recovery, and now seems content to offer herself as the novice’s acolyte rather than her rival. They make an arresting pair: the convent’s two songbirds, both in their way highly strung, both worn thin by the intensity of being alive. How susceptible the young are to such storms of emotion and drama, Zuana thinks. It is as if their very hearts beat faster than those of others. She keeps an eye on them as they settle in their seats. Theirs has been an entrance as much as an arrival, and she is not the only one watching through half-closed eyes. There will be no further rebellion. The abbess’s words sound in Zuana’s ears. As Madonna Chiara will be the last to take her seat, she is not here to witness this moment—which is unfortunate, for it is perhaps something she should take note of.

  Except …except, Zuana thinks, while I know this young woman to be a dissembler of extraordinary talent, there is no deception in what we are seeing now, surely? How could there be? Installed in her choir seat she looks so small, curled in on herself, eyes dull, her expression almost dreamy. If, on top of her drug-induced voiding, she is starving herself more than the allotted penance, there will be precious little stamina for deception in her now. A better confessor would never have imposed such a rigorous penance, for young girls are known to be more susceptible to the drama of fasting than their older counterparts.

  Still, it is possible some good will come of it. She thinks of Suora Magdalena, dried up in her bed like a piece of salted meat. While she represents the extreme, degrees of hunger are necessary—even beneficial—to convent life. In readiness for the host, Zuana herself has not eaten since last night, and there is a familiar, almost pleasurable hollowness in her stomach. For those who find themselves distracted by the world around them, fasting can be a wondrous tool. Indeed, this is the time of year for it: Lent after Carnival. Carne vale, farewell to the flesh. Most of the nuns will be feeling the growl of hunger in their stomachs at some time in the weeks to come. Disciplining the body to free the soul: with the convent still so upside down there will be those who will actively look forward to fasting as a way of returning to a state of greater calm.

  When they are all seated, Father Romero enters, flanked by the sacristan sister and the chosen choir nun who will aid him in the business of the mass. In contrast to the ceremony celebrated in the public church, mass in the convent chapel is an intimate affair: a simple altar set below the great crucifix, with the nuns gathered in their choir stalls close by; the greatest privilege as well as the greatest pleasure.

  If they are honest they might admit that it is not, alas, always a transcendent experience. Father Romero’s surplice, embroidered by the sisters themselves, is so heavy with gold thread that he can barely walk underneath it. Zuana watches him fumbling with the objects on the altar. In the sixteen years she has been here there has been only one confessor whose inner light matched the gold on his robes. He had lasted a mere seven months, taken when a sudden wave of pestilence hit the city, and in the years that followed they had all been either too fierce or too feeble. In the lives of the convent saints, the journey of the most holy women is marked by the wisdom and charity of their confessors. How would Caterina of Siena have learned to speak so clearly to the world if her first human listener had not been Father Raymond de Capua? But here they must fend for themselves spiritually—what is it that Suora Umiliana says? — “like lambs bleating with hunger in need of a pasture to nurture them.” Though Zuana does not want to live in a convent run with her strictness and ferocity there are nevertheless moments when the novice mistress’s eloquence speaks to her. How many other choir nuns, she wonders, may have felt the same?

  The service begins. While Father Romero’s voice is cracked and wheezy, the nuns’ responses are full and joyful and the chapel resounds with eager voices.

  “God be with you.”

  “And with you also.”

  And despite Father Romero, surely He is.

  Zuana bows her head. She has lived among these women for almost seventeen years. Recently even her father’s voice has been growing quieter compared with theirs. The thought does not frighten her as it once did. The abbess is right: through the rhythm and discipline of prayer eventually comes acceptance. How many of them could that be said of? She glances across the stalls and senses Suora Umiliana’s eye upon her. Ah, she always has an uncanny way of knowing who is not properly concentrating.

  Zuana gives her attention to the altar. They are reaching the moment of the blessing of the Eucharist.

  “This is my body.”

  “This is my blood.”

  She glances up at the great crucifix, the trickle of blood unfurling like a scarlet ribbon from His punctured side. And as she studies it, the body seems to tremble forward against the nails. Zuana narrows her eyes to look more clearly. I am tired, she thinks. It makes my vision untrustworthy. She glances around her but, with the exception of Agnesina, whose faulty vision makes even the closest things unreliable to the eye and who is now staring fixedly upward, no one else seems to have noticed. The bell rings, and all of them bow their heads for the elevation of the communion.

  Father Romero turns to face the nuns. The moment has come. The women file out of their seats toward the altar, led by the abbess. She is grace itself at such times, hands folded, back straight, gliding more than walking. Those who follow try to match her, though with the elder nuns it turns to shuffling soon enough. They kneel one by one in front of the stooped figure, heads back, mouths wide open, like hungry birds waiting for the mother’s food. It is as well that Father Romero keeps good hold of the chalice, for a few of them are almost greedy for the wine. His blood. His body. How could you not want more of it? When Zuana’s turn comes she clasps her hands and empties her mind.

&n
bsp; “Accept the body and blood of Christ.”

  “Amen.”

  The wafer slides onto her tongue. She feels its cool familiar weight, the way it slowly starts to disintegrate as it mixes with her saliva. To take the Lord thy God inside you. To be filled with His grace. His sacrifice. His love. The essence of goodness. There is no simpler or greater miracle.

  She returns to her place in the choir stalls, head bowed, eager to hold on to the loss of self for as long as she can. At the altar Suora Umiliana kneels, followed by each of her novices in turn.

  It is not clear exactly at what moment it happens, whether Serafina is actually receiving the eucharist or if the priest has already moved on to the next young girl. What everybody does agree on is that the noise comes first: a sharp angry crack, as if the very flagstones of the church are splitting open; indeed, those who have lived through such quaking of the earth swear they even felt a shiver. But the ground stays firm enough. It is the world above that changes.

  “Aaah!”

  “Our Lord …Jesus!”

  “The cross. The cross!”

  Above their heads the left hand of Christ has pulled away from the horizontal bar of the crucifix and the torso lurches forward. For a second it seems as if the whole body might tear itself off the wood, but the right hand and the feet stay anchored, so that He remains, hanging, suspended, His left arm stuck out into the air, the nail still embedded in His palm, His face staring down in agony toward the altar. At the same time a thin rain of wood dust pours from the exposed hole, showering Father Romero’s robes and head. The priest gives a strangled cry and his hands let go of the psalter and chalice. They bounce off the stones, scattering the remaining host and spilling the wine across the floor. And suddenly everyone is wailing and screaming so that it feels as if the beginning of the end of the world might be nigh, right there in the sanctuary of Santa Caterina’s convent chapel.