Sacred Hearts

by Sarah Dunant

  She had only seen it herself later, when studying again the content. The letters were small and not in the same hand. An apothecary’s wife would surely know how to write, if only to help label her husband’s bottles.

  The girl pulls herself up and holds the page toward the candlelight. She locates the address; then her eyes go back to the letter. She runs her finger over the lines of ink, then brings the paper to her nose as if to drink in the scent of him.

  Does a man’s smell come through his handwriting? It is one of the many things Zuana will never know. She holds out the hand again with the soaked bread.

  At last the girl takes it, moving it slowly toward her mouth. To her mouth but no farther. The portcullis of her teeth remains clamped shut. The air is charged with the conflict: words from without and the will from within. How does this half-starved young woman know anymore which is the true voice?

  “Eat, Isabetta. It is the only way.”

  Her teeth part and she starts to chew, slowly, stubbornly, a dribble of saliva trickling down from her mouth.

  “Good. Good.”

  She swallows, then takes another bite.

  “Oh, you are doing fine. Well done.”

  And now the tears come, running silently down her cheeks, as if eating must be the saddest thing on earth.

  “Not too fast. Here, drink something. It is full of nourishment.” She hands her the vial. “Just a little at first …good. Now rest a bit.”

  The girl leans her head back against the wall, her eyes closed, as the tears fall. The two women sit for a while in silence, the night curled around them.

  Zuana puts another small soaked piece into her hands.

  “I feel sick,” she says. “I feel sick.”

  “That is because your body has forgotten what to do with food. Make sure you chew slowly. Each mouthful.”

  But she cannot chew anything, for suddenly she is crying too much, strangled sobs, as if her heart is breaking all over again. Even when the body is drying up with starvation there are always more tears.

  “I’m scared, I’m scared.” She crushes the bread within her fingers.

  “There is nothing to be scared of.”

  “Oh, yes, there is. You don’t understand. Suora Umiliana will damn me, the abbess will hate me, and I will die in here while he is out there.”

  Zuana looks at her. What can she say? She cannot lie to her, for she is right: that will be her future. Just another young woman who did not want to become a nun. When she thinks about it later, she does not remember an actual decision. All she knows is the compulsion to bring a body back from death toward life.

  Surely God would not damn her for such an action.

  “Eat the bread while I read the letter again, Isabetta. It seems to me that you have missed the proposal of marriage it contains.”

  The girl stares at her. “What? What are you talking about?”

  “Look. I know little enough about such things, but a man who has promised God that he will not love or marry any other woman must be sure enough about the one he wants to spend his life with. Is that not what you want, too?”

  “Sweet Jesus, what are you saying? You are mad.”

  “Well, if I am mad then you had better get healthy to help cure me.”

  And she hands her another piece of soaked bread.

  PART FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  ZUANA BARELY HAS time to reach her own cell before the bell for Matins starts to sound.

  She and Serafina take their respective places in chapel without a glance or any sign between them. But even with her eyes to the floor, it is impossible for Zuana not to feel the abbess’s gaze upon her. On them both. Does she know of her visit to the novice already? Well, if she does not, she will soon enough, for the watch sister is a loyal soul and neither as deaf nor as stupid as some might like to believe.

  Back in her cell again, Zuana kneels in darkness for a while, then gets up and lies on her pallet. Prayer can do only so much. She needs a different kind of intervention now.

  “Dear father, there is a disease inside the convent,” she says, under her breath. “A deep malignancy. A young woman needs to be released from here—but in a manner that saves the convent rather than taking it down with her. What remedy can there be for this?”

  In the silence that follows—she no longer expects her father to answer, but there is quiet in the place left by his absence—she begins, slowly, to fashion a plan. As befits the complexity of the malady, it will call for the combination of different ingredients: a number of simples that must be compounded not only in the right doses but also at the right moments. Despite her tiredness she feels an energy, almost an excitement, growing within her. When she finally closes her eyes, her sleep is deep and dreamless.

  Next morning she prepares the first ingredient. It is both straightforward and difficult: a young man in the house of an apothecary by the west gate must be prevented from leaving the city. Even if the girl had strength and wit enough now to write a letter, no convent censor would pass any communication from a novice unless approved by the abbess first. Zuana, however, is a choir nun of many years’ standing and can write to whomever she chooses, so long as the content is not inappropriate. In the morning hour of private prayer she takes a sheet of paper and writes a letter, already memorized in her head.

  Dear sister in healing,

  I write further to our conversation about the welfare of your patient who suffered such grievous wounds on his body and neck. Having studied my notes, I can suggest that case wort and yarrow will help the skin to join, and honey mixed with cobwebs and egg white can also be applied to minimize scarring. However, it is vital that the patient remain in your care and within your walls at present. In particular he must not undergo any journey, since friction on the torso will cause the wounds to reopen before proper healing has taken place. With regard to the great pain he feels in his chest, in the vicinity of his heart, I am hoping in due course to find a remedy and will forward it when I do.

  I remain yours in the glory of God and the purity of the convent of Santa Caterina.

  She finds Suora Matilda in a small room behind the gatehouse. The post of convent censor is a weighty one, as the nun who takes it on must possess not only authority and experience (those who deal with the outside world must be over forty years of age) but also excellent eyesight, and these qualities do not always go together. Though not directly of Madonna Chiara’s own family, until now Matilda has been a loyal servant to the abbess, although recent revelations in chapter suggest that her loyalty may be wavering.

  Luckily, Zuana’s connection with her is more robust. When she was younger, Matilda suffered from a chronic complaint of itching and stinging when passing water. It had taken her a while to confess such an intimate ailment (she is not the only one; it can drive many sisters mad in the heat of a Ferrarese summer), but the doses of vaccinium juice Zuana gave her had brought much relief, and she has held a fondness for her ever since.

  “It is not often you have recourse to the outside world, Suora Zuana.”

  “No. But I had a visitor recently.”

  “Oh, yes, I know. A daughter of one of your father’s pupils, wasn’t it?”

  Zuana smiles. How could such an occasion ever have remained a secret?

  “She is the wife of an apothecary now and came to ask advice on treatment for her husband. It was an urgent request, and I must answer her with all possible speed.”

  Thus prepared in advance for the substance of what she must pass, the sister opens the letter and starts to read, holding the paper almost at arm’s length to do so. Zuana has already noticed how in chapel she screws up her eyes sometimes to follow the daily prayers in her breviary.

  “Cobwebs and honey, eh?” Suora Matilda, evidently relieved to have managed the small print, closes the letter and brings her stamp down upon it. “When I was a child my nonna used to say that spiders’ silk was the thread of life. She would make the servants collect webs fr
om the cellar. It always made me squirm.”

  “She was a healer then, your grandmother?”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that. She was more of a termagant to me.” She pauses. “Though these days I think she was the better for being so strict. It is important to live by strict rules, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Oh, most certainly.” Zuana smiles, taking a vial from under her robe and placing it on the desk next to her. “You sacrifice your eyes selflessly for the good of the convent. A few drops of witch hazel will help to keep them sharp on our behalf.”

  The sister hesitates for a second—rules are rules, after all— then closes her hand over the container. “You are most kind. As you say, the letter is urgent. I will make sure it goes this afternoon.”

  WHILE THE FIRST day goes well, that night and the ones that follow it are not so smooth. After Compline, when the convent has finally fallen asleep, Zuana makes her way to the girl’s cell again, bringing food saved from her own plate and extra supplies traded from the kitchen. She must stay with her now until everything is consumed. Eating. It is such a natural act until it is transformed into an ordeal. But then, once a certain level of starvation has been reached it is not only the flesh that is affected but also the spirit.

  “I’ve had enough.”

  “You have eaten barely anything.”

  “How can you say that?” she snarls. “I am stuffed like a goose.”

  “That is because your stomach is shrunken. You must stretch it.”

  “I’ll eat later.”

  “No, you will eat now.”

  “Aagh!”

  If it is hard for Zuana, it is worse for the girl. Each night she finds herself seated in front of a mountain of congealed food— thick and foul, like the devil’s vomit. Before she takes the first spoonful her body is in revolt, her stomach heaving, her throat closing up at the sight of it. Each mouthful is gross to the taste, like chewing raw flesh and swallowing poison. It is all she can do not to spit it back out across the room.

  “Eat, Isabetta.”

  Don’t eat, Serafina.

  There are nights when she fears she is going mad, when she can hear Umiliana’s voice drowning out Zuana’s, rising up out of her as if it were her own; times when even the thought of Jacopo is not enough to pry her lips apart. Were it not for Zuana she would give up before she has begun. They are locked together in the struggle: the push-pull of hope and despair. In between the tears there are eruptions of fiery rebellion, growlings of fury, or blunt refusals. It is remarkable how the coiled snake of resistance continues to hiss and spit, as if halfway to heaven—or maybe it is to hell—she will not, will not, give up.

  Eventually, however, the exhaustion beneath the hunger reduces her to a kind of docility, a numb surrender watered by tears.

  My dearest Isabetta, I did not, nor would I ever, knowingly desert you.

  Zuana woos her mouth back open by reading extracts from the letter.

  My dearest Isabetta. How long is it since anyone called her that? Isabetta. Her own name is a stranger to her now. Who is this young woman who once answered to it? Who is this man who once loved her?

  I hear your voice each night before I go to sleep, its beauty seducing the very sweetness out of silence, and when I wake it is the first thing I remember. I ask for no more.

  She listens carefully, like a child hearing again a story she once loved. And sometimes it seems she can almost remember, can almost go back there: a face, a touch, the echo of a voice. But where and how did all these things happen between them?

  I will never love or marry another. That is the promise I made to God if He would let me live, and it will be my pleasure to keep it… Pray for me, my dear Isabetta.

  But will she ever really be Isabetta again? After a while it is too tiring to ask herself the questions. To imagine a future, she must give up the comfort of feeling nothing. It seems it is not just her body that has shrunk but her whole world.

  Afterward, when the horror of eating is over, she is given, and takes—for she is acquiescent by now—a dose of acqua-vita to help the process of digestion. It does little to quiet the war of attrition that is starting to take place in her body. After the first few days her gut launches its own rebellion, sending out nausea and cramps so that at times it is all she can do to sit without doubling over with the pain. Where before she folded herself up against the cold, now she lies curled over her own throbbing entrails.

  Meanwhile, if the physical refeeding is a challenge, so is the extra level of dissembling that must now accompany it. Once outside her cell, whatever her exhaustion or confusion, Serafina needs to be clever. And deft. At every meal in the refectory, the convent must see her eat, though in a way that makes it clear to Umiliana that no food is actually passing into her mouth but is instead hidden away under her robe to ensure her continued fasting. And Umiliana, as always, is eagle-eyed over the journey of her most beloved novice.

  As the food starts to give her back some strength, so does constipation begin, her bowels filling up with stones that grow bigger and harder each day. It feels as if her whole body is bloated with the poison of waste. She remembers the bishop and the way he leaked blood and bad temper everywhere he went. Is this how it will be for me? she wonders. Will I grow back into a body made decrepit by starvation? She looks at herself. Her skin inside the shift is gray, veins running like gnarled branches underneath. Hideous. She is hideous. How can any man ever love her?

  Zuana tells her again that it takes time for a body to reacquaint itself with the normality of eating, that it will pass, it will get easier. But what if it doesn’t? What if she simply swells up until she rips open or explodes? Zuana now supplements the acqua-vita with senna: senna, the great healer of life, to clean the spleen and the liver and the heart and, in this dosage, strong enough to move the bowels of a horse. But not, it seems, those of a starved novice.

  On the sixth morning at Lauds the pain and pressure are so bad that she almost passes out. Eugenia, as usual, is at her side in chapel, and supports her until she gets her breath back. She straightens up, the sweat of pain glistening on her skin, only to find herself staring into the faces of a dozen choir nuns and novices in the opposite stalls. They look almost disappointed to find her still on her feet. Plainly, every move she makes has the convent enthralled. But then it is not nothing to watch a body starving itself in its search for God.

  SUORA UMILIANA, MEANWHILE, is not distressed. On the contrary, she is excited. She, who knows the arc of fasting as well as she knows her psalms, understands that there are moments when one is hard pushed to tell pain from the arrival of transcendence. It is not the right time, anyway. The chapel is still empty, the figure of Christ still in the hands of workmen. If—no, when—this wondrous young soul is called, it should be when He is back to watch over her.

  For Umiliana, too, has her plan, her own dream of well-being that warms and sustains her in the darkness. She has nurtured an army of novices in her time and there have been those, such as Perseveranza or Obedienza or Stefana, even the young Carità, who have emerged humble and dedicated brides of Christ. Just as she herself has always yearned to be. She has burned with the love of Jesus for so many years now—worked, fasted, prayed, given her life to Santa Caterina—and yet, and yet, she cannot help but feel there is something lacking.

  It is Umiliana’s fate to have stood in this same convent chapel, an impressionable young nun barely twenty-one years old, when a living saint, a small stunted figure, humble and mysterious beyond words, opened her palms during Matins to reveal the bleeding stigmata of Christ Himself. For the rest of the service, with the choir transfixed around her, this tiny but vast soul had sung her way through the office, tears streaming down her face, before limping back to her cell, leaving a trail of bloody footprints in her wake.

  As a child Umiliana had heard of such wonders—who had not? — and from the earliest moment they had affected her deeply. She had always dreamed of being pure enough, prayed that she might
one day be made so humble. Living saints, they called them. In the years before the heretic madness spread there had seemed to be so many: Lucia of Narni, Angela of Foligno, Camilla of Brodi. Her mother had made sure she heard of every one, feeding their life stories like rich worms into her fledgling’s open mouth. If only all young girls were instructed so young.

  Even without her mother’s piety, she would have yearned for the veil. As a child she’d continually had to be restrained for being too fierce with herself. And while the family was never one of the most powerful in the city, their name had certainly been good enough to find her a place at Santa Caterina. By the time she entered at the age of twelve she already had calluses on her knees and found most of her fellow novices vain and frivolous. Surely it would be only a matter of time and self-abasement…

  Except it had not happened. Despite all the praying and passion (one is so sure when so young), she had yet to feel the touch of ecstasy and had begun to fear that she would never be worthy enough. That night, as she had stood staring at the blood trickling from Suora Magdalena’s hands, she had understood the truth: she herself would never be so blessed.

  When you love someone so much, it can be unbearably painful to be passed over. But Christ gives different challenges to different souls, and Suora Umiliana had shouldered her own cross without complaint, sewing, copying, cooking, gardening, with as much humility as she could muster, until she had found a way to move into a position where her passion and dedication could help guide younger souls. No one could doubt that she had been an honest and just novice mistress and that a number of her charges grew to love her as much as they once loathed her. But all the time, through all of them, she had been watching, waiting, in case such a moment might come again. And it had never been more important than now, when false truths were everywhere and the church itself was bent on more discipline and less license.