She disappeared into the kitchen and soon Caterina smelled the best smell in the world: Turkish coffee. It was her favorite, the sweet blackness of it. When had Leda learned to make it? She must have been watching more than Caterina had realized.
Leda came to the table with the steaming copper coffeepot and some dishes. Caterina laid out the bread and cheese. Leda sat and, before she had even poured, broke off a heel of the bread. She gobbled it down, dropping flaky crumbs on the table.
“No coffee for you?” Caterina asked, noticing she had only brought one cup.
“Oh—no,” Leda answered with a sudden blush. “It makes the baby wakeful now that the kicking has started.”
“The kicking has started?” A huge smile rushed to Caterina’s face at the news. This was a road she knew. It had ended for her too soon. But she started down it again with Leda.
CHAPTER 36
Murano, 1753
Stone, stone: That’s mostly what I remember from my first day at Santa Maria degli Angeli. Cold stone floors in the dormitory, a bed like stone, the stony stare of Christ from an icon on the wall. I shivered and my teeth chattered, though it was high summer.
The abbess—Sister Paulina at that time—came to greet me in my room. She had pockmarked skin and a fat nose. We girls used to whisper she was part troll, because she was so ugly and short. Her whole body hardly reached up to my shoulders.
“The girls at Santa Maria degli Angeli are not allowed any visits from men—except your father, brother, and uncles,” she told me. She held a pile of books stacked up to her chin. “No men pretending they are cousins. And no letters to, or from, home.”
My eyes filled with tears. I felt sick. Visits from my father and brother? I would rather be alone.
“These books will help you pass the time,” she said, stepping past me to unload them on a writing desk that sat in a dark corner. “You can copy out the passages that you find most inspiring.”
I saw there were pens, ink, and a few sheets of paper on the desk. Oh, I was already thinking of other uses for these marvelous tools!
“Grazie, abbess. I will start now,” I said, eagerly. What I really wanted was for her to leave me alone. I think she knew it: She gave me a sly look with her small, puffy eyes.
“Listen for the bells for prayers at Sext,” she said. “After, we will eat.” I guessed by her stout body that this was secretly her favorite time of day.
Once the door closed behind her, I went immediately to the writing desk. It was simply made, maybe by some poor monk at a nearby monastery, of knotty pine. Nothing like my luxurious and sweetly fragrant rosewood desk at home. Also, it faced the wall. I pulled the desk out carefully, a few feet, to sit under the single window. Doing this, I could look out to the lagoon, stretching like a shallow pool of tears between me and my Giacomo. Home. I was no more than three miles from Venice and could still see the bell tower of San Marco. But how to cross the distance? How to get a letter to him?
I sat down and began to write nonsense, pouring out my love. All the time, my eyes ran like sad fountains. Could Giacomo feel me thinking of him, I wondered—feel my words as if I spoke right into his heart? Would he ever hold the letter where my fingers brushed, as if joining our hands magically across the water? I willed myself to believe these things.
Prayer bells startled me out of my reverie. My fingers were covered with ink. I balled up what I had been writing. What good was any of it, in the light of reason? I was trapped. I sat and stared out at a few gondolas and fishing boats passing in the far distance. Wearily, as if I had grown old in just a few hours, I rose to go to church. I would pray to God to free me.
How ironic the convent was called Santa Maria degli Angeli. What angel would ever choose to make a home in that miserable place? The church—a pile of rough bricks. Inside—cold tombs, marked by creepy sculptures of nuns laid out sleeping in marble habits and clogs.
I kept my eyes down as I took a seat in the choir. From a quick glance up, I saw a sea of black-veiled and habited nuns around me, and, clustered together near the back, a group of brightly clothed younger girls. These were the boarders, I realized. As the prayers droned on, I sensed everyone’s eyes were on me. I was probably the most interesting thing that had happened at the convent in a while: a change.
After the service ended I went with the others to the refectory, still keeping to myself, however. I wasn’t ready to be anyone’s new friend. To look up or speak was to sprout a root, and I preferred the soil of home.
I felt hot and nauseous at lunch. The meal was some sort of fried seafood, with legs. I avoided it. The nuns and boarders were all pressed together on benches at long tables. At one point, a beautiful nun of about twenty years old approached me. Turning to face her, I saw she was dressed in the usual black habit, but wore no veil. Instead, her chestnut-colored hair was twisted up in a fashionable style, and set with a lilac glass pin surrounded by pearls. Her brows were perfectly arched, etched and elegant, as if she took in everything and was surprised by nothing.
She gave the girl beside me a tap on the shoulder with a long fingernail and nudged her away using only her eyes. How clear and blue-green they were, in the sunlight that shone in from the high windows all around. The girl hastily got up, taking her seafood with her. The beautiful nun sat down.
We could not speak because someone was reading from the Bible while we ate. A boarder no more than twelve years old stood on a box at a lectern set up at the head of the room. A peeling and faded fresco of The Last Supper loomed above her as she recited the venerable Song of Solomon:
Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth:
for thy breasts are better than wine,
Smelling sweet of the best ointments.
Thy name is as oil poured out:
Therefore young maidens have loved thee.
Her young, high-pitched voice echoed in the huge refectory. Only recently I had been full of earnest faith, too. But now: Let him kiss me? Thy breasts are better than wine? I was hearing new things.
It was as if the beautiful nun by my side read my mind. She squeezed my knee under the table, her arm perfectly still beneath her habit. She continued to eat with her other hand.
I stifled a giggle. How good it felt to laugh at the ridiculous seriousness of the place, to feel I was not entirely alone. At the end of the meal she slipped me a note. I realized she must have seen me earlier in church and planned to seek me out. How flattering!
I held my secret in my palm and read it only when I got back to the dormitory.
Come to my room tonight.
—Sister Marina Morosini
CHAPTER 37
Marina Morosini’s room was better than mine. It was about twice as large, and filled with her own furniture: a gilded bed with thick mattress, pink silk-cushioned sofa, Turkish carpets, even a bright yellow canary in a cage. She came from an old noble family. Her name told me that. I remembered several past doges of Venice had been named Morosini.
Why was she here? Surely, such a high-ranking family could afford a dowry. And if money was short, wouldn’t this be the daughter they banked on for the marriage market? The beautiful one? It was no secret that many girls sent away to convents were defective in some way.
“Enchantée!” she said in French when I showed up and told her my name. She acted as if we were destined to be friends, clasping both my hands and kissing my cheeks. I followed her into her room, my eyes popping at all the luxury.
“You must smile for me, Caterina!” she said, taking a seat on the sofa and patting a cushion to beckon me next to her. “You may be unhappy now, but I will show you how to be happy here.”
“How do you know I am unhappy?” I asked, still standing awkwardly. But of course every girl dumped at the convent was unhappy. Why wasn’t she?
“Your eyes tell me you are sad,” she said. “They are the windows into our souls. Do you . . . miss someone?” She patted the cushion again and gave me an inviting smile. This time, I came over to sit beside her.
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“Hmm?” she asked me again.
“I do,” I confessed, wanting to draw the warmth of my love over me. “I do miss someone, desperately.”
“Tell me!” she urged. “You can tell me all of your secrets.”
“Oh—it is nothing,” I said, keeping myself from an indiscretion I might regret.
“Of course it is something!” she pressed, taking my hand in hers. “Tell me.”
How comforting it felt to hold hands, to have someone touch me, and seem to care about me. “I—I am secretly married!” I blurted out.
“A wife!” she exclaimed. “At—how old are you? Fifteen?”
“Fourteen.” I blushed.
“Fourteen.” She pulled away a little, as if considering me from afar. I watched her lips, which somehow looked damp with dew. Did she anoint them with some mysterious and costly oil?
“Well, it is no wonder someone has snatched you up already,” she said, after a while. “How pretty you are, Caterina. Especially when you smile.”
My heart started to flutter. The way she was studying me—admiring me as if she could eat me—made me feel uneasy. I realized I had probably said too much about myself, and should stop before I spilled more. I gathered my skirts to start to go. She reached for my hand again, keeping me with her.
“I imagine you would like to write to your husband, yes?” She dangled my most fervent wish. “To hear from him?”
“Oh—yes!” I said, melting at what she was offering. “Grazie! Grazie, Marina!” Without thinking, I threw myself on her and embraced her. I noticed her heart beating fast against me.
“Caterina—” she said, color rising in her unblemished white cheeks, “only the stupid ones here follow all the rules. There are many ways around them.” She smoothed her habit, which I had rumpled, moving closer to tell me secrets.
“Take the first rule—no letters to or from home. Easy. Any servant here past forty years old—they are called converse—has the privilege of leaving the convent to do business for the abbess.”
“Why only the ones past forty?” I asked.
Marina laughed, then lightly touched my nose with her finger, as if noting my adorable innocence. “Because what trouble would they ever get themselves into? They are too old for trouble—at least the kind we want for ourselves!” She squeezed my arm in a conspiratorial way. “But that doesn’t mean they don’t want money. That lust lasts for life. A coin in the right hand, and off your letter goes to Venice. Another coin, and back comes a letter from your lov—husband, my dear.”
“Can you tell me which conversa might go to Venice for me?” I was already springing up, remembering the letter I could now rescue and send. And thanks to Giacomo, I had a purse full of money to spend on the hundreds more I planned to write to him.
“Wait! Wait!” said Marina, reaching around my waist and guiding me back to the sofa again. “You are like a gazelle, ready to run off! Let me tell you a story, Caterina.”
I settled back down, though my mind was jumping elsewhere.
“These converse, they don’t only deliver letters. No—they are the very servants of young love! There was a nun at San Giacomo di Galizzia, nearby us on this island. She was frantic to see her lover again. Her conversa figured out that a storeroom that stood along the canal was the perfect place for a tryst. They began to dig a hole together in one of its side walls. They picked and picked away each night using garden tools. In a month they were finished.”
“But wouldn’t anyone who came into the storeroom see the hole?” I asked.
“No. They concealed it with a large stone that could be removed whenever they wanted. Her lover would come out and hide in there for days—sometimes weeks! Such a happy nun!”
I clapped my hands at her story. I was ready to go dig my own hole.
“Voilà. I have made you smile, Caterina. That is all I wanted.”
She rose to lead me to the door. She was letting me know our time together was over. But somehow, now I did not want to leave. I felt pulled to stay near her. Her power over her situation, her mastery of the rules, her miraculous beauty: She had drawn me in. I could not bear returning to my lonely room.
“Come, Caterina. In only a few hours the bells for Matins will ring. Sitting in that cold church at dawn, you’ll be sorry you stayed up gossiping with me!”
“Why are you here?” I asked her, suddenly. It was the question I had been wondering since I had first walked into the room. Or even, since I had first seen her in the refectory, wearing no veil, and jewels in her hair. “You seem—not to belong in a convent.” I blushed at my bluntness.
“For my freedom,” she said, smiling devilishly. “To do as I please.”
This was not the answer I had expected to hear. But I sensed, for her, it was true.
CHAPTER 38
I found my bridge back home. Concetta was the conversa who took my first letter to Giacomo. She was a disagreeable fisherman’s widow, always complaining.
“Signorina, stop your scrawling and give me your letter! The abbess will have my head on a plate if I am late getting back!” I had written a journal about seven pages long and was still scratching away when she snatched the last sheet from me.
“Che pazzesca,” she muttered as she left my room. Crazy girl.
She was right: I was crazy all that day from the excitement of my words reaching Giacomo, the anticipation of hearing back from him—maybe in only a few hours!
Concetta did not strike me as an eager servant of young love. All she cared about was the two silver coins I dropped in her palm. Then she had smiled, showing me several black holes where teeth were missing. She was not much past forty, with muscled arms still good for hard work. But she was rough, like an old sea sponge.
The hours spent waiting for her return to the convent—by God, they were endless. I joined some of the other boarders playing games in the refectory. The favorite was biribissi, a game of chance. Each player had a piece of paper printed with thirty-six pictures in squares. You placed your bet on one of the pictures, marking it with a glass bead. A girl wearing a blindfold drew cut-up tickets printed with these same pictures from a small leather purse. If she picked a picture you had marked with your bet, you won the other girls’ beads. They were worth nothing, but all the girls wanted them.
The hunchbacked girl who wore the blindfold—Arcangela was her name—seemed to want to be my friend. One time, I noticed she eyed my bet on a picture of a pear, then drew a pear next from the purse. Maybe she had some secret way of knowing which ticket had what picture on it, like the way it was folded. She untied her blindfold and gave me a please-love-me smile. I offered her a small smile back. Pitiful girl, she was badly misshapen and also squinted with poor eyes.
I could not wait to get out of that place, which also smelled like old food. Impatience bit at me.
I saw Marina pass by the open doorway. I jumped up and abandoned the game and all the girls.
“Marina,” I called, tripping after her down the hallway toward the dormitory.
“I am glad to see you made the wise choice,” she said when I had caught up with her. She turned to warn me. “The boarders will all pretend they are your friends, but they will run to the abbess at any chance to tell her everything they know about you. Be careful.”
“Oh—” I said. “You are right. I will avoid them.”
“Yes, do.” She stopped at the door to her room. A sly smile crept onto her face. “Do you know any French?”
I thought of the pink silk garters Giacomo had given me in the garden of San Biagio. I heard him reading in my mind, felt his kisses circling my thighs.
“A little,” I said, blushing.
“Then it is time to teach you more!” She reached for my hand and kissed it playfully, then pulled me inside. “It is the language of lovers!”
CHAPTER 39
The canary in Marina’s room chirped to greet us. I took a seat on the sofa, my eyes catching on the unusual candlestick that stood on the tabl
e beside me. It was in the shape of a peacock, made of fine white clay, and brightly glazed in blue, green, and orange. It had sharply clawed, gilt bronze feet, surprisingly threatening for a decorative object.
“Do you like it?” Marina asked me. She stood by the bookshelves, leafing through a small, thick book and eyeing me.
“I do. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“That’s because it is French,” Marina explained, “made in Chantilly in imitation of real porcelain from the Orient.”
How worldly she was. Even though she was the one wearing a dull, black wool habit, and I was dressed in rich silks, it felt like I was the peasant, and she was the queen.
“Here is something else from France,” she said, coming toward me with the book in her hands. “It is a splendid treatise on wisdom by the French priest Pierre Charron.” She sat close to me on the sofa and handed me the book. “I have my conversa Laura bring me all the banned books from Venice.”
“Why is it banned?” I asked, as the illicit book seemed to come alive in my hands. “What could be wrong with the topic of wisdom?”
“Monsieur Charron is accused by his detractors of having been an atheist,” she said. “But he is a freethinker more than anything else.” She turned to a page she had marked with a thin silk ribbon. Her fingers brushed against mine as I held the book open for her.
“Listen,” she said, leaning in to read. I could feel the warmth of her cheek near mine. She read the sentences first in French, then translated them effortlessly.
“The most noble minds are the most liberal. Nothing does more deprave and enthrall the mind of man than to let him have and understand but one opinion, belief, and manner of life.”
“You see,” she explained, “he is only saying that we should not be slaves to one idea.”
“He does not deny God?” I asked. I pretended to examine the book more closely, though, of course, I could not read it. As I did this, a few strands of our loose hair mingled together over the pages.
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