by Mary Novik
“Where is she?”
I sat up straight. Nocturns were still underway, but Elisabeth was gone. What perverseness had made Saint Benedict put the longest service at the darkest time of night? As soon as the office was over and the nuns had gone up the stairs to their beds, I crawled through the broken wall in the chapel to search for Elisabeth. The snow was thin and old, a crust that made noises underfoot. The owl had left his perch in the yoke of the pine to hunt for prey. I knew him by his call, who-looks-for-you, who-looks-for-you-all, though sometimes he barked like a dog to fool the nuns.
A light emerged from the sacristy—Mother Agnes fastening the door behind her, her gilded crosier spraying lamplight into the dark as she set out along the path towards the woods. She paused near my hiding spot beside the pine to look for something. When the snow crunched, she deposited her lamp so she could grip her crosier with both hands. A twig snapped and a moving shape sank into the darkness of the outbuildings.
“Quo vadis?” the abbess called, brandishing her weapon. Whither do you go? Then, more imperiously, “Who?”
This much Elisabeth understood, for she stepped out of the shadows with a knife in one hand and a carcass dangling from the other. A stoat, but I had seldom seen one this colour—white except for its black-tipped tail. A deep scratch ran from Elisabeth’s thumb up her forearm. Her cloak was also torn, probably from the barbed thicket near the garrigue.
“Why are you scavenging in the woods?” the abbess asked.
Elisabeth swung the carcass, admiring the drops of blood fanning across the snow. “Ermine for the Florentine. He said it makes the finest brushes.”
“Your work is in the kitchen and almshouse, not waking men at night.”
The wind rose, dusting up the snow, which allowed me to shift without being heard. I had come out in my inside shoes, no better than gloves on my feet. The stoat’s blood had already frozen on the snow and I could no longer feel my toes.
“I will be sixteen soon.”
“Too old to be crawling through the hole in the north chapel. I am surprised you can still get through it. I trust my familia to obey me without locks and chains.” When Elisabeth swore in the old tongue, the abbess’s response was swift. “If you talk like a servant, I will put you outside the wall to eat and sleep with them.”
“Why not, since you refuse to let me become a novice?”
“You scarcely know a single psalm.”
This was not true, as I had discovered by sitting beside Elisabeth in church. She could chant many, though she could not read or write them.
“I have read my Latin book from Lent.”
“You mean that Solange read it to you. You spend your time skulking about the woods while she copies the church fathers for her own instruction. In a few years Solange will be made a master scribe and take her vows as Sister Marie-Ange.”
Elisabeth swung the carcass again. “She has not had a vision since that one about the unicorn.”
There was a whiff of envy about Elisabeth tonight, but as the moonlight touched the abbess, I saw no surprise on her round face. She turned away, and planted her crosier firmly with each step towards her flickering lantern. Elisabeth reached it first, blocking the abbess’s route.
“You said I would be Sister Martha.”
“So you will.” The abbess was staring at the crimson snow, as if just realizing that the blood was dripping as much from Elisabeth’s wrist as from the dangling stoat. “Perhaps you are ready for new duties in the abbey. You may begin your year’s novitiate as a lay sister. You need not study Latin or concern yourself with the business of the abbey.”
Elisabeth made a rude sound through her nose. “The lay sisters are no better than servants. I wish to be a choir nun and attend meetings in the chapter house.”
As much as I knew Elisabeth, slept and ate beside her, I had not guessed the heat of this ambition within her.
“You must do as you are best fitted, Elisabeth.” Mother Agnes was calm, yet resolute. “Tomorrow I will travel to Avignon to claim the final payment from Cardinal Orsini. The cart would get mired in the snow, so I must ride the mare. I need someone to accompany me and you are the only one who can cling to the mule. Put that knife away. Your skill with it may prove useful if thieves should beset us. First light will be upon us soon and we will be better for some rest.”
At this welcome news, Elisabeth was quickly gone, and the abbess poked her crosier into the long shadow beside the pine where I stood.
“You may come out, Solange.”
I moved into the light. “How did you know I was here?”
“Who else could it be? You and Elisabeth are seldom far apart. However, that must change. What I said was as much for you as for Elisabeth, for you are destined to take different paths. You must begin to use your education to glorify the abbey.”
The abbess’s gentle wing had spanned my life all these years. Under her direction, I had completed logic and embarked on the quadrivium. Nevertheless, in all my lessons with her, the scarlet ledger had sat on her shelf above me as a silent reproach, for I had not given her what she most wished: a vision as great as one of Hildegarde’s. The time had now arrived when she would demand more from me.
Nine
THREE DAYS LATER, I was keeping watch from the top of the bell-tower, when I saw the abbess and Elisabeth returning to the abbey, their cloaks as black as the ermine’s tail against the snowy fields. Elisabeth was riding in front, her head driving into the sleet, her heels digging into the mule’s flanks to keep him pushing forwards. The abbess was close behind, hunched over the mare’s pommel in the shelter of Elisabeth’s broad back.
I rang the bell to alert the abbey and met the riders at the gates. Elisabeth leapt from the mule to help Mother Agnes down from the saddle. When her feet touched the ground, she stumbled and gripped Elisabeth for balance.
The librarian hurtled towards the abbess, her cloak unhooked and sleeves flying. “Did Cardinal Orsini pay in gold?”
The abbess halted the questions. “Send for meat and drink at once, then assemble the scribes in the scriptorium. I will be there as soon as I have eaten.”
The abbess walked stiffly towards the cloister, while Elisabeth, tired but proud, gathered the reins of the two mounts. The mare whinnied and reared up, smelling the stable, and it was all Elisabeth could do to hold her. I hauled on the mule’s reins until he settled down. As soon as we had stabled the animals and filled their buckets, their noses were buried in the oats.
I asked, “What did the cardinal say?”
“I did not hear, because the abbess sent me on an errand to the street of the goldsmiths. I found the door with the compass on it and delivered her letter to a man of science.”
“What was the message?”
She shrugged. “It was in Latin.”
I threw up my hands in exasperation. “She should have taken me! I can ride the mule as well as you.”
This outburst made her laugh. “He handed me this.” Elisabeth dug in her cloak for a tooled leather case. “The abbess said it was for you.”
I unfolded the clever instrument of bone and glass—magnifying glasses for close work on parchment! Elisabeth’s face shone with pleasure, giving me her blessing in my rôle as a scribe. Mumbling my thanks, I folded the glasses and stowed them in my pouch. I hoped she did not know how much the abbess had paid. The abbess was not only generous but also wise, for she had allowed Elisabeth to take most of the credit. Together we shut the stable doors, placed our hands on the bar, and forced it down.
As we walked arm in arm, she told me about the trip. “Avignon is full of strange customs and foreign goods. The quarters are so crowded with travellers and pigs that we could not ride. And the stench! The streets are slippery with dung. The abbess could barely keep her footing in those boots she wears.”
A bell pealed far off to the west. Was it the cathedral? A long time had passed since I had thought of Notre-Dame-des-Doms and the press of faithful on their knees inside
it.
“You’ll be hungry,” I said, waiting until she was half-way to the refectory before I turned towards the scriptorium.
Mother Agnes was on a soft chair, her cloak still pinned against the cold. A lay sister lowered a basin of hot water to the floor and tugged off the abbess’s boots as anticipation built amongst the scribes and scriptorium monks. The abbess grimaced as she immersed her feet.
“We knew the Orsini livrée by the arms carved on the arch,” she began. “I gave the cardinal the psalter-hours at once. He praised the miniatures, one after another, until his tongue grew tired of praising and he began to pick out small faults. Finally his hands rested on the despoiling of Christ in the hours of the Passion.”
His eyes must have caressed Mary Magdalene, so carefully worked in crimson, gold, and purple. The Florentine had counted on another man’s appreciation of her beauty, for he had lavished his skill on the Magdalene, painting the slyness of Eve into her. To my eye, she had Blanche’s face grafted onto Ursula’s body, and stood between the Virgin and Mary of Bethany like a blood-rose between two white ones.
The librarian prompted, “How many florins did he pay?”
“Five.” The abbess leaned her head back, closing her eyes.
“So few? How can that be?”
“He said that the three Marys are not in that Bible verse.”
If the Florentine had any shame, his face would have gone as bright as the Magdalene’s hair, for he had blithely painted over the librarian’s cartoon and added more faces to the crowd to entertain himself. But no, he was not humbled. He was on his feet, rocking confidently from heel to toe.
“Mother Agnes,” he said, “why not offer the psalter to another prelate, one who would pay more?”
The abbess grasped her calves, one at a time, to ease her feet from the basin, although they had not been in long enough to get relief. The water streamed onto the flagstones. The lay sister stooped to dry the blistered feet, then backed out eagerly to tell the cloister of the stingy payment.
“Because you worked the Orsini bear so cleverly into the miniatures,” the abbess said wearily, “as the cardinal was delighted to show his kinsmen, who were gathered around.” We had all watched these bears becoming smaller and more witty, the last no larger than a grain of rice. “It seems, Tommaso Tarlati, that as much as I dislike the double plough, we are yoked together, for the cardinal prizes the indelicacy of your art. He has awarded us a commission for his nephew’s marriage and given you licence to let your fancy roam this time.”
The Florentine took the book that she held out to him. “La Vita Nuova—The New Life—by Dante Alighieri. Another Florentine, who writes in my native tongue.”
He read a few pages to himself, then translated. The poet Dante, he explained, fell in love with Beatrice when she was only nine. Nine years later he had a vision in which Amore, the god of love, appeared to him carrying Beatrice in one hand. In his other hand Amore held the poet’s burning heart, which Beatrice, naked except for a wisp of scarlet, devoured.
The Florentine sniggered as he handed the book to Ursula. “It is a bedchamber gift to stimulate the bridegroom’s heart and body.”
“A book we cannot read cannot corrupt us,” the abbess asserted.
Ursula was too red-faced to open it. I reached for the book, but she passed it behind my back to Blanche, who passed it to the librarian. I had grown a hand’s-breadth in a year, but still no one took any notice of me.
The abbess said, “The copying will take a twelve-month, but will fill our cellar with salt, spices, cured fish, and dried foodstuffs.” She upended a purse of gold florins. “The first payment—to buy the finest vellum. If we scrape it ourselves and do not blot the pages, we will have enough left over to build a new infirmary.”
“But our vows!” Ursula protested. “Saint Benedict enjoined us to read holy works, not pagan ones.”
I stood up quickly, as tall as Ursula was. “I will do it.”
The Florentine agreed. “Solange’s writing is slanted in the Italian style. She has not taken her vows and need not know what she is copying. I will check her pages each day at dusk to spare the librarian.”
Before the scribes could object, the abbess carried the manuscript to my writing desk and helped me bind it with leather straps.
“Bless your work, child,” she said, covering my fingers with hers. “The fate of our infirmary is in your hands.”
In the morning, I placed my new magnifying glasses on my desk. Blanche noticed them at once and sent Ursula a jealous signal, but I steadied myself to face the task before me. On page after page, I saw the intriguing words Beatrice and Amore. The lean, graceful script ran in one unbroken line. I practised on used parchment while the librarian and the Florentine mapped out the folios and illuminations. Each of the forty-three brief chapters would have a miniature—but this time the Florentine would draw his own cartoons. Once my wrist was supple and my letters sloping and continuous, I called for a folio of perfect vellum.
At dusk, after the scriptorium had emptied, the Florentine leaned over my shoulder to read my first flight of cursive script, letting the words roll richly off his tongue as he warmed himself against my back. Big as a bull, he stank of drink and something rancid, like oil gone bad, but perhaps this was how all men smelt. It was the first time one of the monks had touched me and it made me feel more womanly, almost as unclothed as Beatrice.
“The other scribes are envious,” I said.
“Leave them to me. Your letters are finely wrought, a joy to the eye. However, to be a scribe who copies the most prized books, you will have need of Italian. I will teach you the Tuscan dialect from my own lips, Gentilissima.”
“The abbess has forbidden it.”
He lifted me down from my chair lightly. “Your little ears did not hear correctly. She did not actually forbid you to learn Italian.”
He had twisted her meaning, yet where was the harm? Up to now, the abbess had encouraged my passion for learning, and all day I had been hungering to know the words instead of blindly copying them. The poetry had teased my ear with sweet, long syllables of love and I yearned to discover the fate of Dante and his Beatrice. I would soon be thirteen, old enough to please myself. Besides, how could the abbess discover my furtive pleasure if neither of us told her?
Ten
THE QUIET IN THE scriptorium sped my work and I feasted on Dante’s words, picking up their meanings quickly with the Florentine’s help. Even when folios awaited him, he hovered over Blanche and Ursula, chivvying them along with bawdy hand signals, finger-milking, and ear-pulling. Sometimes he spent more time teaching Ursula to illuminate than wielding his own brush. He used our faces in his miniatures and gave his females tall, high-waisted forms like ours, to which he added rounded, fecund bellies. He had become a Solomon with his harem, hornswoggling them and cuckolding God.
In the gutters of the folios he prepared, I found Italian phrases that I erased briskly, although their coarseness was indelible. He made his cartoons deliberately lewd. But when he dipped his brushes, the miniatures became as luminous and spiritual as Dante’s love for Beatrice. There had never been a girl like Beatrice, never such blandishments of brush and colour as the Florentine lavished on this pair of lovers. It made me wish that I could draw.
While I waited for another folio to work on, I visited Sister Raymonde in her gardening shelter, observing her load her brushes for the showy petals of the opium poppies. Ever since her opiate had eased Madame’s pain, Raymonde had been trying to get their shape and colour exactly right. I leaned into her as she painted a new one, soaking up her body heat and the earthy scent of furrows after a rainfall. From her, I learnt how to sketch outlines in ink, then fill them with brushstrokes, one colour at a time. I washed an old book clean of ink to create my own hortus deliciarum, my garden of delights, drawing flora and fauna and the daily life of the abbey. Over the months, as Raymonde’s poppies turned to seed, lost their petals, and died, I brought her specimens from
my rambles in the fields, Lady’s bed-straw or devil’s paintbrush, only to see her open her record book to find them already there. Her science was so exact it extended to the furthest corner of the abbey grounds.
“Goosefoot,” she’d say, turning pages, “yes, here it is. From the river—amongst the willows. But this wort is unusual.” She picked up a specimen I had brought. “I haven’t seen blue flowers on this before.” She sketched it briskly in ink, then dipped her brush into the lapis lazuli, which I had stolen for her, to paint a brilliant wash over the flower.
One dusk, when the scribes had left the scriptorium and the Florentine read my Dante pages to check them, he found only a single wavering end-stroke to correct. After he had complimented the vigour of my pen, I asked, “Will you teach me how to draft cartoons?”
“Show me what you can draw.” His big hand splayed across my desk, oddly inviting to the touch. When I had inked a cornflower with deft strokes the way Raymonde had taught me, he tilted his head, acknowledging its merit. “But can you draw a man?”
After shaving my quill to an exact point, he drew a heap of straw next to my cornflower, a peasant girl lying back against the straw, and on top of her a monk, his habit flapping to expose his hairy buttocks. Then, slyly, he wet a brush on his tongue, loaded it with madder, and reached across me to colour the girl’s hair and cheeks a brazen red, like mine. Ashamed that I had encouraged him, I thrust his cartoon beneath my other papers and cleaned my tools with extra care. I was waiting for him to leave so we did not walk out together, but he was in no hurry to go.