by Mary Novik
“Can you imagine what it is like to work in this scriptorium, with its moist and tempting females?” He circled my writing desk, swaying, eyelids almost shut. In his fist, stained with the Virgin’s blue paint, was a flask of eau-de-vie, but his words had never been more sober. “Like me, you crave a love akin to Dante and Beatrice’s, but human love is not found in abbeys. Think what you must forfeit to become a nun, Gentilissima. Be certain before you prostrate yourself on the church pavement, for a chill goes through you that lasts a lifetime.”
I was stripped to my shift before Abbot Bernard and all the abbey on the day I became fourteen. Pentecost was early in 1323 and I shivered in the nave as the sacristan clothed me in my new habit. The abbot asked me whether I offered myself willingly and with an open heart, and I answered in the correct Latin. I was then accepted into my novitiate and he advised me, as he advised each novice, to keep my secular garments so that if I did not espouse obedience and chastity, I could climb into them once more. Otherwise, in a year’s time, I would profess my vows as a choir nun.
When all was done, the nuns embraced me and bade me welcome. The abbot put his arm around my shoulder and walked me to the cloister. “You answered very capably today,” he said cheerfully.
“I am grieved I have no dowry, Father Bernard. I hope my talent as a scribe will bring income to the abbey.”
“No, no, no—your gift is your clairvoyance, my dear.”
“I have had few visions.”
“We will not trouble her for more, shall we?” He looked conspiratorially at the abbess. “Do not press her, Mother Agnes, do not urge, but send me word by a quick horse as soon as she has one.”
He drew me apart from the abbess. “Now, tell me, because the abbess refuses. How far has the Florentine progressed with illuminating the Dante?”
I knew the abbess was afraid to inform him because we had already taken more than the twelve-month expected by Cardinal Orsini. “Half-way,” I said, though it was half the truth.
The abbot weighed a purse on his palm and dangled it in front of the abbess. “Then I am commanded by Orsini to give you half a payment.”
The abbess loosened the string to fish out a coin. “Pope John is minting his own florins?”
“Such are the times. Let us hope his gold is as pure as the King’s. Now, Mother Agnes, stop scrutinizing your coins and escort me to the refectory. Where is the banquet you promised me for receiving this child into her novitiate? Your abbey is renowned for its table and this is Pentecost! I insist on sampling your eau-de-vie, though the Florentine says it is fiery. No, dear abbess—do not deny you distilled your rotting fruit! I will not object if a flask finds its way into my saddlebags. But pity my poor horse. Put a jar on both sides to balance his load.”
It was just past midsummer when the stockbreeder discovered me lying in the pasture, reading one of the finished Dante folios while I waited for the Florentine to prepare a new one.
“Watch Emmanuelle for a sign she is ready for breeding,” she said.
“What should I look for?”
“You’ll know. She’ll start acting oddly.”
I continued to read, glancing over at Emmanuelle frequently. In cow years, Emmanuelle was no older than I was. She was one of the more intelligent heifers, with soft, begging eyes, though I could never tell exactly what she wanted. In the afternoon, her tail stood strangely erect. As I approached, she swung about, knocking me to the side, then trotted towards a cowardly heifer to leap on her back, forelegs dangling as she pumped up and down. I pulled Emmanuelle off, yelling for the stockbreeder, who shouted that I should halter her and lead her to the small field. By yanking and scolding, I got her into a corner. I was tying the rope to the fence just as the stockbreeder led in our brown bull by the ring in his nose. Once she let him go, he lumbered over to Emmanuelle to sniff her hind parts, pawing a hoof and snorting, pawing and snorting. He took a violent leap on top of her and began making quick, clumsy jabs. Then he wandered off, no doubt trying to recall what he had left off doing. I ran to Emmanuelle to console her, for I felt upset myself. I led her back to the pasture with her tail crooked a little to one side, and as we walked, it fell by stages until it hung softly, as was usual.
I retrieved the folio and lay back on the sweet hay, watching Ambrose, the big abbey cat, prowl for mice and feeling the sun-drenched earth through my novice’s habit. Two of the cows peered at me curiously, but I had seen enough of cows. When I waved a dandelion at them, they took flight. I was glad I was not as timid as a cow, though I regretted teasing Elisabeth for having udders. My fleurs had arrived, heralded by sore breasts, cramps, and shooting pains. Everything about me was changing. Even my hair was darkening to chestnut like my mother’s. What if I went into heat like Emmanuelle and courted suitors on the neighbouring farm?
The dandelion fell onto the folio and I licked the page to remove the stain. It tasted alive, like the side of a cow. It seemed unfair to calves to end up as leaves in books. I did not want to read a book made from the womb-vellum of Emmanuelle’s calf, not after what the bull had done to her today. Could I see inside Emmanuelle if I pressed my eyes against her belly? I was too lazy to try, but the more I ruminated and sank into myself, the more I fancied I could see through her hide like calfskin oiled for a window. Tiny but well formed, the bull-calf ripening inside Emmanuelle was not brown as she was, but white with black spots. The spots inflated inside my head to merge into one terrifying blotch, until a carcass the size of a cow sat rotting on my legs, turning them green from toes to waist. The weight and the stench were pulling me downwards. Before long, I would be suffocated by earth. At last the foul odour penetrated my trance, and I sat up to find Ambrose squatting on my feet. Emmanuelle was grazing companionably nearby. The stink came from the fresh cow pie she had deposited beside me.
I could recall my trance clearly, even to the seven spots on the calf. All this time I had been waiting for a vision from above, when I had been seeing into bellies all along. I decided not to tell the abbess, since I did not know what good she could make of it. However, I would tell the stockbreeder in case it was a bad omen for Emmanuelle’s calving. Small for a heifer, she might have a hard time of it. In no hurry, I lay on the nymph hay, rich in clover and cat’s tail and smelling of midsummer, until the sun set and the bells sang out for vespers.
Autumn arrived, the nights became cooler, and the cicadas stopped whirring. One morning I stumbled upon an egg in the rere-dorter, where a wandering hen had sought warmth to lay it. I carried it to the scriptorium and cracked it on the edge of my desk to make glair. I separated the egg white and strained it into two shells, one for me and a larger one for the Florentine, which I glued to his desk. He had set out his Dante folios, cartooning on his left and illumination on his right, but had made little progress from the previous day.
I had been having strange dreams since I became a novice—dreams of Dante embracing me, dreams of a life beyond the abbey—which made no sense, for Fate had decreed that I would never marry. The end of my apprenticeship was nearing. I had completed the trivium and quadrivium and mastered the church fathers. I did not think I would make a good gardener, or beekeeper, or cellaress. I knew I would never be a stockbreeder—I might as well have been born a cow—and I would never be as devout as the sacristan. Most likely, I would continue in the scriptorium. In time I might become a librarian, distributing Lent books to the nuns to read, mapping new folios, and doling out copy work to the scribes. However, my heart was set on something more. I wanted to be sought after across Europe as a scribe, to copy the finest commissions in the finest script, perhaps even to be a painter-scribe so I was not dependent on illuminators like the Florentine.
The librarian had been urging him to take an assistant to hurry his work. Hoping to be chosen, I was drafting my own cartoons, imagining the colours I would pick when I was allowed to dip my brush into the most costly paints—vert de flambe from wild irises and azur d’outremer. Each day, the Florentine found fault with my
sketches, amused at a misshapen skull or a left arm longer than the right. He had not yet allowed me to illuminate even a hair of his divine Beatrice or a laurel leaf in Dante’s crown. But at night—at night I dreamt of gold and silver foil beaten to supreme thinness and the manuscripts that would spill from my pen in the years to come.
At Candlemas, the Florentine placed the last folio of La Vita Nuova before me with a smirk, opened to his final cartoon. An erotic triumph, it illustrated, far too carnally, Dante’s hoped-for reunion with Beatrice after death, a fitting wedding gift for Cardinal Orsini’s nephew. As soon as my work was done, a few more days at most, the librarian would assign me a more mediocre task, but I could not bear to part with Dante and his Beatrice. La Vita Nuova would be in the scriptorium for a few more months while the Florentine painted the full-page miniatures. While he painted, I decided, I would make a second copy of La Vita Nuova for myself, penning it at night when the scriptorium was empty.
Eleven
IT WAS SHROVE TUESDAY, it was cold, it was the middle of the night, and my stomach was queasy from the delicacies of the abbess’s table. I sprang awake to find Elisabeth on her knees on the floorboards, her face mottled and her eyes red. She was scraping all her belongings into her cloak. I stayed silent until I saw that she was fingering my paternoster beads.
“What are you doing with my paternoster?” I caught the string of agates flying past, just before they hit the wall.
“I took it to pray with, but it did no good.”
“Where are you taking those things?” At my question, she doubled over, head to knees, and sobbed. I got out of bed to see what was wrong, and discovered that her tunic was stained with blood. It seemed to be coming from between her legs, although it was not the right time for her fleurs. I tried to speak slowly, although my thoughts were racing. “The blood will slow if you lie down.”
“It cannot be stopped, for I have sullied Our Lord’s bridal chamber.” She showed me an ugly wart perched on her middle knuckle. “The devil’s mark.”
“You also have welts on your wrist, Elisabeth, but they are from the hot kettles in the kitchen, not the devil. Where do you get such ideas?”
She began to chant a crazy sermon. “The cow that leads the herd has a bell at her neck, so likewise the woman who leads the song and dance has the devil’s bell bound to hers, and when the devil hears the tinkle he says, ‘I have not lost my cow yet.’ ”
“The bell you hear is in Gadagne. It always rings before ours here.”
“Do you not see? I am with child! Enceinte.”
So that was why her back was bent and her hands pressed on her belly, why she had lost her chaste odour and smelt of a man. Over the past months, Elisabeth had grown so big from overeating that I had not noticed this infant taking root.
“Who has done this to you?”
She shook her head, refusing to answer. One of the travelling friars, I guessed. He had taken her roughly, given the welts on her wrist, which were not from a kettle after all. But why was she bleeding? Her raving had reached such a pitch that she might disturb the nuns—sound sleepers, but not that sound. She was on all fours when the next pain caught her. I crouched beside her, afraid that she might die, as Maman had done, in the agony of giving birth. My courage had turned hollow, a horrid, wretched hollow deep within me.
I got to my feet. “I am going for the infirmarian.”
“No.”
“Then the stockbreeder.”
“Not her, not anyone.”
For once, Elisabeth was wiser than I was. If she was exposed, she would be cast out. How many times had we been told that maidenhood had its fruit a hundredfold in heaven and that carnal love was licking honey from thorns?
She clutched my ankle to stop me leaving. “Stay with me. You help the stockbreeder bring forth young.”
“I have never done it by myself. This is a child—what if I fail?”
I held her as another pain seized then released her. I helped her lie on her back so I could pull her tunic up, applying my ears, eyes, and fingers to her womb. The infant was tiny, but it was coming now. Could a child so small live? At the next contraction, she braced her feet against me and we slid, clinging to each other, against the wall. The infant surged out between her thighs in a river of running blood, with solid chunks like chicken livers. I picked the infant up gently—one heartbeat, two—then it became quiet in my hands. I choked on my sobs, too affrighted to look closer.
Elisabeth curled on the floor, moaning. Her eyes closed, she was spared the pain of seeing her stillborn infant cupped in my blood-streaked hands. Before she could look, I swaddled the fœtus and shoved it out of sight behind me.
I choked out some words to comfort her and calm myself. “You have lost your child. It is quiet and at peace.”
The nocturn bells began to toll, mourning our loss. I had to think what to do. The afterbirth had been expelled cleanly, instead of staying inside to poison her. I suspected she had done more than climb over night fences to rid herself of this burden. Perhaps she had swallowed some ridding potion that had savaged her. I took her hands in mine to say the Latin of the absolution. Her mind was shaken, but her whimpering told me she had heard.
“I have been your confessor, Elisabeth. You will do three times forty days of penance. You will go faithfully to all the hours. Above all, you will remain silent. No one need know what has happened. Listen to me!” Her shoulders, when I put my arms around them, were wet with perspiration. “Your maidenhead is gone, but you may still be celibate. You must learn to read and write, and you must obey the abbess in everything.”
I hugged her tenderly. In me was a sadness, for this stillbirth had driven her where I could not follow. “These are now yours,” I said, twisting my paternoster beads around her wrist to hide the welts. “You will be a good novice and then a good nun, and you will forget the sad outcome of this night. I want your solemn promise.”
“Yes, yes, I will,” she said, as the agates dragged down her arm.
It was a honeyed lie, given as sleep claimed her, but this promise was all she had to give. I accepted it from her, the only sister I would ever have, knowing that even a lie could guide a life aright. I held her until she stopped shuddering, then sponged the blood from her legs and drew her blanket over her.
I was ill to my stomach waiting for nocturns to end, rocking back and forth as uncontrollably as if I had given birth myself. At last, I heard the nuns mounting the stairs to return to sleep and took grim courage for the task ahead. I could now carry the tiny corpse through the tumbled ashlar in the chapel. Outside, I would dig a grave with my bare hands so no one would hear the scrape of the spade or its bitter clang as it hit rock. The softest earth was in the abbey’s churchyard, but only hallowed corpses rested there, after their souls had been saved.
Had this infant been ensouled? I lifted the swaddled fœtus into my lap and touched it tentatively. It felt older than the forty days at which the soul entered a male child. If male, it had died without being baptised and would be eternally damned. But what if it was female? The soul would not arrive until the eightieth day. My tears had fallen on the bloody swaddling, moistening it enough for me to peel it from the tiny corpse. It was a girl, perfectly formed, with every limb exactly as it should be, as much a part of me as of Elisabeth, yet none of her looked fully human. I had seen animals born before time, but never had such fierce grief assailed me. She was the size of my trembling hand—certainly older than eighty days, a fœtus animatus. Even now, a soul was fluttering inside her, an anima preparing to take flight. I gathered the bundle to my heart to baptise her myself, saying every word of Latin I could remember from the liturgy—one wild, unstoppable, crazed word after another. Then I lifted my eyes to witness her soul’s escape. After I had swaddled her in clean linen, I cradled her in my arms and carried her outside, beneath the cypresses, to give her a home in the soft earth of the hallowed graveyard.
Twelve
AT DUSK THE FOLLOWING DAY, Ash Wed
nesday, I took Elisabeth through the silent darkness to the bathhouse after the nuns had bathed. When she undressed and I saw her still-swollen belly, I ached for her travail, knowing the agony she had gone through. I helped her climb into the barrel, soaped her, and poured rinse water over her. Then I took her back to our cell and made sure no one came near since her flesh was frail and her thinking unstable.
In the following days, her disquiet grew. She was sure that the wart on her finger was getting larger. Although I doused it with eau-de-vie to stop the oozing, two more warts sprang up and soon an army marched across her knuckles, broadcasting her guilt to the whole abbey, or so she believed. Elisabeth was attending all the hours to chant the Latin psalms almost word for word. Even more unsettling, she was haunting the church at other times, saying prayers tearfully for her dead. Why had I ordered her to do penance? Now she could not be stopped, and the nuns might guess the reason.
Lent, with its rigour and deprivation, was a blow to our appetites. By the second week, the nuns squabbled over what they might and might not eat. I was drawn in, and heard myself argue the merits of almonds over walnuts, for I was fasting for the first time and crossing off the days until Easter.
As the weeks passed, the chapter meetings became unruly, stirred up by papal letters warning against sorcery and malfeasance, for Pope John feared an attempt upon his life, a fate the abbess welcomed. Ever since her brother, the Knight Templar, had been despoilt and hounded, she had hated the French popes. On Palm Sunday, she reported, the Pope preached a sermon in Notre-Dame-des-Doms denying that the souls of the just saw God face to face, as former popes had promised. The Pope stood accused of heresy for this assault on the Beatific Vision and the abbess was not sorry for it. Such large transgressions had made her more attentive to the souls in her own keeping. Her eyes fell upon Elisabeth—her newfound piety, her surprising knowledge of the Latin psalms—and she announced that Elisabeth would be allowed to become a choir nun, as she had wished, instead of a lay nun.