by Mary Novik
As I looked at the three paintings, trying to make sense of them, I felt faint from the bleeding earlier. My lips became numb, then my tongue, then the numbness crept down my left arm into my fingers. The skin on my forearms quivered into gooseflesh, as if feathers were sprouting, and circles jagged across my vision. The Virgin plucked one of Gabriel’s wing feathers, the feather turned into a suckling baby, the baby squirmed on the Virgin’s lap, and his chin grew wiry, black hairs. The two Marys blended into one gigantic female, gloriously big with child, who blotted out the tiny, pompous Jesus. I was talking aloud, saying only-God-knows-what. I had once spoken with the tongue of an angel. Perhaps I still had something of the gift. A door slammed and a draught sucked through the church, banging the side panels of the triptych closed. I wondered who had been creeping about in night shoes and what she had overheard me muttering in my delirium.
If this was a sign, what did it mean? Perhaps only that the rich dishes of the head table did not agree with me after the months of meagre food. I was ill all that night in the abbess’s bed, running a fever, clammy one moment, shivery the next. At daybreak, Elisabeth brought in an opiate to sedate me, but the sweet odour made me queasy and I pushed it away. The obedientiaries entered the bedchamber behind her. The sacristan took down the chain of office and held it out to me with a serene look, as if she knew the outcome, like the knowing Virgin.
“You are forgetting that I have not taken my vows,” I said. “Any one of you would make a better abbess than I would. Your chastity is a much finer thing than my belated celibacy.” In spite of my protest, they did not shift their feet towards the door. What could I say to dissuade them from this scheme? Far from condemning me for my sins, they were eager to hear more. “One of the children who arrived with me, Félicité, is my own daughter.”
Elisabeth muttered to the sacristan, “I told you the child was hers.”
What other rumours had reached Elisabeth’s ear? Certainly, she had guessed something of my past, more than the others, who were whispering almost as foolishly as the Poor Clares. I had no wish to itemize more sins to convince them of my unworthiness. Why should I name the great men I had lain with? I wanted to keep my past a secret.
When the bells called the nuns to vespers, I left the abbess’s house to watch them rising from their tasks, brushing earth and flour from their hands, deserting their handwork to go gladly to choir. I walked into the fields in the setting sun as the owl flew out of the pine’s yoke to scan the earth for mice. Burrs and foxtails and the thorns of trailing brambleberries caught at my hem. What business had I wandering about an abbey under the swollen mass of the rising moon?
That cool, wordless moon had plucked me out of the tinderbox of Avignon just as she plucked words out of tongue-tied lovers. Yet she was not as chaste as poets believed, for her pull on the blood was strong. Her power over the sublunary realm was fiercely carnal. Even now, she called me to her own offices. I was still fertile. Why should I become a celibate nun? I had no desire to become a barren sister barking at the full moon, chanting faint hymns and chafing at the abbey’s bonds.
“Why do you keep bothering me?” I yelled at the big yellow globe. “What do you want from me?”
Then I remembered that I was a mother and looked around to ensure that no one was creeping about in her night shoes. Ahead, wormwood moths were collecting in a pool of moonlight on a bough, then sparking off into the dark with an eerie phosphorescence. I had given birth to four children, two of whom had lived. I, too, had been born of woman. On the eightieth day of my life, my soul had entered my body. Now, beneath the moon, I was once again that luminous spirit inside a ball of flesh. Expelled in a river of blood, I had slithered out between Maman’s legs, slipping onto her great bed, gathering speed until I came to the end of her silken cord, which yanked me back like a palace bell summoning a truant servant. I was sniffed at by an impertinent snout, licked by a cat’s tongue, peered at by an old moon of a grandmother. I had begun the soul’s journey from bloody birth to bitter death. This was so docile I could scarcely call it a vision. My soul had simply fluttered to the surface to remind me that it dwelt within and that it had needs I could no longer ignore.
The abbey buildings had shrunk since I last surveyed them. The cracks in the infirmary had lengthened and the stones were green with mildew. The foundation had been laid for the new infirmary, but the work had halted. There was a whiff of feral stoat outside the scriptorium. It, too, was sadly tumbled, for discipline had not been enough to keep the walls well mortared. After a time, I gathered courage to go inside, where I found the desks knocked over and mouldy folios scattered across the pavingstones. The shattered window was letting in the draught. When I was last here, the Florentine had attacked me, propelling me outwards into the world of men.
I drew my miséricorde and squinted at myself in a piece of broken glass. I sheared my hair close to my scalp, letting the red hairs drop through my fingers onto the stone floor. The winter stubble left upon my head was as grey as a Benedictine veil. I walked to Sister Raymonde’s gardening shelter, my scalp cold and my eyes moistening with remembered love. Inside, I lit a candle and said an orison for her soul. Her last specimen, an unusual blue wort, had dried where she had left it on the workbench, but curiously, one of her brushes was still wet. Nearby lay cakes of madder and woad, along with pea-sized lumps of vert de flambe and saffron, brushstrokes still visible on them. What had Raymonde been drawing? There was no parchment to be seen.
In her old hiding place, I found a record book. Here, too, were others, strapped to the underside of the bench, a life’s work that awaited the return of a disciple who knew where to look. The last leaf of the last journal was marked Midsummer Eve 1348. On it she had drawn the blue-eyed wort with a note that it opened at night only when the moon was full. She had named it belle-de-nuit and written another name nearby, Solange. I leaned against her chest in memory and breathed in the scent of newly furrowed earth. I had so much I wanted to say to her. Why had she died just a few weeks before I returned to Clairefontaine?
I was not the only one who had visited this shrine. Indeed, someone was approaching even now. I heard the cry who-looks-for-you, who-looks-for-you-all, then a step, too soft to be Raymonde’s restive spirit. The candle guttered as a waif entered, her fingers tinged with saffron.
“Maman?” Félicité said. “Are you unhappy?”
“No, my sweet. You bring happiness with you.” I lifted her onto my lap to hug her, enjoying her stillness for a moment before she wriggled out of my arms. She weighed no more than an owl, and like an owl, she was fond of wandering under the moon. I kissed her ear. “From now on you must explore the grounds in the daytime, not by yourself at night. Hold my hand and I’ll take you back before Anne-Prospère wakes to find herself alone in bed.”
Forty-four
ON THE SAME DAY that I became a nun, I became an abbess, responsible for the health of forty souls. I professed my vows in the chancel and the abbot presented me with my crosier and seal of office. I was grateful to Mary Magdalene for taking this path before me. It was a comfort to know that I was not the only woman who had slept with powerful men en route to the veil. I had barely reclaimed my birth name, Solange Le Blanc, when life wrested it from me, for Elisabeth insisted that I take the name Marie-Ange, as the old abbess had wished.
Now the abbess’s chain of office swung from my neck and her ink-pot sat at my elbow. My motley scalp was warm beneath a grey veil trimmed in white. I counted the hours by the divine offices, not the hourglass, and the days by the saints, not the calendar of science. My only astrologer was that common astrologer, the barnyard cock, whose duty was to rouse me at daybreak. I wore my silver-and-ivory belt, because an abbess should show her power to the world, and on my finger I displayed the Pope’s sapphire ring. I was making plans, since I had no intention of leaving my daughters’ fate—or the fate of any of my nuns—to less loving hands.
My first act as abbess was to draw my miséricorde to whittle
a quill. I found Mother Agnes’s account books in better order than her properties. She had secured the abbey’s plate and lands by letting the buildings fall into disrepair, but with no honey to sell or commissions for the scriptorium, we had no ready income. To restore the abbey to its former prestige, I would need to twist a lion’s tail. I wrote a letter to Pope Clement VI, signing it vicomtesse of Turenne, abbess of Clairefontaine, in which I asked him for an endowment for the abbey that would surpass the worth of its ancestral lands. I asked for eight thousand florins, one-tenth the amount Clement had paid to buy Avignon from Queen Joanna. For less than it cost to make an honest woman of his beloved city, he could keep me at a distance from his palace.
I pressed the sapphire ring into the sealing-wax to admire the papal coat of arms. Once Clement had grasped that I was still alive, he would see the wisdom of paying the ransom I demanded. He would not wish his sleep disrupted by my ghost returning to Saint Peter’s short, cramped bed. What power had enabled me to escape the fire that had consumed me in my Gentilly robe? He was always eager to believe in the miracles and charisms of saints. Perhaps he would fear that I had reassembled my bones by al-jabr and clothed them, in an act of sorcery, with flesh.
Three days later, a horse galloped into the cloister, soaped by exertion, with the gatekeeper chasing after hotly. The Poor Clares swarmed and gossiped, while the Benedictines looked stern and kept their silence. The Pope’s emissary leapt down, as fatigued as his mount, and tied the reins of the huge animal to the pommel as the nuns retreated out of range of its hooves. The emissary’s purse rang with gold to buy me off and his saddlebags held the rare books I had demanded from the palace library. When I recognized the slim volume of Francesco’s poems that I had compiled, I gladly relinquished the papal ring and signed the release the emissary slapped onto his sweaty thigh.
My booty would restore the fame of Clairefontaine. If my daughters did not wish to take up vocations in the abbey, I would provide dowries so they could marry worthy noblemen. Perhaps one of my daughters would choose to live in Francesco’s house in Parma and avail herself of the great world offered there. When the time was safe, I would tell him who they were and their relationship to him. Anything was possible. My wingspan was broad enough to cover them wherever they went. But one daughter I would keep with me for all time, for each day I saw more of my beloved Francesco in Félicité’s dark eyes and hair. She was my heart—my Francesca.
After I had locked the new books in the armarium and attached the key to my belt, I took Félicité to dig up my mother’s perfume bottle and my garden of delights, my hortus deliciarum, which I had hidden so many years ago. She carried them to the pasture, where we lay on our stomachs to enjoy my abbey stories with the misshapen creatures I had drawn to illustrate them. The nuns with their habits soiled from tilling vegetables and herding cows. The sisters treading the grapes, tipsy from sampling last year’s vintage. A friar’s ribald tale curling into a nun’s welcoming ear. A dead Benedictine settling into rigor mortis in her coffin. The abbey as a world unto itself, a microcosmus. All the while, even when laughing at my childish drawings, Félicité kept a good grip on the perfume bottle.
When we reached the end, she asked, “Will you die, Maman?”
Not when I would die, but if I would—a startling question. Death was indeed hovering closer, although I was only half the age of Mother Agnes when she died.
“We will all die,” I said, “and I will die before you, for I am older.”
“I will wait for you to fetch me as you did in the priory of Saint Clare.”
I kissed her wet lashes. “My soul will fly to yours like an arrow.”
“Like a mother to its baby?” She rubbed her nose against mine.
“Yes,” I said, rubbing back. “The perfume bottle was my mother’s. If you look carefully, you will see dried traces of her tears.”
She held it beneath her eyes, then mine, for both of us had begun to weep, then hid the tiny bottle beneath the other treasures in her alms-bag.
“Now you must come to get your tears,” she informed me. “And your mother must collect hers. What is it called again?”
“The last busy day, when we will all be together again. Now, that is enough seriousness for one day. Let us make you a book of delights of your own.”
Perhaps she had inherited Raymonde’s love for science. Or mine for poetry—befitting a child conceived in the finest library in Christendom. Upon her thigh, a shadowy mark was growing, similar to mine. It might yet turn into a thimble or a chalice, even the mark of Venus. In good time, her destiny would be revealed.
All Saints’ Day was almost upon us. Our haymaking was over and we were gathering and crushing the vintage. Soon it would be blood-month, the time for slaughtering. When our harvest was done and our salt, fish, and spices laid by, I would put each Poor Clare to apprentice with one of the Benedictines. After the lady nuns were trained, they could choose to stay or return to their own priory, though I hoped they would remain so I could guide and watch over them.
My new scriptorium would rise on the bank of the fast-running Sorgue, where our labours would be soothed by the rush of the river chasing stones. It would be built from the best limestone, with a glass window, not oiled parchment, for each scribe. I intended to make the scriptorium as active as it had been at the height of Benedictine learning, with the finest library along the branches of the Sorgue. Angière had consented to be my first apprentice, for even now she had a good black-letter. When Félicité and Anne-Prospère were older, I would train their stubby fingers to love copying, as mine had done.
The little girls were never to be found when I wanted them. Everything was new to them: hives guarded by stinging bees, green apples that hurt their bellies, a hedgehog darting out of cover, swallows skimming over the corn, the scent of wet hay after the rain. Glad as I was that Félicité was no longer so frail and that Anne-Prospère was no longer la petite misère, I must still lay down rules for them to follow. It was enough to ask the disciplined Benedictines to put up with the disorderly Poor Clares, for they were like salt and sugar. To ask the Benedictines to indulge my daughters, as well, was unfair. They skipped about the abbey, causing havoc wherever they went. They let the goats into the gourds and stole eggs from my henhouse to tame a wild dog. They mimicked the nuns’ hand signals by sticking their hands between their legs and giggling when they wanted to make water. And they could not comprehend the rule of silence—even in the refectory where it was sacrosanct while the sacristan read the saint’s life from the falcon’s nest above our heads.
Such mischief could not go on. It was time for them to learn the daily routine of the abbey. I was forced to that conclusion while we were singing an antiphon during sext. The choir-mistress was leading. Unde lucet in aurora flos de Virgine Maria, she sang. The last note wavered, miraculously drawn out as if held by a martyr with perfect pitch, a sacred note too high for profane ears. Was this the music of the spheres, the ineffable harmony of planets in their orbits? As the antiphon resounded from the groined vault, the note heightened into a scream. The choir-mistress clutched her head and clawed off her veil to see what had fallen on it. The flash of two dark heads above the singers told me that the little girls had been playing in the upper stalls and amusing themselves by dripping hot candle wax onto the choir nuns below. They ran out the door, dislodging the wild dog that was lying in the sun. As they escaped, a shaft of sunlight illuminated Félicité, piercing me with dread. No longer thistledown, her hair was as bristly as a hedgehog’s. What if she had inherited, through Francesco’s seed, some of his brother Gherardo’s rapscallion nature?
This reminder of Francesco was my undoing. As the choir-mistress resumed her angelic singing, my thoughts drifted in a more carnal direction. I recalled the pleasure of lying with Francesco thigh to thigh, spinning to the world’s swift tune. I prayed that in the general resurrection, in that great synthesis of blood and bones when bodies reassembled, Francesco’s soul would be drawn to mine so
we would taste the transporting joy that we had known in our youth. Just as destiny had divided us, it would bring us together, joining us in one another’s arms for the rest of time. I imagined a laurel wreath clinging victoriously to my brow as I embraced him in the ecstasy of our resurrected flesh.
When the office was over, I found the little girls in the cellar, sliding back and forth on the floor. Elisabeth did not look up from recording the stores in her ledger. Why had she been avoiding me since I returned to Clairefontaine? She was wasting away, but I could not make out what was wrong with her other than too much piety. She had insisted that I become the abbess, but after I had taken on the rôle she had woven a hair shirt of privacy around herself. Was she still bitter that Mother Agnes had favoured me? The names we had been given, Marie-Ange and Martha, separated us even more. A kitchen Martha should be fat and merry, but she was taking after Saint Elisabeth, who had delusions and died from fasting. Where had the Elisabeth of the frogs and insects gone? Where was that whimsy, that fire that had warmed our cell when we were children?
I felt unwelcome in her cellar, but I was the abbess, after all, and I could see that the sack of rice was almost empty. “I will need to inspect the levels for winter,” I told her. “All our supplies must be stored by Martinmas.”
Still Elisabeth did not say anything, only turned her back to pry up the lid of a wooden box with a crowbar. The nails shrieked, the little girls shrieked louder, and the cellar vaulting amplified the noise. Why had I been so high-handed? Perhaps if I trusted Elisabeth to do her job, she would warm to me in time.