None of this word-spinning will mean much to Suora Benedicta. Though she might be a visionary in her compositions, she is also a choir mistress with a pragmatic understanding of the tools of her trade. The exuberant sweetness she has heard before (and can make good use of, for there can never be too much purity in a convent choir), but what she could never have predicted is how such a young body—still a girl’s as much as a woman’s—might produce a voice of such extraordinary range and control. How her lungs might hold so much within a single breath. How she might encompass so many registers, from the icicle point of a soprano to the chestnut honey of a tenor, or move between them so effortlessly, betraying no hint of strain or even the smallest of impurities with which the onset of menstruation can often infect the vocal cords. And then—most of all— how, when the choir reaches the new psalm settings in four or even six block parts, this single voice can know and travel between them all with equal assurance, though she can only have heard the notes once, or at best twice, through half-closed windows.
By the time the service ends, Benedicta is already halfway in her composition of the next, her mind filled with a voice that seems to be writing its own parts.
And meanwhile, what of Suora Zuana in all of this? Zuana, who remains as ignorant of the subtleties of vocal technique as she is impervious to the poetry of exaggeration. Zuana, who has been bred to observe and consider, to make sense of what her senses tell her. Except that everything her senses tell her now seems wrong. In front of her she is seeing a novice, apparently suffused with joy, singing her heart out to the glory of God and the joyful sacrifice of a virgin in the fires of martyrdom. But who is she, this girl? How can such a transformation have taken place? How can the strong-willed, recalcitrant, rebellious, angry young woman that she knows—a figure of much power but dubious spirituality—have disappeared so entirely, to be replaced by this new creature: absorbed, distilled, so consumed by the music she is making that she seems not even to be aware that any change has taken place.
Surely at some level she must know what she is doing. What, in effect, she has already done.
THE SERVICE MOVES triumphantly to its close. Yet as the last notes fade into silence—Serafina’s voice now plaited into, though not lost within, others—no one on either side of the grille moves.
The abbess, whose rising will mark the sign for others to do so, still sits in her seat. Around her the choir is caught, some looking down as they are instructed, others watching for the sign, a few staring more openly at the novice, who has dropped her hands and eyes and looks only at the floor.
The silence in the choir stall is matched by that in the body of the church. Not a sound can be heard through the grille now, no clearing of throats, no coughs or whispers. The good citizens of Ferrara are either unable or unwilling to accept that the experience is over.
Then, out of the silence, comes a man’s voice, clear and loud. A single word: “Brava!”
The shock of it runs through them all, so that now the abbess is spurred into movement and quickly the others follow.
And the girl? Well, for a moment the girl does nothing, just stands staring at the floor. But as those around her start to move she lifts her head up and for that second her eyes meet Zuana’s. What is it the elder woman sees there, exhilaration? Satisfaction? Even joy? Certainly. But also the unmistakable flash of triumph.
It is this last that Zuana registers most powerfully, for though the girl has reason to feel gratified by the impact she has made, she must surely also understand that she has pronounced her own life sentence. Because, whatever happens, they will never let her out now.
PART TWO
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE SMELLS FROM the bakery are almost overwhelming. It has been building up over the last few days, this assault on the senses, from when the first trays of ginger biscuits, followed by cakes and herb breads, went into the ovens, releasing their yeasts and sugars through the cloisters. Some sisters have even confessed to salivating as they pass by the kitchens (winter meals can become sparse and repetitive), but their confession only makes others more aware of the sin in themselves, and impatience is the mildest of transgressions. They will all be allowed to taste the results soon enough.
In the kitchens, Suora Federica has been excused the more exhausting of the daily offices, as she and her cohort of nuns and converse struggle with the extra work needed to produce the specialties that will feed a small army of visitors. Packages are delivered to the gatehouse every other day, and the chief conversa in charge of provisions is run ragged with journeys to and from the river storerooms to collect deliveries and further supplies. That very morning two barrels of wine have arrived from a new benefactor. One is to be opened and decanted, the other put into storage. The abbess has sanctioned the use of Suora Ysbeta’s private store of glasses. As a nun from one of the great families she has a passion for Murano glass, as well as small dogs, and came with a dowry chest full of it. There has been the annual discussion in chapter as to how far the use of such luxuries might count as ostentation or even vanity, with the vote going—though less smoothly this year—in favor of the demands of hospitality. As a consolation to the novice mistress and her followers, it is decided that the glasses will be used only to serve benefactors and the highest rank of visitors, and that should there be any breakages the convent will not be responsible for replacing them.
Soon the gilded goblets will be sitting next to full jugs of wine on the covered trestle tables along one side of the parlatorio. The room has been transformed: the small organ has been moved from the music chamber into one corner, with two high-backed chairs placed nearby for the lute and harp players and space for the choir. There are candles (beeswax of the highest grade, from the stores) on spiked stands, and branches of evergreens with winter berries have been woven together with garlands of herbs across the ceiling, and fumigants in metal pomades hang suspended, ready to be lighted, the air already fragrant with their scents. The room gives off such an appearance of a great domestic salon that those sisters who entered the flock late enough to recall feast-day gatherings with their families are flooded with memories as they stand in the entrance and marvel.
One end of the refectory has been cordoned off, ready for the construction of a platform stage upon which the martyrdom of Santa Caterina of Alexandria will be performed before a specially invited female audience, and a storeroom nearby has been opened to hold props and costumes. Some are being made by the nuns themselves, but the more exacting—doublets and hose for the emperor’s courtiers, boots and swords for the nun soldiers, and the wheel itself, which must appear solid only to be broken by divine intervention before Santa Caterina can be tied to it—have to be brought in from outside, courtesy of the nuns’ families. Those sisters and novices involved in the play can often be found during recreation walking briskly in the garden or around the cloisters reciting their lines, either to themselves or to one another. Santa Caterina herself will be played by Suora Perseveranza, whose habit of self-mortification does not prevent her from the pleasure of occasional performance, to which, everyone agrees, she brings a tender verisimilitude. In years past her portrayals of such shining saints have brought tears—and flowing donations—from many of the female benefactors who have seen them.
After a long spell of bitter cold the city has grown a little warmer, though not enough to drive off the mists. The change has come too late for Zuana’s fingers, which are raw from mornings spent in the herb garden fixing burlap hoods over her more vulnerable plants. While the collection of garlands and herbs and the making of the decorations and the fumigants are her responsibility too, she has been afforded some help with this, though not of the caliber to which she had grown accustomed over the last months.