“No. You do not disturb me at all. Please, I would very much like to hear.”
Umiliana takes a step toward her now, as one might do if the intention was to share a special confidence. Her gaze slips over Zuana’s head to the wall of vials and pots behind her. My choir of cures, Zuana thinks, then checks herself. Never once has the novice mistress had recourse to them. Whatever pain she may encounter she keeps to herself. If that is strength, does that somehow make others’ suffering a weakness? Umiliana’s eyes move back to connect with her own. Certainly something is happening here, and she would do well to pay attention to it. She tries to concentrate.
“It seems to me that God may use such contagion for a purpose, sending it into people and places where He feels He is not worshipped properly.”
Their faces are close now. If the seeds are indeed turning more potent inside me, I must be careful not to breathe them out directly onto her, Zuana thinks. She looks away to the side. “Yes. Well, that …that can also be true.”
“Ah! So you are aware of it, too?”
“Of what?”
“The way He feels toward Santa Caterina. About what is happening here—how the convent is changing.”
“Changing? I …am not sure—”
“That night when Suora Imbersaga died, you did not sense something? You did not feel His blessed presence in the room?”
Certainly she had experienced something. “I …I felt His great compassion, that He had seen fit to end her suffering.”
“Oh, yes, indeed. But more than that. You did not feel that His taking her to Him was a sign of how He felt about Santa Caterina? That such a good soul would do better in His care?” And now she pulls back slightly. “You were much moved that night, Suora Zuana, I could tell. I would say more than I have seen you for years.”
“I was …I …yes—” She breaks off, not knowing what to say.
A soul as smooth as a bolt of silk. Those are the words her supporters use about Santa Caterina’s novice mistress. Though others might add and a tongue as sharp as a toothpick. Yes, Zuana had been in pain that night, though it had been more about what she could not feel than what was revealed. Had God really spoken to Umiliana and not to her? There was no question but that there had been an intensity of sweetness in her sorrow. No question either but that the young nun was deserving …But does that make Zuana so undeserving that she had noticed nothing?
She is aware that the silence is growing, can feel herself sweating further under the heat of Umiliana’s concentration. My work is to tend the plants and alleviate suffering, she thinks stubbornly, not to dabble in convent politics. If the abbess were here she would know what to say. Particularly with the welfare of the convent at stake. Well, it seems she must say something.
“The convent has grown in numbers in recent years. I think all change brings more change with it.”
“Yet Our Lord Jesus Christ does not change. His love, His sacrifice. And neither does our duty toward Him. We are bound to serve Him in obedience and humility, not look to the outside world for sustenance and praise. The great bishops at Trento warned against such contamination. Yet look around you, dear sister. Do you not think that in our hunger for ever more dowries and glory we take in too many young women who love themselves more than they love God?”
Ah, so it is the problem of young souls. Everyone knows it has been a source of distress to her for some time. Not to mention this latest challenge. “If you are talking of the young novice Serafina.” She pauses, not sure for a second what she is about to say. “I think …I think with your help—and God’s music—she is slowly finding her way.”
“Do you? I am not so sure. I think the Lord is crying out to her but that now she uses her voice to stop her ears against Him. And why not? These days Santa Caterina is more interested in training voices for profit than for prayers. Perhaps you do not see it because you do not remember, but this was once a convent of great devotion. Novices would feel it all around them. Angels would wrap Suora Agnesina in their arms during Matins, and Suora Magdalena had only to open her hands in chapel for blood to pour out from her wounds. But she is locked and forgotten in her cell.” She pauses. “Though I am sure that He still comes to her. Does He not?”
Ah! So even the novice mistress is not immune to the power of gossip. Surely this, too, is its own form of contagion, Zuana thinks: how words once spoken have no need of repetition, since instead they can travel through the air, invisible, incorporeal, becoming potent as soon as they are ingested. She has a sudden image of the world as it must be seen by the angels, vibrating with a cornucopia of unseen matter, a mix of the benevolent and the malign. On what day was all of this created? She wishes her father were here so she could ask him. But that is not the matter in hand. The matter in hand is Suora Magdalena and her possible transcendence. Is this what the conversation is really about? Could it be that the holy novice mistress is simply using the welfare of the convent as bait to catch a bigger fish? Such cunning seems—well, somehow unworthy of her.
Thank God, Zuana is safe from it, though. Unquestioning obedience is the greatest discipline a nun can aspire to. And the instruction of one’s abbess is the instruction of God Himself.
“The last time I tended her, the good sister was quiet in her cell.”
For that second, the disbelief in Umiliana’s eyes is so naked that Zuana is startled; more so as she watches the tears starting to flow down the plump slopes of the sister’s cheeks.
“Oh, oh, I know you have a good soul, Suora Zuana. I see it in the way you treat the sick. Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself was a healer, and you have been given a gift from Him in your work. But I fear we have failed you by not training your spirit to find His great love through prayer. I would have given much to have had you as my novice.”
“I …I would have liked that, too,” she says, and suddenly it feels as if the words have been wrenched out of her heart, which now feels as hot as her forehead. It may be that she even sways a little.
“Are you all right, sister?”
“Oh, yes, I am fine. I—well, I just have much to do to help the sick.”
Umiliana regards her solemnly, as if wondering how much more she should say. The tears now reach the deep creases around her mouth, slipping down toward the pitted pores of her chin. Zuana watches them, half mesmerized. She is so lovely and so ugly. If Suora Scholastica were to compose a play about the birth of Christ, surely the novice mistress would play the part of Elizabeth, her withered old womb filled by God’s grace…
Enough, enough. I must concentrate, Zuana thinks again.
“I am trespassing upon your work hour. God needs you for other things.” The elder nun takes a step back, but the gaze remains. “I thank you for this …this talk between us. You are always in my prayers. I hope I have not disturbed you too much.”
“No, not at all. I …I will come to Angelica soon.”
But she makes a dismissive gesture with her hands. “Do not worry. I will let you know if you are needed. If the prayers do not help. God be with you, Suora Zuana. You are precious to Him, and He is watching your journey.”
“And with you, Suora Umiliana.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
AS SOON AS she is alone again she mixes up the vinegar water and rue and moves on to some fresh eau-de-vie and basil. Though she knows she is ill, she is determined at least to finish the work hour.
How many batches of these remedies has she made up in this room? Twelve, thirteen years’ worth? How many more to come? What will be her allotted span? Fifty, fifty-five? Certainly there are nuns who live that long. Even sixty. Sixty years …She thinks of time almost as a weight. She sees a set of scales, with the years like bags of salt on one side, balanced on the other by good works and prayer. Perhaps when the two are in perfect harmony she will be ready. But how does one measure goodness? And does all time weigh the same? Surely not. Days spent in prayer or sacrifice should be worth more than those taken up in watering plants or distilling juices. Perhaps the point is not balance after all but the tilting of one side in favor of the other?