She wonders if this is something she already knows but has simply forgotten because she feels so strange. Yet she cannot shift the thought that recently her progress has seemed so slow. Sister Imbersaga was barely twenty-two years old when she was taken. On the surface she had been just another nun, in truth rather ordinary. So why her? Unless it was that very ordinariness that had made her the chosen one.
Chosen. Even the word smells of carrion these days. That is what heretics believe: that God has chosen some and not others, and that His choice is more important than a life of good works or a convent full of nuns interceding for your soul. Of course they will burn in everlasting fire for such thoughts—though hell must be overflowing now, for the sickness is still spreading, crossing mountains, seas, and borders, taking villages, universities, towns, even nobles and princes with it, almost as if it is another form of malevolence moving through the air. No wonder the true church grows so nervous for its flock. What had been the abbess’s words? They would even restrict letter writing as not conducive to the tranquillity of our state. Yet how could they do that? Such enforced isolation would surely start another kind of fever.
The basil and eau-de-vie is barely mixed when she hears footsteps and turns to find a young conversa, whose name she cannot remember, in the doorway, a package in her hand.
“I …Madonna Abbess sent this for you.”
The girl steps forward hesitantly. She is new to convent life and finds the infirmary the strangest place of all, inhabited as it is by mad crones, with the dispensary sister, flush-faced and sweating, suddenly the maddest of them all. Zuana holds out her hand but the girl ducks by her and leaves it on the workbench, moving away so fast she knocks against a table as she goes.
The package bears the bishop’s seal, though it has been broken. The abbess will have already checked the contents: no doubt some flowery message from His Holiness, thanking the worthy sisters for their kindness and offering them this gift of cochinilla in recompense for their goodness. Inside the cloth wrapping is a small burlap bag. Zuana holds it in her palm, weighing it up quickly. Ten grams, maybe more. Together with what she has put by, enough for both the kitchen and the dispensary. She pulls open the strings and lifts it to her nose. There is a dusky quality to its scent, of something grown and dried in great heat a long way away. How far has it traveled to get here? Carefully she pours a small quantity of it into her hand. The small granules are a dark dull gray. You would never think they could contain such fiery color. Red gold: that is what people call it. What little she knows of it comes from one of her father’s books, a history of New Spain written by a doctor who had followed the army there. He told of how the dye was made from worms that sprouted out of a cactus, grown in a desert somewhere where they had never heard of the Garden of Eden or Jesus Christ, but where the color produced was strong enough to paint His blood as if it had been shed for them that very day. The book had shown a drawing of the plant, soft and spiky at the same time, but not the men who cultivate it, so she has to imagine what they look like: naked, painted skins, or lips stuck out like plates into the air, as she has seen in drawings elsewhere.
It worries her that she is offending against modesty by even thinking such thoughts, and she moves on instead to the contemplation of how, with the help of God’s missionary fathers, these men—and women—would have found Jesus Christ by now. Some of them, she has heard said, are even taken into the church as monks and nuns themselves. Thus does the glory of the Lord bring light into dark places, especially ones where nature has fashioned an entirely different prism of wonders. What would she give to have seen some of those wonders herself?
Oh! But the illness is making her thoughts run wild. In her palm she sees that the edges of the granules are moist from the sweat on her skin, leaving a dark mark, and when she brushes her forehead with her other hand she finds it burning to the touch.
I wondered if you had thought of using the cochinilla.
Of course she has thought of it. To be taken to break a fever. That is what her father’s notes had said. But although she remembers him writing about such a remedy in theory, he left no measurements, for he had never had his hands on the dye, and therefore she has no way of knowing how strong would be too strong or what too strong might mean when taken internally.
She knows very well what her father would have done had he had the opportunity. The only thing to be aware of is that for such an experiment it is well to err on the side of caution and always be sure to note each and every step, so that when you look back you can mark its course with certainty.
His voice seems so close in her ear now that she turns her head to see where he might be standing, only to find her vision blurred by the speed of the gesture. I am more ill than I realize, she says to herself. I must be careful how I do this.
She moves slowly, notebook open to the side with a new heading, date, and time, while she measures out a portion of the granules into a clay bowl before wrapping up the rest and securing the bag within a drawer, ready for delivery to Suora Federica during the afternoon. Then she takes a measure of hot water and slowly mixes it into the grains, noting the proportions in her book as she goes. The resulting liquid is too dark to distinguish what depth of color it might be making. It occurs to her that this may mean it is too strong, but the work hour is almost over and if she wants to have time to test this it would be best done now. What does not occur to her is that she is so feverish that she is no longer capable of deciding what is and what is not best for herself.
She takes a few sips. Under the heat of the water the mixture is bitter to the taste. The shelves in front of her look strange suddenly—as if something is wrongly placed or missing, but she cannot think what. Her head is spinning. As she drinks the rest she wonders if it will stain her lips in the same way as the marzipan strawberries and, if so, what Suora Umiliana will make of her newfound vanity as they sit opposite each other during the midday office.
BECAUSE SO MANY of the choir sisters have been struck down in the last days, Suora Zuana’s absence is not immediately noticed in chapel. It is not until everyone is settled and the office has begun that the abbess, counting her flock and duly marking the return of Suora Ysbeta, pale but clearly better, seeks out her dispensary mistress to communicate her silent congratulations on the recovery, only to find that she is not there.
In her place amid the sweetest-voiced, sweetest-breathed choir sisters, it takes Serafina longer to notice, for she is caught today between her singing and her thoughts, which are still wrestling with the problem of how to get into the cell of the chief conversa. As soon as her eyes fall on the gap at the end of the second row, however, she knows straightaway what must have happened. She glances around surreptitiously to see who else has spotted it. But the abbess has her eyes on the crucifix and seems, at that point, unaware of her flock.
When the office ends she files out of the chapel into the courtyard with the others, then loiters a little as the rest disperse to their cells. The midday service is followed by personal prayer. Given her newfound compliance it would not be fitting for her to be found guilty of disobedience at this stage. But among the many things she owes to Zuana is her silence on a matter that might even now have had her incarcerated on bread and water. Anyway, if the dispensary sister is ill, it would surely be better if it is known about sooner rather than later.