“Wait. I’ll get the book for you.” She gets up. Then hesitates. “Am I allowed to go into the dispensary alone?”
Zuana puts her head back against the wall and smiles weakly. “It seems you have been there anyway.”
“Oh, only with the ab—” She breaks off. No, that is not true. She was there before the abbess. But she does not want to draw attention to it now.
Inside the dispensary she spots the stain on the floor and feels—what? — almost joyful? Yes, joyful. Suora Zuana is better. She will not die. Had she really been so worried for her? It seems that in some part of her she must have been.
But there is no time for that now. She takes the bottle of syrup out of her robe, quickly transfers some of it to the waiting empty vial, then slips the original back onto the shelf. The row of bottles nestle up to one another again. It has been missing for barely twenty-four hours. She can only hope it was really not noticed. Now she still has to get back to the cell with the wax imprint, for the bell is ringing for private prayer, and the cloisters will be deserted soon enough.
“How is the convent?” Zuana says, as soon as she returns with the book. “What of the chief conversa?”
“Her fever is high. I gave her a dose of basil and eau-de-vie a while ago.”
“You?”
“I told you. They gave me dispensation to help. The novice mistress said it would be good for me.”
Zuana stares at her. “Well. We will make a dispensary mistress of you yet.”
But Serafina’s duplicity is now so far advanced that the compliment makes her uncomfortable rather than pleased.
“Santa Caterina doesn’t need another healer,” she says quietly. “It already has you.” The feeling is made worse by the awareness that the block of ointment wax under her robe is growing ever warmer from her skin, and she cannot afford for the imprint to be less than perfect.
Zuana starts to pull herself out of the bed again. “Give me the book. I will write the notes while you prepare another draft.”
“I …I must go. The bell is ringing.”
“It will only take a few minutes, and I will make sure the abbess knows why you are late. Come. Help me get out of here before Clementia realizes she has a new companion.”
LATER, WHEN SUORA Zuana arrives for Compline, weak but nevertheless on her feet, the rest of the convent is amazed, for everyone knows by now that she was found half dead from bleeding on the dispensary floor. If speech were allowed they might congratulate her, even marvel a little at how, despite her pale face, there is such a ruddiness of health to her lips. As it is, Federica is the only one who regards her at all suspiciously—but then she is impatient to start her marzipan fruits and is alert to the color of strawberries wherever she sees it.
Others express their gratitude through the words of the office, for Compline, which, marking the end of the day and the beginning of the Great Silence of the night, opens with penitence but moves toward joy. Even Suora Umiliana seems relaxed, almost satisfied, and the once-so-troublesome novice Serafina, who it is rumored was given special dispensation to tend her former mentor, offers up the words of the 30th psalm—Thou hast turned mourning into dances, put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness. O Lord, I will give thanks to Thee for ever—in purest voice. Those sisters—and there are a few of them—who have been as suspicious of her sudden goodness as they had been tired of her outright rebellion find themselves giving extra thanks that the convent has regained its balance. And that there is nothing now to interfere with Carnival, with all its opportunities for pleasure and performance.
The abbess, as ever impeccable in her formality and avoidance of favoritism, waits until the service ends to show her delight, pausing briefly in front of her dispensary sister and bowing her head to welcome her back to the flock. Those who are close enough to note the encounter are struck by the deep warmth in Madonna Chiara’s eyes, not to mention the way she offers the lightest of nods in the direction of the young Serafina herself, who seems so taken aback that the blush is evident behind her veil.
Three hours later, when the convent is deeply asleep, that same young novice slips out of her cell, a parcel concealed under her robe. Not long after, the voice of a perfect male tenor, moving along the street toward the river wharf, lifts up and over the walls. It sings of young love and a woman whose hair is a cloud of gold, Petrarch’s words set to haunting music. When the song ends it is answered by a single high vibrating note, a female voice rather than male, and then a heavy thud as something hurled from inside the walls lands somewhere on the other side.
Three days later the same procedure takes place the other way around. That night Serafina is especially fortunate. With the Carnival spirit on the move again, the watch sister has changed the timing of her rounds, and the novice barely reaches her cell before the footsteps hit the flagstones outside.
She lies on her pallet, fully dressed, heart thudding, the heavy package clasped to her breast, as she hears the footsteps stop by her door, hesitate, then go forward again. In the dark when all is silent once more she pulls open the wrapping and feels underneath her fingers the shape of two newly forged iron keys and the fold of a letter around them.
There is nothing they can do to hurt her now. She is ready. It is only a question of waiting.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
WITH ZUANA BACK on her feet, it takes less than a week for the contagion to be halted. The fever passes naturally from the remaining sisters (in the city, the severity of the attack is already waning), while the chief conversa, in whom it proves more stubborn, emerges three days later with rosy lips and renewed strength: a happy outcome, since her trips to and from the storehouse are even more frequent.
The rehearsals for the play enter their final stage. Suora Perseveranza comes out of her cell word-perfect, having been heard reciting her lines while in the midst of her delirium. Except for meal hours the refectory is now strictly out of bounds, as workmen are brought in from outside to build the stage and set. For three days their sawing and hammering offer a background percussion to the daily orders, and their presence—invisible though it is—introduces a level of exhilaration into the convent, with the novices and boarders closely chaperoned on every journey. There is a story, so often repeated that it is almost certainly apocryphal, of how a particularly beautiful postulant from a convent in Prato had her lover dress up as a workman to come in and fix the pews in the church and then, at the end of his time, he smuggled her out in a great bag of his tools. The very idea is enough to have a few of the younger ones swooning with excitement—but it is Carnival, after all, and when the body is incarcerated the mind cannot help but play a little.
Outside, too, the city has come alive. Family visits to the parlatorio tell of a wave of new arrivals: visitors from Mantua, Bologna, Padua, Venice—even a few from Rome itself. Ferrara has a reputation for good living as well as beautiful voices, and celebrations are already in full swing. It is said that if you walk by the palace you can hear the trumpeting of elephants brought in especially for the d’Este marriage feast and kept on for Carnival. The ducal garden has been transformed into a huge stage set, lit by a thousand candles, with grottoes and temples and even a great pyramid, all part of an elaborate game of valor in which a group of knights must win their ladies’ hands by slaying dragons and answering riddles—though since the duke must triumph there are rumors of the riddles being adapted to fit his somewhat limited knowledge.
Meanwhile, the streets outside the convent have become their own stage for debauchery. All over the city young men are trying on their Carnival masks, and once disguised how can they possibly stay indoors? Disturbing the city’s peace is an accepted part of the celebrations. Disturbing its nuns is a more serious affair, a crime against God as much as against the women themselves, but even here a little leeway is granted in the name of high spirits. Soon the odd slingshot pellet is arriving over the walls, to be picked up by the watch sister after Lauds: balls of paper scrawled with madrigals and bad poetry. Madonna Chiara sighs as she reads them and feeds them to the fire. The sentiments are predictable: unrequited love like evergreen laurel for ladies whose virtue is so fierce that it freezes the sun itself, alongside a handful of scurrilous verses offering a more instant heaven on earth for those with the wit to imagine it. Any abbess worth her salt has seen it all before. Most men are tempted by what they cannot have, and the truth is that it is not just heretics who are greedy for tales of lustful nuns that, like bad confessors, they can both enjoy and denounce at the same time. If anything, she thinks, this year’s crop is somewhat tamer than the last. Surely the city’s poets used to be wittier and cleverer than this? Or perhaps she, like Suora Umiliana, is becoming nostalgic for times past.