At the front the choir and convent orchestra face each other, as if to pretend they are performing for themselves alone. Suora Purità has her head and hands poised over the organ, Lucia and Perpetua are bent over lute and viol, while Ursula keeps her fingers cupped around the strings of her harp as if she is still cradling the notes she has just released. At her feet sits a flute, which she will play later. Its presence in the room has already caused a lively debate in chapter since there are those—some outside as well as in—who would consider it almost indecent for a woman to be seen in public playing any instrument with her mouth. The fact that the flute is there at all is testimony to the passion of Benedicta’s arguments, along with the thinly veiled threat that it may not be possible to perform her arrangement of one of the more popular song cycles without it.
Across from the orchestra sits the choir itself, each of its fifty-some sisters in freshly laundered robes and pressed black veils over wimples newly starched with egg whites left over from the baking. And in front, marked out by white robes with an echo of the angelic about them, a handful of novices, easy on the eye as well as the ear. One especially.
Benedicta gives her a signal. As she takes in her breath, it seems as if everyone else holds theirs.
“Here am I, a little lamb, a new bride of God. I live in splendor and celestial ardor.”
The words are from Rome, written by one of the pope’s new favorites, though the setting—as joyful as Serafina’s own voice—is Benedicta’s. Even Zuana, who is not generally susceptible to such sugary sounds, is charmed. She glances to the carved wooden seat (brought especially from chapter for the occasion) where the abbess sits, ramrod-straight, her hands like a pair of resting white doves in her lap. It had been she who had suggested the text as a suitable one for Carnival, during the same chapter meeting at which tempers had flared over the use of the flute. Not surprisingly, with the exception of Umiliana and Felicità, everyone had been won over by it.
“I cheer the holy angels with my song. My eyes are fixed on the sun of paradise and my life sustained by an infinite beauty. ”
Certainly it is perfect for the occasion, the mix of innocence and fervor irresistible to any prospective novices in the audience and also—more important—their parents. “Christ is the one son-in-law who will not cause me trouble.” The words had been those of Ferrara’s great Isabella d’Este, when she married two of her own daughters to the church. The nunnery that received them had been lucky indeed, since there had been no greater patron in the whole of Italy. However, with a songbird such as this one, Santa Caterina will do well enough.
And it is not yet over. There are still Petrarch’s sonnets to the Virgin to come, in a new setting that shows the girl’s voice at its finest; then, after refreshments, the play in the refectory before an audience of female relations and benefactors. If the performance goes as well as the concert—and the only concerns are that Suora Lavinia finds her courtier’s costume, which has gone missing, and that the nun in charge of special effects gets the moment right so the thunder coincides with the miraculous breaking of the wheel rather than rumbling irrelevantly two or three speeches later—the convent will surely have delivered up its finest Carnival entertainment ever. Yes, Zuana thinks, the abbess has every right to look satisfied.
As the song draws to a close, all eyes are fixed on the girl. She glances up quickly toward the audience, then drops her gaze demurely to the ground. Though some will see a glow of performance about her, to Zuana’s eyes she looks gaunt and exhausted, almost feverish with the excitement of it all. Perhaps it is no wonder. Extreme goodness can be as taxing as extreme rebellion. Once Carnival is over and normality has returned, she will find convent life gentler and more soothing. If, that is, gentleness and soothing are what she really wants.
In the orchestra, Suora Ursula picks up her flute and brings it to her lips as the audience settles itself for more pleasure.
THE CONCERT ENDS and the singers disband. Behind a screen a table is now revealed laden with refreshments: fine wines next to fine glasses, hand-painted ceramic plates piled high with biscuits and sugared almonds, and, in the middle, a glass bowl full of the glowing colors of marzipan fruits. The families and visitors surge forward to meet and congratulate the performers; a few of the younger men are so eager to get to the front that there is some shoving and pushing along the way (protected by their masks, there is now the chance for a little Carnival courtesy as well as compliment). When they arrive, however, they are disappointed. The songbird herself is already gone, whisked out through the back door by Umiliana, who, having been a veritable lioness in her protection of all her novices, now sacrifices her visiting rights to chaperone Serafina in the interval between the concert and the performance.
They go first to the chapel, where they are joined by Suora Perseveranza, excused from the festivities to spiritually compose herself for her ordeal at the hands of the pagan emperor. From prayer they move to the refectory, where it becomes Serafina’s task to arrange the remaining chairs and light the candles in readiness for the performance. Though it is humble work for a young woman whose voice has just captivated some of the city’s most discriminating music lovers, she exhibits no resentment or impatience at her fate; she simply does everything as she is instructed, occasionally glancing out through the window to where the day is gradually dying.
By the time the watch sisters in the gatehouse have counted out the last male visitor and closed and secured the doors against possible intruders (a procedure most rigidly observed today of all days), and the abbess has accompanied the noblewomen, sashaying across the courtyard like a fleet of well-rigged galleons, into the refectory, the twilight is advanced enough for the candles to light up the stage, leaving just enough remaining natural light for the actors to move behind the curtains.
The novice mistress’s attention is now divided between those of her charges who will perform and the others who will be spectators, and everyone is vying for the best seats behind the benefactors. Such are the bustle and chatter that Serafina finds it easy to slip away from the throng and select a place for herself at the far end of a row at the back.
There are still a few empty places elsewhere when Zuana takes a seat to the right, almost directly in front of her. She turns a little to survey the room and as she does she catches Serafina’s eye.
“Your voice was heavenly in the concert,” she says lightly, before the girl can drop her gaze. “The parlatorio was ringing with your praises.”
Far from taking pleasure in being complimented, the novice looks confused, almost anxious. “Thank you,” she says, with a half smile. Zuana glances back toward the stage across a sea of elaborate veils and tall headdresses. “I fear you will not see much from here. You should find a place closer to the front.”
“Oh, no, no …I am happy here.” The girl shakes her head. Zuana notices how her hands are clasped tightly in her lap, one on top of the other as if to stop them from trying to escape. “I am …well, but I am very tired now.”
Her voice trails away as the noise level in the room rises. With the men gone, the women are more animated, rowdy even. She would not be the first young novice to yearn for company after solitude only to find it hard to be amid so many people and so much clamor.