There is little chance of such marvels tonight. Old Suora Agnesina sits febrile with devotion, head cocked to one side, vigilant as ever for the divine note inside the human chorus, but in the back stalls Suora Ysbeta is already asleep, making much the same wheezing sounds as her rancid little dog, and for the rest it is an achievement just to keep their minds on the text.
To counter her weariness, Zuana pulls herself upright until her shoulders connect with the back of the seat. In most choir stalls, nuns rest their backs against plain wood, polished by years of cloth rubbing against it. But Santa Caterina is different. Here the seats are decorated by the wonder of intarsia: hundreds of cuts of different-colored woods, inlaid and glued together to create scenes and pictures. The stalls were a gift from one of the convent’s benefactors during the reign of the great Borso d’Este a century before, and the story is that it took a father and son over twenty years to complete them. Now, as the sisters of Santa Caterina pray to God, each and every spine rests against a different image of their beloved city—streets, rooftops, chimney pots, and spires—recognizable even down to the slivers of cherry or chestnut wood that mark out the edges of the wharves and the dark walnut veins that make the River Po. In this way, though they live separated from the city of their birth, their beloved Ferrara is kept alive for them.
When Zuana’s mind suffers badly from distraction, as it does tonight, she uses these little jewels of perspective as a way of connecting back to God’s devotion. She imagines the voices floating upward, a cloud of sound rising high into the nave, up and through the chapel roof into the air outside, then moving like a long plume of smoke out into that same city; twisting and turning around warehouses and palazzos, passing along the side of the cathedral, hovering over the dank moat surrounding the d’Este Palace, poking its way through windows and releasing mellifluous echoes in the great chambers, before slipping out and returning to the edge of the river itself, from where it rises up toward the night stars and the heavens behind.
And the beauty and clarity of that thought makes her tiredness fall away, so that she too feels herself lifting free and growing toward something greater, even if the transcendence does not manifest itself in the beating of angels’ wings or the warmth of Christ’s arms around her in the night.
IN THE CELL across the courtyard, the angry novice moves heavily in her sleep, full of the wonder and madness of drugged dreams.
CHAPTER TWO
“HOW QUICKLY WAS she calmed?”
“After the draft, soon enough. She was sleeping deeply when I left.”
“Too deeply. I could not wake her for Prime or Terce.” Suora Umiliana’s tone is sharp. “I feared that God might have taken her to Him in the night.”
“It was my duty to settle her. In my experience, when a body is warm and breathing it is easy enough to tell life from death.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt your medicinal skills, Suora Zuana. But I am concerned for her soul …and it is impossible to bring God’s comfort to a young woman who can barely sit up, let alone kneel.”
“Sisters, sisters, we are all weary, and it does no good to anyone to find fault with each other. Suora Zuana, you are to be thanked for calming her. The convent needed its rest. And Suora Umiliana, as novice mistress you have, as always, done all that could be asked of you. This novice is given to us as a challenge, and we must do what we can for her.”
The two nuns bow their heads in obedience to their abbess’s voice. It is early afternoon, and they are gathered in her outer chamber. The room is heated by a wood fire, but outside of its immediate orbit the air remains bitterly cold. The abbess herself sits with a rabbit-fur cape around her shoulders, leather shoes, newly tooled, peeking out from under spread robes. She is forty-three years of age but looks younger. Recently, Zuana has noticed, a few wispy curls have been allowed to escape from under her wimple, and her face is softened by them. While there are those who might suspect such attention to worldly detail as vanity, Zuana sees it more as a reflection of how fastidious she is with everything, from the painted finish on the gesso religious figures that the convent produces for sale to the pastoral care of her flock. Besides, God and fashion sit more easily together than those outside might imagine, and the sisters of Santa Caterina absorb the latest styles with the same appetite with which their choir voices explore the latest complexities of polyphony. In this way, while they may be cloistered, they are still true daughters of their fashionable, musical city.
“So. Let us consider the young soul we are dealing with. Your thoughts first, Suora Zuana. How did you find her?”
“Angry.”
“Yes. Well, that much we could all hear. What else?”
“Afraid. Sad. Outraged. There was a lot of spirit.”
“Though little of it directed toward our Savior, I would assume.”
“No. I think it safe to say she does not enter with a vocation.”
“Ah, always the diplomat with words, Zuana.” She laughs, and one of the curls dances on her forehead. It is not surprising that she is admired by the young as well as the old, since her style combines elements of the benign elder sister along with those of the strict mother. “Did she have anything to say on the matter?”
“She told me that the vows came from her mouth but not her heart.”
“I see.” The abbess pauses. “Those were the actual words she used?”
“Yes.”
At Zuana’s side, Suora Umiliana sighs heavily, as if this is a burden she is already shouldering. “I feared as much during the ceremony. She was opening her mouth but I could barely hear any words.”
“Well, if she was coerced, she gave no indication of it when I met her with her father. Had she been beaten, do you think, Zuana?”
Zuana feels the body again, soft and heavy in her arms. There had been no sign of wounds, or none that the girl herself seemed aware of. “I …I am not sure, but I think not.”
“Suora Umiliana. What were your impressions?”
The novice mistress clasps her hands together, as if asking for help before she speaks. In contrast to the abbess, she is a well-padded woman whose wimple is fixed so tight it seems to have impacted into her features, squashing them ever more closely together, her cheeks like puff pastry and her mouth small and puckered, with a covering of wispy white hairs across her upper lip and chin. She must have been young once, but Zuana cannot remember a time when she looked any different. While she is a ferocious shepherd of her novice flock, few pass through her hands without gaining some sense of Christ’s majesty, and the older sisters who go to her looking for spiritual respite report that beneath her crumpled exterior she has a soul as smooth as an unpacked bolt of silk. There are times when Zuana has felt something akin to envy for the simplicity of her certainty, though in such a close community it does not do to dwell on what one does not have.
“I agree with Suora Zuana. There is a great storm in her. When we undressed her after the ceremony her face was set like a black mask. I would not be surprised if her education has been directed more toward vanity than spirit.”
“If that is so, it will come as a surprise to her family,” the abbess says, fielding the implied rebuke to her judgment gently. “They have an excellent name in Milan. One of the best.”
“Also she didn’t sing—or even open her mouth—at Compline.”
“Perhaps she is unfamiliar with the texts,” Zuana says softly. “Not everybody knows them when they arrive.”