As the convent slides into a satisfied deep sleep, the abbess and the dispensary mistress meet in the corner cell of the main cloister, where one of them holds open a young woman’s mouth while the other pours into it a draft of poison made from pulped apple saturated with white hellebore root.
It does not take long for the first spasm to hit. Though by now she is almost unconscious, the agony is sharp enough to wake her; she opens her eyes in a kind of drugged terror and an unholy groan comes out of her mouth. Together they drag her from the bed to the floor. For the next however many hours they must keep her sitting up with her head bowed over, to facilitate the evacuation but also to stop her from drowning in her own vomit. It might be better if they could pray and the abbess is quick enough to find the right psalm on her behalf.
“O God, rebuke me not in Thine indignation, neither chasten me in Thy wrath, for I am weak and my soul is in anguish. ”
But once the spasms start in earnest, they are so violent and frequent that there is no time for speech, let alone prayer. It is physically exhausting work. The bowls Zuana brings fill and refill. When the diarrhea begins, the girl’s body is racked by double agony. The stench fast becomes almost unbearable. They roll up their sleeves and tuck their habits into their belts to avoid the worst of the contamination. They strip her down to her shift so she will soil herself as little as possible and wrap her hair in a piece of material to keep it from falling over her face into the vomit. But they can do nothing about the sweat that pours off her or the way her limbs shake uncontrollably from the spasms that crack through her body.
There are those who swear to the efficacy of hellebore as an aid to exorcism, since any demon trying to bury itself deeper to escape the burns inflicted by holy water will find its hold on the body severed from within. While Zuana has never had cause to use it in such a way, she has seen it work enough to understand what that might look like: the torso so gripped by spasm that it can go as rigid as wood, lifting the backbone high off the bed as if some spiteful spirit is controlling it from within. But what she has never witnessed before is its effect on top of such a powerful soporific. The battle between a body wanting to let go and the eruptions seizing it from within is truly terrible to watch, so that there are times when the girl feels like a rag doll held between the teeth of a great dog that shakes her to and fro before flinging her down on the ground, only to pick her up and start the whole thing again minutes later.
“Don’t be frightened, Serafina,” she finds herself whispering, as they lift her back up in anticipation of the next wave. “Remember how we said that sometimes one must use a poison to cure a poison? It will not last forever.”
But the poppy and the hellebore have her too deeply in their grip, and it feels as if there is no reaching her. Across the girl’s body, Zuana meets the abbess’s eyes and sees in them a look of such unashamed admiration that she feels almost shy. On the wall above the bed the figure of Christ looks down from a wooden crucifix. Suffering upon suffering. Who is to know how much is enough? Which sins can be forgiven and which remain?
As she falls backward into Zuana’s arms again, the girl murmurs something.
“Srree—m srree.”
Zuana puts her head close to her mouth to try to hear more but it is gone, swallowed up in a long growl of pain as her insides contract again.
Somewhere toward the end of the night the abbess leaves. She will have to appear at Lauds, and before then she must return the stolen costume to the props cupboard, cleanse and dress herself, and get at least some sleep. By now the spasms have become less frequent, and for a while Zuana wonders if the worst may be over. But almost immediately a new wave of vomiting begins, and it is all she can do to manage the girl on her own.
They had pulled the mattress down on the floor to give the girl some respite from the hard stone, and once the spasm has passed she lies flattened on it, her breathing fast and shallow, her skin covered in a mist of sweat that returns however many times Zuana mops her. How successful the hellebore has been will only become clear when the spasms finally stop and she becomes conscious again. But Zuana has no idea if—no, she will not hear that word—when that will happen.
“Out of the deep I have called unto Thee, O God. Lord, hear my voice. Let Thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplication. ”
Outside, rain starts to fall, gentle at first, then much fiercer, with a wind driving the water. Whoever is still out after the madness of Carnival will be chased home by it. Our Lord is washing the streets clean in time for the beginning of Lent. Tomorrow the city will wake with a collective hangover and turn its face to abstinence and repentance. And if the repentance is sincere, then surely He will listen.
“If Thou, O God, shall mark iniquities, then who shall stand unaccused? Yet there is pardon of sin with Thee, that Thou mayest be feared.”
The downpour is so relentless that soon she can hear water from the roof gushing out in streams through gargoyle mouths onto the flagstones in the courtyard beneath. She has a sudden desire to be out in it, to be standing in the middle of the deluge, drowning in its freshness.
The cloth of her habit is stiff with vomit and traces of feces, and the smell is so pungent that the girl’s condition will surely become obvious to everyone as soon as they wake. She turns her on her side in case another spasm should take her and quickly slips out of the cell into the courtyard, taking the bowls with her. She puts them on the ground and the water hammers down into them. She washes them out as best she can and lets them fill again as she lifts her face to the rain. The night is black, the half-moon that was there before engulfed in thick cloud. Within minutes she is soaked, gasping with the cold. But she is also awake. On the river the wind will be smashing the rowboat against the dock, the convent doors behind closed and locked. But then nothing happened there tonight, did it? Did it? She will not think about that now.
She goes back into the cell with the fresh water and washes the girl as best she can.
“Purge Thou me with hyssop and I shall be clean; wash Thou me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Turn Thy face from my sins and wipe out all my misdeeds, make Thou unto me a clean heart, O Lord, and renew a right spirit within me. ”
There are a dozen other psalms she could recite: verses of supplication, cries of shame and guilt, calls for repentance, for forgiveness, for God’s boundless mercy. But sitting over the novice’s unconscious body, she is suddenly no longer sure about their efficacy; while the words are fine enough, none of them say what really needs to be said here.
The truth is that forgiveness can come only to those who are repentant. Yet the girl lying on the pallet is sixteen years old, in love, and incarcerated against her will. What if, when she wakes and finds herself back in her cell for the rest of her life, she is not sorry for what she has done, only sorry that she has failed in the doing of it? The list of her sins is long: deceit, cunning, rage, lies, lust, disobedience. But the worst is surely despair. Sworn to silence now, where will she go for relief? Without the intervention of God’s grace as well as His penance, what reason will she have not to fall prey to desperation?
“Forgive me, Lord, for not seeing what was in front of my eyes. ”
The girl is not the only one in need of grace and forgiveness. Zuana bows her head on her own behalf.
“Forgive me for not recognizing her despair. For thinking only of my own sadness when I should have been listening to that of others. For not keeping guard over the poppy syrup in the dispensary. For my loss of concentration during the play. Forgive me for being too proud or too blind or too busy. For all these sins send me penance and, in Your infinite mercy, if it be possible, save this young woman from further torment.”