IN HER CELL, given dispensation to miss the morning offices, Zuana finally wakes during the afternoon work hour. Her sleep has been deep and dreamless. She washes in a bowl of warm water, which one of the converse has delivered outside her door along with a new pad of rich-smelling soap and a fresh washing towel. As her own dowry is not sufficient to fund such regular luxuries, she understands this to be a gift from the convent stores and is grateful for it. The smell of the girl’s bodily expulsions still clings to her and she washes herself vigorously. She takes special pleasure—yes, she accepts the word—in lathering up the soap on her head. Her hair has grown during the winter months and she likes the wet weight of it, the shiver of massage as her fingers move over her scalp. She leaves her head bare as she uses the cloth to wash her arms and then her body under her shift.
Working as she does in the infirmary, she is less of a stranger to women’s bodies than most nuns, but in general she takes little interest in her own. Of course there have been moments in her life when she has wondered what it is she will never feel, even once or twice explored her own dark sweetness, but her battles with the flesh have proved to be, at most, passing cravings, absorbed and subdued as much by the challenges of work as the discipline of prayer.
The soap is soft on her skin and lathers up like sea foam. She can detect a hint of almond and calendula within it—perhaps it comes from the abbess’s own stores—and registers a quiet delight in the way the smell and the softness complement each other.
She understands that the fight with the flesh is not always so easy for others. Serafina is far from the only young woman to have brought her virginity to Jesus while in the grip of desire for a more carnal husband. Of course there are ways to earth such lightning bolts. Over the years there have been nights when, unable to sleep because of some problem or remedy she has detected a sudden wind of rushed breathing and moaning sliding out from under one cell door or another. Sometimes it is hard to tell the pain from the pleasure; but either way it is a sound that can ignite yearning in those who hear it, and Zuana has become adept at increasing the volume of her own thoughts to blot it out. It is not up to her to damn or save the souls of others.
She rinses and dries herself quickly, rubbing her hair until it sticks out like a spiked halo around her, though with no mirror in her cell she will never see the effect.
If, or when, such transgression becomes obvious—and in the end it always does—the induced confession will be a private matter, the sister or sisters finding themselves subject to penance and regular discipline. Either it passes—the excess of energy transmuted into the love of Our Lord—or they become better at concealing it. Amid the filth of heretic propaganda, the most popular scandals are those of priests and nuns scaling the walls or squeezing their way through the confession grille to reach one another. The idea of women sinning with themselves or each other is too poisonous even for those who would wash away the structure of the church along with its sins.
She dresses herself in a clean shift and robes and kneels by her bed. She has missed almost two days of offices and is long overdue on prayer, but her mind fills up fast and it is hard to stem the flow of thoughts. She does what she can with words rather than contemplation and then makes her way into the cloisters to check on her patients.
Back in her own cell, Suora Magdalena lies like a corpse on her pallet, the bones of her head so prominent as to seem already half skull. Her sleep is so deep that Zuana has to put her ear next to her mouth to discern any breath at all. It seems inconceivable that this—this wraith—could ever have found the strength to get up and walk to another cell, let alone sing and pray over a sick girl. Well, it is gone now, drained away along with her life force. Whatever she may be seeing behind her eyelids, Zuana prays it is a landscape full of light and joy, for there is nothing left for her here. She moistens her patient’s lips with water and changes her position a little to ease the worst of the bedsores. She can do no more.
Inside Serafina’s cell there is more to celebrate. The air smells of fresh herbs, and by the bed there is bread and vegetable pie, along with a single bright-green marzipan pear. The girl is asleep between clean sheets, her body washed, her hair brushed and flowing around her. Zuana wonders if she should wake her to check on her progress, but her pulse is steady and after such a powerful purging sleep is often the kindest remedy. There is a stillness in the cell, a sense of peace almost, but whether it is the relief that comes with the cessation of suffering or something more she cannot tell. She thinks of Suora Magdalena crouched by the bed, transfixed by her vision of Christ…
Her vision—but not mine, thinks Zuana. However much she might wish it differently, the cell had remained empty for her.
And what of Serafina? What had she seen when she first opened her eyes? Zuana understands her medications well enough to know that anyone in the grip of poppy and hellebore would already have been careering between heaven and hell. In such a softened state, Suora Magdalena’s intensity may indeed have reached inside her, for everything is close to the surface when body and mind melt into each other.
The girl’s skin is pale and there are hollows under her eyes. She will need feeding up if she is not to find herself permanently weakened by the viciousness of the evacuation. How could she not have noticed such loss of weight before? Though convent robes conceal all manner of sins, surely the novice had not been so gaunt when they had last worked together. Was this the result of love sickness, too? Ah, it seems so obvious now. Had Zuana been so preoccupied by work, or so much in need of a younger companion, that she had missed what was in front of her eyes? Would it have been any different if she had known? If the abbess had taken her into her confidence earlier—whenever that might have been, for she has no idea when she found out.
No. She glances around the cell. It had been here all along, everything she needed to know. The fury and the lushness of that young body as she carried her to bed that first night, the love madrigals hidden away in the breviary, the man’s voice singing behind the walls, that single Brava after Vespers, the way the girl’s eyes had grown large as she recited the poem found in the scriptorium manuscript. Tell me, little sister, do you have a fever or are you in love?
Oh, yes, this conflagration of the flesh had been there from the beginning, burning fiercely enough for Serafina to risk everything—disgrace, social exile, even death—to find a way back inside its flame.
Zuana looks down at her. A slight frown flickers over the girl’s forehead. What will she do with all that fire now? All the despair and shredded dreams?
Love. There is no illness like it, or anything in her herb garden or her notebooks to address it. No, this disease must be left in God’s hands, to kill or cure as He sees fit. Instead of comfort, the thought sends a shiver through her. She bows her head in prayer, but the bell for chapter interrupts before she can find the right words.