In the chapel, Zuana puts her head down and starts to pray
The afternoon light moves around her. Eventually she lifts her head, takes the letter in her hands, and breaks the seal.
IT IS ALMOST the end of visiting hour when she crosses the courtyard to the novice’s cell. By rights she should be studying or at prayer. Instead, she finds the girl lying on her bed, so deeply asleep that she does not even register her entrance. She is fully dressed, curled up like a small child, with a blanket pulled over her. Her face is pale, save for the lightly bruised skin under her eyes. The line of her chin is sharp now, the childish plumpness worn away. She will be feeling the cold, hence the body curled in on itself: before the spirit ignites its own fire, lack of food drains away the body’s warmth.
Under the bed Zuana notices a small bundle. She takes it out and unwraps it. A lump of bread sits inside. It is fresh, her daily portion from lunch, no doubt, concealed somehow in her robes. As her appointed spiritual guide, it is Suora Umiliana’s job to be monitoring her return from fasting to food now. Since there is no nun in the convent with a sharper eye for the infraction of rules, the very presence of the bread is evidence that Umiliana is encouraging the fast beyond the end of the penance. How convenient it would be for her if this sweetest of the sweet saved souls now became a conduit to God. Her very own young mystic.
But how long does it take to truly subdue the body? At what point did Magdalena’s fasting turn to joy? And what happens to those who never manage to light the fire within, young women with no future, who in the end do not really care if they live or die? The letter lies folded in the pocket of her robe. She moves the blanket farther up over the girl’s body and leaves her quietly sleeping.
Back in the cloisters, the abbess’s outer door is closed. It is a sign that she is either at prayer or in conference. Zuana lifts her hand to knock, then makes out muffled voices from behind the door. The mellifluous tones of Madonna Chiara’s voice are instantly recognizable, and in recent months she has become familiar with the harsher, more sibilant sounds of Suora Umiliana. She is about to turn and leave when she hears footsteps moving briskly toward the door. She barely has time to step back before it opens and the novice mistress comes out. The meeting is so abrupt and unexpected that it takes them both a few seconds to recompose their features—Zuana to disguise her discomfort at being caught at a kind of eavesdropping and Umiliana to cover up the unmistakable look of triumph in her eyes.
“WHAT WOULD SHE have us do, drive nails into our own hands?”
Inside her chambers, Zuana has never seen the abbess so angry.
“If she is so in love with humility and poverty, she should have joined the Poor Clares. Though even they might not have been strict enough for her.” She laughs bitterly, moving to and fro across the pile of the Persian rug. “Ah! Who would have thought it? A younger daughter of the Cardolini family turning out so ambitiously pious.”
Zuana would prefer to leave now and come back when she is calmer, but she is already pulled into the orbit of her fury. Evidently she is the abbess’s confidante as well as spy. “What did she say?”
“That God has given her the courage to speak her mind and she can—or rather will—no longer be silent.” She shakes her head. “Though I cannot recall when she was ever quiet, with or without His intercession.”
“Perhaps she feels there are more who agree with her now.”
“And who are they? Agnesina, Concordia, yes, Obedienza, Perseveranza, Stefana, Teresa perhaps, and a couple of the novices and younger nuns—I have not seen Carità so enthusiastic at the idea of deprivation before. Still, I would not give her more than maybe twelve or fifteen in total. Fifteen out of sixty choir nuns; that is hardly the convent. Santa Caterina is home to some of the city’s noblest women. Their families did not pay good dowries to have them living like paupers, fasting and praying twenty-four hours a day.”
She moves to the desk, opens the glass decanter, and pours two glasses of wine. Zuana takes hers without a murmur. She has no idea when she is going to speak and what she is going to say. Strangely, it does not worry her.
“Ha! She is playing with fire. She knows nothing of what is really going on out there. Once a bishop or a cardinal is determined, the inspections can take place with barely any warning. Apostolic visitors, they call themselves and, when they leave, an army of ironmongers and bricklayers come after them, building walls and fitting grilles and gates wherever there is a glimpse of open air. I have heard of places where the parlatorio is being redesigned as a prison, so that the nuns can only see their families through iron grilles covered with curtains. Is that what she wants? We would have half of the city’s fathers hammering on the duke’s door complaining that their daughters were suffering ill treatment.”
“In which case the city’s families will protect us, surely?”
“They will try, but it seems Rome is committed to taking on even the authority of the families: those final statutes of the Council call for elections of abbesses to take place every four years.”
It is a rule that up until now has been honored only in the breach, giving many abbesses and therefore also their families power down through many lifetimes. If it were to be imposed now, Santa Caterina would be voting for a new leader.
“And what if they did? You would still be reelected.”
“What? Even though I underestimate her support?”
“I didn’t say—”
“You did not need to. I saw it in your face.”
“I …I just think there may be more than fifteen.”
“Who are they?”
“I do not know names,” Zuana says quietly, for she is no longer anybody’s spy. “It is more a feeling.”
“Hmm. How much is this to do with the girl?”
“What do you mean?”
“Come, Suora Zuana, naïveté does not suit you. She has done nothing but shake the walls of the temple ever since she arrived. First the fury, then the acquiescence, then the escape, then the drama with Magdalena, and now this showy fasting, and the fainting in chapel just at the right moment. Do you think she is eating on the sly?”
“No, I don’t. In fact I think she has become ill with it.”
The abbess is silent for a moment. “Ah …Suora Umiliana. Of course. I fear I made a grave mistake, leaving her alone so much with her. Though at the time …” She stares at Zuana. “Well, we have come too far to have her die on us now. You must see her and get her eating again.”
Zuana hesitates. This is the moment. There will never be another.
“I think it would do her good, perhaps, to have some news of her lover.”
“How could that help? It would only make it worse.”
“Her sense of abandonment is acute. I feel it might address her despair.”
The abbess shrugs. “From what I hear, there is nothing to tell. He is well enough, singing his heart out with a bevy of pretty girls on his arm.”
“Madonna Chiara, I don’t think there is a more remarkable abbess than you anywhere in Christendom,” Zuana says quietly. “The things you know.”
She shrugs it off, but it is clear she is pleased. “I know only what I have to know to help the convent.”
“So you have no fear that he might try to come back to claim her at the vow-taking ceremony?”