And she had tried, truly and honestly, tried so hard that sometimes, despite the nun’s kindness and patience, she thought she might go mad with the effort. Eventually she had come to accept a level of failure. What point was there in dissembling? He would know it anyway. God always seeth man from heaven and the angels report to Him every hour.
How much easier it had become when the kind old novice sister died and she had found herself in the company of her assistant, Suora Chiara. Chiara, with her smooth skin and dancing eyes and her bright, confident relationship with God and the world around her. Chiara, who seemed able to inhabit both the mind and the spirit without fearing His displeasure and who, even then, enjoyed an almost unnatural standing in the convent itself; much more than the other women of her age with fewer aunts, cousins, and nieces around to support their rise through the ranks.
Yet she had been generous with her power. Without Suora Chiara arguing her case, Zuana might have languished for years in the scriptorium, decorating the word of God with calendula leaves or fennel fronds. It was she who had helped Zuana to find work in the dispensary, she who had organized and supported her election as dispensary mistress and, when she finally became abbess, allowed her to take over the infirmary as well, For it is written in the rule of Saint Benedict that it must be the abbess’s greatest concern that the sick suffer no neglect. Without Madonna Chiara there would be no treatment of the bishop’s ailments and therefore no flow of special outside supplies. Without Madonna Chiara there would be no distillery, a smaller herb garden, fewer shelves with fewer bottles to be broken, fewer notebooks of remedies to be destroyed. Without Madonna Chiara—
Zuana looks up to see two of her books on the table. In her chest there are others, lovingly cared for over all these years. Is she really willing to be instrumental in their destruction? For what? To alleviate the misery and starvation of one obstreperous novice? She is only a young woman who did not want to become a nun. The world is full of them.
The truth is that Zuana herself does not understand why this girl has become so important to her. There have been times when she wonders if it is some affliction of the womb: she has seen it enough in others; how an older nun might seek out a novice or postulant or boarder of the age that her own child would have been, had she had one. Such rapports are often characterized by undue care and attention, for while everyone knows the creation of favorites is prohibited, it is also unstoppable.
Yet it has never been like that for her. As a child without brothers or sisters she had always been familiar with her aloneness, her self-sufficiency. And yet, and yet …this young woman with her sense of fury and injustice has somehow infiltrated Zuana’s life. That Zuana likes her is undeniable, despite her spirit and her truculence—or perhaps because of them. No doubt she sees something of herself in her; the curiosity as well as the determination. And it is true that had she married, had she become a wife instead of a nun, her own child might indeed now be Serafina’s age. How would she feel about her then? It is a painful question. While Santa Caterina has been a good home to her, would she choose to give a daughter up to such a life? And if not, does that mean she is willing to risk bringing down the convent to help her?
The abbess is right. The world is full of them: daughters who are too young, too old, too ill, too ugly, too difficult, too stupid, too smart. Waste. Banishment. Burial alive. Custom. The way things are. What can she do about it? It is not as if there is so much out there to celebrate. Freedom? What freedom? To marry the man you are told to and no other? If she had been living outside the walls, Serafina might still have found her singing composer half dead on some riverbank, only the knives would have been wielded by her father’s family rather than the abbess’s. Love is not a marketable commodity; you take what you are given, even if it is your husband’s pleasure to bruise your skin and breed bastards out of prettier loins. It is simply how it is. What point is there in railing against it? And why, in God’s name, single out one spoiled young girl from all the rest?
The sand is at the bottom of the glass. She stares at it, then turns it over again.
The voice of the Lord is powerful. I will praise the Lord, with my whole heart.
She closes her eyes and tries not to think.
The voice of the Lord is full of majesty.
She knows the words as well as any remedy.
For His mercy is everlasting and His truth endureth to all generations.
She prays until the words make no sense, and when the sand comes to rest for a second time—or is it a third? — she gets up and makes her way to the dispensary. She takes down a bottle of acqua-vita and moves out into the cloister, where a half-moon throws the well in the courtyard into gray relief, as it did all those months before when she first visited a howling, furious young entrant.
If she were to ask herself now why she is doing this, it is unlikely, even after all the meditation and prayers, that she would be able to answer. The truth is that there has been no great revelation between her and God. No transmission of grace, nothing with which she could protect herself in confession for the disobedience she is about to commit. There are words she might use. Words she believes in. Compassion. Caring. The need to address suffering, the offering of comfort. But they are more the language of the healer than of the nun.
She knows this—but it does not stop her. If anything, now, it spurs her on.
Outside the door, she uses the taper she has brought to light the candle concealed in her robe. As she enters, its glow illuminates the room enough to show that the bed is empty. For a second she feels panic, remembering Serafina’s last absence, but then, soon enough, she sees her. She is sitting on the floor with her back to the wall, in the same place where Zuana had found her on that first night. Only now there is no rebellion, no fury, no noise at all, just a small figure swamped by her robe, hunched over, arms wrapped tightly round her knees, head bowed, rocking slightly to and fro.
Zuana crouches beside her. If the girl is aware of her, she does nothing to show it. Zuana’s sin of disobedience is already sealed by her presence there. Now, in the middle of the Great Silence, she must compound it further with speech. “Benedicta.” She says the word gently under her breath, though she knows there can be no absolution of a reply. This time the words Deo gratias remain unsaid. So be it.
She moves the candle closer. “You sleep when you should be awake and you are awake when you should be sleeping.”
The huddled figure remains silent, still no sign that she has heard or even noticed her.
“Come, let me put you to bed.”
“I am praying,” she says at last, her voice dull and flat.
“You are not on your knees.”
“If one is humble enough, He hears you wherever you are.”
“What have you eaten today?” Under the bed the bundle of bread sits untouched. “Serafina, look at me. What have you eaten?”
The girl lifts her head briefly: close to, the planes of her face are sharp angles, her eyes black in deeply scooped sockets, her wrists on her knees as thin as kindling wood. How much body is left inside the sack of clothes? How long before her skin starts bruising purple from lack of flesh? Zuana feels shock like a cold hand squeezing at her throat. Could Umiliana be so unaware of the damage that her search for God is causing?