Dear sister in healing,
I write further to our conversation about the welfare of your patient who suffered such grievous wounds on his body and neck. Having studied my notes, I can suggest that case wort and yarrow will help the skin to join, and honey mixed with cobwebs and egg white can also be applied to minimize scarring. However, it is vital that the patient remain in your care and within your walls at present. In particular he must not undergo any journey, since friction on the torso will cause the wounds to reopen before proper healing has taken place. With regard to the great pain he feels in his chest, in the vicinity of his heart, I am hoping in due course to find a remedy and will forward it when I do.
I remain yours in the glory of God and the purity of the convent of Santa Caterina.
She finds Suora Matilda in a small room behind the gatehouse. The post of convent censor is a weighty one, as the nun who takes it on must possess not only authority and experience (those who deal with the outside world must be over forty years of age) but also excellent eyesight, and these qualities do not always go together. Though not directly of Madonna Chiara’s own family, until now Matilda has been a loyal servant to the abbess, although recent revelations in chapter suggest that her loyalty may be wavering.
Luckily, Zuana’s connection with her is more robust. When she was younger, Matilda suffered from a chronic complaint of itching and stinging when passing water. It had taken her a while to confess such an intimate ailment (she is not the only one; it can drive many sisters mad in the heat of a Ferrarese summer), but the doses of vaccinium juice Zuana gave her had brought much relief, and she has held a fondness for her ever since.
“It is not often you have recourse to the outside world, Suora Zuana.”
“No. But I had a visitor recently.”
“Oh, yes, I know. A daughter of one of your father’s pupils, wasn’t it?”
Zuana smiles. How could such an occasion ever have remained a secret?
“She is the wife of an apothecary now and came to ask advice on treatment for her husband. It was an urgent request, and I must answer her with all possible speed.”
Thus prepared in advance for the substance of what she must pass, the sister opens the letter and starts to read, holding the paper almost at arm’s length to do so. Zuana has already noticed how in chapel she screws up her eyes sometimes to follow the daily prayers in her breviary.
“Cobwebs and honey, eh?” Suora Matilda, evidently relieved to have managed the small print, closes the letter and brings her stamp down upon it. “When I was a child my nonna used to say that spiders’ silk was the thread of life. She would make the servants collect webs from the cellar. It always made me squirm.”
“She was a healer then, your grandmother?”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. She was more of a termagant to me.” She pauses. “Though these days I think she was the better for being so strict. It is important to live by strict rules, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Oh, most certainly.” Zuana smiles, taking a vial from under her robe and placing it on the desk next to her. “You sacrifice your eyes selflessly for the good of the convent. A few drops of witch hazel will help to keep them sharp on our behalf.”
The sister hesitates for a second—rules are rules, after all— then closes her hand over the container. “You are most kind. As you say, the letter is urgent. I will make sure it goes this afternoon.”
WHILE THE FIRST day goes well, that night and the ones that follow it are not so smooth. After Compline, when the convent has finally fallen asleep, Zuana makes her way to the girl’s cell again, bringing food saved from her own plate and extra supplies traded from the kitchen. She must stay with her now until everything is consumed. Eating. It is such a natural act until it is transformed into an ordeal. But then, once a certain level of starvation has been reached it is not only the flesh that is affected but also the spirit.
“I’ve had enough.”
“You have eaten barely anything.”
“How can you say that?” she snarls. “I am stuffed like a goose.”
“That is because your stomach is shrunken. You must stretch it.”
“I’ll eat later.”
“No, you will eat now.”
“Aagh!”
If it is hard for Zuana, it is worse for the girl. Each night she finds herself seated in front of a mountain of congealed food— thick and foul, like the devil’s vomit. Before she takes the first spoonful her body is in revolt, her stomach heaving, her throat closing up at the sight of it. Each mouthful is gross to the taste, like chewing raw flesh and swallowing poison. It is all she can do not to spit it back out across the room.
“Eat, Isabetta.”
Don’t eat, Serafina.
There are nights when she fears she is going mad, when she can hear Umiliana’s voice drowning out Zuana’s, rising up out of her as if it were her own; times when even the thought of Jacopo is not enough to pry her lips apart. Were it not for Zuana she would give up before she has begun. They are locked together in the struggle: the push-pull of hope and despair. In between the tears there are eruptions of fiery rebellion, growlings of fury, or blunt refusals. It is remarkable how the coiled snake of resistance continues to hiss and spit, as if halfway to heaven—or maybe it is to hell—she will not, will not, give up.
Eventually, however, the exhaustion beneath the hunger reduces her to a kind of docility, a numb surrender watered by tears.
My dearest Isabetta, I did not, nor would I ever, knowingly desert you.
Zuana woos her mouth back open by reading extracts from the letter.
My dearest Isabetta. How long is it since anyone called her that? Isabetta. Her own name is a stranger to her now. Who is this young woman who once answered to it? Who is this man who once loved her?
I hear your voice each night before I go to sleep, its beauty seducing the very sweetness out of silence, and when I wake it is the first thing I remember. I ask for no more.
She listens carefully, like a child hearing again a story she once loved. And sometimes it seems she can almost remember, can almost go back there: a face, a touch, the echo of a voice. But where and how did all these things happen between them?
I will never love or marry another. That is the promise I made to God if He would let me live, and it will be my pleasure to keep it… Pray for me, my dear Isabetta.
But will she ever really be Isabetta again? After a while it is too tiring to ask herself the questions. To imagine a future, she must give up the comfort of feeling nothing. It seems it is not just her body that has shrunk but her whole world.
Afterward, when the horror of eating is over, she is given, and takes—for she is acquiescent by now—a dose of acqua-vita to help the process of digestion. It does little to quiet the war of attrition that is starting to take place in her body. After the first few days her gut launches its own rebellion, sending out nausea and cramps so that at times it is all she can do to sit without doubling over with the pain. Where before she folded herself up against the cold, now she lies curled over her own throbbing entrails.
Meanwhile, if the physical refeeding is a challenge, so is the extra level of dissembling that must now accompany it. Once outside her cell, whatever her exhaustion or confusion, Serafina needs to be clever. And deft. At every meal in the refectory, the convent must see her eat, though in a way that makes it clear to Umiliana that no food is actually passing into her mouth but is instead hidden away under her robe to ensure her continued fasting. And Umiliana, as always, is eagle-eyed over the journey of her most beloved novice.