“Suora Umiliana.” The abbess’s voice cuts across her gently. “You will, I know, be feeling this pain more acutely than the rest of us, for you have spent so much of your time and blessed instruction on her behalf. How much more important it is, then, that we ask for God’s understanding on this before we offer up any blame. And if there is blame, it will fall on my shoulders, for I am the abbess. Please, please, dear sister, sit and rest yourself.”
This kindness silences Umiliana faster than any rebuke. It also leaves the floor to Chiara. She lifts herself up, resting her hands on the lion’s heads of the chair. It is a familiar, almost comforting gesture that everyone knows well, which is all to the good, because they are in great need of comfort now.
“You will know, I think, that even before the distressing events of today I have been concerned about the welfare of the convent. We are living in turbulent times. There is change and debate everywhere, and it is not a surprise if some of this anxiety finds its way inside these walls, with disagreements and confusions as to how we should be conducting our lives as nuns. In many cities, others are asking the same questions—and some are being forced to make changes under grave duress.” The abbess sighs. “These past few weeks I have spent many nights in prayer, asking for God’s advice in this, my great task of caring for His flock. And He has taken pity on my distress and come to my aid. He has helped me to understand much. And perhaps the most important thing He has helped me to see is how some of the burden we have been laboring under has come from the presence of this young woman.”
She pauses. The room is utterly still, waiting on her words.
“Dear sisters, I would ask you to consider this now, as He revealed it to me. How since the novice Serafina arrived with us all those months ago, her fury, her disobedience, the fame and glory that came with her voice, her tremendous sudden piety, her illness, her secret confession with its dramatic penance, her exaggerated fasting nigh unto starvation, and now this—this exhibition of fraud and madness—all this behavior has taken its toll on the peace and comfort of Santa Caterina. While we have done our best to absorb and contain her—in particular the work of Suora Zuana in the dispensary, Suora Benedicta in the choir, and the selfless care and discipline of Suora Umiliana—despite all our efforts, this young woman has grown more rather than less distressed. It is perhaps not a surprise.
“All these stages of behavior, these phases of the moon that she has passed through—for there has been some correlation between her mood swings and the moon’s cycles—have one thing in common: they have needed—no, demanded—and received our attention. Such symptoms are consistent with a most virulent form of greensickness, which though it can beset many young girls of her age, at its worst brings full-blown lunacy. Until this point, Santa Caterina has been mercifully free of it. I had some worry about this on that very first morning—Suora Zuana will no doubt remember that we discussed the possibility that the girl was sick rather than simply rebellious. I wrote then to her father to ask for further information. His reply was reassuring. And yet since then it has only grown worse rather than better—so much so it is surely no surprise that we have all, in some way or other, been influenced by it. For what we have been living through is the presence of a mad young woman who has dedicated her life to performance rather than piety.”
All this the abbess says slowly and with quiet conviction, leaving pauses every now and then so that you would think the words are somehow precious, fragile things that must be handled with care; either that, or they are so heavy one must hold them for a while in order to absorb them.
The message she offers is simple: a young woman has destroyed the equilibrium of the convent by dedicating herself to deceit rather than devotion. Very simple, in fact, yet it speaks to many of the nuns present.
Zuana looks out over the sea of faces. To the left of the room sit the novices, a group of young women overshadowed by Serafina up to now but who can perhaps feel vindicated for their occasional flashes of envy or lack of charity toward her. Could it be that they have been pious enough to suspect that she was a fraud all along? Close by, young Suora Eugenia is no doubt remembering how contented she had been as the convent songbird before Serafina opened her mouth at Vespers, and how lost and tortured she has become since.
On the converse bench Letizia hears again the girl’s sniping, angry tone, so different from her public piety, as they crossed the cloisters together to tend the chief conversa in her cell, while Candida thinks about all those evenings she spent brushing her hair, and how she can always tell the ones who yearn to be touched more, even when they seek to deny it.
In among the choir nuns, the twins, who have long since had to make do with being ignored, remember that once she tripped one of them up in her hurry to get to chapel and never apologized. Suora Benedicta thinks that though she composes for God, the young girl often seemed more interested in singing for her own pleasure, while Suora Federica knows she never really liked her, even though she felt compelled to pick her out for the first marzipan strawberry, and wishes now that she had put more wormwood into her penance food. Devout old Suora Agnesina reminds herself that she was never sure of her, even when Umiliana spoke so hotly about her emerging purity. Felicità, meanwhile, does not feel so bad about the resentment she has harbored toward Umiliana, whose time has been taken up with this shallow novice rather than other, more deserving sisters such as herself.
And Suora Umiliana? Well, Suora Umiliana is thinking and remembering a great number of things.
“Performance rather than piety. The noisy seeking of attention over the gentler business of living humbly inside God’s love. That has been a fear close to your heart, I know, Suora Umiliana, and one must say that in this you are right,” the abbess says, with a generosity that cannot help but draw attention to Umiliana’s own gullibility and failed judgment in this whole sordid business.
“We need to come back to the true path: Not to love strife. Not to love pride. Not to be jealous or entertain envy. To hate one’s own will. To love one’s neighbor as oneself and—”
And here she does not need to add—because each nun knows the words of the rule of Saint Benedict backward—and to obey the commands of the abbess in all things.
“In this way I am sure we will ride out the storm and return our convent to what it once was, a place of harmony and honest worship.”
The room is silent. It is a remarkable performance, and no one is more impressed than Zuana.
The bones of the plan, the central ingredients, were hers. But this …this elaboration …this decoration has come spinning out of the abbess’s own head, and its skill and cleverness amaze her. Here is a woman who cares so much for the reputation of her convent that she was willing to allow a young man to be killed to prevent scandal from coming upon them, but also a woman willing to forgo the chance of revenge on her most potent opponent in order to bring peace and reconciliation. For, as she well knows, only in that way can they hope to avoid interference from outside.
Zuana thinks back again to the rule of the order. The abbess is one to whom much hath been entrusted, from whom much will be required; the difficult and arduous task of governing souls and accommodating herself to a variety of characters, mingling gentleness with severity, so that she not only suffers no loss in the flock but may rejoice in the increase of a worthy fold.
Who else in this room could do it so well?
She lifts her hand gently.
“Yes, Suora Zuana? You have permission to speak.”