“Here, wipe your mouth,” she says, handing her a cloth. “We would not want you getting into trouble now that you are doing so well.”
And doing well she is. With every passing day Serafina grows more radiant, despite her humble demeanor. She shines even when she is silent, as if God’s great love were trying to burst out of her heart, and her voice in chapel, especially at the darkest point of the night, entrances everyone. When she is not singing she is at prayer. She has even dispensed with Candida and taken on the duties of cleaning her own cell, washing the floor, making her own bed, changing her own linen. There are those who whisper behind her back that she is only trying so hard in the hope that she will be allowed to join the visiting in the parlatorio after the concert is over (the rules are clear that she is not yet eligible to entertain or be entertained). But if that is her aim, she says nothing about it. In fact, these days she says almost nothing at all.
SERAFINA’S BEHAVIOR MIGHT be more remarked upon were it not for the drama that takes place within the convent in the days leading up to the concert and play
Following some urgent exchanges of letters and out-of-hours visits in the parlatorio, Suora Apollonia’s sister, the lady Camilla Bendidio, arrives late one night with a maidservant and a small bag and is quickly settled in the guesthouse to the side of the main cloisters. It doesn’t take long for the news to spread that there is trouble in the marriage and she has asked for refuge away from her husband while negotiations take place within the family to try to bring peace. Apollonia is given special dispensation to spend time with her, and that same night Zuana is called by the abbess to attend her. She has a deep cut at the hairline of her forehead, as if something has been thrown at her, and sits without movement or murmur while Zuana cleans and tends the wound. When asked if there is anything else she needs help with, she removes her shawl and upper bodice to reveal a set of large ripening bruises on her arms and shoulders and sits weeping silently as Zuana rubs ointment gently into the damaged skin.
She was a pretty woman once, Zuana remembers, but she is grown gaunt now, older than her years. Those young nuns who cry themselves to sleep at night for want of a man’s hands on them might find pause for thought here, for this is not the first time she has used the convent as a haven. Her husband, the eldest son of the splendid Bendidio family, is one of the duke’s most favored courtiers and by all accounts a man with a quick temper. There might be more sympathy for his long-suffering wife were it not for the fact that in seven years of marriage she is yet to produce a child. He, in contrast, has no such problems, having already sired half a dozen illegitimate children. If it continues much longer, she will be under pressure to allow the marriage to be dissolved so that he can get himself a sturdier, more fertile bride—in which case she will find herself coming back to Santa Caterina permanently, as there is nowhere else that would take such a castoff Perhaps that would be a relief to her. Looking at Apollonia’s healthy young body and her rebelliously fashionable courtier face, Zuana cannot help but think that Bendidio married the wrong sister. But it is too late now—for both of them.
The next afternoon their father, along with the abbess, meets with a representative of the husband’s family in the guesthouse to discuss her future, while the parlatorio overflows with the last visit before the Carnival concert.
Zuana, in contrast, sits alone in her cell with her books. She has more than enough work but cannot concentrate on doing it. It has been like this for a while now. The time of year has much to do with it. While many of the inhabitants of Santa Caterina find Carnival an exquisite distraction, for Zuana it is more a disruption than a pleasure. During her long and painful assimilation into convent life, it was the rhythm of routine that became one of her greatest solaces, and to have it so rudely interrupted makes her almost nervous. Perhaps it would be different if she were more connected to the outside, if she had family to visit and entertain: mother and aunts, cousins or sisters with an ever-expanding brood of little ones to cuddle and coo over. But all she has is her herbs and her remedies, and while they keep the convent healthy they count for little in the world beyond.
This much she is used to, has grown to understand. Yet there is something else going on now. Over recent weeks, even before the illness, if she is honest, she has detected in herself a strange restlessness that she cannot entirely explain. While it is possible that the contagion may have exacerbated it, with the exception of the blood-red urine she passed for two days after the draft (a shock in itself until she realized it was the drug and not her own insides pouring out of her), she has felt well enough.
No, it seems that it is not her body that is ailing but rather her mind.
She finds herself feeling sad—yes, sad is the right word—for no reason. It is as if for the first time in her life her own company is not enough. She prays, of course, each and every day, but often her mind slips in and around the words, so that they never rise high enough for Him to hear.
The healer in her has witnessed such things in others; convents are full of nuns who become lethargic or tearful or distraught by turns. Winter sadness. Summer madness. Monthly moon cycles, or the more persistent melancholia that comes with their ending. There are as many terms for it as there are states of mind. The stricter nuns—the novice mistress and Suora Felicità (even her name marks her out as immune)—regard it almost as a rebellion against God and counsel stern treatment of work and prayer. But over the years Zuana has tested and used other remedies. Her father’s books are full of them: infusions, pills, borage steeped in wine, Saint John’s wort, fumigants of incense and hypericum, with mandragora and poppy syrups to ease the insomnia that often accompanies such distress. Then there are other treatments that involve neither simples nor compounds: kindness, sympathy, a little relaxation of the rules of solitude. In the darkest cases the best is a combination of all of these. Prayer, work, sleep, and care: God, nature, and man working together as they were meant to.
Of course Zuana is not so distressed herself. Nowhere near. More likely she is simply tired. She disciplines herself through duty. The parlatorio needs more perfumed herb tablets to place on the brazier during the concert, and she busies herself preparing them. When ordinary prayer does not work, she uses recitations from the psalms.
“The voice of the Lord is powerful, I will praise Thee, my Lord, with my whole heart, and show forth all Thy marvelous works. ”
She says these particular phrases over and over again under her breath, wrapping them around her like a blanket, leaving no room for the cold drafts of distraction to slide in around the edges.
“For God is good, His mercy is everlasting, and His truth endureth to all generations. ”
AFTER A WHILE, the simplicity and the repetition bring her a certain calm. Like tonight.
Somewhere outside the walls a muted roar goes up. They must be lighting the Carnival bonfire in the piazza in front of the cathedral in time for the sunset. Her father took her to see it once when she was very small. There were so many people they could barely move, and he had to hold her up amid the crowd. She remembers that the smoke made her eyes water and her throat sore. At least she thinks that is what happened. Recently she has noticed that she is less sure of things she was once certain about, as if her life before the convent is slipping away altogether. Her father’s face, for instance: the broadness of his forehead, the shadows under his eyes, the way his bottom lip always seemed a little pulled downward by the weight of his beard. All this she had assumed was imprinted in her forever. Only, sometimes when she studies the face of Christ on the cloister crucifix, she could swear she sees the same features in Him too, as if the familiarity of one face has simply blended into another.