She gets up, making a gesture to Zuana to do the same, leaving the girl curled on the ground like a broken doll.
They move quickly into the outer storeroom.
“I must return to the refectory. I have been away too long. You will have to get her back to the cloisters on your own.”
Zuana nods, though it may be too dark for it to be seen.
“Take her to her cell and stay with her until I decide what to do. Can you do that?”
It is only a short pause, nowhere near as long as the one when Zuana had stood paralyzed on the dock, with the abbess somewhere in the room behind her. But now, as then, the air is too gloomy to know for certain what anyone could have seen. Or heard.
“Yes,” she says flatly.
“Good.” The abbess moves out into the gardens, the door swinging behind her.
But inside, on the floor of the inner storeroom, the girl has already made her own decision.
While the two women have been talking, Serafina has had her fingers inside the pocket of her skirts. She has drawn out a glass vial and removed its stopper, careful not to lose a drop of the liquid as she takes it out. By the time Zuana turns back to her she has it to her mouth and is gulping greedily.
Zuana reaches her fast and smashes the bottle out of her hand so that it jumps and clatters on the stone, the glass too thick to shatter. Immediately she is on her hands and knees feeling for it, a barrage of images instantly assaulting her. She is standing in the dispensary mixing cochinilla and water, a fever cooking her brain—and there is something strange about the arrangement on the shelves in front of her. Yet when she is well and upright again and studies them more carefully, there is nothing missing; every ingredient is in its rightful place and there is no reason for her to check the level on each and every bottle.
Her fingers close around the glass. She brings it to her nose. God help us now. The ground is dry and the bottle is empty. She crawls back over to the girl, grabs her by the shoulders, and pulls her up, bringing her face so close to her own that she has to look at her. “How much, Serafina? How much was in there?”
But in answer the girl only licks her lips to make sure there is no drop left.
“Tell me!”
She shakes her head. “It’s one of the ingredients they give to those who are going to be tortured to death. Isn’t that what you told me that night?”
“Oh, Heavenly Father,” Zuana says under her breath. “What have we done to deserve this?”
She puts out her hand and strokes back the hair from the girl’s face. She looks so tired and worn. Too much youth. Too much emotion. The lunar madness that can strike some young women at the onset of menstruation. This is how it started all those months ago. Please God, don’t let it be how it finishes. “Come,” she says gently. “Come. Let’s take you somewhere more comfortable.” She picks the girl up and hauls her to her feet, noting as she does so how thin her body feels beneath the robes, so much lighter than when she lifted her up from the floor of her cell all those months ago, and she wonders how this weight loss will affect her susceptibility to the drug. But none of this shows in her voice, which is kind, loving almost. “So, Serafina, can you help me? Can you walk with me?”
The girl nods and starts to move her feet obediently. In the gloom she offers up what seems a crooked half smile. “I think it was enough not to feel pain. I hope so.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
THE VOMITING AND the evacuation go on through that night and into the next day.
Because Zuana has no idea how much poppy syrup the girl has drunk, she must assume the vial was full. The dose of hellebore she gives must be enough to empty her stomach but not so much that it will kill her. It is a balance no apothecary however experienced, can be sure of.
At least she is given the freedom of a night without interruption to start the process.
With the visitors gone, the abbess brings her flock together. She congratulates them on the wondrous performances of the day and the glory they have brought to Santa Caterina and announces that tonight of all nights they have earned a rest that will not be disturbed, even by prayer, so there will be no service of Matins. The convent bell will remain silent until dawn. It is a popular dispensation, for now that the excitement is over they are exhausted; indeed, a few of the younger ones even weep a little at the news. If the novice mistress does not entirely approve of the decision, she is as tired as everyone else and says nothing against it.
As the convent slides into a satisfied deep sleep, the abbess and the dispensary mistress meet in the corner cell of the main cloister, where one of them holds open a young woman’s mouth while the other pours into it a draft of poison made from pulped apple saturated with white hellebore root.
It does not take long for the first spasm to hit. Though by now she is almost unconscious, the agony is sharp enough to wake her; she opens her eyes in a kind of drugged terror and an unholy groan comes out of her mouth. Together they drag her from the bed to the floor. For the next however many hours they must keep her sitting up with her head bowed over, to facilitate the evacuation but also to stop her from drowning in her own vomit. It might be better if they could pray and the abbess is quick enough to find the right psalm on her behalf.
“O God, rebuke me not in Thine indignation, neither chasten me in Thy wrath, for I am weak and my soul is in anguish. ”
But once the spasms start in earnest, they are so violent and frequent that there is no time for speech, let alone prayer. It is physically exhausting work. The bowls Zuana brings fill and refill. When the diarrhea begins, the girl’s body is racked by double agony. The stench fast becomes almost unbearable. They roll up their sleeves and tuck their habits into their belts to avoid the worst of the contamination. They strip her down to her shift so she will soil herself as little as possible and wrap her hair in a piece of material to keep it from falling over her face into the vomit. But they can do nothing about the sweat that pours off her or the way her limbs shake uncontrollably from the spasms that crack through her body.
There are those who swear to the efficacy of hellebore as an aid to exorcism, since any demon trying to bury itself deeper to escape the burns inflicted by holy water will find its hold on the body severed from within. While Zuana has never had cause to use it in such a way, she has seen it work enough to understand what that might look like: the torso so gripped by spasm that it can go as rigid as wood, lifting the backbone high off the bed as if some spiteful spirit is controlling it from within. But what she has never witnessed before is its effect on top of such a powerful soporific. The battle between a body wanting to let go and the eruptions seizing it from within is truly terrible to watch, so that there are times when the girl feels like a rag doll held between the teeth of a great dog that shakes her to and fro before flinging her down on the ground, only to pick her up and start the whole thing again minutes later.
“Don’t be frightened, Serafina,” she finds herself whispering, as they lift her back up in anticipation of the next wave. “Remember how we said that sometimes one must use a poison to cure a poison? It will not last forever.”
But the poppy and the hellebore have her too deeply in their grip, and it feels as if there is no reaching her. Across the girl’s body, Zuana meets the abbess’s eyes and sees in them a look of such unashamed admiration that she feels almost shy. On the wall above the bed the figure of Christ looks down from a wooden crucifix. Suffering upon suffering. Who is to know how much is enough? Which sins can be forgiven and which remain?
As she falls backward into Zuana’s arms again, the girl murmurs something.