This change of mind is so perfect and expressed with such sincerity that Zuana is rendered speechless for a moment.
Umiliana, however, has no such problem.
“If she is now to leave her cell, if the convent decides that is best for her, then surely she could also be allowed to attend chapel and mass and take the host. I know there are sisters who would happily carry her there if she so desired.”
There is an audible gasp. On the surface it is the drama of the sparring between abbess and novice mistress, but there is something else going on here: some of the older nuns, the more natural allies of Umiliana such as Agnesina and Concordia, will no doubt have memories of the services where Suora Magdalena’s appearances coincided with weeping stigmata. And, given the excitement in the convent, some of the younger ones will surely have heard rumors by now.
“Suora Umiliana, you have spoken my own thoughts aloud. However, such is her fragility I do not think that will be possible,” the abbess says smoothly. “In fact, I have discussed the matter with Father Romero already. Indeed, he visited her this morning when he came to hear the confession of the novice.”
Whether he did or did not visit Magdalena, there is no one in the room to contradict her, since they were all at work hour. Anyway, why should anyone doubt the word of their abbess? Although Zuana finds herself doing just that.
“She was, alas, unconscious and so not able to take confession or receive the host. But he has promised to come again.”
“Oh, is she dying? Are we to lose our holiest soul having only just found her again?”
Suora Felicità’s voice is now tearful, so that a few of the young ones look positively alarmed. Umiliana glances at her sharply. It is one thing to pit your wits against a skilled opponent, another thing entirely to find yourself undermined by your own side.
“We must all die in the end, Suora Felicità,” the abbess says gently, “and we must not be selfish. For Magdalena herself it will be the greatest celebration to be taken by God.”
The words, so humble that in other circumstances they might have been spoken by the novice mistress herself, still the room. In her chair on the dais, the abbess sits upright and graceful.
“Suora Zuana? As dispensary mistress you have seen our dear sister the most recently of all of us. Perhaps you might give us your thoughts on her strength or frailty?”
She turns to Zuana and her eyes are shining. To look at her you would think she was positively enjoying herself. At recreation the more mischievous nuns sometimes speculate on what a perfect wife for a great noble she would have made, running his family and his palace as efficiently as she runs the convent. They do her an injustice, Zuana thinks. It is not a mere palace she should run but a state. For surely in its way that is what she is doing here. Right down to a network of spies and agents to help keep her authority intact.
“When I saw her this morning she was unconscious and most weak. She is also suffering from chronic bedsores. In my opinion it would be kinder if she was moved as little as possible.”
A network in which Zuana appears now to have been granted a position of considerable authority.
“And if it was so decided, would you take over her care in the infirmary? You have in the past expressed grave concern over her state, I know.”
But how much does Zuana really want the role? It is not a question she can answer now. She bows her head.
“If it is the will of the convent, I would be honored to do so.”
The abbess smooths her skirts and turns to the audience.
“So. Let us put it to the vote. The motion before the sisters of Santa Caterina today is whether to move our aged and beloved Suora Magdalena from her cell into the infirmary, where we may ease her passage into God’s hands.”
The novices watch as the choir nuns come up one by one to the front and, with their backs to the rest of the room to ensure anonymity, pick out a small wooden ball from the bucket— white for yes, black for no—and drop it through a hole into the voting box.
When everyone has voted, the box is emptied and the balls are counted by the sacristan and witnessed by the gate mistress; the motion is declared duly carried. It is noticeable, however, that among the winning white balls are a greater than usual number of black.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
SHE IS EMPTY. Quiet. Still. Maybe stiller than she has ever been in her life. It must be the aftermath of the poison. During her time in the dispensary, she had wondered about the drama of the hellebore: what it might feel like to have one’s insides ripped apart, scraped out nigh unto death. To be so purged, so emptied out. Almost as if one might be able to start again. Another Serafina. Newer, lighter, cleaner, with no hand gripping her heart and twisting her guts. No man to love and yearn for anymore. Because it seems, after all, that he never loved her.
He does not care, you see.
He does not care. Yet how could that be? What of all the poetry? The music? The harmony of voices, the starburst sweetness of mouth on mouth, skin on skin, the mingling of souls that made them for that instant pure, afraid of nothing? Ah, now—now it is too late, she knows that she did really love him; that, amid all the rebellion and hot blood, the very exhilaration of being alive, separately and together, Jacopo had been a man worth loving, himself generous, filled with song and no malice.
Except, it seems, he wasn’t. Instead, he, like she, had been a master of deception. Yet how could that be?
At any other time these thoughts would have been like hooks in her flesh, but there is nothing left to lacerate. She is so tired, too tired to think properly. Certainly this new cleansed Serafina cannot hold on to anything for very long. Her head feels as light and empty as her body. It is not so awful; more like dizziness, like holding a high note for longer even than your longest breath allows, hearing it vibrate, shimmering inside your head.
Perhaps this sensation is the result of her confession? The scouring of her soul as well as her stomach. She has told the old priest everything. With the screams of the pierced and the sliced still inside her, how could she not? Everything—the bliss, the rage, the terror, the disobedience, even the self-destruction—such a fast-flowing river of sin. How much of it he heard she has no idea, for both their eyes were closed as she spoke. But at the end he had prayed for her, imposed a penance of confinement with bread-and-water fasting for two weeks, and given her absolution.
Two weeks’ confinement and fasting. It is not such a torment. In fact she welcomes it. In the time since she opened her eyes on the cell full of nuns, she has relished the solitude. How can she bear to face people again? As for the fasting, well, her hunger is so familiar to her now that even when she does feel the need to eat, she feels a greater sense of triumph when she overcomes it. Her gut has been full of undigested rage and panic for so long that to be without anything inside her seems a marvel in itself.
Whether it comes from the quiet or the exhaustion, she prays more: simple prayers held inside simple phrases. I am sorry. Help me. Forgive me. Childish, almost. Each time she sleeps she wakes to the sight of the crucifix on the wall, but often when she looks at it she sees instead the figure of the man in the marshland, walking toward her with the sun as a radiating halo behind him. The moment when he first came she had thought it might have been Jacopo, because his hair also fell curling around his shoulders and he, too, walked with a long stride. But she knows now that it was not Jacopo but Christ Himself and that He came to her through Suora Magdalena. Why and how this happened she does not know. She is certainly not deserving. Yet, oh—He brought her such comfort then! And now. For He also is generous, filled with song and no malice.