“In which case the city’s families will protect us, surely?”
“They will try, but it seems Rome is committed to taking on even the authority of the families: those final statutes of the Council call for elections of abbesses to take place every four years.”
It is a rule that up until now has been honored only in the breach, giving many abbesses and therefore also their families power down through many lifetimes. If it were to be imposed now, Santa Caterina would be voting for a new leader.
“And what if they did? You would still be reelected.”
“What? Even though I underestimate her support?”
“I didn’t say—”
“You did not need to. I saw it in your face.”
“I …I just think there may be more than fifteen.”
“Who are they?”
“I do not know names,” Zuana says quietly, for she is no longer anybody’s spy. “It is more a feeling.”
“Hmm. How much is this to do with the girl?”
“What do you mean?”
“Come, Suora Zuana, naïveté does not suit you. She has done nothing but shake the walls of the temple ever since she arrived. First the fury, then the acquiescence, then the escape, then the drama with Magdalena, and now this showy fasting, and the fainting in chapel just at the right moment. Do you think she is eating on the sly?”
“No, I don’t. In fact I think she has become ill with it.”
The abbess is silent for a moment. “Ah …Suora Umiliana. Of course. I fear I made a grave mistake, leaving her alone so much with her. Though at the time …” She stares at Zuana. “Well, we have come too far to have her die on us now. You must see her and get her eating again.”
Zuana hesitates. This is the moment. There will never be another.
“I think it would do her good, perhaps, to have some news of her lover.”
“How could that help? It would only make it worse.”
“Her sense of abandonment is acute. I feel it might address her despair.”
The abbess shrugs. “From what I hear, there is nothing to tell. He is well enough, singing his heart out with a bevy of pretty girls on his arm.”
“Madonna Chiara, I don’t think there is a more remarkable abbess than you anywhere in Christendom,” Zuana says quietly. “The things you know.”
She shrugs it off, but it is clear she is pleased. “I know only what I have to know to help the convent.”
“So you have no fear that he might try to come back to claim her at the vow-taking ceremony?”
“None at all.”
“Well, perhaps you should have. Because he isn’t dead.”
It is immediate and perfect: the way the abbess now stares at her, the expression on her face changing not one iota. “Dead?” Her voice is strangely light. “No, of course he isn’t dead.”
“However, it seems that the knife wounds to his face and throat will make it hard for him to take up the post at Parma. If, that is, it should ever have been offered.”
Zuana feels her mouth dry. She lifts the glass and takes a sip of the wine. Her hand is very steady. Across the room the abbess’s face remains impassive. Then suddenly she gives a sigh: light, almost playful.
“As always, you do yourself an injustice, Zuana. It is not I who am remarkable but you. I do believe that if you had been born into a better family you might be ruling this convent now.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Oh, such a thing is not impossible.” There is a pause. “Indeed, with the right people behind you it might yet happen. Imagine the great dispensary you could build then.”
“I am happy with the one I have,” she says quietly.
“Yes, I believe you are.”
It is strange, but there is almost a sense of calm inside the room. How amazing, Zuana thinks. When confronted with such danger to herself, this woman still seems at ease, confident. Does she feel it always? When she is praying? When she is in the confessional? How early would she have had to catch Father Romero to be sure that he was sleeping through this admission?
“It seems now I must ask you about your sources, Zuana.”
“I had a visitor.”
“So I heard. Who was she?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Oh, yes, it matters. My nuns do not accept visits from just anyone.”
“What? Do your rules now squeeze harder than Umiliana’s?”
The abbess stares at her, then sits back heavily in her chair, her natural grace deserting her for an instant. This time there is no smoothing of creases or removal of fluff from her skirts.
“I did not have anything to do with it,” she says at last. “It was never—” She breaks off. “It was not my—well, sometimes one does not always have control over what one unleashes. But it was never—never—what I wished.”
Zuana puts down her glass of wine. She has no idea whether she believes her.
“Do I have your permission to treat the novice?”
“And if you do, what will you tell her?”
“That he did not desert her.” She pauses. “I believe knowing this will lessen her despair.”
“No. No, I cannot allow that.”
With the exception, perhaps, of the girl herself, the woman in front of her is the nearest Zuana has come to a friend in her life. She has admired, respected, enjoyed, even at moments sought to emulate her. Most of all, she has obeyed her. For this is the first and most powerful rule of the Benedictine order: to obey one’s abbess in all things.
“And what if she continues to refuse to eat? What if she starves herself to death?”
“Then to make sure we do not lose half her dowry we will just have to arrange for her to take her vows before she does so.” To Zuana’s astonishment, the abbess laughs. “You look shocked! Yet those are the words you wanted to hear from me, yes? Proof that as your abbess I care only about money, not souls? Oh, Zuana, do you know me so little? Is that what they say about me, this small army that is raised up now behind Umiliana? That I think more about reputation than I do salvation? Is that how it is?”
Zuana does not reply. There is nothing to be gained from false comfort now.
“Well, in some ways they are right. There may be times when my methods seem cruel. But believe this, if you believe anything. The battle we are fighting now is not just for the honor of the convent or the influence of one family over another. If Umiliana wins, if she creates enough noise and rebellion to bring the inspectors in, it will affect everyone.
“After they have stripped us of our income, after they have walled us up, even in our own parlatorio, after they have banned Scholastica’s plays and taken away the instruments from the choir orchestra, they will come for you. You, who have found such unexpected sanctuary inside these walls. They will not care about your remedies and your herbs. They will break the bottles in your dispensary and take away the books in your library, and after that they will find the others, the ones that are hidden in your chest. That is what my cruelty is trying to avoid. That—the great and the small of it—is what is at stake here.”
Zuana feels her heart moving fast against her rib cage. She will not think that far ahead. No, she could not live without her books or remedies, in a convent ruled by Umiliana. Yet how can it be acceptable to so offend God in order to be able to continue to serve Him? She, who can solve the most difficult riddles of the body, feels lost in the face of such complexity.
“I am still the abbess of this convent, Suora Zuana. And until I am not you must obey me, or I must impose penance on you.” She pauses. “As I have done already on Umiliana. Which, of course, was exactly what she wanted me to do.” She sighs. “Think of it: the abbess’s enemy and her favorite both lying in the doorway of the refectory for the other nuns to walk over. What a gift it will be to her.”