After the dissolvement of the marriage, Lucrezia withdrew to the Convent of San Sisto in the Appian Way — partly to escape the various items of scandal which were rocking Rome, partly to appear to act with the decorum her situation demanded.
She was to spend a period of some six months in her own private quarters, taking part with the nuns in daily prayers, joining with them in much of their work.
For some weeks she lived with them, praying, making baskets, carving small figurines in wood, walking in the quiet grounds, feeding their dozen hens. She was happy for a time to be free of the world in which she always felt a little as if she was living on the summit of a volcano that was likely to erupt unexpectedly.
But, at the end of that time, accustomed as she was to fierce and frequent intercourse, she began to feel an aching void in her loins, began to consider how to best soothe it.
During her walks in the grounds she had particularly befriended a young nun who had been in the convent only a short time before her. This young girl, whose name was Carlotta, was designated to show Lucrezia how to make the baskets and the little wooden figurines.
They got on very well and it soon became apparent to Lucrezia that the younger and unworldly Carlotta was quite fascinated by her.
Lucrezia managed, cleverly, to discover that the girl, who had never had a lover, was taking ill to her new and voluntary exile. She felt in her a need which she didn't understand, although listening to her confused explanations, Lucrezia was only too well aware of the trouble — the young girl needed a good fuck.
Carlotta was very attractive in her own way. She was dark, with a long face and slightly Jewish nose dominating long, well-defined lips. Her body was completely concealed under the shrouds of her long robes, but the melancholy attraction of her face was quite enough to excite Lucrezia in her present manless state.
Giving way to the girl's hinted-at curiosity, Lucrezia began, during their walks in the grounds, to tell her a few things about her sexual life. But always she exaggerated the brutality of the male, making him sound an utter, unbearable brute.
“I don't think I could stand to have a man using me in such a way,” Carlotta said one morning as they sat staring at the water lilies in the little stream which ran. sluggishly through the lower reaches of the convent grounds. ''I should feel stripped of any sense of dignity I'd ever had.”
Lucrezia took the plunge.
“Yes. If the choice was between man and this convent, I would choose a cloistered existence within these walls,” she said. “But, fortunately there are other things one can do.”
The girl raised her fine, dark eyebrows.
“What- other things in place of a man?”
“A woman, Carlotta. Women are much gentler and more loving than men. And they understand a woman's needs whereas most men are selfish and oafish in their lovemaking.”
“But…”
“I think,” Lucrezia went on quickly, “much as I respect the Mother Superior and the individual right of choice, that any woman who locks herself away in a prison is betraying her function as a woman and displaying a fear of the world which belief in God should not justify.”
Carlotta stared at her, shocked. She had never dared to voice such sentiments, but they fitted well with her present mood of boredom and rebellion.
“You only have to look at the majority of the women here,” Lucrezia continued, “and you see immediately that they're women who are too ugly or too witless to succeed in a competitive and natural world.”
She took Carlotta's hand.
“But you don't belong among them, Carlotta. You are lovely and full of life which won't allow itself to be kept in check forever.”
The girl was flattered and moved by the words which were spoken to her in such sincere tones. They sped her own unformed impulses along the channel that Lucrezia intended.
“I feel you are right,” she said. She glanced around at the distant figures of the other nuns wandering in the upper part of the grounds among the trees. “I'm beginning to wish I hadn't taken my vows.”
“You should make the best of things as they are,” Lucrezia said. “We are both in the same cul-de-sac of frustration. We should help each other.”
“But what can we…?”
“We can take the place of men for each other.”
The girl dropped her eyes and gazed down at the lilies. There was a silence for some seconds.
“I–I wouldn't know how… and — and I'm not sure that it's…”
“We all have deep centers in our beings which others may never reach,” Lucrezia cut in, “but unless they do, unless we try to help them to, we all live lonely, unsatisfied lives, lives which wrinkle us up with bitterness, the feeling of having missed what was essential.”
Carlotta raised her eyes from the stream and found herself unable again to withdraw them from Lucrezia's deep, compelling gaze.
“Come to my quarters after evensong tonight,” Lucrezia went on, “and I will show you what it means to reach that center.”
The dull peal of a bell calling them in to prayer cut short any reply the young girl might have made. She stared at Lucrezia, dropped her eyes at last and walked away toward the building. Lucrezia smiled after her for a moment and then slowly followed her.
That evening, alone in-her quarters-two rooms at the far end of a wing of the convent — Lucrezia, garbed only in a dressing gown, waited for Carlotta to come. She was almost certain she would come although the girl had given her no answer. She knew how the possibility of sexual adventure could play on one's nerves, stimulating, frightening, exciting all at the same time.
For Lucrezia, too, this would be the first lesbian experience and the idea filled her with the same lustful chill of eagerness that her first fuck had — especially as she had been deprived of her conjugal and fraternal rights for some weeks now.
She found herself unable to keep still as the minutes went by following evensong. She rose time and time again and looked out of the sloping window down to the grounds. At last she sat on her bed and tried to concentrate on the pages of Boccaccio's II Decamerone which she had smuggled into the convent with her.
As time passed she became more and more anxious. If Carlotta didn't come now she would die of frustration. She put down the book and stared out of the window again before walking into the next room where she studied herself in a small, silver-backed hand mirror.
Her heart leapt as there came a light tapping on her door. She ran to open it and almost clasped the young girl to her bosom as she drew her into her room.
Carlotta smiled at her briefly and stood uncertainly just inside the door while Lucrezia closed and bolted it.
“Make yourself at home,” Lucrezia urged, turning around to her.
Nervously, the girl went to the window, and locked out as if to reassure herself that the outside world was there, solid and unchanged. Lucrezia watched her pretending to interest herself in the exploration of the rooms, pretending to examine the few books, flicking pages over with a pointless speed.
“I was afraid to come,” she said at last. “Wasn't that ridiculous — we are quite free to visit one another's rooms.”
“We are quite free to act as we please,” Lucrezia added.
“Yes,” the girl said uncertainly.
“I have another gown — why don't you make yourself more comfortable and put it on,” Lucrezia suggested.
She handed over the garment and Carlotta took it nervously.
Lucrezia turned away and studied II Decamerone, listening to the rustle of clothes as Carlotta slipped out of them. She kept swallowing with nervous excitement.
At a well-judged moment she glanced around and caught her companion naked. Carlotta gazed at her with wide, embarrassed eyes and Lucrezia glanced back at her book immediately. But not before she'd had a glimpse of the girl's small, firm breasts, high up and dark, with the splodge of dark nipple giving them body, and her slim figure below it with the eye-catching fuzz of dark hair above her thighs. Lucrezia felt almost matronly beside the girl's small proportions.