Sacred Hearts (35 page)

The figure is already turning as she crosses the floor.

“Serafina!”

“Aah!” The wail she lets out echoes out over the water.

“What are you doing here?”

“No! No! Stop. Don’t come near me!”

And such is her anguish that for a second Zuana hesitates.

“Be careful. Step away from the water’s edge. What are you doing?”

“What does it look like?” Her voice is all spit and panic. “I am getting out. He is come for me. He is taking me away.”

He? Zuana glances quickly around her. But the room behind is empty and there is no one on the dock. The girl is clearly alone.

“Who? Who is come?”

“He will be here directly.” She waves her hand wildly. “I can hear the boat. It is coming. Don’t move, I tell you. Just go away, go back now, and nothing bad will happen.”

But instead of going back Zuana walks toward her. Close to, the water is choppy, butting angrily against the wood. If someone is out there, he will still have to negotiate the way to the wharf and moor in the semidarkness. And if there is no one, surely she will be able to pull the girl back.

“Don’t move. I told you—if you move, I’ll …I’ll jump.” And she shifts her weight closer to the dock’s edge.

Zuana stops. How long has the girl been standing here in the darkness waiting, half an hour? No, by now surely it would be more. There is a wind building and the air smells of rain. “Serafina, Serafina,” she says, and she keeps her voice gentle. “Listen to me. It doesn’t have to be like this. At the end of the year you can—”

“I will never make it to the end of the year. And even if I d-did, no one would listen to me. You s-said so yourself. Not the abbess, not the b-bishop.”

“But what you are doing here will only bring catastrophe upon yourself. You cannot live alone outside. The scandal—”

“I don’t c-care about scandal. I don’t care. I can’t stay here. I’ll die in this place. Don’t you see? I am not like you. It will k-kill me.” The depth of her terror is sending stammer tremors through her voice. “He is coming. He—he—he will look after me.” She stares out quickly over the black water, but the truth is that there is no boat to be heard or seen anywhere. “He—he is coming,” she repeats. “He is coming. He is waiting on the other b-bank”

She moves toward the old rowboat.

“No!” Zuana steps forward instinctively. “There is nothing for you out there. Only disgrace.”

But the girl is crouched already, fumbling with the ropes. She is probably only three or four arms’ lengths away.

Zuana stretches out her hand to her. “Come. Take my hand. It will be all right. I will help you.”

The girl glances up at her, and in the flickering candlelight her eyes for that moment shine out. “I can’t. Don’t you see? I can’t,” she hisses. “Please, leave me, just turn and go away. I will never tell a living soul you found me. Even if they c-catch me and put the screws on me and break all my fingers I will never tell them. I swear. Just turn around and go.”

“And what if you drown?”

“I don’t care.” And now suddenly the girl’s voice is calm. “Whatever happens, it is better than slow death in here. Please. I beg you.”

Zuana stands paralyzed. She knows she should move, take hold of her, bring her back, but …

The moment stretches out around them.

The girl smiles. “Thank you,” she says simply.

She turns her attention to the ropes—and as she does so there is sudden movement behind them.

“Get hold of her. Stop her—now!”

It is the voice of the abbess.

Zuana responds involuntarily, throwing herself across the wood, grabbing the girl’s arm, pulling her back while she flails and kicks and yells. Within seconds the abbess is with her, grasping the other arm, wrenching the girl’s fingers off the ropes, and then both of them are dragging her away from the river’s edge, back from the boat toward the open doors, inch by screaming inch, until they cross the storeroom threshold. Anyone within listening distance will be hearing bloody murder now, though being Carnival it might be mistaken for overenthusiastic courtship.

“The keys. Give me the keys, Zuana.”

The abbess lets go of the girl to lock the doors behind them.

“Noooo!” the girl howls in the darkness, breaking free of Zuana again and throwing herself toward that disappearing sliver of freedom between the closing doors. But the abbess is there, blocking her way, and Zuana grabs her again.

“Noooo! Jacopo! Jacopo! Where are you?” The desperation bounces and echoes off the walls.

The door bangs shut, the key turns, and suddenly the outside world is gone: no lapping water, no expanse of night sky, no open air, nothing. Nothing.

“Aaah! No-o-o-o!”

The girl sags, suddenly such a dead weight that Zuana has to let her down onto the floor. The abbess recovers a hooded candle from by the door and, lifting it up, moves over to where the girl is lying, slumped and moaning in Zuana’s arms. She stares at her for a moment, then shakes her head. “It is over,” she says quietly, almost wearily. “It is over.”

But the girl is moaning to herself and does not seem to hear her.

She raises her voice. “You should thank me. You could have waited out there all night and he would still not have come.”

Now she has her attention. “What? What do you mean?”

“I mean he is not here anymore. He left Ferrara two days ago.”

“No! No, you are lying! You don’t know anything about him.”

“On the contrary, I know a great deal. I know for instance that he—Jacopo Bracciolini; that is his name, yes?—is a very fortunate young man. His composing and vocal talents have been recognized, and he has accepted an offer of work in Parma as assistant capella master. You should be happy for him. It means he is saved from the prosecution and imprisonment that would certainly have followed an attempt to kidnap a novice of one of the city’s greatest convents.” She brushes down her skirts, as if this is an ordinary matter of convent business she is now attending to. “Indeed, he is doubly lucky, since I cannot imagine any other employer would have taken him, given that he was dismissed from his last post for the attempted rape of one of his noble pupils.”

“No-o-o-o,” the girl moans.

The abbess waits. She looks at Zuana and shakes her head slightly. While there are things they must talk about, this is clearly not the time.

She bends down and offers the girl her hand. “Come. It would be best if you walked back yourself rather than having to be carried.”

But the girl recoils fiercely from her.

“You think me cruel, no doubt.” And her voice now is almost friendly. “But I am less cruel than he has been. You should know it was not hard to persuade him to abandon you. He does not really care, you see. He may say he does, he may have sworn everlasting love—I am sure he did; you were fruit ripe for picking, and had he been able to trick your father into marriage there would have been money in it for him. But in the end you are not worth the trouble you would cause him. The trouble you would cause all of them. Do you understand?”

But the girl does not answer, just moans quietly to herself.

“The truth is that God cares for you much more than any man ever will. And so will we—however much you might hate us now.”

Now the girl looks up. “You’re wrong. You’re wrong about him. He loves me. He wouldn’t just leave.”

The abbess sighs. “Believe that if you will. But believe this also.” Her tone is harder now. “For the welfare of your family and the convent, this—what happened here tonight—never took place. Is that clear? And if one word of it should become gossip, I will make sure that, however good his voice, Jacopo Bracciolini will spend the rest of his life rotting in a castle prison for gross indecency.” The girl stares at her. “I think you know by now that I can do this.”

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. ”