Sacred Hearts (50 page)

I will never love or marry another. That is the promise I made to God if He would let me live, and it will be my pleasure to keep it… Pray for me, my dear Isabetta
.

But will she ever really be Isabetta again? After a while it is too tiring to ask herself the questions. To imagine a future, she must give up the comfort of feeling nothing. It seems it is not just her body that has shrunk but her whole world.

Afterward, when the horror of eating is over, she is given, and takes—for she is acquiescent by now—a dose of acqua-vita to help the process of digestion. It does little to quiet the war of attrition that is starting to take place in her body. After the first few days her gut launches its own rebellion, sending out nausea and cramps so that at times it is all she can do to sit without doubling over with the pain. Where before she folded herself up against the cold, now she lies curled over her own throbbing entrails.

Meanwhile, if the physical refeeding is a challenge, so is the extra level of dissembling that must now accompany it. Once outside her cell, whatever her exhaustion or confusion, Serafina needs to be clever. And deft. At every meal in the refectory, the convent must see her eat, though in a way that makes it clear to Umiliana that no food is actually passing into her mouth but is instead hidden away under her robe to ensure her continued fasting. And Umiliana, as always, is eagle-eyed over the journey of her most beloved novice.

As the food starts to give her back some strength, so does constipation begin, her bowels filling up with stones that grow bigger and harder each day. It feels as if her whole body is bloated with the poison of waste. She remembers the bishop and the way he leaked blood and bad temper everywhere he went. Is this how it will be for me? she wonders. Will I grow back into a body made decrepit by starvation? She looks at herself. Her skin inside the shift is gray, veins running like gnarled branches underneath. Hideous. She is hideous. How can any man ever love her?

Zuana tells her again that it takes time for a body to reacquaint itself with the normality of eating, that it will pass, it will get easier. But what if it doesn’t? What if she simply swells up until she rips open or explodes? Zuana now supplements the acqua-vita with senna: senna, the great healer of life, to clean the spleen and the liver and the heart and, in this dosage, strong enough to move the bowels of a horse. But not, it seems, those of a starved novice.

On the sixth morning at Lauds the pain and pressure are so bad that she almost passes out. Eugenia, as usual, is at her side in chapel, and supports her until she gets her breath back. She straightens up, the sweat of pain glistening on her skin, only to find herself staring into the faces of a dozen choir nuns and novices in the opposite stalls. They look almost disappointed to find her still on her feet. Plainly, every move she makes has the convent enthralled. But then it is not nothing to watch a body starving itself in its search for God.

SUORA UMILIANA, MEANWHILE
, is not distressed. On the contrary, she is excited. She, who knows the arc of fasting as well as she knows her psalms, understands that there are moments when one is hard pushed to tell pain from the arrival of transcendence. It is not the right time, anyway. The chapel is still empty, the figure of Christ still in the hands of workmen. If—no, when—this wondrous young soul is called, it should be when He is back to watch over her.

For Umiliana, too, has her plan, her own dream of well-being that warms and sustains her in the darkness. She has nurtured an army of novices in her time and there have been those, such as Perseveranza or Obedienza or Stefana, even the young Carità, who have emerged humble and dedicated brides of Christ. Just as she herself has always yearned to be. She has burned with the love of Jesus for so many years now—worked, fasted, prayed, given her life to Santa Caterina—and yet, and yet, she cannot help but feel there is something lacking.

It is Umiliana’s fate to have stood in this same convent chapel, an impressionable young nun barely twenty-one years old, when a living saint, a small stunted figure, humble and mysterious beyond words, opened her palms during Matins to reveal the bleeding stigmata of Christ Himself. For the rest of the service, with the choir transfixed around her, this tiny but vast soul had sung her way through the office, tears streaming down her face, before limping back to her cell, leaving a trail of bloody footprints in her wake.

As a child Umiliana had heard of such wonders—who had not?—and from the earliest moment they had affected her deeply. She had always dreamed of being pure enough, prayed that she might one day be made so humble.
Living saints
, they called them. In the years before the heretic madness spread there had seemed to be so many: Lucia of Narni, Angela of Foligno, Camilla of Brodi. Her mother had made sure she heard of every one, feeding their life stories like rich worms into her fledgling’s open mouth. If only all young girls were instructed so young.

Even without her mother’s piety, she would have yearned for the veil. As a child she’d continually had to be restrained for being too fierce with herself. And while the family was never one of the most powerful in the city, their name had certainly been good enough to find her a place at Santa Caterina. By the time she entered at the age of twelve she already had calluses on her knees and found most of her fellow novices vain and frivolous. Surely it would be only a matter of time and self-abasement…

Except it had not happened. Despite all the praying and passion (one is so sure when so young), she had yet to feel the touch of ecstasy and had begun to fear that she would never be worthy enough. That night, as she had stood staring at the blood trickling from Suora Magdalena’s hands, she had understood the truth: she herself would never be so blessed.

When you love someone so much, it can be unbearably painful to be passed over. But Christ gives different challenges to different souls, and Suora Umiliana had shouldered her own cross without complaint, sewing, copying, cooking, gardening, with as much humility as she could muster, until she had found a way to move into a position where her passion and dedication could help guide younger souls. No one could doubt that she had been an honest and just novice mistress and that a number of her charges grew to love her as much as they once loathed her. But all the time, through all of them, she had been watching, waiting, in case such a moment might come again. And it had never been more important than now, when false truths were everywhere and the church itself was bent on more discipline and less license.

If she were truthful, she had not (though surely this was true no longer?) been entirely sure about Serafina. At the beginning she had seen only a spoiled, angry rebel, full of vanity and carnality. But then had come the changes. First the early encounter with Suora Magdalena, followed by the arrival of her voice, pure as angel’s breath if only it could have been allowed to rise straight to God rather than trained to seduce through the public grille. Then her sudden showy display of piety—well, God had seen through that fast enough, sending her spinning into that terrible night of fits and illness, which had broken her body and brought her so close to death. Without Magdalena, she would certainly have died. That was the moment Umiliana had known for sure. There had been other nuns and novices, some worthy beyond measure, who had expired alone in agony. Yet Santa Caterina’s living saint had come out of her cell for this girl and had triggered within her a hunger for repentance and fasting. Finally, as if there could be any doubt, Magdalena had died at the same moment as Christ slid halfway from the cross, while Serafina herself had been taking the eucharist.

Yes, there was something of power in this young woman, something put there almost despite herself. She had sensed it inside her despair, had nurtured it, watching the spirit quickening as the body starved. She, Suora Umiliana, had prayed for a force like this to help her in her cleansing of the convent. And now it had been given to her.

THAT EVENING SHE
comes as she always does, in the hour between dinner and Compline, to pray with Serafina. Eager for each nuance of feeling that her young protégée experiences, she questions her about what happened in chapel that morning, when she had almost collapsed. Had she been in pain? What had she felt or heard? Was there any noise or rushing in her ears, the echo of a voice perhaps, or a disturbance of her vision?

Serafina tells her what she wants to hear.

Not all of it is pretense. In those long, starving nights before Zuana came to her, there had been times when she could swear she saw things: strange half-formed shapes growing out of shadows, sudden auras and flashes of light at the edges of her vision. If she stared for long enough into darkness it turned itself into color, oranges and burning yellows like running veins of gold in black rock. Once, in the no-man’s-land between sleeping and waking, she was sure she saw a face coming out of the gloom: His face, bearded, framed by night-black hair, eyes wet with tears of compassion—oh, please God, she thought, let those tears be for me. In contrast, her dreams were full of nothing, though when she woke sometimes she heard music—voices—in her cell, vibrating notes far too high and pure to be human, and they made her feel giddy and weightless, as if she could lift off the bed to join them.

When, haltingly, she recounts these things to Umiliana, the old nun seems almost beside herself with joy.

Such experiences do not come to the girl anymore. With food as ballast she is now weighted back down to earth, her very solidity interrupting the quivering air around her. If she is truthful, with such ordinariness comes, sometimes, a certain sadness, a wonder at what has been lost. But she does not let herself think of that. She is leaving this place, leaving both its visions and its horrors, and she will do whatever it takes to get herself out.

“Help me. I long for Him so. Help me, please.” She knows the lines well enough.

“Prayer, Serafina. Prayer and denial of the flesh. It is the only way. When you are filled with emptiness it will happen. He will come. The pain you had today is surely a sign. The hour of Matins is the best time. He is so close then. All you have to do is welcome Him in. You are ready. The convent is ready. For Him.”

IN SOME WAYS
Umiliana is right. As the food starts to swell her wits as well as her gut, Serafina becomes aware of a sea change in the world around her. Many of the nuns are themselves fasting, with such enthusiasm that there are times when one can hear a descant of protesting stomachs as they gather in chapel. During the work hours, the choir struggles with
The Lamentations of Jeremiah:
the very architecture of this music is stricter than they are used to, and Suora Benedicta’s arrangement for their voices can do little to change or enrich it.

“Jerusalem hath grievously sinned. ”

The words reverberate around the cloisters.

“She hath wept in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks. ”

There are some for whom the text feels like a commentary on Santa Caterina itself.

“All that honored her despise her,
because they have seen her shame. ”

IN THE EVENINGS
, hardly any nuns visit Apollonia’s cell anymore, they are too busy on their knees in their own. A kind of stillness descends on the convent, heavy, cloying, like the stillness before a storm. A further chapter meeting passes without incident. Though the atmosphere remains charged, no one seems to have the energy for further drama. It is announced that the great crucifix is repaired and will be returned to the convent and rehung within the week. Even this news is received quietly. Umiliana, who is more of a politician than she herself knows, says nothing. Yet her soul remains taut as an overstretched lute string, and every evening she continues to pour her longing into the novice’s ears. She is waiting. As are they all.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

WHILE IT WILL
take at least a month for there to be enough change in her body for anyone to notice, after nearly two weeks of refeeding the girl’s face is altering a little: the great hollows under her eyes are growing less dark and there is a touch of color in her cheeks. It is time to add the next ingredient. The abbess must be brought into the plan.

Zuana is under no illusion as to how daunting a task this is. She knows how angry she will be. How angry she is already. Since their last meeting, Madonna Chiara has spent an increasing amount of time in her chambers, seeing visitors or writing letters. Those with sharp eyes would say she looks tired. Zuana knows better. A woman who is used to being in control of the world around her is watching it fall out of her grip. No, she will not want to hear this plan. It is therefore all the more important for Zuana to find ways to convince her.

That night, along with the usual food, Zuana brings two small pouches to the girl’s cell. After they have eaten she hands her the first one.