Sacred Hearts (53 page)

“I …um”—Umiliana is momentarily taken aback by this unexpected support—“I am not sure what the dispensary sister is referring to. The only fasting done by a novice was in response to an imposed penance and has been over for some time.”

“With respect, Suora Umiliana, I do not think that is true. The novice in question has grown steadily thinner through the weeks, and while the food may go onto her plate, I believe she is not eating it at all, only hiding it away to dispose of later. It is not good for one so young to be so depleted of nourishment.”

Zuana is not the only one to be staring directly at the novices’ bench. By now everyone has noticed how clumsy Serafina has become at mealtimes, with bits of food falling to the ground or being so obviously hidden that there is almost no pretense about it. Yet no one has said a thing. When someone is wasting away so dramatically, the fascination can, for a while, overwhelm the concern.

“I am grateful to you for the observation, but if my novice’s
true
health was in any danger, I assure you I would have noticed it by now.”

“Yes, indeed.” The abbess again confounds expectations. “If there was anything to worry about, I am confident Suora Umiliana would have seen it.” There is the briefest of pauses. A few are no doubt remembering the recent screaming. “I know she disturbed the peace of the convent a few nights ago, but I believe that was because she had bad dreams.”

The discussion has taken on a strange, almost surreal, quality, since Serafina herself, the person at the center of it, is being totally ignored. She sits, huddled and gaunt, on the novice bench. For some time those around her have been aware that her breath is coming in fast little spurts with occasional quiet grunts, like a small animal trying to bury itself farther into its lair.

“Meanwhile, we have many more things to discuss and must move on. Rest assured, Suora Umiliana, the convent has the greatest faith in your judg—”

But the abbess does not get any further.

The noise—for it is indeed a noise—coming out of the novice has grown suddenly louder. For a young woman with such a pure voice, the lack of harmony in this rising wail is immediately disturbing.

“Aaaaah!”

Umiliana, who has kept her in her sight, sees it coming. Oh, sweet Jesus! She might have chosen a more devout setting, but one does not argue with God’s ways. She is half out of her seat, but the chapter rows are packed and she cannot get there.

The novice, however, is now standing out from the front row, in the middle of the floor.

“Aaaaah!” She throws her hands above her head, exposing two black, gory palms, with blood streaking down her arms to the floor. Then, when there can be no mistaking what people are seeing, she grabs her skirts and lifts them high, a good deal higher than is necessary, to reveal, at the bottom of long bare legs, feet dotted with blood, though nowhere near as much as the mess of her hands.

The room sits stunned.

She starts to jump and dance, as if trying to get her weight off her feet, and the wail turns into a howl as if she is being tortured, while her skirts reach up as far as her thighs. If this is a thing of wonder, it certainly does not appear to be that way for the girl herself. There is surely no ecstasy here. Only panic, terror—and hysteria.

The abbess gets to her first. “What have you done? Novice Serafina, what is this?”

And Serafina turns on her, pushing her hands almost into the abbess’s face and yelling, “It’s Him! It’s Him! She told me He would come!”

“Who told you?”

Now she waves her hands in the direction of the novice mistress, spraying flecks of blood over the heads of the nuns. “See,” she says, “see, Suora Umiliana? I prayed and He came. Christ’s wounds. But oh, oh, loving Jesus, why does it hurt so much? Oooh! Aaah!”

Behind her a few of the other novices are moaning now, as much in fear as in wonder. Suora Umiliana stands transfixed. Inside her, there is a great falling away. She has waited so long for this moment. Yet she is not tasting ecstasy, either. Far from it. She has spent too long in the company of volatile young women not to recognize hysteria when she sees it. This is not God’s work. The novice is suffering from some other ailment.

She is not so proud that she cannot admit it—but even as she is pushing her way toward the girl, something else happens. As Serafina jitters and twirls, howling like a stuck pig, there is a loud clatter as an object drops from the inside of her habit and skitters across the stone floor.

The nuns closest to the girl see it immediately. But it takes the abbess’s picking it up and holding it aloft for its true significance to become apparent to all present: a small shining knife, with what can only be streaks of blood on the blade.

“My herb knife!” Zuana’s voice now rises above the throng. “It is my herb knife. It disappeared weeks ago from the dispensary, when I was ill. She must have taken it then.”

After this no one can say or do anything, because the place is in such uproar. In the middle of it all the girl whirls and howls, shaking her hands in the face of anyone who comes near her so that the blood spatters around the room, until eventually she is restrained by the abbess and the watch sister and a few others of the braver nuns. She continues to spit and struggle as they pin her to the ground. Then, equally as suddenly, she gives way, her body going totally limp and curling in upon itself until she looks more like a pile of rags than a person. “Oh, I am sorry, I am sorry,” she moans, over and over again. “Oh, oh, I am so hungry. Please, please can I eat now? Please, someone, help me.”

On the orders of the abbess she is picked up by the watch sister and carried from the room under the supervision of the dispensary mistress. “Take her to the infirmary and put restraints on her. Come back when you can.”

As Zuana leaves she sees Suora Umiliana dropping to her knees where she stands, her head in her hands.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

IN THE INFIRMARY
they pick the nearest bed by the door.

Clementia is beside herself with excitement. “Oh, the angel has come! The angel has come! Welcome, poor thing. She is so small now. Oh, no, no, don’t put her in that bed. They all die there.”

No one is listening to her. The girl puts up no fight as the restraints go on. It is as if she is utterly exhausted, almost unconscious. The watch sister stands staring down at her. “I always knew she would come to no good, “ she says grimly. “Still, imagine Suora Umiliana being so fooled.”

“You can go now,” Zuana says. “I will give her something to make sure she sleeps and join you when I can.”

The watch sister, who spends much of her life bored rigid while the convent sleeps, scuttles back to the drama in the chapter room.

Zuana waits until the door closes then leans over the cot. “You did well,” she whispers.

The girl opens her eyes. “Oh, my hands are burning so.”

“I know. But you must lie quietly now. I will bring you something for them later.”

The door opens. Augustina with her blunt face and blunt hands stands waiting. “I am called for?”

“Yes, you are to sit with the novice. Let no one come close to her and be careful. She is very ill indeed.”

But as she starts to rise, the girl pulls at her.

“Suora Zuana.” Her voice is so small that Zuana has to bend her head to her lips to catch the words. “I …I am scared.”

“I know.” She smiles. “But it will be all right.”

By the time she straightens up, her face is grim again.

BACK IN CHAPTER
, the convent is on its knees.

“Bring us to safe harbor from the tempest we are traveling through. For while we are not worthy of Your grace, we strive to be Your true and humble servants.”

From the side of her eye, the abbess spots Zuana in the doorway and brings the prayers to a close. She motions for them all to rise and sit again.

“Dear, dear sisters, we have been subject to a dreadful storm—for which, as your abbess, I must hold myself responsible. Ah, Suora Zuana. Tell us, please. How is the girl?”

“She is restrained.”

“Good. Did you have a chance to examine her?”

“Only enough to know that she has wounded herself severely and is pitifully thin and undernourished.”

“Which may have contributed to her madness.” The abbess bows her head for a moment, as if asking now for help outside herself. “However”—she looks up again—“it is perhaps worth remembering that this sad young woman was, well, most erratic in her behavior when she first entered.”

In the fourth row Suora Umiliana sits, pale, eyes on the floor. The room falls quiet. She starts to stand. “Madonna Abbess, I—”

“Suora Umiliana.” The abbess’s voice cuts across her gently. “You will, I know, be feeling this pain more acutely than the rest of us, for you have spent so much of your time and blessed instruction on her behalf. How much more important it is, then, that we ask for God’s understanding on this before we offer up any blame. And if there is blame, it will fall on my shoulders, for I am the abbess. Please, please, dear sister, sit and rest yourself.”

This kindness silences Umiliana faster than any rebuke. It also leaves the floor to Chiara. She lifts herself up, resting her hands on the lion’s heads of the chair. It is a familiar, almost comforting gesture that everyone knows well, which is all to the good, because they are in great need of comfort now.

“You will know, I think, that even before the distressing events of today I have been concerned about the welfare of the convent. We are living in turbulent times. There is change and debate everywhere, and it is not a surprise if some of this anxiety finds its way inside these walls, with disagreements and confusions as to how we should be conducting our lives as nuns. In many cities, others are asking the same questions—and some are being forced to make changes under grave duress.” The abbess sighs. “These past few weeks I have spent many nights in prayer, asking for God’s advice in this, my great task of caring for His flock. And He has taken pity on my distress and come to my aid. He has helped me to understand much. And perhaps the most important thing He has helped me to see is how some of the burden we have been laboring under has come from the presence of this young woman.”

She pauses. The room is utterly still, waiting on her words.

“Dear sisters, I would ask you to consider this now, as He revealed it to me. How since the novice Serafina arrived with us all those months ago, her fury, her disobedience, the fame and glory that came with her voice, her tremendous sudden piety, her illness, her secret confession with its dramatic penance, her exaggerated fasting nigh unto starvation, and now this—this exhibition of fraud and madness—all this behavior has taken its toll on the peace and comfort of Santa Caterina. While we have done our best to absorb and contain her—in particular the work of Suora Zuana in the dispensary, Suora Benedicta in the choir, and the selfless care and discipline of Suora Umiliana—despite all our efforts, this young woman has grown more rather than less distressed. It is perhaps not a surprise.

“All these stages of behavior, these phases of the moon that she has passed through—for there has been some correlation between her mood swings and the moon’s cycles—have one thing in common: they have needed—no, demanded—and received our attention. Such symptoms are consistent with a most virulent form of greensickness, which though it can beset many young girls of her age, at its worst brings full-blown lunacy. Until this point, Santa Caterina has been mercifully free of it. I had some worry about this on that very first morning—Suora Zuana will no doubt remember that we discussed the possibility that the girl was sick rather than simply rebellious. I wrote then to her father to ask for further information. His reply was reassuring. And yet since then it has only grown worse rather than better—so much so it is surely no surprise that we have all, in some way or other, been influenced by it. For what we have been living through is the presence of a mad young woman who has dedicated her life to performance rather than piety.”

All this the abbess says slowly and with quiet conviction, leaving pauses every now and then so that you would think the words are somehow precious, fragile things that must be handled with care; either that, or they are so heavy one must hold them for a while in order to absorb them.

The message she offers is simple: a young woman has destroyed the equilibrium of the convent by dedicating herself to deceit rather than devotion. Very simple, in fact, yet it speaks to many of the nuns present.

Zuana looks out over the sea of faces. To the left of the room sit the novices, a group of young women overshadowed by Serafina up to now but who can perhaps feel vindicated for their occasional flashes of envy or lack of charity toward her. Could it be that they have been pious enough to suspect that she was a fraud all along? Close by, young Suora Eugenia is no doubt remembering how contented she had been as the convent songbird before Serafina opened her mouth at Vespers, and how lost and tortured she has become since.

On the converse bench Letizia hears again the girl’s sniping, angry tone, so different from her public piety, as they crossed the cloisters together to tend the chief conversa in her cell, while Candida thinks about all those evenings she spent brushing her hair, and how she can always tell the ones who yearn to be touched more, even when they seek to deny it.