Sacred Hearts (28 page)

FOR A WHILE
now it feels as if time itself changes its form, becoming liquid as opposed to weight, moving faster for some than it does for others. And for Serafina it moves fastest of all, so that there are moments when it seems to her as if God Himself must have taken a hand in her well-being, so powerfully and smoothly does she find herself negotiating the rapids, anticipating, reacting, her eyes fixed on the horizon ahead regardless of the tilt and trembling of the world around her.

“What’s happened?” The abbess’s voice has none of its usual velvet nap. “Suora Zuana …can you hear me?”

“She has fainted. It’s the fever.”

“But the blood …look at the blood.”

“I …I think she has vomited it up.”

“There must be a wound inside her.” The abbess’s hand touches close to Zuana’s lips and her fingers come back bright with what looks like the reddest of blood. “We must get her to bed. Help me.”

But Serafina is staring at her own hand, equally stained from where it has come into contact with the liquid on the floor. She gets up quickly and moves to the workbench. She notes everything: the empty vial on the side (so she does have a supply!), the clay bowl next to it, its insides dark with a leftover mixture, and, nearby, the open notebook. The last entry marks a time: a half hour before Sext, followed by some figures, but the writing is too small to make them out. She puts a clean finger into the remains in the bowl. It comes out a fierce crimson. She lays it on her tongue, grimacing at the taste, then looks back to Zuana’s body and the red stain around it. If you didn’t know you might think she was indeed dying in a lake of her own blood.

“What are you doing, girl? Either help me or get a conversa here now.”

Serafina has a sudden image of herself turning back to the abbess, her mouth wide open, her bloody tongue flashing out like a viper’s. But instead she is already at the sink, finding a cloth and dipping it into the bowl of mint and rue vinegar water Zuana must have been mixing when the fit took her. Back on the ground, she lays the soaked material across Zuana’s forehead.

“Are you mad?” Madonna Chiara’s hand snaps out to take the cloth. “That is no use. She is bleeding to death.”

“No, Madonna Abbess, I think not.” As she says it she thinks how calm her voice is compared with that of her superior. “I think she has swallowed some grana and it has reacted badly with the disturbance in her stomach.”

“Grana?”

“Cochinilla. It is a remedy made from the bishop’s dye. She spoke about how it might work to bring down high fevers. Look—that is what is staining her lips.”

Now the abbess is catching up with her, seeing herself filing away His Holiness’s note in her leather ledger where she keeps all the testimonies of the convent’s benefactors, before sending the package off to Zuana, who she knows has been waiting for it. “Oh! She has tried it on herself first,” she says, because of course she knows her dispensary sister’s ways better than most. “Do we know how long it takes or what it can do?”

“No, though I think she must have known or she wouldn’t …” She trails off. “Anyway she still has the fever, so the vinegar and mint will help.”

The abbess moves her hand back from Zuana’s face. The girl is right. Though the skin is flushed she looks quite serene, not like someone who has vomited up her own insides. Chiara pulls herself up, her composure regained. “We must hope you are right. Go and get a conversa so we can carry her to her cell.”

Now that she is back in control, there is no opposing her. Serafina rises meekly from the floor.

“And when you return you will tell me what you were doing in the dispensary in the first place.”

But Serafina is not so easily disconcerted. “I came to bring back a book of remedies that Suora Zuana lent me to read and which she had need of now.” And she points to the notebook sitting obviously on the workbench, as if it had just been placed there.

As she moves by the unconscious Zuana she slips it quickly back onto the shelf.

IN THE SECOND
cloister, the laundry room is belching steam into the courtyard, but inside there is only one conversa at work and she is as old and gnarled as a dead tree, barely able to lift a wet sheet, let alone a sturdy nun. Moving to the kitchens, Serafina finds Letizia shedding tears over a mountain of half-chopped onions. Suora Federica howls when she thinks she is going to lose her, until she hears the reason.

“God in heaven, what a day! First the chief conversa, now Suora Zuana. I will be cooking for a convent of corpses if we are not careful.”

“Don’t worry. We will bring them both back to health soon enough.”

And such is the young novice’s certainty—even joy— as she delivers this prediction that Federica marvels at the transformation that has taken place in her over the last few weeks and wonders if she had, perhaps, been a little heavy-handed with the bitter ashes she had mixed into her penance scraps.

As the two young women move swiftly back across the courtyard into the main cloisters together, Letizia glances at Serafina with an undisguised curiosity.

“What is it? What are you staring at?”

“Nothing.”

“Then keep your eyes to yourself.”

Back in the dispensary, they lift Zuana off the floor and move her through to the infirmary. The intention is to take her to her cell, but as they go Serafina says, “Madonna Abbess, perhaps we should put her in one of the beds here? That way, whoever takes over the dispensary can also keep watch over her. And as she recovers she will be able to advise and help. She would not want to be separated from her patients.”

Possibly because it is a sound idea, or maybe because the body is so unwieldy and heavy (knowledge must weigh more than flesh, Serafina thinks as they struggle to carry her), the abbess agrees.

They move her to the nearest bed, the one left empty by Imbersaga’s death.

As the abbess returns to the dispensary, Letizia makes a move to tend to Zuana but Serafina elbows her out of the way, covering the inert sister with the thin blanket and dabbing her forehead with the cloth.

“Dear Mary, Mother of God! What is happening here?” In the doorway the novice mistress is a sudden wind of anger. “Novice Serafina. You are meant to be at silent prayer. This is—” Then she catches sight of Zuana on the bed and, at the end of the room, the abbess emerging from the dispensary.

“Do not disturb yourself, Suora Umiliana.” Madonna Chiara’s voice makes it clear that the situation is under control. “Suora Zuana was taken ill and the novice is helping, as she knows the cause of it.”

But the old nun now glares at both of them, her undisguised disapproval making it clear that a convent beset by such troubles is a convent in need of more than the help of a rebellious novice. Oh, Serafina thinks triumphantly, but you have no idea how much trouble is still to come!

After a while Letizia braves the silence to ask if she may be allowed to leave. “Suora Federica has no one else to help her now. She will skin me alive if she is left alone much longer.”

“I would very much hope that she does not resort to such an undue punishment.” Now that the moment of crisis has passed, the abbess is almost gracious again. “You may go. Tell me, how is the chief conversa?”

The girl shakes her head. “Very poorly. Suora Zuana had said she would come to her later.”

“Ah, we are beleaguered on all sides.” The novice mistress’s cry has a note of anguish in it.

Letizia ducks out of the room as Suora Umiliana falls to her knees by the bed. “Oh, Lord Jesus, help us in our hour of darkness and bring respite to this good sister who works in Your name.”

She bends her head, deep in prayer, as if pointing out that amid all the drama this is the work that should really be done. Serafina hesitates for a second, then sinks to the floor next to her, eyes closed, praying silently but so hard she fears the words might be spraying out of her:
Please God, please God, help me, too…

There is silence for a while. It is unclear whether or not the abbess herself is praying, but when her voice comes it is remarkably matter-of-fact. “I think that will do now. Serafina, you may go to your cell.”

The girl rises, eyes down, meek-voiced. “Mother Abbess, do I have permission to speak?”

“Very well.”

“I want to offer my help to the dispensary. To nurse the sick.”

She feels the novice mistress’s cluck of impatience behind her. It is not easy, having to charm two such different mistresses, though charm them she must. If she has learned one thing over these last months it is that her own sister’s simpering brought her more joy in life than all the natural defiance she herself displayed.

“I could help. Suora Zuana taught me how to treat fever… I mean, I know I am unworthy …that I have behaved with gross selfishness”—here she glances at the novice mistress—“for which I am deeply sorry. I …I have even feared that Santa Caterina may be being punished in some way for my bad behavior, and I—”

“Don’t talk nonsense, girl.” Madonna Chiara cuts across her sharply, but not before Serafina has registered how her comment has affected Umiliana. “Half the city is infected and Our Lord has better things to do than take notice of a puffed-up novice. If there are amends to be made, you can make them in the choir.”

Serafina looks so genuinely anguished now that even the abbess is slightly taken aback.

“Madonna Abbess.” She hears Umiliana’s voice over her head, quiet but firm. “Might we have a word?”

There is a small pause. Serafina keeps her eyes to the floor. She must not be seen to be part of this, and when the abbess orders her to leave the room she is up and out within seconds.

She stays close enough behind the door to hear the murmur of voices, though not to make out the words. She wonders what Zuana would have to say if she could join them now. Would she have been able to fool her, too? She hears the footsteps and backs away from the door as it is opened by the novice mistress. But it is impossible to tell anything from her face.

Back in the room she stands before the abbess, eyes to the ground.

“You are to go to your cell directly and spend the rest of the hour in private prayer.”

“Yes, Mother Abbess,” she says, with perfect meekness.

“If the convent has need of you we will call you later.”

“Thank you.”

And thank you, Suora Umiliana
, she says silently. She could not have planned it better herself: this way, before she is given the chance to slip her hands under a certain mattress, she has time to retrieve something from beneath her own.

“Suora Umiliana,” she says quietly, “might I come to you for further instruction sometime today? I feel myself in the greatest need.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

AND SO IT
happens that in preparation for caring for others, Serafina finds herself first addressing the sufferings of Christ Himself.

The old nun and the young novice meet together that afternoon in the chapel, with the great crucifix in their sight. Outside, the weather is almost clement for the time of year but the chapel remains as cold and damp as the grave. Umiliana, in contrast, heats the air with words, never letting her eyes move from the girl’s face while she describes passionately the ways in which beside the pain of Jesus Christ all the pain of the world is as nothing, how every drop of blood He shed was like a flood washing over the surface of the earth, taking man’s wickedness with it, so that through His sacrifice we are given the chance to live again, whatever our sins.

Then, to reinforce the message, she gives the novice a passage to read out loud from the teachings of Santa Caterina of Siena. It is a clever choice, for in her way Caterina was a great rebel herself, pursuing her ardent love for Christ against the more conventional marriage planned for her by her parents. Hers was a disobedience, however, that was exquisitely rewarded, as the passage shows, describing how after years of self-mortification and prayer the Lord saw fit to come to her and offer her His wounds to kiss, opening His side for her so that His blood flowed like milk, and as her lips tasted it she was filled to the brim with love, as if the spear had gone into her very own flesh.

Serafina has a good voice and the novice mistress listens attentively, joy like a soft sweat on her skin, almost as if the miracle is happening to her then and there. The saint’s words are so powerful, so visceral, that even the girl herself is affected—so for that moment she stops thinking of the pad of ointment concealed under her shift, or the white pebbles strewn in the grass to mark her way to the spot by the wall where, having taken the imprint of the chief conversa’s keys, she will throw the package over for him to catch.

Later, when the convent is on its way to supper and she is called instead by the abbess and given dispensation to miss the meal in order to assess the condition of the chief conversa, she is surprised by how calm she feels at the prospect. She remains unperturbed when she walks into the tiny dank cell, buried away in the corner of the second cloister and reeking of sweat and old menstrual blood, to be presented with the sight of the woman who lies there, arms as thick as ox legs and her face puffed up with fever. No doubt it helps that the patient is barely conscious, for it means that as Serafina leans down to listen to her breathing it is easy to slide her hand under the pallet far enough to locate a thick metal stem, then a wedge of key teeth. She still has to be careful, though, since the conversa Letizia stands directly behind her, assigned as an assistant but no doubt also a spy to report back anything that is worthy of reporting.