Sacred Hearts (44 page)

Inside the chapel she avoids Suora Zuana, though she feels her eyes on her as soon as she comes in. She takes her place in the choir stalls and sits with her hands on the armrests to keep her sense of balance. On the other side of the pews, Perseveranza and Felicità throw curious little glances in her direction, while old Agnesina stares openly, not even pretending not to look. What do they all see? Maybe they are fasting, too, all equally hollowed out, ready to be filled with God’s grace. How long could one continue? Weeks, months? Longer? Suora Magdalena lived on the host for years. Isn’t that what Umiliana has told her?

The mass begins. When the time comes to sing the responses, the breath she takes makes her dizzy and her voice reverberates so far inside her own head that she is not sure if the sound reaches out at all. By the time they reach the blessing of the Eucharist, she feels as if her whole body is vibrating. She can barely stand in order to make the short walk from the stalls to the altar. She fixes her gaze on the bowed figure of Umiliana in front of her to keep herself steady. She kneels and in readiness tilts her head backward, opening her mouth and closing her eyes, only the sudden darkness makes everything start to spin and she has to open them again. There is a throbbing in her temples. She holds herself still, anticipating the moment, ready to hear the words—which take an age, it seems.

“Accept the body and blood of Christ.”

“Amen.”

And now at last the host is on her tongue. She waits for the explosion of sweetness. The crack is so harsh and sharp that it pulls her head farther back again, and as this happens she feels a terrible dizziness. She sees the figure of Christ tear away from the cross and start to fall, coming straight at her! He has seen through me, she thinks. He knows I am not penitent or empty enough. She tries to stand up and manages to get to her feet but the world is spinning. She hears voices, feels a rush of people around her, and then she is falling, falling…

When she comes to, on the chapel floor, Suora Umiliana’s face is close above her, the white hairs on her chin trembling like animal whiskers. “What did you see?” she whispers urgently. “Was Magdalena in the chapel with you? Did you see Him as He fell?”

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

“
TERMITES.
”

The chapter meeting is called by the abbess two days later. Suora Magdalena has been buried, the chapel is closed, and a carpenter and a local sculptor have been brought in to assess the damage. But with the parlatorio open for visiting at the end of the week, it is time to make sure that the story told by everyone is the same one.

“It seems that large amounts of the wood have been eaten away around the iron fixings on the left hand and at the back of the body, where the statue was fixed to the cross behind. The crucifix is over a hundred years old. The carpenters say it has been going on for decades, perhaps longer. Such things are common enough in damp, hot climates like Ferraras.”

The abbess looks out over the assembled sisters. It is true that most of them will have come across termite damage, rooms where the feet of rich desks or tables rest in bowls of water to try to ward off the worst of them. But Our Lord falling off His cross?

“But they are crawling insects. How did they get up there?”

There is a small silence.

“At times in the cycle of their life they have the ability to fly,” Zuana says quietly, for that much she knows to be true. But she also knows that no one really wants to hear this. And not simply because she is the abbess’s favorite and might therefore say whatever she wants her to.

“They have had a hundred years to do such a thing,” Suora Umiliana says bluntly. “Yet the moment it happens is that of our most holy sister’s death.”

No one can argue with that. A few of them look toward Serafina, who sits pale and hunched among the novices. There seems no point in remarking that after fourteen days of fasting it had almost certainly been lack of food that had made her pass out at that same moment as the death was announced. Though as she thinks this, Zuana realizes that she herself is no longer sure.

THE INTERVENING DAYS
have been hectic ones, with whisper and rumor moving like wind around the cloisters and workrooms. With the chapel invaded by workmen, Suora Magdalena’s body cannot be laid out in front of the altar as is the custom, so the humble coffin has to rest in the room behind the dispensary that doubles as a mortuary. Zuana is helped by Letizia and Suora Felicità to dress her in a clean shift and new white skullcap and arrange her gnarled limbs as best they can, her hands crossed together over her chest, her frame so thin it barely registers under the gold cloth, which is kept for this moment and will be returned to the stores when the body goes into the ground.

Left alone for a few moments before the night vigil begins, Zuana can only marvel at the corpse. Suora Magdalena looks as if she has been dead for years, half mummified already. That she has survived for so long like this is—well, if not a miracle, then certainly a wonder of nature.

Zuana does not ask—because she knows it would be refused—but she would give anything to open up the chest and abdomen of the cadaver now to search for signs of further holiness. There are other places where this has happened; when a nun who was clearly saintlike before her death has warranted an autopsy in case the body might offer up its own evidence. How often has she thought of those sisters who rolled up their sleeves and took the convent’s kitchen knives to the delicately perfumed corpse of the great Suora Chiara of Montefalco two hundred and fifty years before? Imagine the wonder when they discovered, nestling inside the chest cavity a heart three times the normal size, with the clear sign of a cross made out of nodules of flesh emblazoned within. One of those same sisters had been the daughter of a doctor. That was what her father had told her. Oh, if she had been that nun, what a monograph she would have written on the dissection: fine and detailed enough to take its place on any library shelf.

But it is pointless even thinking of it. Suora Magdalena’s secrets, whatever they may be, will be buried with her, for the good of the convent.
For the good of the convent:
the phrase is becoming a kind of liturgy.

In lieu of further miracles, the talk has been more of the death itself. The end, when it came, had been clear enough. Magdalena had opened her eyes wide, murmured a few words, then sighed her life out on a long shallow breath. What she actually said has been the subject of some debate, though, after a conversation with Suora Umiliana, Letizia now swears she is certain that the words were “I come to You, sweet Jesus. God save us all.”

Though the parlatorio visit is not until the end of the week, the news slips out fast enough in the pockets of the carpenters or through the mortar between the bricks in the walls. There are a few local Ferrarese old enough to remember Suora Magdalena’s reputation for miracles, and by the end of the first day a small crowd has gathered outside the gates. The abbess accepts a few scribbled condolences but is adamant (despite a protracted private audience with Suora Umiliana) that there will be no public showing of the body. Instead, the convent holds a vigil by the coffin, but only choir nuns are allowed to attend, and with the abbess leading them the atmosphere remains dignified and restrained. The burial takes place the next morning, immediately the twenty-four-hour laying-out period is over: a simple, moving ceremony, with tears, prayers, and words of joy and reassurance from the abbess and Father Romero.

It is, however, not over yet.

•    •    •

“
I AM NOT
sure I understand your meaning, Suora Umiliana,” the abbess says coolly.

In chapter, Zuana, like the rest of the room, is trying to keep her eyes on both women at once.

“What I mean, Madonna Abbess, is that the taking of the soul of Suora Magdalena at the same moment as the falling of our Blessed Lord from the cross is most surely a sign.” She pauses, but only briefly. Her mind is made up. “I believe we are being told that there is not enough devotion in Santa Caterina. That with all our celebrations and public performances and fame, we are neglecting our true course, which is prayer and humility, discipline and obedience.”

She delivers the speech well; these days it seems as if her piety has a natural performance within it. The chapter holds its breath. In all their years of sparring, the challenge has never been so direct.

In contrast, the abbess smiles broadly. “And yet I see a room before me filled with nuns who celebrate God with all their hearts and souls. There is surely no more joyful or productive convent anywhere in Ferrara.”

“There are those who would disagree.”

“Really?” She looks around the room as if they—whoever they may be—are about to speak. Suora Felicità opens her mouth but Umiliana silences her with a look.

“There are forces abroad greater than us or the city of Ferrara, Madonna Abbess. I am speaking of those within our Holy Mother church, the good fathers of Trento, who might find all manner of faults within the convent of Santa Caterina.”

The abbess, who is done with charm now, stares at her coldly. Her eyes pass over the gathered nuns, and a fair number of them at the back now look away from her. Apparently there have been some conversations within her convent that the Mother Abbess, for all her acuity, has not been privy to.

“Ah! You would prefer to live in Bologna, perhaps. Or Milan, where they no longer play convent instruments and can sing only the plainest of settings when they perform to the outside world. You have, I assume, heard of these changes?”

Benedicta lets out an audible gasp. Arranging the score for
The Lamentations of Jeremiah
has been keeping her awake at night, and she seems less joyful than she used to be.

The novice mistress gives a little shrug. “There are sisters in those cities who would say there is more worship in the psalms they give up to God now than in all the fancy settings they once entertained visitors with.”

While a number of the choir nuns are now visibly alarmed, from the rows at the back of chapter there is a rustling wave of support.

Zuana finds herself imagining a ripe boil: the way it grows under the surface, swelling, hardening, gathering pus, and however many poultices are applied it will not soften or heal of its own accord. Such is the ailment within the body of the convent now.

“For a novice mistress whose greatest desire it is to close down contact with the outside world, you seem to know a great deal about what goes on there.”

The abbess glances briefly at the gate censor sister, who reads all correspondence that moves in and out and who has the decency now not to be able to meet her eyes.

But Umiliana holds her ground. “Santa Caterina could be as great as any of those convents. He has already given us the purest voices with which to praise Him.”

And now she looks toward Serafina, so the rest of the nuns immediately follow the gaze. Not, however, the abbess.

“So. If I have understood you correctly, Suora Umiliana, you see the work of the termites in the chapel as God’s message to us that we are failing in our duties toward Him?”

“I see it as a sign for us to mend our ways, yes,” Umiliana says again.

Zuana thinks again of the boil and how at such times the only way forward is to lance it, whatever mess and pain it might cause.

“A sign. Ah, yes, signs—they are such a rich language.”

The abbess looks out over the assembled chapter. And her eyes are clear, no hint of fear in her.

“I have been in this convent serving God since I was six years old, and what I have learned in that time is that His plan is wondrous indeed. So that while He would not choose to stop the appetite of termites, for nature must work by her own rules, He can certainly make His will felt.”

What is coming? Zuana thinks. Can she really do this?

“The left-hand nail that held Our Blessed Lord’s body to the cross and the fixing in the back of His torso both worked loose at the same moment. Had the nail on the right side of the crossbar also given way, the great sculpture would definitely have crashed to the ground. In which case we would be mourning the loss not only of Suora Magdalena but also of one or more of our sweetest novices—even perhaps Suora Umiliana herself—as they were all close to the altar, taking the host.”

She pauses. Timing, Zuana thinks. The world is made richer by its subtleties.

“That, to me, is the true sign here. For I have to tell you that the carpenter discovered that the wood behind the right-hand nail was even more badly eaten away—so much so that he and the sculptor are in total amazement that it should have held under the strain.” Another pause. “It seems to me that, far from being damned, we were chosen instead to be saved.”

She waits again now, to make sure the room has taken on the gravity of what she has said.

“I have extracted an oath from the workmen not to speak of this outside the convent, in case careless talk of a miracle should spread and we would seem lacking in humility in our desire to bring attention down upon us. But of course I have informed the bishop and asked if perhaps a small service of thanksgiving within the convent might be called for.” She stops, smoothing her skirts again, though there is not a crease out of place and never will be. “If, however, Suora Umiliana, you are still determined to put another point of view, His Holiness might be interested in hearing from you. If you compose a letter I will make sure that it is delivered.”