That same morning, Zuana is in the dispensary working when she receives a visit from Suora Ysbeta, distraught and cradling a silk-wrapped bundle, the snub nose and gummy half-closed eyes of a small dog just visible at one end of the swaddling.
“He is sick, Suora Zuana. Very sick. Will you look at him?”
There is no point in telling her that the dispensary is a place for nuns, not animals. Ysbeta is a pure enough soul, compassionate and devout. In another world she might have been a follower of a stricter regime, only her love of animals is almost as great as her love of people and in a convent where she could not keep a pet she would surely wither and die. As the dog is doing now.
Zuana places the bundle on the worktop and carefully unwraps the silk. The smell tells her much of what she needs to know. The animal is rank with sickness, its little body trembling, its coat, usually so sleek and groomed, matted and dull. She moves her hand carefully along the line of its stomach and soon locates a hard swelling near the groin. The dog whines and makes a feeble attempt to snap, but there is no fight there anymore.
“He has not been himself for a while. Not since the Feast of Saint Agnes. But it is only in the last few days …Can you help him?”
“I am afraid he is beyond my help. There is a growth, a tumor here. Probably not the only one. It will be sapping his strength and causing him pain.”
“Ah, I knew it. Even the pets are sick here.”
Zuana says nothing. She strokes the dog gently. It bares its teeth a little, then gives up and drops its head heavily on her hand.
“Surely God would not punish us so.”
“What do you mean, sister?”
“Felicità says there is a convent in Siena where the inspectors took away the sisters’ dogs and drowned them in a sack in the river.”
Since the chapter meeting, the floodgates have opened on such stories.
“Oh, I can’t believe they would do such a thing.”
“I can. I think Suora Felicità herself would do it if she could. Last week in the cloisters she kicked him.”
“I’m sure she did not mean to.”
Ysbeta will have none of this, either. “Oh, yes, she did.” She nods her head vigorously. “They are so pleased with themselves, she and Suora Umiliana. Just because they can live without comfort they think everyone else must be the same.”
Zuana has never seen Ysbeta so passionate before. “Well, a kick did not cause this. Nor do I think it punishment for any sin. The fact is that the tumor will have been growing in his body for some time now.”
She stares down at the little animal. “So you cannot do anything?”
“I could give him something to make him sleep, so he would not feel it so much.”
“What about the girl? Might she save him?”
“Which girl?”
“The novice, Serafina.” She hesitates. “I …they are saying that Suora Magdalena passed her powers on to her when she died. That was why the cross did not fall on her and why she fainted afterward.”
Indeed? Is that what they are saying? Zuana thinks. What kind of spy am I if I do not hear even the noisiest rustles in the grass?
“Who is saying such a thing?”
She shrugs. “Oh, some of the choir nuns …Would you ask her? I mean—she is close to you.”
Zuana smiles gently. “Suora Ysbeta, I am sorry, but there is nothing she or any of us can do. Your dog is dying. It is the way of nature.”
The old nun bows her head, nodding slightly. She moves to the worktop and, tender as a mother with an ailing child, starts wrapping up the shaking body again, taking care not to touch the animal’s stomach as she does so. Zuana stares at her. Christ dolls, pets, babies in the parlatorio …some women find the barrenness of marriage to God so hard to bear.
She reaches for the poppy syrup.
SHE IS THINKING of the dog and how the convent has grown restless inside the winds of gossip as she sits at her dispensary desk that same afternoon, marking down the remedies and essences that need replacing, when the knock comes at the door.
“Suora Zuana, the watch sister has sent me.” Letizia, bright and efficient as always. “There is someone to see you in the parlatorio.”
“To see me?”
“Yes. The watch sister says it is the wife of one of your father’s pupils whom you have met before. Her husband is very ill, and she is come to ask you to pray for him.”
Zuana frowns. At the beginning she received a few visits from people who had known her father, women from the court whose children or husbands he had healed, but it has been many years since anyone bothered to look her up and she has no memory of such a woman. Falling crucifixes, ailing dogs, and dying living saints. And now a visitor for a nun who knows no one. These are strange times indeed.
