Zuana feels her heart moving fast against her rib cage. She will not think that far ahead. No, she could not live without her books or remedies, in a convent ruled by Umiliana. Yet how can it be acceptable to so offend God in order to be able to continue to serve Him? She, who can solve the most difficult riddles of the body, feels lost in the face of such complexity.
“I am still the abbess of this convent, Suora Zuana. And until I am not you must obey me, or I must impose penance on you.” She pauses. “As I have done already on Umiliana. Which, of course, was exactly what she wanted me to do.” She sighs. “Think of it: the abbess’s enemy and her favorite both lying in the doorway of the refectory for the other nuns to walk over. What a gift it will be to her.”
But this last appeal to the sister who used to be her confidante is too little, too late.
“If you will excuse me, Madonna Abbess, I must return to my dispensary.”
She gets up and moves to the door. The abbess watches her go.
“Zuana,” she says, as she reaches the door, “she is only a young woman who did not want to become a nun. The world is full of them.”
AT SUPPER, SUORA Umiliana accepts only scraps, with a generous layer of wormwood sprinkled on top. The rest of the choir nuns and novices watch nervously as she carries it with her to the table. Once there, she chews each mouthful as if it were filled with honey, a smile playing around her lips. While it is forbidden to look at anything but one’s plate during the meal, it is almost impossible for people to keep their eyes off her. Serafina does not even need to worry about squirreling away her food at this meal, since no one is looking at her. Except Zuana.
The meal and the reading—which no one hears a word of, though Scholastica has been especially picked for her strong voice—finally end, and the novice mistress rises and kneels at the feet of the abbess before going over to take her place in the doorway. She takes a while to get herself down on the floor. While she is adept enough at kneeling, it seems harder for her to lie prone. But then she is not a young woman anymore, and bones at this age become brittle and if broken heal badly.
The abbess leaves the room first, graceful as ever, bringing her left foot to rest on Umiliana’s robe but carefully avoiding her flesh. In her wake, each and every choir nun and novice makes it her business to walk over rather than on the prostrate old nun, though whether it is out of respect or fear for her it is hard to tell. Either way, as convent martyrdoms go it is a fairly painless business. Now that the lines have been drawn, it seems, everyone is nervous about what might happen next.
That night it takes a long time for the convent to settle. In her cell Zuana turns over the hourglass and watches the sand fall. How many times in her life has she sat here, trying to wash away the business of the day in readiness for the prayer before sleep? She has always envied those sisters who live lightly in the world, giving themselves up easily to the silence and stillness of God’s love. She needs that stillness more than ever tonight, for how can she take the next step in her life without His guidance?
Her first spiritual guide, the novice mistress who had shown her paintings in the chapel, had alerted her early to the pitfalls of intoxication with her work. “Your knowledge brings you great solace, Zuana. But knowledge alone has no substance. Our founder, the great Saint Benedict himself, understood that well enough. Let not your heart be puffed up with exaltation. Everyone that exalteth himself shall be humbled, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted”
And she had tried, truly and honestly, tried so hard that sometimes, despite the nun’s kindness and patience, she thought she might go mad with the effort. Eventually she had come to accept a level of failure. What point was there in dissembling? He would know it anyway. God always seeth man from heaven and the angels report to Him every hour.
How much easier it had become when the kind old novice sister died and she had found herself in the company of her assistant, Suora Chiara. Chiara, with her smooth skin and dancing eyes and her bright, confident relationship with God and the world around her. Chiara, who seemed able to inhabit both the mind and the spirit without fearing His displeasure and who, even then, enjoyed an almost unnatural standing in the convent itself; much more than the other women of her age with fewer aunts, cousins, and nieces around to support their rise through the ranks.
