Yet she had been generous with her power. Without Suora Chiara arguing her case, Zuana might have languished for years in the scriptorium, decorating the word of God with calendula leaves or fennel fronds. It was she who had helped Zuana to find work in the dispensary, she who had organized and supported her election as dispensary mistress and, when she finally became abbess, allowed her to take over the infirmary as well, For it is written in the rule of Saint Benedict that it must be the abbess’s greatest concern that the sick suffer no neglect. Without Madonna Chiara there would be no treatment of the bishop’s ailments and therefore no flow of special outside supplies. Without Madonna Chiara there would be no distillery, a smaller herb garden, fewer shelves with fewer bottles to be broken, fewer notebooks of remedies to be destroyed. Without Madonna Chiara—
Zuana looks up to see two of her books on the table. In her chest there are others, lovingly cared for over all these years. Is she really willing to be instrumental in their destruction? For what? To alleviate the misery and starvation of one obstreperous novice? She is only a young woman who did not want to become a nun. The world is full of them.
The truth is that Zuana herself does not understand why this girl has become so important to her. There have been times when she wonders if it is some affliction of the womb: she has seen it enough in others; how an older nun might seek out a novice or postulant or boarder of the age that her own child would have been, had she had one. Such rapports are often characterized by undue care and attention, for while everyone knows the creation of favorites is prohibited, it is also unstoppable.
Yet it has never been like that for her. As a child without brothers or sisters she had always been familiar with her aloneness, her self-sufficiency. And yet, and yet …this young woman with her sense of fury and injustice has somehow infiltrated Zuana’s life. That Zuana likes her is undeniable, despite her spirit and her truculence—or perhaps because of them. No doubt she sees something of herself in her; the curiosity as well as the determination. And it is true that had she married, had she become a wife instead of a nun, her own child might indeed now be Serafina’s age. How would she feel about her then? It is a painful question. While Santa Caterina has been a good home to her, would she choose to give a daughter up to such a life? And if not, does that mean she is willing to risk bringing down the convent to help her?
The abbess is right. The world is full of them: daughters who are too young, too old, too ill, too ugly, too difficult, too stupid, too smart. Waste. Banishment. Burial alive. Custom. The way things are. What can she do about it? It is not as if there is so much out there to celebrate. Freedom? What freedom? To marry the man you are told to and no other? If she had been living outside the walls, Serafina might still have found her singing composer half dead on some riverbank, only the knives would have been wielded by her father’s family rather than the abbess’s. Love is not a marketable commodity; you take what you are given, even if it is your husband’s pleasure to bruise your skin and breed bastards out of prettier loins. It is simply how it is. What point is there in railing against it? And why, in God’s name, single out one spoiled young girl from all the rest?
The sand is at the bottom of the glass. She stares at it, then turns it over again.
The voice of the Lord is powerful. I will praise the Lord, with my whole heart.
She closes her eyes and tries not to think.
The voice of the Lord is full of majesty.
She knows the words as well as any remedy.
For His mercy is everlasting and His truth endureth to all generations.
She prays until the words make no sense, and when the sand comes to rest for a second time—or is it a third? — she gets up and makes her way to the dispensary. She takes down a bottle of acqua-vita and moves out into the cloister, where a half-moon throws the well in the courtyard into gray relief, as it did all those months before when she first visited a howling, furious young entrant.
If she were to ask herself now why she is doing this, it is unlikely, even after all the meditation and prayers, that she would be able to answer. The truth is that there has been no great revelation between her and God. No transmission of grace, nothing with which she could protect herself in confession for the disobedience she is about to commit. There are words she might use. Words she believes in. Compassion. Caring. The need to address suffering, the offering of comfort. But they are more the language of the healer than of the nun.
She knows this—but it does not stop her. If anything, now, it spurs her on.
