“Look. I know little enough about such things, but a man who has promised God that he will not love or marry any other woman must be sure enough about the one he wants to spend his life with. Is that not what you want, too?”
“Sweet Jesus, what are you saying? You are mad.”
“Well, if I am mad then you had better get healthy to help cure me.”
And she hands her another piece of soaked bread.
ZUANA BARELY HAS time to reach her own cell before the bell for Matins starts to sound.
She and Serafina take their respective places in chapel without a glance or any sign between them. But even with her eyes to the floor, it is impossible for Zuana not to feel the abbess’s gaze upon her. On them both. Does she know of her visit to the novice already? Well, if she does not, she will soon enough, for the watch sister is a loyal soul and neither as deaf nor as stupid as some might like to believe.
Back in her cell again, Zuana kneels in darkness for a while, then gets up and lies on her pallet. Prayer can do only so much. She needs a different kind of intervention now.
“Dear father, there is a disease inside the convent,” she says, under her breath. “A deep malignancy. A young woman needs to be released from here—but in a manner that saves the convent rather than taking it down with her. What remedy can there be for this?”
In the silence that follows—she no longer expects her father to answer, but there is quiet in the place left by his absence—she begins, slowly, to fashion a plan. As befits the complexity of the malady, it will call for the combination of different ingredients: a number of simples that must be compounded not only in the right doses but also at the right moments. Despite her tiredness she feels an energy, almost an excitement, growing within her. When she finally closes her eyes, her sleep is deep and dreamless.
Next morning she prepares the first ingredient. It is both straightforward and difficult: a young man in the house of an apothecary by the west gate must be prevented from leaving the city. Even if the girl had strength and wit enough now to write a letter, no convent censor would pass any communication from a novice unless approved by the abbess first. Zuana, however, is a choir nun of many years’ standing and can write to whomever she chooses, so long as the content is not inappropriate. In the morning hour of private prayer she takes a sheet of paper and writes a letter, already memorized in her head.
Dear sister in healing,
I write further to our conversation about the welfare of your patient who suffered such grievous wounds on his body and neck. Having studied my notes, I can suggest that case wort and yarrow will help the skin to join, and honey mixed with cobwebs and egg white can also be applied to minimize scarring. However, it is vital that the patient remain in your care and within your walls at present. In particular he must not undergo any journey, since friction on the torso will cause the wounds to reopen before proper healing has taken place. With regard to the great pain he feels in his chest, in the vicinity of his heart, I am hoping in due course to find a remedy and will forward it when I do.
I remain yours in the glory of God and the purity of the convent of Santa Caterina.
She finds Suora Matilda in a small room behind the gatehouse. The post of convent censor is a weighty one, as the nun who takes it on must possess not only authority and experience (those who deal with the outside world must be over forty years of age) but also excellent eyesight, and these qualities do not always go together. Though not directly of Madonna Chiara’s own family, until now Matilda has been a loyal servant to the abbess, although recent revelations in chapter suggest that her loyalty may be wavering.
Luckily, Zuana’s connection with her is more robust. When she was younger, Matilda suffered from a chronic complaint of itching and stinging when passing water. It had taken her a while to confess such an intimate ailment (she is not the only one; it can drive many sisters mad in the heat of a Ferrarese summer), but the doses of vaccinium juice Zuana gave her had brought much relief, and she has held a fondness for her ever since.
“It is not often you have recourse to the outside world, Suora Zuana.”
“No. But I had a visitor recently.”
“Oh, yes, I know. A daughter of one of your father’s pupils, wasn’t it?”
Zuana smiles. How could such an occasion ever have remained a secret?
“She is the wife of an apothecary now and came to ask advice on treatment for her husband. It was an urgent request, and I must answer her with all possible speed.”
Thus prepared in advance for the substance of what she must pass, the sister opens the letter and starts to read, holding the paper almost at arm’s length to do so. Zuana has already noticed how in chapel she screws up her eyes sometimes to follow the daily prayers in her breviary.
