In among the choir nuns, the twins, who have long since had to make do with being ignored, remember that once she tripped one of them up in her hurry to get to chapel and never apologized. Suora Benedicta thinks that though she composes for God, the young girl often seemed more interested in singing for her own pleasure, while Suora Federica knows she never really liked her, even though she felt compelled to pick her out for the first marzipan strawberry, and wishes now that she had put more wormwood into her penance food. Devout old Suora Agnesina reminds herself that she was never sure of her, even when Umiliana spoke so hotly about her emerging purity. Felicità, meanwhile, does not feel so bad about the resentment she has harbored toward Umiliana, whose time has been taken up with this shallow novice rather than other, more deserving sisters such as herself.
And Suora Umiliana? Well, Suora Umiliana is thinking and remembering a great number of things.
“Performance rather than piety. The noisy seeking of attention over the gentler business of living humbly inside God’s love. That has been a fear close to your heart, I know, Suora Umiliana, and one must say that in this you are right,” the abbess says, with a generosity that cannot help but draw attention to Umiliana’s own gullibility and failed judgment in this whole sordid business.
“We need to come back to the true path: Not to love strife. Not to love pride. Not to be jealous or entertain envy. To hate one’s own will. To love one’s neighbor as oneself and—”
And here she does not need to add—because each nun knows the words of the rule of Saint Benedict backward—and to obey the commands of the abbess in all things.
“In this way I am sure we will ride out the storm and return our convent to what it once was, a place of harmony and honest worship.”
The room is silent. It is a remarkable performance, and no one is more impressed than Zuana.
The bones of the plan, the central ingredients, were hers. But this …this elaboration …this decoration has come spinning out of the abbess’s own head, and its skill and cleverness amaze her. Here is a woman who cares so much for the reputation of her convent that she was willing to allow a young man to be killed to prevent scandal from coming upon them, but also a woman willing to forgo the chance of revenge on her most potent opponent in order to bring peace and reconciliation. For, as she well knows, only in that way can they hope to avoid interference from outside.
Zuana thinks back again to the rule of the order. The abbess is one to whom much hath been entrusted, from whom much will be required; the difficult and arduous task of governing souls and accommodating herself to a variety of characters, mingling gentleness with severity, so that she not only suffers no loss in the flock but may rejoice in the increase of a worthy fold.
Who else in this room could do it so well?
She lifts her hand gently.
“Yes, Suora Zuana? You have permission to speak.”
“I—well, I wonder, what are we to do with the novice now?”
The abbess sighs. “We must try our hardest to bring her back from her fasting madness into health and then address her spiritual state. The first, I think, falls to you.”
“I will do my best.” She bows her head. “But I must say that examining her in the infirmary just now, I found her to be in a grave state. In her lunacy she has been using the knife to harm herself in many ways alongside which she is emaciated unto starvation.”
“My dear Suora Zuana, every sister in this convent knows you will do whatever can be done. I shall ask Father Romero to go to her now. The rest is up to God. We shall pray for His guidance.”
THE NUNS OF Santa Caterina retire to their cells for prayer and private contemplation with an unexpected sense of peace and harmony. And as they kneel praying, long into the dark, there are those who swear they hear a voice coming out of the infirmary, the soaring notes of a young songbird, and though some fear it to be further madness, it is hard not to be seduced by its purity and wonder perhaps whether their prayers have been answered and this disturbed young woman is at last made welcome by God.
At the darkest part of that same night, long after Suora Zuana has bid good night to her patients, Clementia wakes to see a figure in the room, a figure she swears is that of the Virgin herself, for she comes on quiet footfall with a white veil over her face and the smell of flowers around her. She stands by the girl’s bed and immediately the novice sits up and prays as if she were not near death at all. Then the Virgin seems to lean over and kiss her and offer her the communion cup, from which she drinks deeply. The girl lies down again and, after praying for a while by her side, the figure leaves as quietly as she came in.
