Isabetta sees him, too. She stands frozen to the spot. So frozen that in the end Zuana must give her a little push.
She moves slowly, groggy still, half limping toward him. They stop when there is still space between them. One might think they would fling themselves into each other’s arms. But instead it seems they are not sure they know each other anymore. After a second’s pause, he puts out a hand toward her and she gives him her bandaged one in return. He holds it most gently. The moment appears to last forever.
“You must go.” Zuana’s voice pushes them on. “Go now.”
The girl turns and smiles quickly, and then they are on their way; the two of them clambering into the boat, the ropes freed from the mooring, the second man maneuvering the craft backward, turning, then rowing quickly out into the water until they are eaten up by the darkness and all one can hear is the splash and chop of oars.
Zuana stands listening until the sound dies away. Then she goes back inside and locks the door. She replaces the wedding shift and the top sheets, smoothing out their surfaces as best she can, and puts the lid back into place before moving into the inner storeroom and from there out into the convent grounds, locking each door carefully behind her.
She makes her way quickly back across the orchard and gardens toward the second cloisters. As she passes the herb plot, it comes upon her to wonder whether or not the calendula will be sprouting yet, and she makes a note to check it first thing at work hour, for she has grown somewhat lax in the affairs of the dispensary of late, and it will not be long until spring is fully upon them.
In her cell, she says a prayer that their new life together will be pure, and then prays for the souls of all those around her in the convent, for their benefactors, and for the rulers of the city, both alive and dead, before lying down to sleep.
As she lets her mind slide away, she recites a few of the remedies from the books that will be buried in the graveyard tomorrow. From now on, every night, she will memorize a few more. Of course she will never be able to reproduce her library in her head; that would be impossible. Not even her father could do so much.
The work of revealing God’s secrets through nature is not meant to be easy, Faustina. You would do well to remember the words of Hippocrates: “Life is short, the art long, opportunities fleeting, experiment treacherous, and judgment difficult. ” Ah, such humility in a man born so long before Christ. For all our knowledge now, he is yet to be surpassed.
Well, she will do the best she can. Though it would be better if she could find an assistant among the novices, a young soul with energy and aptitude, so that together they might form a chain, to hand on to those who come after the fruits of that which she now knows.
Tomorrow she will talk to the abbess about it.
She closes her eyes and sleeps. And the convent sleeps silently around her.
ALL THE CHARACTERS in this novel are imaginary, as is the convent of Santa Caterina, though its history and architecture draw on Sant’Antonio in Polesine, in Ferrara, which still exists today as an enclosed Benedictine community.
The history in which the novel is embedded, however, is all fact.
One of the final decrees of the Council of Trent before it disbanded in December 1563 was a rushed but detailed reform of nunneries, in response to the fierce challenges and criticisms thrown up by the Protestant Reformation. These changes, which were extensive, took time to be implemented, depending on the zeal of the local bishops, the order, the convent, and the opposing influence of local families.
But eventually reform did come. In the city of Ferrara, the power of the d’Este family protected the convents for a while, but the failure of Duke Alfonso III to produce a legitimate heir, despite three wives, meant that in 1597, after his death, the city and its dominions were absorbed into the Papal States. By the turn of the century, when rampant dowry inflation resulted in almost half of all noblewomen in Italian cities becoming nuns, convent life had changed forever.
Inspections—or visitations, as they were known—brought in the new rules. All contact with the outside world was brutally restricted: stray holes or windows bricked up, grilles put in place everywhere. Walls were made higher (sometimes with the last courses of bricks put up without mortar, in case anyone should try to lean a ladder against them, to climb in or out). Churches were redesigned so that the congregation saw nothing of the nuns within. Parlatori were similarly divided, with grilles and drawn curtains so that families could no longer freely mingle. Performance and music suffered particularly. In some cities, plays and all forms of polyphony were banned, and convent orchestras—apart from a single organ—prohibited. Inspectors visited nuns’ cells and confiscated furniture, books, and all kinds of “luxuries” and private possessions.
