The last note brings each voice together, rising, expanding, then falling through a graceful arc toward a silence that, when it finally comes, is as alive as the sound itself. “Huh.” Benedicta lets out a curious throaty sigh. “There is not enough clarity between the first and second parts on quia Gloria Domini super te orta es. And, Eugenia, the first two alleluias are too thin, next to Suora Margarita’s, and not sustained long enough.”
The door of the room jumps open a little with the wind, then catches back on its hinges, giving away their presence. While the tiny figure of Benedicta does not seem to hear it, the nuns, who are used to moving from heaven to earth with almost preternatural speed, are instantly curious. Any newcomer is fodder for gossip, let alone one who comes with the vocal power to disturb a whole convent through a closed door.
“Eugenia, can you mar—”
Finally she registers their presence and turns.
“Suora Benedicta.” Zuana bows her head. “I have brought the new novice to hear the choir at work.”
“Ah!” The tiny woman’s face lights up. “Ah, yes, yes. The voice from Milan. Come, come, come. We have been waiting for you.”
But the girl does not move.
“Welcome. Oh, look at you. You are well grown. Your menses have come already, yes? Is your voice settled yet?” She pauses but does not seem to notice too much when she gets no answer. “You read music? Possibly you were not taught—but you are not to worry; it is not as difficult as they make out. Still, your voice will learn it quicker than your mind. I have scored your part in the Gradual for the upper register, but it can be adapted easily enough if you have more depth. It moves like this.”
And she opens her mouth onto a tumble of hummed notes, bubbling up faster even than her speech and, to Zuana’s ears at least, impossible to follow. Serafina, though, is clearly listening, even if she never lifts her eyes from the ground.
Benedicta stops. “Will that be too high for you?”
In the silence that follows there is a snigger from somewhere within the choir, audible to everyone but Benedicta.
“What? What is it? Are you not well?”
“I do not sing anymore,” she says finally, her voice now more cracked and splintered than Zuana knows it to be.
“But why?” She comes over to her, ignoring Zuana but grabbing hold of the young woman’s hands. “Oh, but you are so cold. You have been outside? No wonder your voice is gone. It is a chill. The wind often steals the best voices. Or a strain, perhaps, from your long journey here. You must take care of yourself and do exactly as Suora Zuana tells you. Though she herself has been given only a mediocre instrument, God has compensated her with a prodigious talent to help others.” And she beams benignly at Zuana.
“Eugenia.” She turns back to the choir. “Come. Sing the part for our new novice, so she can have the notes in her head while her voice is healing.”
In the front row, young Eugenia, who could barely keep her eyes open last night in chapel, is now as chirpy as a newly fledged bird. As she puffs up her feathers to sing, Zuana notices the hint of what is surely a wispy curl peeking out from under her headband, homage no doubt to the abbess’s change of style.
“Surge, illuminare, Jerusalem …”
The words turn to burnished silver in her mouth. She is young and one of the best voices in the choir, with a healthy appetite for the gossip and drama of convent life. Six months before, she had arrived in Zuana’s dispensary nursing a limp from an infected splinter embedded while walking on Christ’s crown of thorns to share His Passion. Only it had begun to hurt so much that now she wanted it taken out. A week later she was chasing squirrels through the orchard during free time, her high spirits more infectious and inspiring than her halfhearted attempts at mortification. Zuana has felt a certain fondness toward her ever since.
“…alleluia.”
Those who know might say she holds the last note a little too long, as befits a songbird marking her territory against possible newcomers. In church no doubt it would have a few young bloods constructing their own versions of heaven.
All eyes are now on Serafina. She is standing taut, her face drawn and pale, her skin almost gray, her eyes focused somewhere out in front of her. Slowly she bends over, one arm clutched over her stomach.
As her head comes up again, Zuana thinks for a moment she might even be laughing—something about the way she is catching her breath. In the choir someone giggles nervously. Too late, Zuana realizes what is happening.
Serafina opens her mouth, and the retching sound that comes out is followed by an arching stream of bile.
“DRINK IT.”
The girl shakes her head.
“It is only water with an infusion of ginger.”
“In which case, you drink it.”
Zuana lifts the clay pot and takes a mouthful.
