“But why is it not fitting? Everyone wants to hear him, and there is still time within our Carnival calendar for such an event.”
“Really, Suora Apollonia! Do you think Our Lord would approve of such a thing?”
In the front row, Umiliana is in fighting form. With the city still reeling from the d’Este marriage and the climax of Carnival barely six weeks away, she has much to get agitated about. While Ferrara does not go as mad as some cities (Zuana’s father would tell tales of how in Venice, where he grew up, they slaughtered pigs in the main square, covering half the assembled government with blood), still the possibilities for mischief are manifest. Soon the streets will be packed with revelers, and everything, including convent rules, will bend a little to incorporate them. The convent itself will perform a short theatrical piece on the martyrdom of Santa Caterina, written by their wordsmith copyist Suora Scholastica, in front of a specially invited audience of women benefactors, and there will be a special concert in the parlatorio for families and friends of both sexes. Meanwhile, some of the city’s best-known musicians will pass by or even stand inside the portico of the main gates so the nuns can listen to them.
The talk this year is all of the new singer the duke has brought back from Mantua, a man with a voice so high and pure that every woman who hears him bursts into hot tears of envy. He has had to lose his manhood to achieve it, but according to Suora Apollonia’s aunt, herself a regular at the duke’s most intimate soirees, he is happy enough with his state. While such men have been talked of before, this is the first time one has ever been in the city, and such is the excitement that the convent is in debate as to whether, given the curtailed state of his manhood, he might be allowed to visit and give a recitation of his artistry.
“I don’t see why not.” Suora Apollonia raises her artfully plucked eyebrows in feigned innocence. Still a creature of the court as much as of the cloister, she can always be relied upon to fight for her—and others’—pleasures. “I mean, since he is not even a true he anymore, as long as he—or whatever he is—is a good Christian and comes with Suora Standini’s family in attendance, surely it does not infringe on any rules that we are bound by.”
A murmur runs like a breeze through grass. A castrato in the parlatorio? Whatever next? The novices, who attend chapter and can even speak if they have the courage, though they are not yet allowed to vote, can barely contain their enthusiasm at such a level of drama. Zuana locates Serafina among them. She had started out the meeting with her usual closed expression, but even she is visibly interested now.
“I am against it, Suora Apollonia—as you should be— because our duty is to serve God humbly and quietly without worldly distraction, not be blown off course by each and every scandal or petty novelty. And Carnival is a living source of such temptation, as this convent knows only too well. It is bad enough that in the lead-up to such debauchery we will have to suffer every would-be minstrel of Ferrara parading around the walls, serenading chaste women who do not want to hear them.”
Protecting her novice flock from the contamination that she sees seeping like rotten damp through the convent walls has become Suora Umiliana’s lifework. Certainly, without her, chapter would be a more mundane, even boring affair.
“Oh yes, indeed. In fact it has started already.” Where the novice mistress goes, Suora Felicità is never far behind. “Surely I am not the only one who was kept awake last night with the noise? Two of them, one with a voice as deep as the chapel bell, marching up and down, howling like lovesick puppies. But at least theirs were proper men’s voices, created by God, not the barber’s knife. Our novice mistress is right. Such a ‘half-man condition is an abomination of nature. Wouldn’t you agree, Suora Benedicta?”
“Oh, dear. Oh, I simply cannot say, for I have never heard one of them.” Zuana has to drop her eyes now, she is so close to smiling. Caught between her passion for new voices and the desire not to have her choir’s thunder stolen by some foreigner who has given up his genitals in the service of court employment, Santa Caterina’s radiant choir mistress is floundering. She sighs. “From what I hear, they have the ability to reach and sustain the highest notes with miraculous ease, but whether they can deliver the passaggio or the subtlety of decoration of a good soprano— well, those who witness them all say different things.”
Zuana glances toward Madonna Chiara, but the abbess’s expression gives nothing away. She sits with her fingers curved perfectly over the ends of the carved mahogany arms of the great chair, her head bent to one side, then to the other, the better to follow the discussion. The more seriously she is seen to take each and every opinion, the less those who lose the argument might feel they have not been listened to.
