They only told her after her sister had agreed. By then she was so deep in love she thought for a moment it might even be good news. She and Jacopo—for this no-name singer did have a name, and a beautiful one at that—would take the smaller dowry and be glad of it. It cost so little to live on song.
Her father’s fury had torn the tapestries off the wall. Given the choice of an impoverished singing teacher or Christ, there was only one possible bridegroom. When she refused, he had locked her in her room and refused to let her out until she gave in. Between her stupidity and her disobedience was the fear that she was already compromised. When he found the teacher at the door whispering to her, he had thrown him out of the house and beaten her almost senseless, while her mother stood by howling. Within ten days she had been on her way to Ferrara, having bribed a servant to take the name of the convent to Jacopo so that he could follow her.
And he had. He had come for her. He was out there now, waiting.
But …but …a worm of doubt remains. What if, after all, it isn’t him? Oh, what if she is buried alive here for the rest of her life, listening for every bird that sings at night while another bit of her withers up inside and dies?
She glances nervously around the cell. The nun who was here before her had died of something exploding in her head. Part of her brains had spewed out of her mouth. That’s what one of the other novices had told her. Sometimes she thinks she can smell what happened here coming off the walls. She will go mad if she does not get out. It would be a great shame for someone to be so isolated and constrained in her cell while the rest of the convent is so joyfully employed. As the abbess had said it, you could almost feel how much she relished the idea.
They had all been staring at her by then. She had been as amazed as anyone by Suora Zuana’s compliment. What words had she used? Aptitude? Determination? No, dedication. That was it. But she didn’t really think those things about her. How could she? In which case, she had said it to be kind. Yet kindness might skewer her worse than malice, since now they will be watching her even more closely. The abbess, the novice mistress, all of them …
Her mind is racing so fast she feels almost sick. She has to quiet this mad skittering inside her so she can think straight. She takes her hands and clasps them together hard, getting down on her knees and bending over, all the force of her thought and feeling going into the words.
Dear God, please hear me. Please let it be him. Please make him sing again and let me find a way to contact him.
Only now it feels like another kind of madness: to be in this place and praying to God for help. If the Lord cared for her at all why had He let them put her here in the first place? She had done nothing. Well, almost nothing. A few furtive kisses here and there, the moistness of hands moving over skin and the touch of swelling tongues. They had sinned more inside the music; oh—their very souls had joined there. But no one could see that, except God Himself. Was it really so wrong to fall in love through voices? Was this His punishment? Could He really be so cruel?
Talk to Him. He is waiting, always, for the sign. We are His children, and He is listening. Umiliana’s exhortation slides into her mind.
“Forgive me.” She whispers the words. “Forgive me. And help me. Please.”
She kneels in silence, waiting. The edges of the stone flags dig into her knees, and she feels an ache from all the cleaning and scrubbing burn through her body. Gradually the noise inside her head clears, replaced by the throbbing pain, and she becomes a little calmer, more concentrated. “Thank you,” she says, savoring the stab in her knees. “Thank you.”
She gets up and goes to her chest. The excitement has been replaced by a sense of purpose. Under a cloth, next to the sheaf of papers, lie six stones, lifted from the edges of the herb garden the morning they had harvested the figwort. She picks up the largest and weighs it in her hand. It is smooth and full, as if something in the earth had been polishing it. Ha! She sounds like Suora Zuana. Rainbows in the sky, rivers of gold and silver in the earth, the cosmic spirit vivifying everything. Even stones have wonder for her. What madness!
Yet after they finished work today, when Zuana had brought out her lodestone and held it close to the metal spoon and they had watched the two almost leap together—well, that had been something she could understand, a force from within. Almost like the pull of music between her and Jacopo.
