The apology takes Zuana by surprise. While it is her duty not to feel any resentment toward the young woman, she has needed no effort to resist it. Neither—now she comes to consider it—has she felt any irritation or even impatience. On the contrary, there has been something about the girl’s presence over these weeks—her very refusal to be comforted or managed— that she has almost …what, enjoyed? No, that cannot be the right word. Sympathized with, perhaps? Or at least understood.
It is our duty to serve God humbly and quietly without worldly distraction, not to be blown off course by each and every scandal or petty novelty.
Now it is Umiliana’s voice she hears, coming back to her from the chapter meeting. Could this be what is happening to her? That she is being seduced by the novelty, the drama of it all? It is true that these days she wakes every morning wondering what the work hour will bring, even perhaps looking forward to its challenges. The idea disturbs her. It has been a hard-fought battle, the cultivation of serenity through the years, and she would not have it unwittingly undermined. Out of the corner of her eye she sees Serafina watching her again. “Keep stirring,” she says, a little sharply. “It is important that it stays moving at all times.”
The girl returns to the task. But after a few minutes she looks up again. “I …I need to ask you a question.” She pauses. “What kind of man is the bishop?”
“The bishop?” Zuana shakes her head. “It would be better for you to forget the bishop. He cannot help you.”
“He is the abbess’s superior,” she says stubbornly. “I think I have a right to know who he is.”
Zuana sighs. What were Madonna Chiara’s words on his appointment years before, when she was still a sister rather than the abbess? “As ugly as he is holy. But we will have to put up with him. Rome has had its eye on Ferrara ever since the last duke’s French wife, Renata, was found to be hiding heretics in her skirts.”
No doubt she would phrase it differently now, but the conclusion would be the same. Zuana is careful with her own words: “He has a reputation as a godly man and a reformer.”
The girl frowns. She is, of course, far too absorbed in her own troubles to appreciate the magnitude of the shift taking place all around them: this war within the faith in order to defeat the heresy outside it, bringing with it endless rules and definitions as to what is true thought and what is not. As yet, the nuns of Ferrara have been spared the worst of it (thanks be to God for the bishop’s ailments), but the future remains uncertain. It is better, perhaps, that she does not know the truth, for it would only make her journey harder, her passage to quiescence longer.
“He is also”—Zuana takes a breath; ah, well, she is long overdue a confession with Father Romero, asleep or awake— “exceedingly ugly. Possibly the ugliest bishop Ferrara has ever seen. Keep stirring. It must not be allowed to set until all the spices are absorbed.”
The girl moves her hand but the stare continues. I know what lies behind that look, Zuana thinks: she believes herself too lost and angry to find anything in the world worth enjoying or delighting in. But she is wrong. Oh, how she is wrong!
“You think I jest? Believe me, I do not. The bishop of Ferrara is as fat as a wild boar, with jowls like slabs of pitted rock and a skin as thick as that of a rhinoceros.”
“A what?”
“A rhinoceros. You don’t know this animal? Oh, it is a remarkable creation: a kind of overweight cow, with plates of gladiator’s armor for skin and the single thick horn of a unicorn coming out of its skull. I am amazed that you and it have never become acquainted.”
“You’ve seen it—this thing?”
“On the page, not in the flesh. It is to be found in only the wildest parts of the Indies, though I believe they once brought one back on a boat and showed it in Portugal.”
She watches Serafina’s eyes widening. Her father used to say that the world was full of young women with their heads clogged up with fabric and frippery, ignorant of the wonder of God’s universe everywhere around them—and he would not have his daughter wasted thus. Well, he has done a good job. When had she first learned about such creatures? Young enough that he had made her put her nose close to the page to catch the smell of the ink he claimed was still rising off it. This book left the printing press in Venice yesterday and has journeyed by boat all night and day to get to us. Imagine that, carina. Imagine that.
