Zuana smiles. “Like the rest of us, she is trying to sleep.”
“You think I am stupid?” The voice rises again. “She does not care about me. I’m only another dowry to her. Oh, I have no doubt my father paid very generously to keep me hidden.”
“Even the greatest dowries come with souls,” Zuana says gently. Each word that breaks the Great Silence is as painful to the Lord as it should be to the nun who utters it, but kindness and charity are also virtues within these walls; anyway, she is committed now. “You will come to understand that soon enough.”
“No! Agh!” And the girl flings her head against the wall, hard enough for them both to hear the thud. “No, no, no!”
Only now when the tears come they are of despair as much as fury or pain, as if she knows the battle is already half lost and all she can do is mourn it. There are some sisters in Santa Caterina, women of great faith and compassion, who believe that this is the moment when Christ first truly enters into a young woman’s soul, His great love sowing seeds of hope and obedience in the soil of desperation. Zuana’s own harvest had taken longer, and over the years she has come to understand that the only true comfort one can offer another is the one you yourself feel. While it is not something she is proud of, at moments such as this it is impossible to pretend otherwise.
“Listen to me,” she says quietly, moving closer. “I cannot open the gates for you. But I can, if you let me, make tonight easier. Which in its way will help you with tomorrow, I promise you.”
The girl is listening now. She can feel it. Her body has started to tremble and her eyes dart everywhere. What is going through her head, escape? The cell is not locked and there is no one to stop her flight. If she wanted she could easily push past, out the door, across the cloisters, and down the corridor toward the gatehouse—only to find when she got there that it is not the gatekeeper who holds the night keys to the main door but the abbess herself. Or out into the gardens, then, through the orchards, eventually reaching the outer walls—except that they are so smooth and high that scaling them would be like trying to climb a sheet of ice. All this, of course, is common knowledge to those living within. Indeed, for some the real terror only starts to bite when they imagine themselves standing in the world outside.
“No, no …” But it is more a moan than a protest. The girl covers her face with her hands and slides slowly down the wall, her back scraping against the stone, until she is crouching, curled over, crushed with sorrow.
Zuana kneels on the floor beside her.
The girl jerks away. “Get away from me. I don’t want your prayers.”
“That’s just as well,” Zuana says lightly, sweeping away the horsehair to find a safe spot to rest the candle, “since Our Lord is surely temporarily deaf by now.” She smiles so the girl will know the words are meant kindly. Close to, in the candlelight, she sees a lovely enough face, though a little swollen and pockmarked now with rage. Zuana can think of half a dozen giggling young novices who would happily help nurse her back to beauty again.
She takes the vial out from under her robe and uncorks it.
“Stop crying.” Her voice is firm now. “This panic that you feel will pass. And it will do nothing for you or your cause if you keep the convent awake all night. Do you understand me?”
Their eyes connect over the vial.
“Here.”
“What is it?”
“Something to make you rest.”
“What?” She doesn’t touch it. “I still won’t sleep.”
“If you drink this you will, I promise. The ingredients are those they give to criminals on the cart to the gallows so their drowsiness will blunt the torment long enough for the worst to be carried out. For those suffering less it brings a faster and sweeter relief.”
“The gallows.” She laughs bitterly. “Then you must be my executioner.”
I am the jailer, Zuana thinks. So be it. How much energy it takes to fuel rebellion. And how hard it is when you are the only one. She holds the vial out farther, as one might offer a tidbit to a wild animal that could bolt at any moment.
Slowly, slowly, the girl’s fingers reach out to take it. “It will not make me give in.”
Now Zuana cannot help but smile. If she knew how to make a draft that could do that, every convent in the country would want her for their infirmary. “You don’t need to worry. My job is to tend your body not your soul.”
The girl’s eyes lock on Zuana’s as she swallows. The taste is strong and makes her choke, her throat raw already from the yelling. If that talk of a nightingale was not another lie, she will need a soothing syrup to coax her singing voice back out.
She finishes the draft and puts her head back against the wall. The tears keep flowing, but with less noise. Zuana watches carefully, the healer in her now alert to the progress of the drug.
Hear my prayer, O Lord, and let my crying come unto Thee.
