Inside the cell, Letizia took her place by the old woman’s pallet, and the abbess, the dispensary sister, and the novice waited with her behind the closed door while the choir nuns passed into the chapel. Madonna Chiara’s injunction to the three of them was instant and severe. “What has taken place in here this afternoon is for Suora Magdalena and God alone to know. Is that understood? Any further mention of it to anyone apart from myself will bring down on the offender the strictest penance.”
But, as she no doubt knew, it was already a lost cause. Though the convent had been at work when it happened, there were those who claimed afterward that they had heard the wild laughter, while others said they had followed the rushed footsteps through the cloisters, even down to one who, looking out from high windows, was sure she had spotted the open cell door.
All this certainty, though, comes much later.
At the time, with the bells ringing out over the city and the nuns gathering in chapel, there is only a sense of slight confusion, as if something has happened to agitate the surface of the water, but no one can tell what it is. With the doors shut in readiness for the beginning of the service, the nuns glance around them to see who, apart from the abbess, is missing.
This is the moment when Zuana and Serafina slip in quietly, heads down, eyes to the floor. As they enter, the girl grabs a breath, as if she might be about to cry, but her face is hidden from Zuana. The choir mistress, Suora Benedicta, is already seated at the small organ to the side from where she can both play and direct the singing, and the curtain is pulled aside to reveal the great grille that runs along the length of the wall, through which comes the soft glow of candlelight from the greater church beyond.
There are some convents where the nuns sing from a choir loft suspended over the nave of the church, so that sharp eyes might spot the odd movement or shaft of color from below through the slits between the wood at their feet. But inside the choir stalls in Santa Caterina, while the singers can see little they can hear everything: the shuffling of bodies, the clearing of throats, the odd raucous male cough or low chatter of voices. That evening they make out more unrest than usual. Santa Caterina’s reputation and the fact that the city is still celebrating the d’Este wedding mean the church is full, with many arriving early to find good seats and restless now for the service to begin.
From her place at the end of the second row Zuana tries to keep Serafina in her sight. The girl is still in shock. She is deathly pale and has not said a word since being freed from the grip of Suora Magdalena. Even before she had walked into the old nun’s cell she would have been light-headed from the lack of food and sleep, but now her disorientation is obvious. She sits stock-still, staring straight out at everyone and no one. Next to her, old Maria Lucia, she of the toxic breath, is hunched over her breviary, her chin trembling in anticipation.
At last the abbess enters and quickly finds her place. She nods to Benedicta and they both rise, the body of nuns following them. The rustle of cloth alerts the rest of the church, and beyond the grille the congregation quiets in readiness for the music.
Discounting the few sisters who are too simple or—in the case of Suora Lucrezia—too physically damaged to sing, some fifty earthly angels now stand waiting to bring glory to God and, perhaps, a little to themselves. The diminutive figure of Benedicta raises and then drops her head as the sign, and the voices lift into the air, the words of the order clean and clear, plunging the audience immediately into the drama of a young woman’s martyrdom.
“Blessed Agnes, in the middle of the flames, spreading her hands wide, prays …”
In the beat of silence that is her cue, the choir’s best songbird, Eugenia, head held high, draws a breath, ready. But before she can open her mouth to let it out, the voice of Agnes herself, ripe with youth and sharp as a golden spear, soars up from the fire into the air and out through the grille.
“O Great Father. Respected. Worshipped. Feared. ”
In the choir stalls there is an involuntary turn of heads toward the novice. Zuana registers a skewering in her stomach, though whether it is shock or pleasure she cannot tell. Serafina’s face remains pale, her eyes still focused somewhere in the middle distance. But she, or that other she that has been hidden for so long, is here now. The novice has found her voice.
“Through the power of your great Son, I have escaped the threats of a sacrilegious tyrant. ”
