Still, better to be without it. She has no friends in this place, whatever they like to pretend, and the traps are everywhere. God knows there were times when Suora Zuana’s caring was harder to bear than cruelty, and though she may be crazy in some things she was sharp enough in others. When she had talked of the power of the night songbird, for instance …what if she had heard more than the song, if she knew more than she claimed? And that poem of the long-ago nun, with its rattling of convent doors and the lover’s voice outside. Had she picked it deliberately or made it up to draw some truth out of her? Even before the penance it had become harder to lie to Zuana; she recalls moments when the temptation to confide had been like vomit rising in her throat and she had had to clamp her lips together not to let it out. How would it be if Zuana could see inside her now, could understand what lay behind the excitement in the same way she had started nosing her way in behind the pain?
No. Better for them both to be alone. When the convent wakes up—as it will—to find her gone, she wouldn’t want the blame to fall on the one person who has shown her kindness, the one who has, without knowing it, already given her much— though not yet all—of what she needs to get out.
She lifts up the mattress and slides her hands under until she locates the tear in the material. Inside, deep within the straw and padding, her fingers find a lump of material. She extracts it carefully. The petticoat silk is stained dark and oily. She unwraps it to reveal a roughly fashioned pad of waxy ointment, scooped from the pan when it was cool enough to be touched but not yet set too hard, and squirreled away under her robes. In chapel the morning she had taken it, the smell of the rancid pork fat had been so strong she had been terrified someone would know, and she had had to press herself close to the gumless old bat with the vicious breath to cover up her own stink. Thank God, she has a new seat in chapel now, while the smell of the pork has faded as the ointment set harder.
Under the light she puts the pad on the table and presses the nail of her index finger deep into it. The surface gives a little to take the imprint. When she lifts it off, the shape of her nail is etched perfectly, even down to the slight ridge of skin around the cuticle. She rubs hard to make it smooth again. Then from under her shift she pulls out a silver medallion of the Virgin on a chain around her neck. She takes it off and embeds it facedown into the ointment, pressing it heavily, equally on all sides. When she pries it loose, the image of the metal face in the candlelight is clear, each line and the curve perfectly reproduced.
Thank God for the bishop’s pustules and the mad correspondences of figwort and pork fat. It can indeed cure all manner of things.
He has come. He is waiting. They will find a way.
WHEN ZUANA MEETS the abbess in her chamber that afternoon it is the first time since Suora Magdalena’s ecstasy that the two women have been alone together.
Inside the old nun’s cell, the routine of prayer and sleep has returned and she has been largely forgotten again. Whatever the initial excitement, the rumors of some kind of transcendence have been extinguished by the lack of firm facts plus the drama of Vespers and the death of Suora Imbersaga, with no less a figure than the abbess herself encouraging the distractions. Letizia still keeps her fed and watered as before and reports to Zuana that though she grows weaker, there are times when the old woman will close her eyes and rock to and fro, suffused with what seems like quiet joy, after which she often asks about the young novice and how it goes with her. But when Zuana visits, as often as her duties allow, there is no such excitement. Instead, Magdalena lies silently on her pallet, her expression dreamy, as if she is only half present. Her flesh is now so paper-thin that Zuana is almost afraid to touch her in case bits of it might peel away in her hands. If the decision were hers she would move Magdalena to the infirmary now, for a soul so close to death deserves better care. She wonders if, when Suora Scholastica comes to inscribe this particular entry in the convent necrology, her life might warrant more or different words.
The abbess welcomes her in and seems pleased to see her. The formerly errant curls are now scooped back under the wimple, but then she has hosted a number of eminent visitors recently and is always careful to fit her style to their differing expectations.
“I am glad you are come. I have been concerned that the work might be proving too much for you. I had wanted to see you earlier, but the passing of Suora Imbersaga and the communication with her family took up my time, along with everything else. You did a fine job of tending her.”
“I did nothing except fail to stop the bleeding. It was Suora Umiliana who eased her passage into the light.”
