Of course, Zuana has thought about this—how far her concern about the girl is born of her own selfishness. For yes, she has missed her company, more than she expected. More than she finds it easy to admit. But it is not only that. Watching from the outside, there is something about the girl herself, an almost fevered energy in the way she seems to hurl herself through each and every day—as amenable as she was once intransigent—that makes Zuana think of illness rather than health.
“It is not so much her singing that worries me as the sudden perfection of her behavior.”
“Hmm. First she is too bad and now she is too good. Our novice mistress mistrusts her motives for starting to sing at all. She thinks she is using it as a way of gaining privilege and that underneath she still remains resistant to God’s love. I have wanted to know for a while what you think.”
The wine has a slight metallic aftertaste. Zuana cannot tell whether it is pleasant or not. How much there is to note, even in a single mouthful of liquid. One lifetime barely scratches the surface of experience.
“I think …I think she would have started singing earlier if that was the reason. She could have saved herself a lot of trouble.”
“So why did she choose to do so when she did?”
Zuana is silent. It is something to which she has given a good deal of thought over these last weeks, like the study of an ailment whose cause she is struggling to understand.
“Let me ask you another question. How far do you think your tutelage may have helped?”
She shakes her head. “I simply taught her how to make lozenges and ointments.”
“Ah, Zuana, if you have the temerity to accuse your abbess of the sin of pride, you would do well to address the mote of false modesty in your own eye.” And now for the first time they smile. Sitting closer to her, Zuana can see the pull of sallow skin under her eyes and the furrows across her forehead. With all the triumph she is not without worries. “It’s clear that some kind of bond developed between you. I had wondered if perhaps she came to identify something of her own journey within yours.”
“Mine? Oh, no. I was never so …so accomplished. Or so eligible.”
“No, but you arrived with a similar anger and resistance.”
“Is that why you sent her to me?” she says quickly.
“I think you know why I sent her.” The reply is equally quick, almost brusque, in its tone. She gives an impatient shake of the head, as if to deny the inferred intimacy of the comment. “A good nun learns as much as she teaches.”
Zuana drops her eyes to her hands, which are folded in her lap, the correct position for a choir nun when in the presence of her abbess. Behavior. Order. Hierarchy. The power of obedience and humility. How many times must one learn the same lessons over and over again?
“I did what I could to show her how she might make a life here for herself, how resistance was”—she is at a loss for the word for a moment; futile, though it nudges around her tongue, will not do—“…was …fruitless. But I didn’t expect …I mean, that afternoon in Vespers I was as taken aback as anyone. Except for—” She stops.
“Except for what?”
“Nothing. It is a matter that is not to be discussed.”
“Ah! We are talking of Suora Magdalena?”
Zuana nods. Though she can make no sense of this, she has found herself returning to it: the look of awe in the girl’s face as she watches the old nun’s sublime joy; the way those talonlike fingers flick over and embed themselves in her flesh. And those words: “He told me you would come.” As if the novice had in some way already been marked out by Him.
“Has she spoken to you about it?”
“We do not work together anymore.”
“No, but you have seen each other.”
“Once.” Once, if one does not count the glances across the refectory table or the passing of the other in the cloisters.
“Suora Zuana, if you know something that I don’t about what happened in Magdalena’s cell that afternoon, I need you to tell me. Despite this new …humility, the girl is still highly strung and, while I thank God constantly for her newfound energy toward life here, with Carnival coming the last thing we need is further trouble.”
“She did speak of Suora Magdalena when we met, yes.”
“What did she say?”
“She asked me who she was and why we could not talk of her outside that room. She was concerned that if it was indeed an ecstasy, people should know of it. I told her that all those who needed to know—God and yourself—already did. And that it was our duty to obey your instructions.”
“It was well said.” The abbess smiles, leans over, and refills Zuana’s glass.
WHILE ZUANA HAS answered the question honestly, as is her duty under the rules of obedience, she is aware that there are things she has not told. The fact is that the one meeting between her and Serafina had not been an easy one, though how much that was to do with the girl and how much herself, Zuana does not fully understand.
