She stays close enough behind the door to hear the murmur of voices, though not to make out the words. She wonders what Zuana would have to say if she could join them now. Would she have been able to fool her, too? She hears the footsteps and backs away from the door as it is opened by the novice mistress. But it is impossible to tell anything from her face.
Back in the room she stands before the abbess, eyes to the ground.
“You are to go to your cell directly and spend the rest of the hour in private prayer.”
“Yes, Mother Abbess,” she says, with perfect meekness.
“If the convent has need of you we will call you later.”
“Thank you.”
And thank you, Suora Umiliana, she says silently. She could not have planned it better herself: this way, before she is given the chance to slip her hands under a certain mattress, she has time to retrieve something from beneath her own.
“Suora Umiliana,” she says quietly, “might I come to you for further instruction sometime today? I feel myself in the greatest need.”
AND SO IT happens that in preparation for caring for others, Serafina finds herself first addressing the sufferings of Christ Himself.
The old nun and the young novice meet together that afternoon in the chapel, with the great crucifix in their sight. Outside, the weather is almost clement for the time of year but the chapel remains as cold and damp as the grave. Umiliana, in contrast, heats the air with words, never letting her eyes move from the girl’s face while she describes passionately the ways in which beside the pain of Jesus Christ all the pain of the world is as nothing, how every drop of blood He shed was like a flood washing over the surface of the earth, taking man’s wickedness with it, so that through His sacrifice we are given the chance to live again, whatever our sins.
Then, to reinforce the message, she gives the novice a passage to read out loud from the teachings of Santa Caterina of Siena. It is a clever choice, for in her way Caterina was a great rebel herself, pursuing her ardent love for Christ against the more conventional marriage planned for her by her parents. Hers was a disobedience, however, that was exquisitely rewarded, as the passage shows, describing how after years of self-mortification and prayer the Lord saw fit to come to her and offer her His wounds to kiss, opening His side for her so that His blood flowed like milk, and as her lips tasted it she was filled to the brim with love, as if the spear had gone into her very own flesh.
Serafina has a good voice and the novice mistress listens attentively, joy like a soft sweat on her skin, almost as if the miracle is happening to her then and there. The saint’s words are so powerful, so visceral, that even the girl herself is affected—so for that moment she stops thinking of the pad of ointment concealed under her shift, or the white pebbles strewn in the grass to mark her way to the spot by the wall where, having taken the imprint of the chief conversa’s keys, she will throw the package over for him to catch.
Later, when the convent is on its way to supper and she is called instead by the abbess and given dispensation to miss the meal in order to assess the condition of the chief conversa, she is surprised by how calm she feels at the prospect. She remains unperturbed when she walks into the tiny dank cell, buried away in the corner of the second cloister and reeking of sweat and old menstrual blood, to be presented with the sight of the woman who lies there, arms as thick as ox legs and her face puffed up with fever. No doubt it helps that the patient is barely conscious, for it means that as Serafina leans down to listen to her breathing it is easy to slide her hand under the pallet far enough to locate a thick metal stem, then a wedge of key teeth. She still has to be careful, though, since the conversa Letizia stands directly behind her, assigned as an assistant but no doubt also a spy to report back anything that is worthy of reporting.
She removes her hand and goes to work on the woman’s wrist, searching for a pulse amid the fat flesh. She has no idea how ill she is but she smells as though she is dying and there are specks of froth around the edges of her mouth.
“She is in need of eau-de-vie and basil.” She turns to Letizia. “There is a bottle on the workbench. Suora Zuana left it there just before she became ill. Can you bring it to me?”
At first Letizia is having none of it. While she may be a good nurse, she knows when she has been given power of her own. “I have to stay with you at all times. That’s what the abbess said. Anyway, I don’t know which bottle you mean.”
“You will smell it clearly enough. Look at her. See how sick she is? If we are to help her I need that bottle. Get it. Now.” And she takes her tone from the one Zuana used when they were in the cell with the mad Magdalena. “Unless you want it known that you were the one who allowed her to die.”
The girl hesitates, then turns and goes.
