LATER, WHEN SUORA Zuana arrives for Compline, weak but nevertheless on her feet, the rest of the convent is amazed, for everyone knows by now that she was found half dead from bleeding on the dispensary floor. If speech were allowed they might congratulate her, even marvel a little at how, despite her pale face, there is such a ruddiness of health to her lips. As it is, Federica is the only one who regards her at all suspiciously—but then she is impatient to start her marzipan fruits and is alert to the color of strawberries wherever she sees it.
Others express their gratitude through the words of the office, for Compline, which, marking the end of the day and the beginning of the Great Silence of the night, opens with penitence but moves toward joy. Even Suora Umiliana seems relaxed, almost satisfied, and the once-so-troublesome novice Serafina, who it is rumored was given special dispensation to tend her former mentor, offers up the words of the 30th psalm—Thou hast turned mourning into dances, put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness. O Lord, I will give thanks to Thee for ever—in purest voice. Those sisters—and there are a few of them—who have been as suspicious of her sudden goodness as they had been tired of her outright rebellion find themselves giving extra thanks that the convent has regained its balance. And that there is nothing now to interfere with Carnival, with all its opportunities for pleasure and performance.
The abbess, as ever impeccable in her formality and avoidance of favoritism, waits until the service ends to show her delight, pausing briefly in front of her dispensary sister and bowing her head to welcome her back to the flock. Those who are close enough to note the encounter are struck by the deep warmth in Madonna Chiara’s eyes, not to mention the way she offers the lightest of nods in the direction of the young Serafina herself, who seems so taken aback that the blush is evident behind her veil.
Three hours later, when the convent is deeply asleep, that same young novice slips out of her cell, a parcel concealed under her robe. Not long after, the voice of a perfect male tenor, moving along the street toward the river wharf, lifts up and over the walls. It sings of young love and a woman whose hair is a cloud of gold, Petrarch’s words set to haunting music. When the song ends it is answered by a single high vibrating note, a female voice rather than male, and then a heavy thud as something hurled from inside the walls lands somewhere on the other side.
Three days later the same procedure takes place the other way around. That night Serafina is especially fortunate. With the Carnival spirit on the move again, the watch sister has changed the timing of her rounds, and the novice barely reaches her cell before the footsteps hit the flagstones outside.
She lies on her pallet, fully dressed, heart thudding, the heavy package clasped to her breast, as she hears the footsteps stop by her door, hesitate, then go forward again. In the dark when all is silent once more she pulls open the wrapping and feels underneath her fingers the shape of two newly forged iron keys and the fold of a letter around them.
There is nothing they can do to hurt her now. She is ready. It is only a question of waiting.
WITH ZUANA BACK on her feet, it takes less than a week for the contagion to be halted. The fever passes naturally from the remaining sisters (in the city, the severity of the attack is already waning), while the chief conversa, in whom it proves more stubborn, emerges three days later with rosy lips and renewed strength: a happy outcome, since her trips to and from the storehouse are even more frequent.
The rehearsals for the play enter their final stage. Suora Perseveranza comes out of her cell word-perfect, having been heard reciting her lines while in the midst of her delirium. Except for meal hours the refectory is now strictly out of bounds, as workmen are brought in from outside to build the stage and set. For three days their sawing and hammering offer a background percussion to the daily orders, and their presence—invisible though it is—introduces a level of exhilaration into the convent, with the novices and boarders closely chaperoned on every journey. There is a story, so often repeated that it is almost certainly apocryphal, of how a particularly beautiful postulant from a convent in Prato had her lover dress up as a workman to come in and fix the pews in the church and then, at the end of his time, he smuggled her out in a great bag of his tools. The very idea is enough to have a few of the younger ones swooning with excitement—but it is Carnival, after all, and when the body is incarcerated the mind cannot help but play a little.
