"Sacred Hearts" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dunant Sarah)

CHAPTER TWO

“HOW QUICKLY WAS she calmed?”

“After the draft, soon enough. She was sleeping deeply when I left.”

“Too deeply. I could not wake her for Prime or Terce.” Suora Umiliana’s tone is sharp. “I feared that God might have taken her to Him in the night.”

“It was my duty to settle her. In my experience, when a body is warm and breathing it is easy enough to tell life from death.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt your medicinal skills, Suora Zuana. But I am concerned for her soul …and it is impossible to bring God’s comfort to a young woman who can barely sit up, let alone kneel.”

“Sisters, sisters, we are all weary, and it does no good to anyone to find fault with each other. Suora Zuana, you are to be thanked for calming her. The convent needed its rest. And Suora Umiliana, as novice mistress you have, as always, done all that could be asked of you. This novice is given to us as a challenge, and we must do what we can for her.”

The two nuns bow their heads in obedience to their abbess’s voice. It is early afternoon, and they are gathered in her outer chamber. The room is heated by a wood fire, but outside of its immediate orbit the air remains bitterly cold. The abbess herself sits with a rabbit-fur cape around her shoulders, leather shoes, newly tooled, peeking out from under spread robes. She is forty-three years of age but looks younger. Recently, Zuana has noticed, a few wispy curls have been allowed to escape from under her wimple, and her face is softened by them. While there are those who might suspect such attention to worldly detail as vanity, Zuana sees it more as a reflection of how fastidious she is with everything, from the painted finish on the gesso religious figures that the convent produces for sale to the pastoral care of her flock. Besides, God and fashion sit more easily together than those outside might imagine, and the sisters of Santa Caterina absorb the latest styles with the same appetite with which their choir voices explore the latest complexities of polyphony. In this way, while they may be cloistered, they are still true daughters of their fashionable, musical city.

“So. Let us consider the young soul we are dealing with. Your thoughts first, Suora Zuana. How did you find her?”

“Angry.”

“Yes. Well, that much we could all hear. What else?”

“Afraid. Sad. Outraged. There was a lot of spirit.”

“Though little of it directed toward our Savior, I would assume.”

“No. I think it safe to say she does not enter with a vocation.”

“Ah, always the diplomat with words, Zuana.” She laughs, and one of the curls dances on her forehead. It is not surprising that she is admired by the young as well as the old, since her style combines elements of the benign elder sister along with those of the strict mother. “Did she have anything to say on the matter?”

“She told me that the vows came from her mouth but not her heart.”

“I see.” The abbess pauses. “Those were the actual words she used?”

“Yes.”

At Zuana’s side, Suora Umiliana sighs heavily, as if this is a burden she is already shouldering. “I feared as much during the ceremony. She was opening her mouth but I could barely hear any words.”

“Well, if she was coerced, she gave no indication of it when I met her with her father. Had she been beaten, do you think, Zuana?”

Zuana feels the body again, soft and heavy in her arms. There had been no sign of wounds, or none that the girl herself seemed aware of. “I …I am not sure, but I think not.”

“Suora Umiliana. What were your impressions?”

The novice mistress clasps her hands together, as if asking for help before she speaks. In contrast to the abbess, she is a well-padded woman whose wimple is fixed so tight it seems to have impacted into her features, squashing them ever more closely together, her cheeks like puff pastry and her mouth small and puckered, with a covering of wispy white hairs across her upper lip and chin. She must have been young once, but Zuana cannot remember a time when she looked any different. While she is a ferocious shepherd of her novice flock, few pass through her hands without gaining some sense of Christ’s majesty, and the older sisters who go to her looking for spiritual respite report that beneath her crumpled exterior she has a soul as smooth as an unpacked bolt of silk. There are times when Zuana has felt something akin to envy for the simplicity of her certainty, though in such a close community it does not do to dwell on what one does not have.

“I agree with Suora Zuana. There is a great storm in her. When we undressed her after the ceremony her face was set like a black mask. I would not be surprised if her education has been directed more toward vanity than spirit.”

“If that is so, it will come as a surprise to her family,” the abbess says, fielding the implied rebuke to her judgment gently. “They have an excellent name in Milan. One of the best.”

“Also she didn’t sing—or even open her mouth—at Compline.”

“Perhaps she is unfamiliar with the texts,” Zuana says softly. “Not everybody knows them when they arrive.”

“Even those with no voice are able to read the words aloud,” Umiliana says tartly, in what may or may not be a reference to Zuana, who everyone knows arrived tone deaf and ignorant of everything but her remedies. “We were told that her singing was a marvel. Suora Benedicta has been beside herself, waiting for her to arrive.”

“Indeed she has.” The abbess smiles. “Though our dear choir mistress is no stranger to such a …heightened state, glory be to God, and the welfare of the convent is dear to her. The wedding of the duke’s sister already brings noble audiences into our church, and it would be a fine thing if this new young songbird could find her voice in time for the Feast of Saint Agnes and Carnival. Which I am sure she will.” Her voice is now as deliberately soothing as the novice mistress’s is agitated. “We have come through these heavy seas before. It was barely two summers ago that young Carità spent her first weeks soaked in tears. And look at her now: the most eager seamstress in the convent.”

Umiliana frowns and her face collapses further into itself. In her eyes noble weddings bring only distraction, and Suora Carità’s dexterity with her embroidery needle is as much about fashion as the solace of prayer. This is not, however, the time to mention such things.

“Madonna Abbess? If I might suggest …?” She keeps her eyes to the ground, so that unless the abbess sees fit to interrupt her she will go on anyway. “I would like to separate her from the rest of the novices for a while. That way she will have time to contemplate her rebellion, and her intransigence will not infect others.”

“Thank you for that thought, Suora Umiliana.” The abbess’s smile is immediate and full. “I am confident, however, that under your tutelage such a thing would not happen. And isolation at this stage might agitate rather than calm her.” She pauses. Zuana drops her eyes. She has witnessed it before, this quiet battle of authority between the two women. “Indeed, I think perhaps we should leave any further instruction until she has recovered from the effects of Suora Zuana’s potion.”

Zuana feels Umiliana stiffen, though her expression remains impassive. Within the rule of Saint Benedict, the first degree of humility is obedience without delay. “As you wish, Madonna Chiara.”

“I think at this stage nothing of what happened last night need go any farther than these walls. With all the dictates and instructions from the last meetings of the council at Trento, our dear bishop has far more important things on his plate than a rebellious novice. Perhaps you might make that clear to any novices who have family visiting, Suora Umiliana.”

The novice mistress bows her head, then hesitates, waiting for a sign from Zuana that the two nuns will leave the room together.

“Oh—and Suora Zuana, would you stay for a moment longer? I have dispensary business to discuss with you.”

ZUANA KEEPS HER head down until the door closes. When she looks up, the abbess is rearranging her skirts and drawing her cape farther around her. “Are you cold? You could come closer to the fire.”

Zuana shakes her head. Lack of sleep is beginning to overcome her, and she needs the chill to keep her mind alert.

“Perhaps you should tell me about the draft.”

“It is possible that I put too much poppy syrup in it.” She remembers her father’s words. “A few extra drops is a little, but it can be a lot.”

“Well, do not blame yourself too fiercely. She was making an awful din, and I doubt even Suora Umiliana’s prayers could have quieted her on their own.”

“I did say psalms while the draft was taking effect.”

“You did? Which ones?”

“And they cry unto God in their trouble: Who delivereth them out of their distress—”

“—For He maketh the storm to cease, so that the waves thereof are still: and He bringeth them to their haven”. Her voice joins in, melodious and soft. “One hundred and seven. A great solace and very apt. Are you sure you are not cold? Did you rest?”

“A few hours before Prime. Enough.”

The abbess looks at her for a while. “So. It seems we have a problem. Do you think we are looking at greensickness?”

Zuana frowns. It is a slippery illness, greensickness, since although it arrives with the onset of menstruation, many of its symptoms—rage, despair, excessive exhilaration—can come naturally to young women and pass without any treatment at all. “No. I believe she is just angry and frightened.”

“Is there anything else I should know?”

“Only that she thinks her dowry was a bribe to get us to accept her.”

“Oh! There is hardly a dowry that isn’t a bribe these days, whoever the husband. She would need to be a simpleton not to know that. Still, she is right about its size. The city agent says the rent on the commercial properties alone will bring in an extra hundred ducats a year—which makes it a substantial sum indeed.”

Substantial enough to make the vote in chapter unanimous when the abbess had announced it. Honor, breeding, a fat dowry, and a superior choir voice. What reason could there have been for refusing her? Did it matter that much if she needed a little coaxing? Hadn’t most of them? While it might damage their sense of charity to admit it, there was a certain satisfaction to be had from watching others pass through the same flame.

Zuana waits. The silence grows. With Umiliana gone they are comfortable in each other’s presence, these two brides of Christ. They have known each other for many years and have more in common than at first glance it might appear. Though one was born to the veil, with all the appetite for politics and gossip that convent life entails, and the other was unwillingly inducted, they both have a leaning to the life of the mind as much as the spirit and an enjoyment of the challenges that come with it. It was a bond forged early, when a newly appointed assistant novice mistress befriended an angry grieving novice and helped her through the tempests of convent entrance.

Since Suora Chiara’s elevation, the strength of their connection has loosened, as it must, given the shift in their relative status. No abbess who cares for her flock should be seen to show favoritism, and as head of her family faction in the convent she has support enough to call on should she need advice. Nevertheless, Zuana suspects there are times when Chiara mourns the freedom she enjoyed before the weight of such responsibility, just as Zuana herself misses the informality, even the companionship, that they once shared. Whatever the abbess chooses to say now, they both know Zuana’s lips will remain closed. With plants and invalids as her closest companions, whom would she tell anyway?

“Her father insisted that she had been bred for the veil.” She clicks her tongue. It is a sound Zuana recognizes well; it comes when she is frustrated with herself. “He made a most convincing case for Ferrara as a better home for her than Milan. Certainly her voice will be better used here. It seems that Cardinal Borromeo is turning out to be more of a reformer than the pope himself. From what I hear, if he has his way all the nuns of Milan will be singing plainchant with barely a few organ notes for accompaniment.” She laughs. “Imagine how our city would react to that! Half of our benefactors would desert us immediately. Though I daresay you would find the settings easier to follow,” she adds, almost mischievously.

Zuana smiles. When it comes to the glory of music, her reputation for having cloth ears is well known, and over the years she has grown used to the teasing. “I still don’t understand. Was her father hiding the truth? Was she really expecting marriage and not the veil?”

“If she was, I have heard nothing about it.” The abbess gives a sharp sigh. While her information is extensive in church matters, Milan is a long way away when it comes to domestic gossip, and clearly she is worried that she might have missed something. “There is another daughter, younger. To marry them both he would need a fortune. Eight hundred is a fine dowry for a nun but it wouldn’t buy much on the Milan marriage market. What? You look surprised.”

“No. I …I was thinking how much my father’s estate paid.”

“Ah, well, that was a long time ago and you came cheaply,” the abbess says bluntly, but with good humor. “ Good family over bad fortune, I think was the phrase.” She smiles broadly. “Though I recall you had reservations enough when you first arrived.”

Reservations. It is a cunning thing, convent language, full of words that smother as they try to smooth. Zuana, bred on the precision of her father’s use of words, has never adapted well to it. “Yes. A few.”

No doubt they are both thinking of the same moment: a great trunk deposited outside the main convent gate, so packed with a famous father’s books that the servant sisters could not carry it inside without help from the city porters, who, in turn, were not allowed to cross farther than the entrance. And alongside the trunk his one and only child, a young woman, her face disfigured with grief, refusing point-blank to take a step farther without it. Such was the impasse that a small crowd had gathered to watch. The drama had been ended only by the intervention of the energetic, newly appointed assistant novice mistress, one Suora Chiara, who suggested that they push the trunk half in and half out of the gatehouse and then unload the heaviest books into wheelbarrows brought from the gardens.

It had been nobody’s fault directly. The truth was that there had been no time to arrange anything. Her father was barely cold in his grave, yet his house was cleared and she, as part of his estate, was being walled up for her own protection. What other option was there? A single woman living on her own in a house with no immediate family to absorb her? Impossible. Marriage? Which man in his right mind would take on a twenty-three-year-old virgin with a dowry of forbidden knowledge and hands stinking of the distillery? Even had there been one willing, she would have refused him. No. This young woman wanted what she could not have: her old life back, the freedom of her father’s house, the satisfaction of their work, and the pleasure of his company and knowledge.

How long do you think it will take for the maggots and the worms to regenerate my body, Faustina? I would very much like to know that. It is the greatest pity I did not train you as a gravedigger. You could have eavesdropped on the process for me.

Sixteen years next All Saints’ Day; surely his body would have given birth to a commonwealth of worms by now.

“Still, you are well settled now.”

She says it as a statement rather than a question. The fire cracks open a log in the grate, and the wood spits a shower of fireworks into the air.

“In fact”—the abbess pauses—“there might be some who would almost envy you—would see in your way of life things that are not so easy in the world beyond the walls.”

They have not referred to this for a while, the two of them: how when the wind of church reform blew into Ferrara, it brought trouble even to those within the university; instances of men, scholars who sat at her father’s table or taught alongside him, who had been forced to make choices between certain books and the purity of their faith. Zuana has often wondered how he would have dealt with it, the many ways he would have convinced them, for in his world there was nothing in nature that was not part of God’s divinity and vice versa, and he had never done anything to offend or deny either. As it was, he had been saved the ordeal. A rich life and a timely death. They might all wish for as much for their tombstones.

“You are right, Madonna Chiara, I am as fortunate as I am content.” She pauses. The civic atmosphere is milder now. Nevertheless, the chest under her bed remains heavier in response to the stories told, and there are some books that she consults only while others are asleep. “And as diligent.” What is not known about cannot be taken away—or cause distress to those whose job it might be to prohibit it.

“I am pleased to hear it.” The abbess smiles, sitting more upright and smoothing her skirts. It is another gesture that Zuana has come to recognize: the abbess drawing attention to her own authority. “So: how was the rest of the convent last night?” Even her voice is changed. Whatever closeness there has been between them is ended. “Suora Clementia was in good voice, I heard.”

“She …she is eager for Our Lord’s coming and seems convinced that it will happen during the hours of darkness.”

“So I gather. Last week the night-watch sister says she found her roaming the second cloisters singing psalms. Perhaps we would do better to restrain her further during the night.”

“I fear that would make it worse. If you allow it, I will keep a closer watch on her.”

“Just as long as you do not interfere with the watch sister. I have better things to do than adjudicate territorial squabbles.”

“Also …I stopped by Suora Magdalenas cell.” Since they are back to convent business, Zuana has her own flock to take care of. “I think that, given her condition, she would be more comfortable in the infirmary now.”

“Your charity is exemplary. However, as you know, Suora Magdalena made her views clear some time ago. She has no wish to be moved, and it is our duty to respect that.” Her tone is a little sterner now. “Anything else I should be informed of?”

Zuana sees again the novice’s sheaf of papers tucked fast into the breviary, also the limping figure emerging from a cell that is not her own. She hesitates. The line between gossip and necessary information has never come easily to her.

“I broke the rule of silence and squandered words,” she says, deciding on her own misdemeanor rather than those of others.

“More than was necessary for the bringing of comfort?”

“I—perhaps a few.”

“Then it is just as well that you were about God’s business.” The abbess, if she has registered the hesitation, says nothing about it.

“I also came to chapel without my breviary.”

“Did you?” Her surprise sounds convincing enough, though they both knew she noted it at the time. There is a pause. “Anything more?”

Zuana hesitates. “Only the usual things.”

“You still spend as much time talking with your father as you do with God?”

Though her tone is gentler, Zuana registers the question almost as an intrusion. When they were sisters together, rather than abbess and choir nun, such confessions had come more easily. “Maybe a little less. He …he helps me with my work.”

The abbess gives a sigh, as if deciding what or how much more to say. “Of course it is your duty to honor him as any child would a parent—indeed, more so since he was both your mother and your father. But it is also your duty to honor the Lord in front of and above all others. Forget your people and your father’s house. Remember the vow you took? For He is the font of all life on this earth and the next, and it is only through Him that you will find a true and lasting place in the mercy of His infinite love.”

For the first time, the silence between them has an edge within it. Zuana finds it strange how she speaks like this sometimes. While it is an abbess’s business to care for her flock, there is something in her manner these days, as though God’s counsel were a quality she now receives firsthand through the grace of her position, naturally, effortlessly, like a young plant rising up toward the sun. While everyone accepts that her elevation to abbess was more about the influence of her family than the state of her soul, recently even her opponents have been heard to speak of a growing humility. Knowing her as well as she does, Zuana has assumed it is politics, the need to appeal to the whole convent and not simply to those who naturally agree with her. But there are moments now when even she is not sure.

“You must live more in the present and less in the past, Zuana. It is for your own good. It will make you a better—more contented—nun and bring you closer to God. Which is what we must all strive for.”

“I shall work on myself and take my faults to Father Romero,” Zuana says, dropping her eyes to hide her irritation.

“Ah, yes, Father Romero. Well, I …I am sure he will be able to guide you,” the abbess says coolly.

The fact is, they both know Father Romero could not guide a mouse out of a goblet of wine. With the storms of heretic propaganda about lascivious priests and nuns poisoning the air, such confessors have become almost fashionable in recent years: cautious bishops recruiting the most elderly into convent service, men in such advanced stages of decrepitude that they are oblivious not only to their own desires but also to any that might seep out from cloistered women, some of whom might appreciate, even seek out, a little male attention.

Father Romero avoids any such temptation by being asleep most of the time. In fact it is a current joke among the novices that, when he is not propped up in the confessional box, he spends his life upside down in the church rafters, so great is his resemblance to a shrunken bat.

“I believe he is at his best in the early morning,” the abbess adds quietly. It seems the joke has reached her ears, too.

Zuana bows her head. “Then I will make sure that is when I go. Thank you, Madonna Abbess.”

The audience is ended. She is halfway to the door when Chiara calls her back. She turns.

“You did the convent a fine service last night. Your remedies are their own kind of prayer. I am sure Our Lord understands that better than I.” She pauses, as if she is unsure of what she is going to say. “Oh, and speaking of remedies, I have an order from our bishop for lozenges and ointments. The festivities around the wedding have taken their toll on his voice and his digestion. Can we dispatch him some within the next few weeks?”

“I …I am not sure.” Zuana shakes her head. “The convent is drowning in winter phlegm and the melancholy of black bile. To do so I would need to put his care above those in my own.”

“And if you could be excused a few of the daily offices over the coming weeks?”

Zuana appears to consider the offer. While it takes a particularly rebellious nun to cross her abbess on spiritual decisions, it is accepted that each convent officer has her own sphere of expertise and must defend her territory when she sees fit. In reality, such negotiations are part of the responsibility of command on both sides. How else would a good abbess hone the skills of arbitration required to keep a community of almost a hundred women living together in peace and harmony? Over her four years, Madonna Chiara has developed considerable talent in this area.

“If that were the case, then yes, I think it could be done.”

“Very well. Take the time you need, but leave word of when you will not be in chapel so it will not be noted as a fault. I wonder, do you think she could help you in this?”

“Who?”

“Our troublesome novice,” she says, ignoring Zuana’s deliberate slowness.

“I …I have no need of help. It would take me much longer to instruct someone than to do it myself.”

“Nevertheless, she must be put to work in some way, and you and she have already established some connection.” The abbess hesitates, as if this is an idea that has just come to her and is only being thought through as she speaks. “Once I have seen her I shall send her to you. You may show her around the convent and then find her something useful to do in the dispensary. She is bright enough and may even find some pleasure in the instruction.” And now there is a ghost of smile on her lips. “Or you in the giving of it.”

Zuana thinks briefly of the drawings on her desk and the notes needed on the varying strengths of the drafts, not to mention her coveted solitude, which allows her father’s voice as her hidden companion. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. She bows her head. “This is my penance?”

“Not at all. No, this is a gift rather than a penance. For both of you. For penance you will forgo dinner tonight and eat scraps from the table. There. I think that completes the matter.”

They hold each other’s eyes for a moment, and then the abbess turns to the brushing of her gown again.