Sarah Dunant - Sacred Hearts

The girl’s eyes lock on Zuana’s as she swallows. The taste is strong and makes her choke, her throat raw already from the yelling. If that talk of a nightingale was not another lie, she will need a soothing syrup to coax her singing voice back out.

She finishes the draft and puts her head back against the wall. The tears keep flowing, but with less noise. Zuana watches carefully, the healer in her now alert to the progress of the drug.

Hear my prayer, O Lord, and let my crying come unto Thee.

When was the last time she had to use this level of dosage? Two—no, three—years ago, on a girl with an equally fat dowry but a hidden history of fits. Her first-night panic had unleashed a seizure so violent it had taken three sisters to hold her down. Had the family been more powerful the convent might have been forced to keep her, for though epilepsy is one of the few recognized causes for the annulment of vows, that, like many things, depends on levels of influence. As it was, Madonna Chiara had successfully negotiated her return, along with a portion of her dowry somewhat reduced for their trouble. Such was the diplomatic acumen of Santa Caterina’s current abbess— though what she might do with this recalcitrant young spirit was yet to be seen.

Hide not Thy face from me in the day of my distress.

The voice inside Zuana’s head grows into a whisper.

“Through the noise of my groaning my bones cleave to my flesh”

When she thinks back on it later, she cannot remember what makes her say this particular psalm, though, once started, the words are apposite enough.

“I am like a pelican in the wilderness. Like an owl of the desert. I watch and am as a sparrow that sitteth alone on the house top. ”

“It’s not working.” The girl shakes herself upright, flailing, angry again.

“Yes, yes, it is. Stop fighting and just breathe.”

“I have eaten ashes as if it were bread and mingled drink with weeping.”

The novice gives a little cry, then slumps back down again.

“For Thou hast set me up and cast me down. My days fade away like shadows, and I am withered like grass. ”

She groans and closes her eyes.

It won’t be long now. Zuana moves closer, to provide support when she starts to slide. The girl pulls her arms tight around her knees, then after a while drops her head down on them. It is a gesture of tiredness as much as defeat.

“But Thou, O God, endurest for ever: and Thy remembrance throughout all generations.”

Outside, the night silence renews itself, moving out through the cloisters, across the courtyard, nosing its way under the doorframes. The convent lets out the breath it has been holding and slides toward sleep. The girl’s body starts to lean toward Zuana’s.

“So will He regard the prayers of the destitute, and He will not despise their call.”

It is over; the rebellion has ended. Zuana registers a certain sadness mixed with relief, as if the words of the psalm might not after all be enough to guarantee comfort. She chides herself for the unworthiness of the thought. Her job is not to question but to settle.

And it is happening. The girl will be unconscious soon enough. Zuana glances around the cell.

At the entrance to the second chamber is a heavy chest. With cunning packing a nun might carry half a world within it. Certainly she would have her own linen; those whose dowries buy double cells sleep on satin sheets and goose-feather pillows. The bed frame can be turned upright without help, but even with the remains of the mattress in place she will need thicker covers. Her body, no longer heated by the force of her distress, will grow clammy, and what started as outrage might turn into fever.

“For He maketh the storm to cease, so that the waters thereof are still.”

She moves the girl gently back against the wall and goes over to the chest. The lid releases a wave of beeswax and camphor. A set of silver candlesticks lies across a bed of fabrics, a velvet cloak and linen shifts next to a wooden Christ child doll. Farther down there is a rug, thick Persian weave, and next to it a handsome Book of Hours, the cover elaborately embossed, newly commissioned no doubt for her entrance. She can think of a few sisters who will find themselves wrestling with the sin of envy when they see this in chapel. As she picks it up, it falls open to a lavishly illustrated text of the Magnificat: intricate figures and animals entwined in swirling tendrils of gold leaf, shimmering in the candlelight. And tucked inside, like a page marker, some sheets of paper covered in handwriting. Had they been read and passed as acceptable? Or did the inspecting gate sister perhaps miss them in among such riches? It would not be the first time.

“What are you doing?” She is alert again now, head jerking up despite the pull of the drug. “Those are mine.”

Mine. It is a word she will have to learn to use less in the coming months. The girl’s panic answers Zuana’s question. Not prayers, evidently. Poems, perhaps? Even letters from a loved one, as precious as any prayer …The light is too dim to make out any words. It is better that way. What she cannot read she cannot be expected to condemn.

She thinks of her own chest and how the books inside it saved her life all those years ago. What if someone had seen fit to confiscate them? She would have needed more than a sleeping draft to dull the pain.

“You have a rich life in here.” She shuts the book and slips it back into the chest. “And you are lucky to have these rooms,” she says, pulling out a piece of heavy velvet cloth. “The sister who lived here before you kept court some evenings between dinner and Compline. Served wine and biscuits and played music, sang court madrigals even.”

She moves the bed upright and hauls the remains of the mattress back onto the frame.

“From the outside the walls are forbidding, I know. But once you get used to it, life in here need not be the desert you fear it to be.”

“Iss your job to tend ma body, no ma soul.” Though she is still propped against the wall, her eyes are half closed now and the words fall away into one another. While the spirit may be unwilling, the flesh at least is now weak.

“And they are glad because they are at rest and He bringeth them to a haven wherein they would be. ”

Zuana lays the coverlet carefully over the open mattress so she will not have the worst of the horsehair sticking into her skin. When she is finished the girl’s eyes are closed again.

She pulls her up by the armpits, putting one of the girl’s arms over her own shoulder and supporting her around the waist to steady her as they move. Her body is as plump as a partridge and heavy now with the drug. The remains of a perfumed oil she must have used that morning are mixed in with the sourness of her sweat. She feels her breath on her cheek, tangy from the poppy syrup. Ah, along with the clubfooted and the squinty-eyed, Our Lord takes the most lovely of young women into His care to keep them from the defilement of the world beyond. She herself had never been so desirable. Not that such things had mattered to her.

“I am no …sleep,” she slurs defiantly, as she falls on the bed.

“Hush.” Zuana wraps the coverlet over her, tucking it tightly underneath like a swaddling cloth.

“Give thanks unto God, for He is good and His mercy endureth for ever.”

But no one is listening to her anymore.

She maneuvers the girl’s body onto her side so that her face is tilted to the mattress, as experience has taught her. Her father once treated a violent patient who—unbeknownst to him—had prefaced the draft with an excess of wine. Halfway through the night he retched up some of it and almost drowned in his own vomit as he lay unconscious on his back. Trial and observation. The true path to learning.