Sarah Dunant - Sacred Hearts

“All these stages of behavior, these phases of the moon that she has passed through—for there has been some correlation between her mood swings and the moon’s cycles—have one thing in common: they have needed—no, demanded—and received our attention. Such symptoms are consistent with a most virulent form of greensickness, which though it can beset many young girls of her age, at its worst brings full-blown lunacy. Until this point, Santa Caterina has been mercifully free of it. I had some worry about this on that very first morning—Suora Zuana will no doubt remember that we discussed the possibility that the girl was sick rather than simply rebellious. I wrote then to her father to ask for further information. His reply was reassuring. And yet since then it has only grown worse rather than better—so much so it is surely no surprise that we have all, in some way or other, been influenced by it. For what we have been living through is the presence of a mad young woman who has dedicated her life to performance rather than piety.”

All this the abbess says slowly and with quiet conviction, leaving pauses every now and then so that you would think the words are somehow precious, fragile things that must be handled with care; either that, or they are so heavy one must hold them for a while in order to absorb them.

The message she offers is simple: a young woman has destroyed the equilibrium of the convent by dedicating herself to deceit rather than devotion. Very simple, in fact, yet it speaks to many of the nuns present.

Zuana looks out over the sea of faces. To the left of the room sit the novices, a group of young women overshadowed by Serafina up to now but who can perhaps feel vindicated for their occasional flashes of envy or lack of charity toward her. Could it be that they have been pious enough to suspect that she was a fraud all along? Close by, young Suora Eugenia is no doubt remembering how contented she had been as the convent songbird before Serafina opened her mouth at Vespers, and how lost and tortured she has become since.

On the converse bench Letizia hears again the girl’s sniping, angry tone, so different from her public piety, as they crossed the cloisters together to tend the chief conversa in her cell, while Candida thinks about all those evenings she spent brushing her hair, and how she can always tell the ones who yearn to be touched more, even when they seek to deny it.

In among the choir nuns, the twins, who have long since had to make do with being ignored, remember that once she tripped one of them up in her hurry to get to chapel and never apologized. Suora Benedicta thinks that though she composes for God, the young girl often seemed more interested in singing for her own pleasure, while Suora Federica knows she never really liked her, even though she felt compelled to pick her out for the first marzipan strawberry, and wishes now that she had put more wormwood into her penance food. Devout old Suora Agnesina reminds herself that she was never sure of her, even when Umiliana spoke so hotly about her emerging purity. Felicità, meanwhile, does not feel so bad about the resentment she has harbored toward Umiliana, whose time has been taken up with this shallow novice rather than other, more deserving sisters such as herself.

And Suora Umiliana? Well, Suora Umiliana is thinking and remembering a great number of things.

“Performance rather than piety. The noisy seeking of attention over the gentler business of living humbly inside God’s love. That has been a fear close to your heart, I know, Suora Umiliana, and one must say that in this you are right,” the abbess says, with a generosity that cannot help but draw attention to Umiliana’s own gullibility and failed judgment in this whole sordid business.

“We need to come back to the true path: Not to love strife. Not to love pride. Not to be jealous or entertain envy. To hate one’s own will. To love one’s neighbor as oneself and—”

And here she does not need to add—because each nun knows the words of the rule of Saint Benedict backward—and to obey the commands of the abbess in all things.

“In this way I am sure we will ride out the storm and return our convent to what it once was, a place of harmony and honest worship.”

The room is silent. It is a remarkable performance, and no one is more impressed than Zuana.

The bones of the plan, the central ingredients, were hers. But this …this elaboration …this decoration has come spinning out of the abbess’s own head, and its skill and cleverness amaze her. Here is a woman who cares so much for the reputation of her convent that she was willing to allow a young man to be killed to prevent scandal from coming upon them, but also a woman willing to forgo the chance of revenge on her most potent opponent in order to bring peace and reconciliation. For, as she well knows, only in that way can they hope to avoid interference from outside.

Zuana thinks back again to the rule of the order. The abbess is one to whom much hath been entrusted, from whom much will be required; the difficult and arduous task of governing souls and accommodating herself to a variety of characters, mingling gentleness with severity, so that she not only suffers no loss in the flock but may rejoice in the increase of a worthy fold.

Who else in this room could do it so well?

She lifts her hand gently.

“Yes, Suora Zuana? You have permission to speak.”

“I—well, I wonder, what are we to do with the novice now?”

The abbess sighs. “We must try our hardest to bring her back from her fasting madness into health and then address her spiritual state. The first, I think, falls to you.”

“I will do my best.” She bows her head. “But I must say that examining her in the infirmary just now, I found her to be in a grave state. In her lunacy she has been using the knife to harm herself in many ways alongside which she is emaciated unto starvation.”

“My dear Suora Zuana, every sister in this convent knows you will do whatever can be done. I shall ask Father Romero to go to her now. The rest is up to God. We shall pray for His guidance.”

THE NUNS OF Santa Caterina retire to their cells for prayer and private contemplation with an unexpected sense of peace and harmony. And as they kneel praying, long into the dark, there are those who swear they hear a voice coming out of the infirmary, the soaring notes of a young songbird, and though some fear it to be further madness, it is hard not to be seduced by its purity and wonder perhaps whether their prayers have been answered and this disturbed young woman is at last made welcome by God.

At the darkest part of that same night, long after Suora Zuana has bid good night to her patients, Clementia wakes to see a figure in the room, a figure she swears is that of the Virgin herself, for she comes on quiet footfall with a white veil over her face and the smell of flowers around her. She stands by the girl’s bed and immediately the novice sits up and prays as if she were not near death at all. Then the Virgin seems to lean over and kiss her and offer her the communion cup, from which she drinks deeply. The girl lies down again and, after praying for a while by her side, the figure leaves as quietly as she came in.

Clementia is known to be as mad as a field of spring lambs, yet when it is discovered, close on sunrise, that the girl has quietly died in the night, this account of hers moves like a soft breeze through the convent, bringing a sense of wonder and hope to all who hear it.

IN THE MIDST of death, however, life must go on, and a convent leading up to Easter is a busy place.

Letizia and Suora Zuana, who had been the ones to find the girl without pulse or any sign of life, take the body to the mortuary room behind the dispensary, where they wash and dress it for burial. In lieu of a public laying out, prayers are said in chapel. While everyone is mad with curiosity to see the corpse, it is the abbess’s duty to return the convent to normal life as soon as possible, and with her authority renewed she is obeyed without question.