‘Oh, they gave me plenty,’ said Cousin Caterina, with a benign smile. She was used to fasting.
Cosima ate. She had been on a low diet and this was a stew with roborant herbs and spices.
The widow took plate and spoon, and stowed them about her person. As Cosima finished the wine, she asked her, ‘What would you do, cousin, if Sister came in while you were walking?’
Cosima unfocused her eyes. She bore, of a sudden, quite a resemblance to Benno at his most vacant. ‘Like that. I shall pretend I don’t know where I am.’ She handed over the cup and lay back.
The widow gave a soundless chuckle. ‘Cousin Jacopo didn’t get his riches by being a fool,’ she said. ‘You’re his daughter.’
Cosima’s small face under the cropped hair became fierce. ‘That Bandini woman shall not get the better of me.’
Cousin Caterina nodded and turned to go. The door opened, no warning tap being necessary for a drugged girl, and Mother Luca stood there. Her hand still on the latch, she stared at them. Cosima lay as one dead, her eyes closed, her face washed of meaning, and the widow stumbled forward, catching herself from a fall by grabbing the inner side of the latch, jarring Mother Luca’s grasp of it. Her eyes showed the whites hideously.
‘Oh Mother, at last. I went to the shrine… I felt so strange… How did this girl come to be in my cell? Is she dead?’
Mother Luca’s face expressed quite plainly that she would have been indifferent had the widow herself been in extremis. She summoned up a smile that gave new meaning to the words ‘lip service’ and stuffed her hands in her sleeves as if to spare the widow a box on the ear.
‘Go to your cell, daughter. This is not it. Go to your cell and remain there. I will send you medicine to calm you. This child is gravely ill, but, if she is not disturbed, she will not die.’
The widow, almost whispering her apologies, her thanks, made her way out, helping herself along by the wall as Mother Luca stood aside to let her go. The door was shut. She could only speculate on what Mother Luca was making of Cosima’s state. The medicine she should have taken was in the chamberpot and suitably diluted.
Once in her cell, she listened acutely, but the drone from next door overcame all other sounds. It would be unwise to visit Cosima again until the final time.
The day drew early to its ending. Dark clouds slowly obscured what remained of the daylight, which in these cells was never strong. Doors opened and shut. A distant chanting made itself heard, drawing nearer, and there was an impression rather than an actual noise, of a lot of people in the corridor outside. Someone pressed against the door. A small bell rang, and the widow opened her door and knelt, and remained so. The sisters were escorting the priest who brought the Sacrament to Sister Benedicta.
Nothing could be better.
Sister Ancilla appeared, her veil a little awry as if she had come through a press of people, and looking more distracted than was compatible with the Rule. She carried in both hands a horn cup, rather full. She gave hurried instructions that this medicine was to be drunk immediately and that the widow must lie down and rest. She did not stay to see it drunk but turned to collect a candle from a sister waiting at the door, who carried two. The door closed. The widow, sniffing the cup, raised her eyebrows and slowly nodded, pursing her lips: a draught for meddlers indeed. Father Vincenzio might have had to look in here when he had finished in Sister Benedicta’s room.
A shuffling next door initiated a general exodus, the procession reversed. The widow, opening her door a minute crack, watched Sister Benedicta, her bed carried by her sisters, on her way to the chapel in a dazzle of candlelight. As they processed into the dormitory, the widow was out of her own door and along to Cosima’s.
The girl lay still, eyes shut.
‘Cosima.’
The eyes opened and Cosima sat up; the eyes were brilliant even in the gloom.
‘She tried to wake me, but I pretended to be far gone. She took my pulse and I’m sure it was wrong. I hardly dared to breathe. I don’t think she was very satisfied. Do you think she would suspect?’
‘I don’t doubt it. As a doctor of medicine she knows what she is about. She sent me water hemlock in a dose of valerian. Waste no time talking. Benno’s waiting and he has horses ready.’
Cosima, standing up without having to grasp at her cousin for support, held out a fold of her shift in dismay. ‘I can’t go like this.’
Cousin Caterina turned aside and was busy with her own clothes. Cosima relaxed. Of course that would have been thought of. Then the door opened.
Mother Luca stood there. She saw Cosima standing, and she advanced. Then the door shut and Mother Luca seemed to disappear among Cousin Caterina’s flying wide sleeves and then to throw herself forward as though fainting, held up by the widow’s grip.
‘What happened?’ Cosima shrank from the woman whom the widow now laid down on her side, eyes closed, on the bed. ‘Is she ill?’
‘Quickly!’ Her cousin had whipped out from somewhere a strip of material very like a stocking and, amazingly, was gagging Mother Luca with it. Next, as Cosima still stared, off came the nun’s veil, wimple and cap, revealing a head as dark and cropped as her own and alarmingly vulnerable. The neck and chin showed that she was not a young woman, the planes of her face, that she had been a very beautiful one. She seemed unconscious; the face jolted as Cousin Caterina turned her over in the process of taking off more clothes.
‘Put these on.’
Cosima took the garments thrust at her and, half in a daze, began to put on stockings still warm, then to assemble the habit round her, drowning temporarily in the darkness as the tunic dropped over her head, tying strings at her waist, putting on the scapular, still shocked at Mother Luca’s immobility and vaguely conscious that parts of the habit she was assuming had been blessed and it was surely a sin to wear them. Mother Luca looked nothing like a nun by now, and the more secular she looked, the more it became credible that she was a Bandini.
‘Turn round.’
She turned, a puppet, and had the cap put on and the strings thrust into her hands to tie. Her cousin was now tearing her petticoat to make strips to bind Mother Luca — the Bandini woman — and fasten her to the bedstead. The covers were then pulled up to her nose, hiding even the gag.
Her cousin turned to her, took the strings of the cap she was fumbling with, gave them a professional twist and tucked them in; wound the linen of the wimple into place and pinned it, flung the veil over all and pinned that — holding the pins in her lips like any lady’s maid — and then led her to the door. Cosima glanced back for a second. Another Cosima lay there, just the closed eyes and the dark cropped head showing.
‘I had clothes for you; but those are better.’
Cosima was not strong yet. It was in a daze that she walked beside Cousin Caterina through some big room and out into the open air. Here, she was supported. Cousin Caterina leant over her. Anyone might think she, a nun, was holding up an ailing guest! They reached, at last, after crossing about a quarter mile of the great court, stables. There was Benno, ducking over her hand, hustled by Cousin Caterina. There was a dog who was for a moment Biondello. There were horses.
They were in the open, riding across heath and into trees. She was held in a steely arm against Cousin Caterina. It was not possible to hold things steady or clear in her mind, but she kept seeing Benno’s delighted face turned towards her. Summer at the villa, freedom, riding with dear scruffy Benno…
They were on a road. She saw countryside. Leaning against Cousin Caterina, she glanced down at the hand that held the reins. It was broad, muscular, with hair along the back, quite unmistakeably male.
Cosima sat upright, the horse sidled and her head swam. She looked at Cousin Caterina, who smiled. She looked at the face closely, in the noonday light strong and clear after the cells’ grey dimness.