And little Caterina was puzzled. She had been for six months with the nuns of Santa Lucia, and Santa Lucia, with its fasting and strict observances, would seem what a convent should be. Here in the Murate there were amusement and laughter; the nuns were highly-born ladies, gay rather than earnest. It might seem to that logical little mind that, for all its ceremonies an outward show of piety, the Convent of the Murate was less holy than that of Santa Lucia; and it was very important what this little girl thought of the Murate, for one day she was to make a grand marriage and hold a very high position in the world. She must be made to understand that the Murate’s way of life was, in its comfort, as godly as that of the Santa Lucia its austerity.
‘You are a little puzzled by our ways here, Duchessina?’ asked the Reverend Mother.
‘I am very happy here, my Mother.’
She was a little diplomat already. It was certainly very important that she should be made to see the Murate point of view.
‘You never saw such ceremonies as you witnessed yesterday when you were at Santa Lucia. Yet, in that convent, the strictest rules of Holy Church were adhered to. Here, you think, we eat meat on Fridays; our services are beautiful; our church full of colour; we do not wear coarse linen; you think we are not so forgetful of the vanities of the world as our sisters of Santa Lucia.’
‘Oh no, Reverend Mother.’
But the Reverend Mother continued: ‘We wash our bodies, and that the nuns of Santa Lucia would tell you is a sin.’ Caterina was silent.
‘And yet,’ said the Reverend Mother, ‘it is the Santa Lucia that has been visited with the plague, and the Murate is the only unpolluted spot in Florence.
That is a miracle, my little one. Let us pray now. Let us give our thanks to the saints for showing us that our way of life is the one which has given them most pleasure.’
The Reverend Mother watched the grave little face while Caterina murmured her prayers. The child was learning the first of the lessons the Murate had to teach her.
Caterina loved to sit stitching at the tapestry with those who were her friends. There were hardly any in the convent who were not her friends; but those nuns whose families supported the Government felt it their duty to treat the little Medici with some reserve.
As they stitched at the altar cloth which they were making, they talked.
Caterina loved to speak of Ippolito, to tell the nuns of his charm and his gaiety and his chivalry; she even confided in one or two of them the hope that she would one day marry him. She knew that he was alive. She could not say how she knew, but she was certain of it. ‘It is something inside me that tells me this is so,’ she tried to explain.
She was happy in the Murate― as happy as she could be without Ippolito.
And with that peaceful feeling within which told her she would see Ippolito again one day she felt that she might enjoy these pleasant hours. There was one summer’s day as she sat at work with the others on this altar cloth that a conversation took place which she was to remember all her life.
Lucia, a garrulous young nun, was talking of miracles which had been performed in the convent.
‘Once,’ said Lucia, ‘the Murate was very poor indeed, and there was great trouble throughout Florence. The city was poor as the Murate, and the citizens thought to beg relief from the Impruneta Virgin. So they brought the statue into the city and every convent was expected to make some offering to the Virgin.
Now, here in the Murate, we had nothing at all, and we did not know what to do.’
‘Ah!’ said Sister Margaretta. ‘You are going to tell the story of the Black Virgin’s Cloak. I have heard it many times.’
‘Doubtless you have, and doubtless our Duchessina has never heard it.’
‘I have not,’ said Caterina. ‘Nor has little Maria.’
Little Maria was the novice whose ceremonial entrance Caterina recently witnessed. ‘We should like to hear, should we not, Maria?’
Maria said she would like to hear the story of the Black Virgin’s Cloak.
‘Well,’ went on Lucia, ‘the Reverend Mother summoned all the sisterhood to her and she said, “Do not despair. We will give the Impruneta Virgin a cloak.
It will be a cloak such as has never been seen before in Florence, a cloak of rich brocade, lined with ermine and embroidered with gold.” The nuns were aghast, for how could they in their poverty give such a mantle? But there was about the Reverend Mother a look of such holiness that there were some, as they declared afterwards, who knew a miracle was about to be performed.
‘Listen to me,” said the Reverend Mother. “This mantle shall be made through prayer. For six yards of brocade three Psalters in honour of the Holy Trinity shall be sung; fifty psalms for each yard with Gloria tibi Domine, and meditations on the great favours Mary received from the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. For the ermine skins seven thousand times the Ave Maria; for the embroidered crowns sixty-three times the Rosary; for a golden clasp seven hundred times the O Gloriosa Domina; for a golden button seven hundred times the Alma Redemptoris Mater; for embroidered roses seven hundred the Ave Santissima Maria. ” Well, there were many prayer to be said for each item that went into the making of the cloak; and so, in addition to other duties, the nuns of the Murate must say these thousands of prayers. It meant hours and hours of devotions.’
Caterina leaned forward. ‘But even then,’ she said, ‘they would have no mantle to lay at the feet of the Virgin, for you need brocade and ermine and silver and gold for such a mantle, and these were only prayers.’
‘But you have not heard all, Duchessina. On the day when the gifts were to be given, many people were gathered in the piazza before the municipal palace.
The great figure of the Virgin was placed there, waiting to receive the gifts; and gifts there were in plenty― beautiful gold and silver and precious stones. And there stood the Reverend Mother and sisters of the Murate empty-handed, but faces shining, for in their minds they saw the beautiful mantle that was made of prayers. And then― what do you think? Two men came forward, and at the feet of the Virgin, on behalf of the Murate, they said, they laid a mantle of brocade lined with ermine, embroidered with roses in exactly the detail the Reverend Mother had described to her nuns. The two men were angels, and that was the miracle of the Virgin’s Cloak. There, Duchessina. What do you think of that? I might say that from that time the Murate passed into prosperity, for the tale spread and many rich ladies came to share the life of the convent, and many donations were given. It was a great miracle.’
‘Oh, it was wonderful!’ cried Maria; but Caterina said nothing.
‘Well, Duchessina?’ asked Lucia.
‘I think,’ said Caterina, ‘that it was a very good miracle, and I think that the two angels were two men.’
‘Two men! You mean it was no miracle?’
Caterina’s solemn dark eyes surveyed the nuns. She felt old and wise in spite of her youth. ‘It was a miracle,’ she said, and as she spoke she felt that this was how the present Reverend Mother would have explained it to her, ‘because the Holy Virgin would have put the idea of the cloak into that Reverend Mother’s head. “Make a mantle of prayers,” she would have been told, “but at the same time have one mode embroidered with jewels. Let two men appear as angels and lay it at my feet. For if you made such a mantle yourself, rich as it is, it would please the people so much as one made of prayers and presented by two whom they could think of as angels.’