Back at the bedside she helped the girl upright so she could sip it slowly.
“Ooh, I am dying.”
“No, you are not,” she said. “The problem is more that you are growing.”
Sometime next morning the girl passed small clots of black blood, followed not long after by a more recognizable menstrual flow.
“I should have realized.” Back in her room, she was almost too tired to undress. “How could I not realize? It was so simple.”
It is the simple that is sometimes hardest. That is why you have to continue to ask questions and keep looking.
Perhaps if I had had a mother, she wanted to say, but if she thought about this now she would have to accept the loss of two parents.
You did well enough. Go to bed now, Faustina. You need the sleep as much as your patient.
“No! Don’t go. Please don’t go.”
Do not worry. I will be here when you need me.
“BENEDICTA.” THE VOICE behind her in the dispensary is loud and real.
Zuana turns too suddenly, which causes her head to throb so that she has to steady herself to avoid falling. The novice mistress, Umiliana, is standing almost directly behind her, her cushion-fat cheeks red and veined from exposure to the winter winds.
“Deo gratias.” Has she been talking out loud to herself? Surely not.
“Do I disturb you, sister?” The older woman pauses. “I heard voices.”
“No. No, I”—Zuana stumbles, unsure of what or how much she has heard—“I was …praying. Is there something wrong?”
“A novice has been taken ill during instruction.”
“Who?”
“Angelica.”
“Angelica? She suffers with her lungs.”
“God has seen fit to afflict her that way, yes. But she bears it well.”
“I …I will come to her.” She turns back to the worktop as if to find something to give her, but the move makes her dizzy again.
“I would not worry yourself. She is recovered enough for a while. I have sent her to the chapel to pray”
But Zuana is thinking of how the infection might mix with the asthma and what they would do if the girl starts to find it hard to breathe. “It would be better if she were resting.”
“What? And make the chapel even emptier?”
She hesitates. It would help no one to have them bickering now. “It is only that the contagion moves more swiftly in places where we are gathered together.”
“So I have heard said. However, when it comes to the greater well-being of the convent, there is some disagreement as to what brings most relief.”
Zuana watches as the novice mistress’s gaze shifts away from her face down to the open books behind her on the worktop: woodcuts of the upper chest and respiratory system, with a commentary to the side of them. She is struck once again by the intensity of Umiliana’s concentration. It is no wonder that her novices find her so intimidating; it seems there is little, inside or outside the soul, that she does not notice.
“You use interesting prayer books, sister.”
“They are records. From a physician in Verona who dealt with an influenza similar to the one besetting us now.”
“And did he know the cause of it?”
Now that Zuana thinks about it, she cannot remember a time when the novice mistress has come to her in the dispensary like this. Certainly she does not need to be here. News of a novice’s illness could have been sent easily enough via a conversa.
“He had some idea, yes.”
“What was it?”
“He was of the opinion that it is connected with semina morborum.”
“Semina morborum? Bad seeds? What—that come from the ground?”
“No, they are all around us. In the air.”
“Where?” And Umiliana looks about her now with such innocent immediacy that Zuana can detect no hint of mockery.
“They are incorporeal and therefore invisible to the eye.”
“Then where do they come from?”
“They exist within nature.” As she says this she becomes suddenly aware of how ill she is now feeling.
“So they are created by God, then? On which day of creation did He make them?”
“I think there was not a particular day.” Maybe a vinegar and rue water cloth on her forehead would help. “The great Saint Augustine himself has this same idea within his work.” She will make up a further batch as soon Umiliana leaves. “Perhaps I have not explained it well.”
But it seems that the novice mistress is not that interested in leaving. “Well, I am only a simple nun. I do not have your …education in such things.” She pauses. “But I have another idea as to why such things happen. Of course, it is not as …newfangled as yours.”
As she says this she smiles, as if to show her business is not quarreling after all. Only it is hard to tell what she is really feeling, since when she smiles her eyes are swallowed up into cheek flesh.
Zuana leans back against the bench.
“You are sure I do not disturb you? I would not so presume if the welfare of the convent was not at stake.”
Zuana glances to the hourglass, which is pouring sand toward the end of her work hour. If the novice mistress has come simply to debate God’s place in medicine, she could have done it within chapter. It would not be the first time they had wrangled over such matters, and in chapter she could have been sure of having an audience to play to.
“No. You do not disturb me at all. Please, I would very much like to hear.”
Umiliana takes a step toward her now, as one might do if the intention was to share a special confidence. Her gaze slips over Zuana’s head to the wall of vials and pots behind her. My choir of cures, Zuana thinks, then checks herself. Never once has the novice mistress had recourse to them. Whatever pain she may encounter she keeps to herself. If that is strength, does that somehow make others’ suffering a weakness? Umiliana’s eyes move back to connect with her own. Certainly something is happening here, and she would do well to pay attention to it. She tries to concentrate.
“It seems to me that God may use such contagion for a purpose, sending it into people and places where He feels He is not worshipped properly.”
Their faces are close now. If the seeds are indeed turning more potent inside me, I must be careful not to breathe them out directly onto her, Zuana thinks. She looks away to the side. “Yes. Well, that …that can also be true.”
“Ah! So you are aware of it, too?”
“Of what?”
“The way He feels toward Santa Caterina. About what is happening here—how the convent is changing.”
“Changing? I …am not sure—”
“That night when Suora Imbersaga died, you did not sense something? You did not feel His blessed presence in the room?”
Certainly she had experienced something. “I …I felt His great compassion, that He had seen fit to end her suffering.”
“Oh, yes, indeed. But more than that. You did not feel that His taking her to Him was a sign of how He felt about Santa Caterina? That such a good soul would do better in His care?” And now she pulls back slightly. “You were much moved that night, Suora Zuana, I could tell. I would say more than I have seen you for years.”
“I was …I …yes—” She breaks off, not knowing what to say.
A soul as smooth as a bolt of silk. Those are the words her supporters use about Santa Caterina’s novice mistress. Though others might add and a tongue as sharp as a toothpick. Yes, Zuana had been in pain that night, though it had been more about what she could not feel than what was revealed. Had God really spoken to Umiliana and not to her? There was no question but that there had been an intensity of sweetness in her sorrow. No question either but that the young nun was deserving …But does that make Zuana so undeserving that she had noticed nothing?
She is aware that the silence is growing, can feel herself sweating further under the heat of Umiliana’s concentration. My work is to tend the plants and alleviate suffering, she thinks stubbornly, not to dabble in convent politics. If the abbess were here she would know what to say. Particularly with the welfare of the convent at stake. Well, it seems she must say something.