they prized the weapon away from her. When he arrived she had been tied down and was delirious, her life dripping out through those dozen wounds onto the floor. So much blood had been lost there was nothing he could do except offer something to help her with the shock and the suffering. But the abbess had refused, convinced that the devil was inside her now and that if she was soothed by the potion he might renew his attack. “When I questioned them, they said no one had noticed anything amiss with her before that morning,” he had said, shaking his head, though whether from disbelief or pity he did not say.
She thinks about it sometimes, that story: how it could be possible that something so powerful should erupt out of nothing. In her experience, a well-run convent is as alert to the distress of its sisters as to any excess of joy, since either can tilt the balance of calm living. And even if it had been the work of the devil (and though she has come across mischief—even occasional malice—in this republic of women, she has yet to make the devil’s acquaintance), why had the abbess or the novice mistress seen no signs of it? So she gives thanks to God that when it came to the decision as to where she would spend the rest of her life, it had been Santa Caterina that had taken her in, welcoming her thin voice and her dowry chest as full of remedies as of prayers.
CHAPTER EIGHT
BECAUSE SHE HAS some understanding of the relationship between exhaustion and acquiescence, and because she does not want to resort to further potions to counter rebellion, Zuana finds herself taking a good deal of care in planning how she and the young woman begin their work together.
Over the first few days, as the effects of the poppy wear off, the impact of physical labor takes over: twice a day, every day excluding Sunday, either out in the cold tending the herb garden or inside cleaning the infirmary and the dispensary, sweeping and mopping floors, scouring pots and bowls, scrubbing down the workbenches. The eradication of previous ingredients to avoid the slippage of leftovers into new ones was a part of her father’s teaching, but Zuana has dismissed the conversa who usually does the heavy manual cleaning and uses her new assistant instead.
At first the girl’s resistance is palpable, her moods as storm-tossed as the weather: one day rage and rolling thunder with much slamming and crashing about, the next a hunched and haunted sadness, her shaking body turned defiantly away over the worktop, silent tears like unstoppable rain. Zuana does nothing to intervene. Better for her to vent her feelings through the scrubbing and scouring. At least that way she will tire herself enough to sleep at night and so, step by step, the process of acceptance may begin.
Though the convent rules allow for speech when necessary during working hours, Zuana makes sure these first days— whatever the emotional weather—pass in silence. Looking back on the memory of her own journey through those painful early weeks, she has come to understand how silence was part of the balm, albeit so slow and gradual that the physician in her found it hard to mark its progress. Now she finds herself studying it in another.
When they first enter, the young (particularly the more lively ones or those with less vocation) find it hardest to adapt to the restrictions on speech. The appetite for conversation is deeply embedded in them; it is there as they gather at table or in chapel, close enough to whisper but forbidden in both places to do so. Or in the way they move past one another through the cloisters during the quiet hours, unspoken words spinning out between them like glistening spiders’ threads. Watching them during those first weeks, Zuana has often thought that chatter is the hardest abstinence of all, harder to bear in some ways even than chastity, for while there is little temptation in that direction, the promise of careless talk is everywhere.
But with
She thinks about it sometimes, that story: how it could be possible that something so powerful should erupt out of nothing. In her experience, a well-run convent is as alert to the distress of its sisters as to any excess of joy, since either can tilt the balance of calm living. And even if it had been the work of the devil (and though she has come across mischief—even occasional malice—in this republic of women, she has yet to make the devil’s acquaintance), why had the abbess or the novice mistress seen no signs of it? So she gives thanks to God that when it came to the decision as to where she would spend the rest of her life, it had been Santa Caterina that had taken her in, welcoming her thin voice and her dowry chest as full of remedies as of prayers.
CHAPTER EIGHT
BECAUSE SHE HAS some understanding of the relationship between exhaustion and acquiescence, and because she does not want to resort to further potions to counter rebellion, Zuana finds herself taking a good deal of care in planning how she and the young woman begin their work together.
Over the first few days, as the effects of the poppy wear off, the impact of physical labor takes over: twice a day, every day excluding Sunday, either out in the cold tending the herb garden or inside cleaning the infirmary and the dispensary, sweeping and mopping floors, scouring pots and bowls, scrubbing down the workbenches. The eradication of previous ingredients to avoid the slippage of leftovers into new ones was a part of her father’s teaching, but Zuana has dismissed the conversa who usually does the heavy manual cleaning and uses her new assistant instead.
At first the girl’s resistance is palpable, her moods as storm-tossed as the weather: one day rage and rolling thunder with much slamming and crashing about, the next a hunched and haunted sadness, her shaking body turned defiantly away over the worktop, silent tears like unstoppable rain. Zuana does nothing to intervene. Better for her to vent her feelings through the scrubbing and scouring. At least that way she will tire herself enough to sleep at night and so, step by step, the process of acceptance may begin.
Though the convent rules allow for speech when necessary during working hours, Zuana makes sure these first days— whatever the emotional weather—pass in silence. Looking back on the memory of her own journey through those painful early weeks, she has come to understand how silence was part of the balm, albeit so slow and gradual that the physician in her found it hard to mark its progress. Now she finds herself studying it in another.
When they first enter, the young (particularly the more lively ones or those with less vocation) find it hardest to adapt to the restrictions on speech. The appetite for conversation is deeply embedded in them; it is there as they gather at table or in chapel, close enough to whisper but forbidden in both places to do so. Or in the way they move past one another through the cloisters during the quiet hours, unspoken words spinning out between them like glistening spiders’ threads. Watching them during those first weeks, Zuana has often thought that chatter is the hardest abstinence of all, harder to bear in some ways even than chastity, for while there is little temptation in that direction, the promise of careless talk is everywhere.
But with
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