sudden noise and chatter behind the walls: the rumble of carts on cobbles, snatches of laughter and raised voices, the everyday business of unsequestered life. Beside her, Serafina stiffens.
“Where are we? What is on the other side now?”
“Borgo San Bernardino,” Zuana says, orienting herself. At times when she was young, she accompanied her father on visits to his patients, and as a result she knows—or at least once knew—the city better than most. “It starts from the river and moves northwest toward the market square, the cathedral, and the palace.”
The girl looks confused.
“You don’t know the great d’Este Palace or the cathedral? They are the marvels of Ferrara. Those and the university, which has a medical school to rival Padua and Bologna in its teaching. The next time you are in chapel with time to spare, run your fingers over the backs of the choir stalls. The city is all there, fashioned through a thousand little cuts of the wood.”
But the girl is fading now, the cold and the disembodied life behind the walls suddenly pressing down on her.
“Come.” Zuara touches her arm. “It is time to go back inside.”
• • •
THEY REENTER THE main cloisters to the sound of the chapel bell, marking out the end of rest time and the beginning of afternoon work. As they move up the corner staircase, the opening bars of a lute melody are joined by a single rising voice, pure as spring water.
The girl’s head lifts sharply, like an animal taking in new scent.
“It is a setting for the Feast of the Epiphany. You like to sing?” Zuana puts the question casually, then watches as a manufactured scowl comes over the girl’s face in response.
“I have no voice anymore,” she says hoarsely.
“Then we will all pray for its return—as should you. The convent’s choir mistress—who, you should know, is the abbess’s cousin—was taught composition by no less a man than the duke’s father’s chapelmaster, and her settings are famous throughout the city. She is eager to meet you. The best voices get to practice when others are working. You would be amazed at the privileges that come from being a songbird here.”
Their route to the music room takes them by way of the scriptorium, where a dozen desks are positioned to catch every last ray of daylight, with a dozen heads bent diligently over them, the silence broken only by the tapping of pens against inkwells and the scratching of nibs across paper. At the podium, Suora Scholastica, her face as large and bright as the full moon, smiles up at them as they stand in the doorway. Zuana nods back. When she is not copying holy words, Scholastica is writing ones of her own, dramatic plays of saints and sinners in rhyming couplets, the best of them produced at Carnival or on special saint’s days. Her dedication infuses the atmosphere. There are other workrooms where a certain restlessness is always present, but over the years Zuana has come to notice how those who choose books and manuscripts over other forms of labor become most absorbed in their work, for while the task is mostly to copy what already exists, there are great skills to be learned and a slow pleasure to be had in watching an empty page fill. During the first six months, when she had been frantic for the garden and her pestle and mortar, even she had sucked some sweetness here, not to mention the mischief of using only medicinal herbs as her border illustrations, drawn accurately enough to signal a cure for all manner of ills, if only the reader knew how to recognize them.
They move farther along the upper cloister, past the embroidery room, where an intermittent starling chatter slides out from underneath the door. Francesca, the supervising sister here, is lenient with high spirits, believing as she does that laughter is one of God’s methods of purifying the heart, and as a result some of the younger nuns congregate here and take advantage of her. While there are those
“Where are we? What is on the other side now?”
“Borgo San Bernardino,” Zuana says, orienting herself. At times when she was young, she accompanied her father on visits to his patients, and as a result she knows—or at least once knew—the city better than most. “It starts from the river and moves northwest toward the market square, the cathedral, and the palace.”
The girl looks confused.
“You don’t know the great d’Este Palace or the cathedral? They are the marvels of Ferrara. Those and the university, which has a medical school to rival Padua and Bologna in its teaching. The next time you are in chapel with time to spare, run your fingers over the backs of the choir stalls. The city is all there, fashioned through a thousand little cuts of the wood.”
But the girl is fading now, the cold and the disembodied life behind the walls suddenly pressing down on her.
“Come.” Zuara touches her arm. “It is time to go back inside.”
• • •
THEY REENTER THE main cloisters to the sound of the chapel bell, marking out the end of rest time and the beginning of afternoon work. As they move up the corner staircase, the opening bars of a lute melody are joined by a single rising voice, pure as spring water.
The girl’s head lifts sharply, like an animal taking in new scent.
“It is a setting for the Feast of the Epiphany. You like to sing?” Zuana puts the question casually, then watches as a manufactured scowl comes over the girl’s face in response.
“I have no voice anymore,” she says hoarsely.
“Then we will all pray for its return—as should you. The convent’s choir mistress—who, you should know, is the abbess’s cousin—was taught composition by no less a man than the duke’s father’s chapelmaster, and her settings are famous throughout the city. She is eager to meet you. The best voices get to practice when others are working. You would be amazed at the privileges that come from being a songbird here.”
Their route to the music room takes them by way of the scriptorium, where a dozen desks are positioned to catch every last ray of daylight, with a dozen heads bent diligently over them, the silence broken only by the tapping of pens against inkwells and the scratching of nibs across paper. At the podium, Suora Scholastica, her face as large and bright as the full moon, smiles up at them as they stand in the doorway. Zuana nods back. When she is not copying holy words, Scholastica is writing ones of her own, dramatic plays of saints and sinners in rhyming couplets, the best of them produced at Carnival or on special saint’s days. Her dedication infuses the atmosphere. There are other workrooms where a certain restlessness is always present, but over the years Zuana has come to notice how those who choose books and manuscripts over other forms of labor become most absorbed in their work, for while the task is mostly to copy what already exists, there are great skills to be learned and a slow pleasure to be had in watching an empty page fill. During the first six months, when she had been frantic for the garden and her pestle and mortar, even she had sucked some sweetness here, not to mention the mischief of using only medicinal herbs as her border illustrations, drawn accurately enough to signal a cure for all manner of ills, if only the reader knew how to recognize them.
They move farther along the upper cloister, past the embroidery room, where an intermittent starling chatter slides out from underneath the door. Francesca, the supervising sister here, is lenient with high spirits, believing as she does that laughter is one of God’s methods of purifying the heart, and as a result some of the younger nuns congregate here and take advantage of her. While there are those
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