Sacred Hearts

They had dined at table—he had had broth, roasted meat, and a bottle of good Trebbiano wine—and they were sitting together by the fire companionably reading, as was their habit. He was studying one of the recently arrived volumes of Vesalius, as he often did those days, and was deeply absorbed.

When it happened it had been so quick she could barely remember it. She had heard a fast intake of breath, as if he had come across something that a

She had got to him almost as he hit the ground, screaming out for the servants and trying to raise him up. She had done all he taught her: loosening his collar, calling his name, rolling him onto his side—though his body was as heavy and loose as a great sack of grain—and pouring water from the jug into his slack half-open mouth. But already it felt as if there was nothing there. He, her father, was gone. No movement, no breath, no hint of a pulse, nothing. It was as if life, not wanting to cause any fuss or bother or the need for remedies or nursing, had slipped out of him in that one single exhalation of breath.

Later, when the priest had come and the body had been lifted and carried out to lie on the table in his workshop, and the place was full of servants and people wailing, she, who had been too stu

When, many years on, the news of this reached her through the grille, she wondered if perhaps that was what her father had been thinking about when the fit took him, or if the correspondence between the dead organ on the page and the loss of his own vital spirit was a simpler affair, left there deliberately so that she might in some way understand this death better. Certainly with the silence of his heart came the silence of everything, from the sound of his voice to all those thoughts and words from the great library of his experience not yet written down and therefore lost forever.

Get up now, Faustina.

And yet, God be praised, an echo of his voice had returned.

You have mourned enough and there is work to be done.

He had been right. She could not grieve forever and there were things to be done. Almost before the priest had said the last prayers you could hear the flapping of vulture wings in the antechambers, and if she didn’t stop crying soon, how would she notice when his most precious volumes started to slide off the shelves, or how his papers were disturbed by teachers or ambitious students coming to pay their respects and take back a few things they had “left with him for safekeeping”? It was flattery of sorts. A doctor with co

But the real communication didn’t start until sometime after the funeral, a few days before she was due to leave for the convent, when the kitchen girl had been struck down with the most monstrous stomach cramps and headaches that had had her vomiting with their ferocity. She was a long, gangly strip of a girl from the country, at that age where she seemed to be growing too fast for her own flesh, and when Zuana had found her she was in such agonies that she could barely uncurl herself to show the source of the pain.

Come on! Have you forgotten everything I taught you so soon? he had said in her ear as she had bent down beside her.

She had been so nervous that her hand had been shaking as she took the girl’s pulse. When she couldn’t find it in her wrist she went to the neck, behind her ear, where he had taught her, and there she located it, forceful but not so fast as to suggest dangerous fever. She had set to work on the headache, making up a crown of verbena leaves in vinegar and wrapping it around the girl’s forehead, then dosing her with basil water and eau-de-vie to settle or expel whatever was wrenching her gut. And because she would not have slept even if she had gone to bed, she had sat with her through the night as she had tossed and moaned.

Well? he had said, just before dawn, at that hour which seems to suit the dead more than the living. What is your opinion now?

She had laid her hand on the girl’s forehead. “Whatever fever she had is gone. But the cramps continue. I would have expected bowel evacuation by now if there was gut poisoning. Perhaps I should increase the eau-de-vie to help expel whatever is there.”

“Perhaps. And what if there is nothing to evacuate?”

“But there is something. I can feel definite tenderness.”

“Where? Show me.”

She put her hands on the thin shift that covered the girl’s body, moving them down from her stomach gently toward the pubic bone. But the truth is she didn’t know exactly where, for while she had seen woodcuts of the insides of a woman, this was the first time she had actually had flesh under her hands.

“Here.”

But by now he had fallen silent.

The girl moaned, arching her body in response to the pressure and the pain. And now, through her shift, she noticed for the first time the fat buds of new breasts. She got up from the bedside and went into the workroom, pulling down a bag of Saint Mary’s mint and some bugloss leaves, infusing them in a mix of hot water and wine. How stupid! No wonder he had stopped talking to her.

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.”