Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant

that.
    “How do you feel today?”
    “Like a dog who has been poisoned on bad meat,” she says, her voice raw and scratched.
    “Well, it will pass soon enough. Madonna Chiara has asked that I show you something of the convent. Are you well enough to walk? The air might help.”
    She shrugs.
    “Good. Here.” She hands her a cloak. “The weather is inhospitable today.”
    Outside, a mist drapes the cloisters in gray gauze, sending plumes of smoke out of their mouths as they walk. Zuana has often thought that if fathers must offer their unwilling daughters to God they would do better to pick the warmer months to do the giving. Were it summer, they might stop in the orchard to split open a few bursting pomegranates or dawdle by the fishpond to catch the sun on the scales of the darting carp. But as anyone born and bred in Ferrara knows, the city is famed for its winter fog, which seeps down even to the bone, so that Zuana must keep the walk fast and the circuit short.
    From the magnificence of the main cloister they move through a short corridor into another, smaller one. They pass an elderly sister walking quickly with a small procession of young girls, eight or nine years old, following like ducklings in her wake. One of them glances up to the novice, frankly curious, and then, when she catches Zuana’s eye, looks down again. Among these boarders of Santa Caterina, some are in safekeeping for marriage while others are destined for the veil. It is not, Zuana thinks, always evident which is which. Still, had their latest novice been born in Ferrara, it is likely that as a child she would have learned both her letters and her piety here, which might have saved them all a lot of trouble now.
    This second cloister is humbler and older: weeds grow through the courtyard slabs and its brick pillars have crumbled in places. Yet there is more sense of life here. Along two sides, dormitories run above the kitchens, bakery, and laundry rooms, housing the converse—servant sisters—with a few cells opposite for those poorer choir nuns who come with less of a dowry. By her side the girl is now interested, Zuana notes with some amusement; her eyes dart everywhere. The smell of roasting meat sauce and boiling cabbage is in the air, and there is a clatter of pots and pans. In winter the heat of the work done here can make it almost inviting, but come the first hot spell and it turns into an inferno, with the night almost as hot as the day. In the doorway of the bakery a scrawny tortoiseshell cat lies sprawled on her side, half a dozen blind kittens mewling and clambering over one another for her teats. Suora Federica, who runs the kitchens, considers it an offense against God to put an extra spoonful on any plate, yet she is soft as butter when it comes to nursing mothers—or at least those ones who have not taken vows of chastity.
    Once through the courtyard, they stop briefly in the herb garden for Zuana to check the plants for frost damage before passing alongside the kitchen garden, then out behind the slaughter and hanging house and—not so far that the noise of death does not carry—the animal pens.
    In the open, with no cover of buildings, the temperature drops rapidly. Zuana sees the girl shiver.
    “Why don’t we save the rest for another day?”
    “No.” The girl shakes her head fiercely. “No, no, I want to go on.”
    “You are not cold?”
    “I’m not going back inside,” she says again, sharply. “If I am to be buried alive, I should at least be allowed to see the shape of my coffin.”
    “In which case pull your shroud closer,” Zuana answers mildly. “You would not want to expire before the walk has ended.”
    To keep the blood warm she quickens the pace. Above them a band of squabbling seagulls chased inland by bad weather wheel and scream before disappearing back into the mist. They cross through the open gardens down to the carp pond; clumps of frozen reed are caught upright inside thin floating islands