Saturday of the Fourth Week After Pentecost, the Year of Our Lord 1456
“We haven’t had enough rain,” Sister Pureza said in a low voice. “The marjoram and lemons must have plenty of water or they won’t survive.”
Lucrezia nodded, although it was dark in the night stair and she couldn’t be sure if Sister Pureza was addressing her, or talking to herself.
“We’ll need the marjoram,” Sister Pureza went on. “And birthwort, too. The child is coming at de’ Valenti’s palazzo, and Signora Teresa is well past the age of five and twenty.”
Following the old nun up into the church, Lucrezia found her place between plump Sister Bernadetta and Spinetta, and knelt. It was Saturday, the Buti sisters’ fifth morning at Santa Margherita, and they were gathering for confession in preparation for Mass and Holy Communion in honor of the Feast Day of Saint Lawrence. It was still dark, but the air was already thick and warm.
“Surely the rain will come soon,” Lucrezia said under her breath.
“Hush.” Spinetta opened her eyelids only a sliver. Her voice softened at the sight of her sister’s face. “Remember, Lucrezia, there’s no speaking between confession and the time of communion.”
Again, Lucrezia envied the ease with which her sister had taken to the cloistered life, the way the words and rhythms of the prayers unfurled easily from her tongue.
Closing her eyes, Lucrezia thought back to the plush kneeler in the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine, where her mother had taken her to visit the Brancacci Chapel and make a final confession before entering the convent. There, Lucrezia’s eyes had lingered on Masaccio’s great frescoes—the illustrated stories of Saint Peter’s life, Adam and Eve’s anguished faces as they were expelled from the Garden—and she’d begged the monsignor to save her from the cloistered life.
“I don’t want to give my life to the church,” she’d said. “I beg you to intercede on my behalf.”
“Your life already belongs to God,” the monsignor had said firmly. “It is only by His mercy and generosity that we speak these words. Your fate is in the hands of the Lord, and there it will be well.”
Now, in the small church of Santa Margherita, Lucrezia entered the airless confessional, knelt on a rough wooden slab, and faced the dark cloth that hung between her and the chaplain.
“Yes, my child?” Fra Filippo Lippi waited impatiently. He’d worked late into the night, furiously revising his sketches for the provost of Santo Stefano, who’d confounded his plans to include him in a scene by demanding a sketch to present to the Comune di Prato for approval.
“Chaplain, I am very troubled,” Lucrezia said.
Her voice caught Fra Filippo’s attention. All morning he’d listened to the weary prattle of nuns confessing to the small transgression of an extra bun at breakfast, or a flash of jealous vanity. Of course he recognized their voices, knowing it was always plump Sister Bernadetta who sinned with her hand in the larder, and thin Sister Simona who was pained by her own lack of compassion for the weaker among them. Only the prioress occasionally surprised him with her desire for greater recognition for the small convent, petitioning men far beyond her reach and harboring anger when her requests for greater resources or an invitation to the councils of the highest convents were ignored.
“Since coming to the convent I’ve been filled with despair,” Lucrezia said with far more passion than she’d intended. “I wake each morning feeling bitter and old. And angry.”
The monk leaned closer to the cloth that hung between them. He looked to the floor, and saw the tip of a clean boot. The young woman’s voice broke, but not before Fra Filippo recognized Lucrezia’s voice.
“Everything has been so sudden and unexpected.” Lucrezia struggled to keep her words steady. “First, my father died. Then the shop was emptied to settle his debts, and before I knew it my dowry was gone.”
“Go on,” he said. He wanted to pull aside the curtain and look into the face that filled his studio, the eyes that looked out at him from the vellum, the sad smile that now graced the panel of his Madonna and Child.
“I never wanted to be a nun.” Lucrezia paused. “I expected to have the life of a Florentine signora.”
Fra Filippo had heard many novitiates lament their internment, and it always brought him back to his own reluctant initiation into the Order: the surrender of all property, the vow of celibacy, the constant vigilance against temptation.
“Reluctance isn’t a sin,” he said at last. His voice was deep, and it soothed Lucrezia.
“In words I’ve renounced everything,” she said carefully. “But in my heart I still want so much. I desire and I yearn, and my thoughts are neither humble nor pure.”
For a moment the friar didn’t respond.
“Go on, my sister. Speak of this desire, this yearning.”
“It’s a sin, I know, but I miss the beautiful silks in my father’s shop, I miss the garden I saw from my bedroom window. Fratello, I wanted a wedding pall of fine seta leale. I wanted my children to rest in an embroidered blanket sewn by my hand. I can’t be pious or gracious when I’ve lost so much.”
She paused, expecting the chaplain’s rebuke.
“Go on,” he said.
“I miss my world.” Lucrezia was driven to speak what she’d choked down for days. “I want my pearl baptism bracelet. I want the blue pitcher in my mother’s house. I want my mother. I want my father.”
She went on, her voice breaking.
“Why does God ask me for devotion and sacrifice without showing me the way?”
This question struck a chord in the monk’s heart. Hadn’t he asked nearly the same question just hours before he’d first seen her face?
“I’m only a conduit to the Lord’s ear,” he said thoughtfully. “But I believe God understands those who long for beauty.
“It’s no sin to want these things,” he said carefully. “Even here, in the monastic life, we have beauty and art and pleasure.”
Something in the chaplain’s voice had changed. Lucrezia leaned forward.
“God made the world so beautiful.” Fra Filippo closed his eyes, imagining the curtain between them might lift and allow him to look at her face.
“There’s no shame in finding the world beautiful, and celebrating that beauty.” He searched for the right words. “The holiest men have known this world is a speculum majus, a mirror of the Lord’s kingdom. The beauty we find here and the beauty we make here pleases God, for it makes our world closer to His.”
Lucrezia waited.
“God has a plan for each of us, my child. I don’t pretend to know His plan, but I know we must trust in Him and pray that He sees fit to show us the beauty that we’re part of creating. Trust the Lord. He sees everything, and knows everything.”
Fra Filippo paused, but Lucrezia was silent.
“Remember, Saint Paul said that in surrender, there is holiness,” he said. “Here, among the sisters of Santa Margherita, you will have a good life.”
Still, she said nothing. The monk heard Spinetta cough as she waited on the cold stones for her turn in the confessional.
“For your penance, you must say twenty Hail Marys.”
“Yes, Fratello.”
“Say them when the sun is high and the garden surrounds you. And while you pray, you must look for the Lord’s radiance in His world.”
She waited while the chaplain offered his final blessing.
“Through the ministry of the Church, may God give you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”
Brushing past Spinetta, Lucrezia found her way to the garden. The humidity had lifted and the sun was bright but not scorching. The green hills were visible over the garden wall as she knelt on the straw scattered below a clump of hollyhocks.
“Ave Maria, gratia plena.”
Forgetting the required silence, Lucrezia began her act of contrition in a whisper. She tipped her face to the sky.
“Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus,” she prayed, thinking of her own womb, which would remain barren forever. “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners.”
When Lucrezia finished her penance she stood and stretched.
As if she’d been watching for some time, Sister Pureza stepped silently from the thick garden foliage. She handed the young woman a sharp blade and an iron trowel, indicating for Lucrezia to follow her to a chaste tree shrub, where the old woman demonstrated how to harvest the dark berries and fragrant flowers. Later, the berries would be pounded with nettle to make a tincture for the relief of weakness and pain in the limbs, and the flowers dried for sachets.
“You came to us with a chamomile sachet,” Sister Pureza said, watching the girl’s hands work. Lucrezia looked up, surprised. “I found it among your clothing, and I kept it.”
Lucrezia felt the silver medallion, secret and warm inside the hem of her undergarment, and nodded.
“It belongs to the convent now,” said Sister Pureza, who felt it was more important to reach Lucrezia in her sadness than it was to observe the Rule of Silence before communion. “But this doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy what you’ve made with your own hand. It’s in the infermeria, where you may find sanctuary whenever you need it.”
Lucrezia fell into a comfortable motion, cutting the chaste berry branches at their divide, dropping the petals into a burlap sack and the berries into the deep basket. Soon her fingers were working on their own, and Lucrezia let her mind wander to the chaplain’s words. Was it truly not a sin to long for pleasure and beauty even here in the convent? By preserving her chamomile sachet, and reminding her of it at this moment, hadn’t Sister Pureza just said as much, also?
In the week since her arrival, Lucrezia had been going through the days in rote motion. She’d knelt with the others, prayed when they prayed, followed Sister Bernadetta as the nuns moved from church to refectory to work. At night she’d tumbled onto her hard cot nearly asleep, and stumbled from dreams before dawn.
Now, in the heat of the garden, in the silence of the long day before the Holy Eucharist, something began to stir in Lucrezia’s heart.
She felt it like a timid flower poking through the hard ground. And when Sister Pureza, who’d begun dragging clay pots into the shade, looked across the garden and saw the trouble easing from Lucrezia’s face, she prayed the girl had found the surrender that would make the veil easier for her to bear.