The sunset is burning itself out now, the reds already shading into gray. Zuana glances at her. The lines on her face have been smoothed by the twilight and her skin has almost a glow to it.

“Thank you, Madonna Abbess,” she says quietly.

“Oh, I only do as the Lord bids me. If He sees one of His flock dispirited or buffeted, it is my job as abbess to bring her back into safe harbor. Come,” she says briskly, turning. “The light is going and the staircase will become treacherous in the gloom. Oh, I almost forgot. There is something I need you to do, for the well-being of the convent. It concerns the novice.”

IN THE DARKNESS Serafina shifts her weight, registering a sharp lump along her upper thigh. The pallet mattress has so little stuffing in it she can feel the imprint of the keys wherever she turns. She likes the discomfort. For a while it brought her only terror, for with her chest unlocked there was no hiding place where she could be sure that her treasure would not be found. She could have tried to buy more stuffing, of course—such a thing is possible—but it might have brought suspicion. The discovery of a little poppy syrup or an extra lump of wax was one thing—Candida was being paid to make her life easier—but a duplicate set of keys to the outside doors …well, the profit to be made from that information would far exceed any paltry gain she could offer her. So instead she had had to pay the conversa off with a good piece of cloth when she took over cleaning the cell herself. Who would have thought it? A noble young novice scrubbing out her own cell. Well, it gives her something to do to make the time pass quicker.

Time. There is so little of it left and yet what there is seems endless. She closes her eyes but knows she will not sleep. Her public docility has come at a cost. While her head stays bowed and her face remains serene, there are moments when the insides of her gut feel so twisted into knots that it is hard to walk upright. This state of constant excitement has become almost a pleasurable pain. She remembers it from before, at home—how every moment between her singing lessons was like a torture of waiting, sometimes so bad that she could barely breathe with it. Now the idea of him—the freezing, burning anticipation—blots out everything: sleep, thought, hunger.

She has had precious little appetite since her arrival, but recently she has come to enjoy the feeling that comes from not eating; the hollowness, the gnawing and fizzing in her stomach, is a kind of exhilaration in itself, like having something alive dancing inside her. Even her voice sounds purer, with less to hold it down, and when she is made to eat—when Federica calls her to the kitchen and presents her with the marzipan strawberry—the syrupy sweetness is so strong it is all she can do not to vomit it back up again.

It is not easy, though—deliberately contriving not to eat. You might think a convent would be happy to have its sisters starving a little—didn’t the saints live on air? — but here there is moderation in everything: enough prayer, enough work, enough sleep (well, once you get used to the mad clock they live by), and enough food. The rule is that each nun must finish what is on her plate, and disobedience is a matter for penance.

Of course there are ways. Deceptions, pretenses. She is fooling them in everything else, why not in this as well? At meals she comes into the refectory and finds her seat at the long table quickly, bending low over the plate, hands clasped under her chin for grace. When the grace is over she keeps her left hand close to her mouth while her right holds the spoon. In this way it is simple to transfer the food into her hand before it reaches her lips. No one is watching, anyway. Those who are not intent on stuffing their faces are too busy listening to the readings: stories of mad men and women living in caves in the desert, vying with each other to endure the worst suffering.

It is a technique—this squirreling away of food inside her habit—that she perfected after she had started singing. It was as if she had been in need of some minor disobedience to reassure herself that she was not becoming one of them. She liked the way the fear of being caught mixed in with the guilt and the fury: sweet and sour at the same time. She had hidden the scraps away in her cell and eaten a few of them later (how dare she, a novice eating in her cell when she should be asleep!) or used them to pay Candida, for the trade in tidbits moved both ways.

Now she holds on to them until recreation, then surreptitiously lets them fall from under her robe as she wanders in the gardens. She is not the only one doing this. She spotted Eugenia doing the same thing the other day. They exchanged shy, sly little looks as they passed. At least they will not betray each other. The evidence is gone within seconds, thanks to the birds; the pigeons pecking away the finches and sparrows, then pecking at one another. Today they swooped down from the bell tower even before anything had been dropped. Still, she must be careful. Suora Umiliana, though she might approve of fasting and would no doubt love to see their flesh withering on their bones, is hawk-eyed when it comes to any infraction of the rules, however small.

Well, it is only a few days before it is over and she is gone from here forever.

Only a few days. The thought slices into her belly. Sometimes it is hard to tell the hunger from the excitement. Gone from here. But to where? How? Oh, if only she could sleep! You could die of waiting here. She slides her hand into the mattress and extracts the keys from the cloth. The iron is cold to the touch. She runs her fingers over the cut of the teeth, clean and smooth. Of course he would have found a good blacksmith. Like those men on the Carnival carts. When she had heard the stories of their songs she had felt her cheeks burning. She had died a thousand deaths that night he had brought back the keys. He had been so late she had thought he wasn’t coming. She had barely made it back to her cell in time to avoid the watch sister. When she had unwrapped them there was a scrap of paper inside with the confirmation of the day and time upon it. That was it. No endearments, no poetry, no words of love. Since then there has been nothing. His face has long since blurred in her mind, and now she cannot even hear his voice, so that when she thinks about the future, sometimes all she can see is the black ink of the river at night.

She lives so much in her own head now (with so many novices involved in the play, the religious instruction has been reduced until the performance is over). Even at her most rebellious as a child she was never so alone. The only contact she has is within the choir, and while the actual singing steadies her a little, the rawness returns as soon as it stops. There are moments when she craves company, a way to soak up some of the tension inside her, only she is terrified of what someone might spot in her, even though most of them are half mad with Carnival anticipation themselves. Except for Suora Zuana. The dispensary mistress seems oblivious to it, almost distant. Yet out of all of them Zuana is the one she cannot see, the one she fears most. She goes out of her way to avoid her, and when they pass each other, on the way to chapel or in the cloisters, she is certain she can feel the older woman watching her, probing to see what is going on within her.

Their time spent together in the dispensary feels like a lifetime ago. The ointments, the spitting treacle, the ginger balls— she thinks about them more than she wants to. She tells herself it is because the nun is clever that she needs to be careful of her in case she suspects something. But it is more than that. What started as anxiety has turned into something more uncomfortable, a gnawing that has nothing to do with hunger but comes instead from guilt. Guilt that the one person who has helped her, shown her kindness and understanding (God knows, more than her own mother ever did), will be seen to have failed with her and brought disgrace upon the convent—perhaps even be blamed in some way for her escape.