Free Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant Page B

of an apothecary’s shop is not something that would excite every young girl’s imagination, except of course for the love potions—and Zuana has had no use for them in her study. “A way of making well people ill” was how her father saw them, though from things she heard people say about her mother he must have been ill thus once himself, however briefly.
    “You put a portion of the root inside an apple or a pear and bake it in hot ashes. When it is cooked you throw away the hellebore and eat the pulp of the fruit instead.”
    “How do you know how much to put in?”
    “It depends on how heavy or light the person is. And on the nature of what you are looking to expel.”
    “You mean you use a poison to cure a poison?”
    “In a way yes. There are a number of ingredients that change their effect depending on their mixing.”
    The girl points to another, farther along. “And this?”
    “Verbena leaves.”
    “What ills do they cure?”
    “When they are fresh, their sweat against the skin is good for headaches. When the root is cooked it dulls toothache.”
    “And when they are like this?”
    “Mixed in sweet wine with Saint Mary’s mint, they are good for monthly cramps.” Of which the convent has more than a few, for empty wombs gathered together seem to produce regulated and in many cases singular suffering.
    “Ha. I know someone who would have paid a fortune for this.” There is a touch of venom in her voice. “Do you have something to dissolve unwanted babies, too?”
    “Unwanted babies? In a nunnery?” Zuana laughs.
    Of course there are always stories. Nuns as the milking cows for the lust of the church. Luther’s poison has leaked everywhere, though a monk who married a nun would have had to construct gross heresy to save himself—and his apostate wife—from hell. However, even in Santa Caterina you hear things …such as the island convent in Venice that the confessor ran as a house of ill repute with himself as the only client. The whole of the city, it was said, had come out to watch him burn.
    “Why? Do you know someone who has need of that as well?”
    She scowls. Certainly she would not be the first daughter to find her future prospects altered by a sister’s strategic lust. But she is not about to tell Zuana her secrets. Not yet, anyway.
    “And the poppy that gave me foul dreams. Which one is that?”
    “It is there. On one of the shelves.”
    The girl follows her eye. “This one? Or this one?” She reaches a hand out.
    “No, no. And be careful with that.”
    “Why? Is it poison, too?”
    “No, it is blood.”
    “Blood? Whose?”
    “Sister Prudenza’s. She has begun to suffer from fits, and I am tending her.”
    “It doesn’t look like blood.”
    “That is because it is mixed with crow’s egg.”
    The girl looks at Zuana as if the devil had just slid from under her skirts; Zuana has to smile.
    “It is a known remedy. When taken internally in small doses regularly, it can help with fits, if the affliction is mild.”
    “And if it is serious?”
    “Then I wouldn’t be able to help her.” And she sees again a young novice, her body like a fish pulled out of water, rigid and thrashing on the cold cell floor.
    The girl puts the bottle back on the shelf as if the very handling of it might contaminate her. “Are there many you can’t help?”
    “That depends on what ails them.”
    Zuana knows what she is thinking, of course: that she is the one who will never be cured, for her ailment is too grave.
    “I wonder they let you do all this,” she says, looking around.
    “What? You think because nuns serve God we should have to die sooner or hurt more?”
    “No. I mean …well, there is not much praying about it.”
    “Oh, but you are wrong.” Of course she has heard it before, this blindness to finding God in anything that does not involve praying or suffering. “This room is full of prayer. Look around you. Everything here—every herb, every juice, every ingredient of