She looked at me hopefully, waiting for a morsel of gossip, but I wasn’t about to bring altar desecration into this hellish mess if I didn’t have to. Staying behind these walls was better than being shipped back to Venice to have my hands and nose chopped off. And if this sharp-eyed prioress learned I had my patron saint’s hand in the pouch beneath my skirt, she’d take it away from me; put Santa Marta back in a reliquary to draw pilgrims and donations to her convent doors.

Maybe I should have given Santa Marta back—it was where she belonged, after all; in the bosom of the Church. Maybe undoing that old act of desecration would have . . . I don’t know. Redeemed me? But I thought I felt the hand twitch in her pouch, and I didn’t want to give her up.

I remained silent, and the prioress looked disappointed. “In any case,” she went on, “you will resume your name of Suora Serafina, but without reference to your, ah, prior service in Venice. None of the other sisters within these walls will know that you are not simply a new lay sister who was moved to take vows after spending these months with us. No scandal at all, you see?”

“Very fortunate,” I echoed.

“Yes, if I do say so. And we are delighted to have you. I understand you were once a cook for His Holiness’s cousin?” My new prioress’s face was alight. “Do you have any skill with marzipan?”

See, I could even go on being a cook. How lucky.

“Your new cell.” The lay sister who escorted me and my small bundle of possessions from the guest quarters in the gatehouse to the quarters of the sisters themselves was entirely cheerful. “It’s a good one, right on the east wall so you’ll get a little dawn light through the window slit. Of course the choir nuns get real windows.” She lowered her voice. “It doesn’t do to annoy the choir nuns. They can make life miserable for us, so if I were you I’d squirrel away whatever coin you’ve got and save it for when you need a favor.”

“Yes.”

“Or since you’ve a skill you can trade, that works just as well. I’ve got clever fingers for braiding hair”—wriggling her plump hands—“and I trade that for a bite or two of meat during Lent. They do like their plaited hair, the choir nuns! They grow it out under their veils, you see. Us lay sisters, we’d be skinned if we tried that. But it’s the way of things, so I don’t see any use complaining.”

“No.”

“Now, you’ll soon get used to the prayers, but for this first week you’re to be allowed to sleep through Matins!” She beamed. “Isn’t that fortunate?”

“Very,” I agreed.