After a fitful night’s sleep in another hotel bed, this time with a rather indifferent pillow, I hardly felt ready to do battle in the Biblioteca Estense. But fortified with a rather unusual croissant integrale con miele (integrale means wholewheat; the miele was an odd kind of jellied honey) and a cup of coffee, I wandered out into the Piazza Mazzini, and saw the beautiful old synagogue by the light of day. What the picture doesn’t show is the mounds of snow left over from the last few days – it’s still cold but very bright, and it feels like spring.

I started by checking some stuff from my last visit that I felt I hadn’t transcribed quite properly (and I hadn’t) then, wondering what to do next, started leafing through an older catalogue of the manuscripts. Well, not so much a catalogue as a hundred-year-old Roneographed list of all the manuscripts in a haphazard order. I came across what looked to be a copy of a play (veglia) presented at a sixteenth-century Florentine convent, noted it down, and then in a completely different place found another manuscript by the same author with the title “Recreazione di monache.” Intrigued now, I ordered both of them, and then checked back in the main catalogue to see how they had been indexed. Neither were there. Drat, I thought, they’ve probably been lost. But no, they just hadn’t been indexed.

So, I opened the one called “Recreazione,” and I’m very glad I was sitting down and that the book was flat on the desk, as I didn’t want everyone to see that my hands had started shaking. On the front page, in her own handwriting (I can recognize it now) was, “Questo libro si è a me Margherita Duchessa di Ferrara.” As I compared the two, it seems that Margherita had been lent a book of about ten little Carnevale plays written by a Florentine nun, and was in the process of having it copied, as her own book contains just over three of them. Whether the original owner then gave her the book, or died, or she just decided to keep it, we will never know. But they ended up in the Estense library, and they clearly haven’t been looked at for many, many years.

Some of the musical interludes are well documented, and the props and costumes are vividly described. My favourite is the costume for a nun representing the canonical hour of Terce: a not-quite-teenager (fanciulletta alquanto maggiore) dressed in red, with red wings, with a card in her hand that bears the number “III,” and a garland of red violets. The numbered card is somehow so poignant. But don’t get the impression that these are “let’s do it in the barn” type productions – there are carriages, suns, moons, kings, queens, processions and presentations. And the book looks like it was compiled so that another convent could use it. So perhaps one of these was used for the presentatione that Margherita and Leonora d’Este went to see at San Vito in 1594? Hmmm? But the weirdest thing is that I kind of feel like I’m watching fiction being written backwards – so much of what Sarah wrote into Sacred Hearts is creeping into my book, almost like she dreamed it up and so it came into being.

I’ll be able to finish examining the book and describing its contents (can’t transcribe it all – well over 300 pages!) over the next few evenings as the library is open a few more hours than the archive. But the high doesn’t make it very easy to eat. Or wouldn’t normally – luckily I’m in Modena, so gastro-exuberance is a given. Tonight it was a risotto al radicchio Trevisiano with verdure alla griglia. I took pictures but they didn’t come out well. Cooked radicchio actually doesn’t look that appetising, but it was delicious, both in the risotto and straight off the grill, drizzled with aceto (balsamic vinegar). Here, they have vinegar on everything – on pasta, on meat, even on ice cream. Yes, you heard. Well, maybe I’ll have the courage to try it by the end of the week. Right now, there are so many butterflies in my stomach I dare not challenge it with something quite so radical. Oh, and, of course – instead of Padre Pio, there was Luciano again, beaming down on my dinner wishing me buon appetito! Viva Modena!

Archive tomorrow, and we’ll see if the angel still has gifts to bestow.

A gorgeous morning, and a satisfactory day. The archive angel is still sitting on my shoulder, bless her. So today I only really found three documents worth having, but they are amazing, just amazing. Almost the first letter (or draft minuta, which is much more difficult to read) I looked at showed me that Margherita was seeking clarification from the Pope, as early as 1581, on the licenza allowing her to enter convents with her ladies. She wanted to get the dress code right. And, twenty years later, she clearly wanted her organ in Sant’Orsola to be equally appropriately attired, as she managed to get a painting for its lid back from Cesare d’Este.

But the reason I know that the AA is still with me is that when chasing a little more information on the gruesome murder of yesterday, I came across something I really, no REALLY, didn’t expect. While there were no letters from or to the dead girl’s immediate family, apart from a very entertaining narration of how her dad came to get married in Rome after being beaten to a pulp by his rival suitor, there was a document about yet another daughter of the family, who was a novice at San Vito in 1572. Quite a sad tale, really, as it is a record of questioning regarding her illicit lover, one Biagio Muradore, who got her up the duff. She begged not to be sent to prison, and really you do feel quite sorry for her, but I couldn’t suppress a snort when I got to the punch line. “And the Inquistor asked, ‘Where does Biagio live?’ ‘I think he’s from San Giovanni Battista, next to the suore convertite [the reformed prostitutes’ convent].’” I could hear somewhere faintly, “Grazie. Sto quì per la settimana.”

The exciting musicological thing about this document, though, is that it names another nun at the convent, who just happens to be cited as an excellent organist in another source, well known to those who have an interest in Ferrarese nuns. But she has been assumed (by some) to be a he, as her name is extremely close to that of male Ferrarese musician. Now I know she’s a she, and she’s real, so all those that assumed that the nuns at San Vito were taught by an imported bloke, think again.

So not even an uncharacteristically bobbins commute back to Parma, waiting on the platform for nearly an hour as the delays got longer and longer, could put paid to my good mood. And I had a good novel, too – my Christmas present from my brother-in-law, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, by Giorgio Bassani. As it’s set in Ferrara, I suppose I should be reading it there, but whatever. It’s a beautiful book, noble and sad.

Clearly, the Italians have the right attitude to writers, though. As I turned to get off the train I saw this sign:

Give us your poetry!!

Can you imagine a British press doing this kind of thing? Advertising for poetry manuscripts on the train? Or an academic press, soliciting on the Underground? Shaking my head in wonderment, I strolled back down the Via Garibaldi, stopping to buy a huge hunk of cheese to take back to Son No 2. I’ve failed utterly to find him a Parma jersey, but hopefully will be able to pick one up when I come back next month. After all, what are these trips for?

downstairs at the Biblioteca Estense

I found out more about the murder, which was distressing in the detail, but (if I’m honest) had a touch of A Fish Called Wanda about it, in that they tried three or four times to do the poor girl in before they were successful. They being a Ferrarese nobleman and his servant, apparently acting under the influence of the nobleman’s “femina” (I suppose, mistress?) who is reported to have been Very Old, i.e. 45 years. It also has a touch of Bones in there, too, as it looks like the Princess Lucrezia ordered a clandestine post mortem and had the body exhumed in the dead of night from its tomb in the cathedral to establish cause of death. How cool is that?

Plus I found a list of the ducal support for Corpus Domini, and blimey, they got through a lot of food. 200 eggs at a time, pounds and pounds of fish and veal (although not during lent), figs, eels, pears, you name it – or not, there is stuff I’ve never heard of. They were seriously, seriously rich for a mendicant order. And I now know that everyone hated the Bishop Fontana of Ferrara. But I’m a bit bored of endless chronicles, so I might get started at the Archivio di Stato tomorrow, which will stand me in good stead for when I come back next month. That way I know I will hit the ground running in the second stint.

I am really looking forward to staying in Modena, for once. The train is easy and relatively cheap, but it would be nice just to roll out of bed and into the sala di consultazione. It seems like such a cool town. When I was in San Severo, much further down south, a couple of years ago for a conference on nuns, everywhere – and I mean everywhere – had pictures of Padre Pio, on the wall, in windows, on banners, posters, whatever. In Modena, however, they have different priorities. OK, Padre Pio does look a lot like the legendary bass, Feodor Chaliapin, but Luciano is the real deal. The poster says, “Grazie, maestro.” Aw.

But here I am, back in Parma for another meal, this time at the Trattoria Corrieri. Time for tris di tortelli, which is a triple combination of spinach, mushroom and pumpkin pasta parcels. The pumpkin tortelli have more citrus to them here than those in Ferrara and Mantua, which is great, but I miss the sage on top, ubiquitous in those cities further east. The insalata mista was right on the money, though, with only winter leaves – lambs lettuce, baby radicchio, rocket. Their sharpness was perfect to cut through the pint of butter on the pasta.

One more whole day, then an extra half day before I start the long trek back. I almost feel like I’m on information overload, but at least I know that I have now have my own story to tell about these wonderful ladies.