by Kate Forsyth
As a small child, I had never been struck, despite all Nanette’s threats. Once the Marquis de Maulévrier became my guardian, however, I had been beaten regularly, to drive the devils out of me, he said. He had failed spectacularly. Each encounter with his birch rod only made me more devilish.
This was true of Sœur Emmanuelle too. The more she struck me and humiliated me, the more proudly I lifted my head and the more slowly I moved to obey. Once, she caught me rolling my eyes.
‘On your hands and knees,’ she cried. ‘You shall crawl to the church like the worthless worm you are.’
I smiled and dropped at once to my hands and knees, gaily shaking my head and arching my back as if playing a game with a child. She struck me a stinging blow across the rear end, and I pretended to rear and buck like a donkey, braying loudly. The other novices smothered giggles.
‘Enough!’ she cried. ‘You are insolent. I’ll teach you to be humble.’
She hit me again, across the face. At once, anger surged through me. I leapt up and seized her cane and snapped it in two, flinging the pieces down. The novices all fell silent, looking scared. Sœur Emmanuelle bent and picked up the pieces of her cane.
‘To defy your superior is to defy God himself. You must do penance. Come with me to the church.’ Her voice was low and filled with menace.
I stood for a moment, my breath coming quickly, wanting to shout, ‘I shall not,’ as I had once shouted at the Marquis de Maulévrier. I was not a rebellious disobedient child any more, though. I was a grown woman. I could not afford to be thrown out of the convent, not until I had the King’s pardon. Disobedience was treason, and the penalty for treason was death.
‘I’m sorry. I lost my temper. You shouldn’t have struck me, though.’ I put one hand to my smarting cheek.
‘To the church,’ she answered, her face whiter than ever.
I nodded my head and moved towards the door. She pushed in front of me, making me follow behind her. I did so without protest. It was freezing cold in the cloisters, snow on the ground and in the sky. The church was just as cold. Sœur Emmanuelle told me to lie down with my arms spread wide in the shape of a cross and my face pressed to the icy floor. I obeyed. She knelt nearby and prayed for my immortal soul. It was unendurable. The minutes dragged past. At long last, she rose, and I lifted my head.
‘Stay there,’ she ordered. ‘Stay till you are given leave to rise.’
She did not give me leave until midnight, when the nuns all came to the church for nocturns. She came in silently and stood over me. All I could see of her was the black hem of her habit. Then she made a sharp gesture, bidding me to rise to my feet.
But I could not. My limbs were stiff and frozen, locked in the shape of a cross.
She bent and seized me by the arm, dragging me to my knees and shaking me. She could not speak; Sœur Emmanuelle would never break the Great Silence, which lasted all night, from the evening service of compline to the morning service of matins. But she shook me violently and tried to make me get up.
My feet were like lumps of stone, my legs as weak as an old woman’s. I managed to stand for a moment, but then the paving stones shifted sideways and I fell. I heard a quick flurry of steps, then Sœur Seraphina was beside me, her hands lifting me up. I staggered, but she supported me strongly, half-carrying me out of the church. She did not speak but helped me to my pallet in the novice dormitory. She wrapped me in her own cloak, which smelt sweetly of lavender, tucked a hot brick wrapped in flannel in bed with me and stood over me while I drank a cup of herbs steeped in hot water, my teeth chattering against the rim. Then she smiled at me, pressed one hand against my cheek in comfort and left me.
I was soon warm again and drowsy. My thoughts drifted. I imagined my mother bent over me, stroking my hair away from my forehead. ‘Oh, Bon-bon,’ she sighed. ‘What trouble have you got yourself into now?’
I wrenched my mind away. I did not want to think about my mother. It grieved me to imagine her up in heaven with the angels, looking down and seeing me here. It was better to disbelieve in heaven altogether.
I had not prayed to God all those long cold hours. I had not prayed since I was a child. I had simply gritted my teeth and set myself to endure. It had seemed important to me that Sœur Emmanuelle realised she would not break my will. I could have got to my feet once Sœur Emmanuelle was gone. I could at least have huddled on one of the wooden pews, perhaps even wrapped myself in the richly embroidered altar cloth. I’m sure that is what she expected me to do. Yet to do so would have been to allow her, somehow, to triumph over me.
The Marquis de Maulévrier used to lock me in the caves under the Château de Cazeneuve. They were as cold as the church, and much darker. A hermit had once lived there, many hundreds of years before, and had died there. I wondered if his skeleton was still there, hidden under the stones. I imagined I heard his footsteps shuffling closer and closer, then I felt his cold breath on the back of my neck, the brush of a spectral finger. I screamed, but no one heard me.
Surely he was a good man, that long-ago hermit, I told myself. He would not hurt a little girl. I imagined he was taking my hand because he wanted to show me the way to escape the cave. Perhaps there was a secret door down low in the wall, a door only large enough for a child. If I stepped through that door, I would be in another world, in fairyland perhaps. It would be warm and bright there, and I would have a magical wand to protect myself. I’d ride on the back of a dragonfly, swooping through the forest. I’d battle dragons and talk to birds and have all kinds of grand adventures.
Later, I found that small door into fairyland could be conjured any time I needed it. The world beyond the door was different every time. Sometimes, I found a little stone house in the woods where I could live with just Nanette and my sister, Marie, and a tabby cat who purred by the fire. Sometimes, I lived in a castle in the air with a handsome prince who loved me. Other times, I was the prince myself, with a golden sword and a white charger.
When I went to Paris, I gave that door to fairyland as a gift to the real prince I met there. The Dauphin was just five years old when I was appointed maid of honour to his mother, Queen Marie-Thérèse, but I did not meet him for another two years. I saw him many times, of course, dressed in frothing white gowns, with his hair hanging in blonde ringlets down his back. When he was seven, he was breeched, baptised, and taken from the care of his nurse and put in the charge of the Duc de Montausier, a former soldier who thought any sign of emotion a weakness to be repressed.
One day, the Queen sent me to bring her son to her for their daily meeting in the Petite Galerie. I hurried through the immense cold rooms of the Louvre, my heels clacking on the marble. My wide skirts swished. When I had first arrived at the Louvre, I had been utterly overwhelmed by the vastness and grandeur of the King’s residence. I had always thought the Château de Cazeneuve was imposing, and indeed it was one of the largest estates in Gascony. It seemed small and medieval in comparison to the Louvre, however.
I understood then why everyone at court wore such full-bodied wigs and totteringly high heels and full skirts with trailing trains, and beribboned petticoat breeches and immense embroidered cuffs and hats flouncing with feathers, and why everyone’s gestures and antics and tragedies were on such a large scale. It was an attempt to be undiminished.
As I reached the Dauphin’s apartments, I heard the Duc de Montausier’s voice along with an all too familiar swish-crack as he brought his cane down upon the little boy’s body.
‘You’re a fool … swish-crack … an imbecile … swish-crack … an affront to His Majesty … swish-crack … you shame me … swish-crack … and yourself … swish-crack … stupid as any peasant boy … swish-crack …’
I stood still, shaking, unable to move or speak. In the past two years, the memory of those dreadful years under the Marquis de Maulévrier’s care had slowly faded to a mere bruise. The sound of that swish-crack brought it all back to me. I hunched my shoulders and set my jaw. At last, the Duc stoppe
d and came shouldering past me like an angry bull. I waited a while, but the sound of the boy within weeping broke my heart. I gently pushed open the door and went inside.
The Dauphin was lying on his stomach on his bed, his curls all in disorder, his eyes swollen and red. His lacy shirt was only half-drawn over his shoulder. His thin back was covered in red weals. I took my handkerchief and dampened it in the bowl. ‘You know, my guardian used to beat me too. I don’t know why. Sometimes, he beat me because I spoke, and sometimes because I didn’t.’
The boy looked towards me but did not speak. I offered him the damp handkerchief but he made no move towards it.
‘I never knew what I was meant to do. If I cried, he beat me harder. If I bit my lip and refused to cry, that only made him angrier and the beating would be even worse. Is that the same with you and the Duc?’
He nodded his head slowly. I knelt beside the bed and passed him the handkerchief again. He took it and pressed it against his eyes.
‘I think being locked up in the cellar was worse than being beaten, though. It was so dark I couldn’t see my hand even if I held it right before my eyes. I was afraid of the spiders and the cockroaches too. And I heard squeaking and squealing and scritching and scratching, and thought there must be rats in there as well. Or maybe bats. Once, I saw little red eyes glowing in the darkness. They came closer and closer and closer …’
The prince’s eyes were fixed on my face. When I paused, he said, ‘What did you do?’
‘I took off my boot and threw it at the eyes as hard as I could.’
He smiled.
‘Worse than the spiders and the cockroaches, worse than the rats and the bats, though, was the ghost.’
‘A ghost?’
I nodded. ‘You see, the cellar used to be a cave where a hermit lived. He was said to be so holy that when he was challenged by a heretic to prove his saintliness, he hung his cloak on a sunbeam.’
The prince sat up on his elbow.
‘He lived in that cave for a great many years and eventually died there. His bones were found there, in the very cave where my guardian had locked me up.’
‘Weren’t you scared?’
‘Terrified. But in the end I thought that a man who was so good he could hang his cloak on a sunbeam wouldn’t hurt me and I’d rather be safe in his cave than where my guardian could get me.’ Then I told the Dauphin about the secret door into fairyland that I had imagined, and how it didn’t matter how hard my guardian beat me or how cold and dark the cave was, I was always able to pretend I was somewhere else.
By this time, the Dauphin was sitting up and his eyes were eager. ‘Do you think maybe you could find a door like that here?’ I asked, taking up his comb and tidying his hair for him. ‘It’s not a real door, you understand, just a pretend one. But it might make it easier to bear the Duc, at least until you’re grown up and you can have him banished.’
‘Or thrown in a dungeon,’ the Dauphin said. ‘With rats and bats.’
‘Don’t waste the secret door on thinking up awful punishments for him,’ I advised. ‘You want it to be a good place, the sort of place you can always go to, whenever you need to. Here, let me help you get your coat on. Your mother wants to see you.’
He sighed and pouted. ‘I don’t want to go. I want to stay here and think about the secret door.’
‘You can think about it on the way. That’s the beautiful thing about the secret door. You can open it anywhere, any time.’
In later years, the court ladies often laughed behind their fans at the Dauphin, saying cruelly that he could spend a whole day tapping his cane against his foot and staring into space. I knew, though, that he was building castles in the air.
MIDNIGHT VIGILS
The Abbey of Gercy-en-Brie, France – April 1697
The midnight bell tolled, jerking me awake.
I lay for a moment, disorientated and afraid. My mind was filled with the flapping rags of dreams. I opened my eyes and felt my spirits sink as I recognised the dirty curtain that divided my bed from the others in the dormitory. Wearily, I sat up, sliding my poor cold feet out, seeking my night shoes. It seemed a long time since my feet had last felt warm. Every night, I slept curled in a ball like a wood mouse, my feet wrapped in the hem of my chemise, my dress and my cloak spread over the top of my thin blanket for added warmth. Perfect for quick dressing in the middle of the night.
I wish I had known nuns were woken up at midnight to pray. I’d have taken my chances with being exiled. Somehow, I had thought that nuns lived a life of idle luxury, with servants to wait on them and nothing to do all day but say the occasional rosary and make the occasional genuflection. I had heard stories of nuns who kept lapdogs, held parties in their cells at night and smuggled their lovers in with the laundry.
Perhaps such stories were true of other convents, but sadly they were not at all true of Gercy-en-Brie. Mère Notre and the other senior nuns took the laws of clausura seriously indeed. The windows were kept shuttered and barred, the gates were double-locked, and the walls were so high that I had not seen a bird or a cloud since I had arrived here. In all the weeks I had been here, I had seen no one but nuns and lay sisters – women who had come to the abbey without a dowry and so were not permitted to take full vows. Like me, they wore a plain dark dress, an apron and heavy clogs, their hair covered with a white cap with a veil hanging down the back. They did most of the work, though the nuns each had their chores to do as well.
Not even serving women were allowed in the convent. Nanette had offered to join the community as a lay sister, so that she could serve me, but Sœur Theresa had told her that novices were not permitted to have servants and she would be put to work scrubbing out the pigsty or some such nonsense. So Nanette went back to the Château de Cazeneuve, prepared to beg my sister to ask her husband, the Marquis de Théobon, to intercede on my behalf with the King. I knew it was no use. Théobon was too fat and lazy to bother to travel to Versailles, and the King never granted favours to noblemen who chose to stay on their estates instead of joining the whirligig of life at court. ‘I do not know him,’ he would say, and flick the letter away.
I had been allowed to see Nanette before she left, though we were separated by an iron grille so thick that we could not touch more than a fingertip.
‘They will not let me stay with you,’ she wept. ‘Me, who has looked after you since you were no more than a tiny flea.’
‘Don’t cry, Nanette,’ I told her. ‘You don’t want to be locked up in here with me, I promise you. The food is dreadful.’
‘Oh, Bon-bon, I don’t like to leave you here.’
‘You must,’ I said. ‘You’ll do more good nagging my brother-in-law to get off his fat arse and help me than scrubbing out pigsties, I assure you.’
I had heard nothing since she left. Nuns were not permitted to receive letters, Sœur Emmanuelle took great pleasure in informing me.
The only break from dreary routine was the monthly arrival of the priest to take confession and give mass. And you cannot count that as seeing a man. Even if you consider a priest a man – which I don’t – I never actually saw him. He was just a shadow and a sweaty smell and a mumble and a grumble. And what did I have to confess, locked away here with all these old women? Wishing the food was better? Wishing I had a man in my bed to keep me warm? Confessing that I had woken up more than once with my body twisting with desire, my dreams filled with images of Charles …
‘What I wouldn’t give to see a man,’ I exclaimed one morning as the other novices and I swept and dusted the dormitory. ‘A young comely one, preferably, but I swear any man would do.’
The other novices giggled nervously.
‘Oh, you mustn’t say such things.’ Sœur Irene looked over her shoulder.
‘The butcher comes in autumn to slaughter the pigs,’ Sœur Juliette said. ‘But we all have to stay in our cells till he’s gone. It’s horrible – all we can hear are the pigs screaming. We hate it when he comes.’
‘Sometimes, the bishop sends a handyman to fix anything that’s broken,’ said Sœur Paula, a novice with a freckled face and gingery eyebrows. ‘But he only comes when we’re all in church and must be finished by the time we return. The portress rings the bell so we know not to enter the cloister.’
‘It’s been a long time since anything’s been repaired here,’ said Sœur Olivia, a lovely young woman with the smooth oval face of a saint in a painting. She might have gone on to say more if Sœur Emmanuelle had not then entered the room and given us all penances for speaking without cause.
There were only a handful of novices, ranging from Sœur Olivia, who must have been approaching eighteen, to little Sœur Mildred, who was only twelve. We all slept together in one long dormitory, with canvas hung up to divide our rooms into the semblance of cells. With the sound of the midnight bell dying away, I could hear the girls next to me stretching and yawning, and Sœur Emmanuelle’s knees creaking as she clambered to her feet.
I dressed quickly, wrapping my heavy cloak about me. My nose felt like an icicle. My hands were mottled blue. Sœur Emmanuelle looked past my curtain, frowning and beckoning. I moved instantly to join her, knowing that the slightest sign of insubordination would result in yet another humiliating punishment.
Beyond my curtain, the other novices were already lined up, their eyes lowered, their hands tucked into their sleeves for warmth. I hastened to fall into line with them. Together, we glided down the length of the corridor and down the night stairs to the church. There was no sound but the shuffle of slippers on the stone floor and the occasional chink of rosary beads. All was black and sombre, the only light coming from the small lantern that burned at one end of the dormitory. It illuminated each black robe and white veil briefly, before each novitiate passed back into shadow.