by Andie Newton
All was quiet.
Moans and romantic gasps followed a thump against the lorry’s passenger side door, and my heart practically stopped, watching Marguerite and the driver kissing each other passionately through the window on the other side. He cradled her face, her veil slipping from the pull of his hands as he worked his way from her mouth to her neck.
‘Mother of Christ,’ I said. ‘You’re in love with a man!’
They froze. Not a sound in the world could be heard. He peeped through the window, blurry-eyed with slobbery lips, and caught sight of me before they both raced to straighten themselves. He hopped back into his lorry and peeled off down the road, leaving me and Marguerite staring at each other through the dusty air.
5
The wave of relief I felt was indescribable—I wasn’t going anywhere. A postulant in love with a man—grounds for dismissal Mavis had said. I popped a fresh cigarette into my mouth—my eyes set on Marguerite—and took several drawn-out pulls as I lit it.
‘Nice day,’ I said, closing the lighter with a click, and I imagined a thousand thoughts raced through her mind as I stood there, staring at her, a smouldering cigarette tight between my fingers. ‘Isn’t it, Marguerite?’
Her mouth pinched up like a drawstring bag, and I thought she was about to come after me, but then suddenly Claire came trooping around the corner with a handful of delinquents and interrupted us both.
‘Afternoon crafts are over,’ Claire announced, as the girls fell in line behind her. ‘Mavis wants us to gather for Bible study.’
I took a breath—I hadn’t even noticed I was holding it—and thought about how Marguerite treated me the first day we met, the way she looked at me in the square and that damn Bible of hers she brought with her on the train, pretending to be a saint. I pointed to Marguerite with my cigarette, and she snatched a switch from the ground.
Claire stumbled back, using a stiff arm to keep the other girls out of the way as Marguerite walked toward me. ‘What’s going on?’ Claire said.
Wpssh! Marguerite whipped my knuckles with one very powerful swat. I bent over, cupping my hand as the cigarette slipped through my shaking fingers onto the ground. The little gasp that had come from my mouth turned into a breathless smile—the day I went back to Vichy would be because I decided to, not because of Marguerite.
Marguerite stormed back into the laundry room, kicking dirt up behind her with her shoes. The girls’ mouths hung open, not sure what to make of Marguerite’s devilish behaviour and then my smirking face.
Claire was the only one who had the nerve to ask. ‘Mademoiselle?’
I lifted my head up, trying to appear serious. ‘Don’t smoke at the convent, girls.’
*
I skipped dinner service, stood in the corridor and listened to the nuns slurp watery noodle soup from wide spoons. Every now and then I’d catch a glimpse of the delinquents clearing trays or carrying soup tureens to and from the kitchen for the sisters. All I could think about was Marguerite. And that man. The way he touched her, with his mouth on her neck. I took a breath just thinking about it, loosening my collar. I’d never seen kissing like that before.
The more I thought about Marguerite, the more I thought she was a spy—a German mole, probably sent here to take notes on the sisters, maybe even turn them in. I should have known she was German with those thick ankles and pointed eyes.
Several times I took a step toward the dining room, but each time a restless simmer in my gut held me back. I needed to do something… but what? If I could sneak into Marguerite’s chamber and go through her things, I bet I’d find something—something tangible to use against her. Evidence.
Mavis had been watching me through the gap in the door. I held my stomach, grimacing as if I had an ache, and she went back to eating. Claire had had enough of me standing in the corridor and used a tipped-over a tray as an excuse to leave the room for cleaning supplies and come talk to me.
‘What’s going on?’ She stood a breath away from my face, eyes dilating.
‘Nothing,’ I said.
I wanted to blow her off, but started to think that perhaps I needed some help. She kept staring at me, her eyes shifting from one eye to the other. ‘It’s Marguerite. I know it.’ Claire poked her head into the dining room. A row of black-veiled heads bobbed up and down from their soup bowls while the delinquents walked around and picked up their trays. She turned back toward me, satisfied nobody could hear us. ‘It’s more than the whipping—all the girls are talking about it. But they’re a bunch of adolescents. Think you did something. I think it’s the other way around.’ Claire’s brow furrowed as she cupped her shoulder with her hand. ‘It’s a feeling I have.’
‘Christ, Claire. Again, with your shoulder?’
Her face scrunched when I said Christ’s name, but I didn’t apologize. I had a lot on my mind.
‘You’re saying there’s nothing going on?’
I looked at her, thinking about what she’d say if I asked her to help me with Marguerite. I couldn’t ask Mavis, nor would I want to. The other girls were too young. Claire was the oldest delinquent at the convent, and I had the distinct impression she craved a little excitement.
‘All right, listen,’ I said, pulling her in close. ‘I need some help. I’m not sure how much time I have.’
She nibbled her fingernails. ‘To do what?’
‘I need access to Marguerite’s chamber. At a time when I know she’ll be occupied.’
‘You want to get her back for whipping you?’
I wasn’t about to tell Claire I thought Marguerite might be a spy. If I did, I’d have to confess what I’d seen in the crypt and she’d tell every one of the delinquents before breakfast.
‘That’s right. The whipping,’ I said. ‘I need to think of a good time. In the morning, during prayer?’ Just as I said the words, I knew morning prayer wouldn’t work because everyone would notice I wasn’t there.
‘What about vespers?’ Claire said.
Vespers was an after-dinner prayer service only the nuns and postulants attended. They locked themselves in the nave, all very secretive, and chanted in Latin. It was perfect.
‘I’ll need a lookout.’
Claire nodded, excitement glinting like a firework in her eye.
*
The sisters’ private chambers were in an area off-limits to the rest of us, through a set of thick wood doors and up a flight of steep stone stairs. The postulants were on the ground level, behind the staircase, in what I heard were much smaller rooms.
Claire and I watched Marguerite and the rest of the nuns file into the nave and shut the door behind them. I flicked my chin. ‘This way.’ Claire nodded, and we snuck down to the private entrance, tiptoeing past freshly lit candles hanging from wrought-iron sconces bolted into the wall. The sisters’ chants spiralled hauntingly down the castle’s stone corridors.
‘In adiutorium meum intende…’
‘This way,’ I said, turning my head for one second, when Sister Mary-Francis and someone new passed by us, someone whose habit looked pieced together and a size too big.
‘Adèle,’ Sister Mary-Francis said, but then sounded much more suspicious. ‘What are you doing out here?’
‘Oh, uh…’
‘We’re going to the infirmary, Sister,’ Claire piped up, and I looked at her. ‘Mademoiselle has a stomach ache. I offered to walk her.’ She smiled, and I looked at Sister Mary-Francis, slowly moving my arms to my waist.
‘Oh?’ the sister said. ‘Are you sick? I noticed you weren’t at dinner.’
‘Uh, yes,’ I said, holding my stomach. ‘I’ll be fine though.’
I tried not to stare, but I wanted to get a look at the new nun’s eyes, see if she was the same woman I saw in the old convent with the guns. My heart sped up, leaning in, and her eyes slowly lifted from the floor, but then more doors slammed shut down the way and the chants turned even more muffled. ‘We better hurry!’ Sister Mary-Francis said, and the pair rushed off dow
n the corridor to vespers.
I watched them leave as Claire pushed me to move on. ‘Come on,’ Claire whispered, and once they were out of sight, I moved.
‘What was that about?’ Claire said.
‘What?’
‘You were staring,’ she said, almost laughing. ‘Like you had never seen a nun before.’ She waved her hand around. ‘Look where we are.’
‘It was nothing,’ I said, thinking about how it was even more imperative that I get to the bottom of Marguerite’s story. ‘Come on.’ I grabbed her by the arm and walked to the end of the corridor where it opened into the foyer. ‘Shush,’ I said, and we listened for what was up ahead before blindly walking around the corner. All seemed quiet. Nothing out of the ordinary.
She pushed me with her knee. ‘Let’s go,’ she said. ‘They’re all in vespers—’
‘Shush!’ I said, and I peeked around the corner, thinking Claire had to be right—we heard the drone of vespers, there was no mistaking that—but to our surprise not all the sisters had made it.
Sister Mary-Gertrude, a nun who was too old to do anything other than sit in a rocking chair, sat just in front of the main entrance to the private chambers. As upsetting as that was, it was seeing Mavis pacing around with her hands on her head that surprised me.
‘What’s Mavis still doing here?’ Claire whispered. ‘That old nun would fall asleep in that chair if she’d leave.’
‘I don’t know…’
Mavis would only miss vespers if she was ill, as devout as she was, and not just for a little stomach ache—she’d have to be vomiting. Besides, she didn’t have a chamber with the other postulants. Mavis slept in the delinquent corridor with us, in the basement under the convent’s bell tower.
‘Maybe she’s on guard duty,’ Claire said.
‘Guard?’ I looked at her. ‘What is there to guard?’
‘Their crucifixes,’ Claire said.
‘Gertrude is older than this castle. The sisters prop her up in the chair because they don’t know what else to do with her.’ Minutes passed, but still Mavis stayed put. ‘This changes everything.’
Mavis licked her palms, getting ready to smooth them over her limp hair and Claire scowled. ‘She’s disgusting.’
‘Shh.’ I patted her hand, rethinking my plan. I had to get into Marguerite’s room. But how? Mavis bent to one knee, meeting Gertrude at eye level, looking very absorbed. Damn it. What will I do now? I turned to leave but Claire tugged on my arm.
‘Marguerite’s room is on the ground floor,’ she said, leaning into my ear. ‘You can climb through the window.’
‘The window?’ I was shocked at first, thinking of her suggestion, climbing through the window like a child-thief. But did it matter how I got into her room if the results were the same? It was my only chance.
‘Let’s go.’
*
The sun had set behind the lush green hills that surrounded the convent. The delinquents’ giddy laughs on the other side of the meadow settled over the convent’s grounds as they picked wild flowers for breakfast service the next morning. The scent of lilac soap bubbled through the laundry doors.
Marguerite’s chamber was the last window at the end of a very long stone wall shaded by a leafy tree. Instead of lead-lined glass panes like the rest of the nun’s windows, Marguerite’s window had glass planks that slid into moveable wood brackets, the kind I normally saw in the toilets.
I looked at Claire. ‘Are you sure you want to help me?’
She nodded.
I carefully slid the planks out of the brackets and handed them to Claire. She bundled them in her arms before setting them on the ground, careful not to make any clinking noises. My heart raced once all the planks were removed and I could see into her room. I had to find something to expose Marguerite with and get her kicked out of the convent.
‘What are you going to do in there?’ Claire said. ‘Smoke? You’ll make her break out.’ She laughed nervously thinking that was what I had planned.
‘Yes! That’s it.’ I took a cigarette from my case and lit it quickly with my lighter. ‘You know she’s sensitive.’ I hadn’t planned to smoke, but it was a plausible revenge. I pointed to the window. ‘Help me up.’ She laced her fingers together, and with a little grunt and a moan, pushed me over the window ledge, sending me tumbling onto Marguerite’s wood floor on the other side. I didn’t expect such strength coming from her little arms, and lay on my back, wondering if the thud from landing on the floor was as loud as I thought it had been, before slowly moving to my feet.
Marguerite’s room looked simple: a bed, mute coverings and a tiny crucifix hanging on the wall above her headboard. A modest chest of drawers made from bleached oak sat in the corner, an oval mirror centred on the top. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. In fact, aside from her pillow, which had the slightest impression of a head set into it, I would have thought the room was vacant.
‘What are you looking for?’ Claire asked, peeping over the window ledge.
I puffed hastily on my cigarette, eyes rolling over Marguerite’s bare walls. ‘Nothing.’
‘What?’ she said over the ledge.
‘I don’t know!’
Claire turned her back to the window while I examined Marguerite’s chest of drawers. It was about the same size as that damn crate she lugged with her from the train. The knobs were shiny and made from some kind of ornamental metal. Odd, I thought, since nuns didn’t like fancy things, but hardly the evidence I was looking for.
Inside she had a dozen or so neatly folded postulant aprons and skirts separated into stacks. I ran my hands between the cottony layers and along the interior edges of the wood drawers. Nothing but a dried-up vanilla sachet that had lost its scent.
‘Hurry up,’ Claire said in a shouted whisper. She looked worried, shooting sharp looks over her shoulder. ‘The sun’s setting.’ A shady darkness fell into the room as the sun completely disappeared behind the hills. ‘She’ll be coming back!’
I puffed more and more on my cigarette, frantically moving about Marguerite’s room, thinking about how I was running out of time. Ash flew from my cigarette when I pulled back her bed quilt, yanking the sheets from the mattress like a mad dog. Nothing. Frustrated, I kicked the bed, and a piece of paper slipped through the metal bed frame and landed upright on the floor—a list, a long list.
I paused in shock, and then reached for it. The names of nearly every sister and delinquent at the convent written in ink and in sequential order. Beside each one was a star or a check-mark. Around my name was a dark circle that had been traced over so many times the paper had torn.
My mouth drew open, cigarette sticking to my lip, surprised by the amount of ink and the darkness of it around my name.
‘Someone’s coming,’ Claire whispered through the window in a frantic, breathy shout.
The duelling clip of footsteps echoed down the corridor—clip, clop, clip, clop…
I gasped, looking at Marguerite’s closed door, heart pounding.
‘Hurry!’ Claire said, and I heaved the mattress back onto its frame and spread the quilt into place faster than I had taken it off. I lunged for the window, but then realized I still had Marguerite’s list in my hand. A key slipped into the door lock. I shoved the list back under the bedframe and dove head first out the window with my cigarette pinched between my lips. Just as my legs slipped over the ledge, Marguerite’s door unlocked.
The door creaked open, and we heard the whisperings of two women in the corridor, chatting as if they were in no rush to come inside. We hurried to slide the planks back into the window brackets, their voices quieting just as we slid the last one into place. We froze, then the door swung wide open, and the room lit up with candlelight.
Claire and I dropped to the ground.
Footsteps trudged to the window, the end of my cigarette burning closer and closer to my lips, a ribbon of smoke teasing the hairs in my nose. With a flick of my tongue, I flipped the burning cigarette over into my
mouth and clenched it in between my teeth. Then I prayed.
Please, God. Please…
Seconds passed as Claire and I crouched quietly in the dark space below the window, the ominous feeling of Marguerite’s eyes hovering above us. An eerie pause followed as I felt her presence standing dangerously close to the window, followed by the clink of a hand touching the planks.
Claire squeezed my hand, harder and harder and harder until I thought it might split in two.
‘Achoo!’ Marguerite sneezed, and I closed my eyes, stuffing down a smoky cough.
Please… God…
Marguerite’s fingers slipped from the planks, and she walked away from the window. Seconds felt like minutes, the ember burning ever so close to my tongue, until finally I heard the soft click of a shut door.
I spat the cigarette from my mouth, gasping for clean air. ‘You can open your eyes now, Claire,’ I said, coughing into my shoulder. ‘She’s gone.’
Claire whined like a caught little mouse.
‘Claire?’ I said, but she’d let go of my hand and run back into the convent.
6
I slept soundly, as soundly as one could in the dank, grey basement under the convent’s bell tower, when I heard Marguerite’s heavy, almost manly voice bark my name. ‘Adèle!’ She loomed over my cot, the shadowy outline of her postulant’s veil hiding her face. Her breath seemed forced, laboured, as if it was hard for her to breathe. She tapped the soft part of my hand, in between my knuckles, where it was still tender from the lashing she gave me the day prior.
I propped myself up by the elbows and focused on her face, but all I could see was the collar of her white tunic and her pocketed blue skirt against the slate basement walls. She leaned into a shaft of sunlight that had just broken through the paned window-well. ‘Regardez-moi! Look at me!’
I sat bolt upright.
Marguerite’s right cheek swelled like a balloon and her eyes shined pink like a rabbit’s. Raised, red splotches trailed down her neck and then vanished underneath her collar. She swallowed, wincing as if her throat hurt as much as her face.