‘In the toilet,’ I whispered, and she looked confused as to why I’d tell her the particulars, but I wanted to wash away all her doubt. ‘I’m all right now. Not to worry.’
I patted her shoulder and she went into the conservatory even though we were all outside.
‘Yes, have a rest,’ I said as she walked away. ‘I’ll take care of everything this morning.’
I made my way over to the grassy hill, where so many of the girls had already started to paint. Sister Mary-Francis inspected the artwork, hands folded behind her back.
‘Mother wants you to paint more of the same today,’ she said. ‘We need more coal. And your painting fetched us a mint.’
I didn’t understand what the fuss was about, why someone would trade a fortune in coal for that glob of paint I slapped on the canvas the other day. Art was subjective, Charlotte had told me once. I suppose it isn’t up to me to understand. I smiled. ‘Yes, Sister.’
I set up my palette and chair, listening to the girls fight over the last tube of blue paint when I noticed the sister staring off toward the front of the convent. I got off my chair and walked over when I felt something wasn’t right. ‘Something wrong?’
She shook her head slowly from side to side, still looking at the front of the convent, and to a car that had just rolled up. Vichy police, and not one, two or three of them, but four gendarmes got out of the car and walked the courtyard, lingering, kicking up dirt and fingering their batons. Mother Superior walked out to talk to them. Voices were raised.
The bell tower chimed, clinging and clanging with so much force even the girls turned around. ‘What time is it?’ they asked. ‘Why are the bells ringing?’
Sister Mary-Francis walked off without so much as a word, disappearing into the laundry.
‘Where’s Marguerite?’ I said to anyone who’d answer, eyes still on the gendarmes, but only a few looked up from their canvases. ‘Girls!’ I said, and they all looked at me this time. ‘Where’s Marguerite?’
The bells had stopped ringing, but the hum still echoed in my ears and over the convent grounds. Vibrating. One of the gendarmes noticed me, but then his fleeting glance turned into a stare. He pointed for another gendarme to look, and then Mother. My stomach sank.
I ducked behind a canvas. He’d found me. I don’t know how, but he’d found me.
‘Girls,’ I said, trying to sound calm but my heart was racing. There was no time for counting and to think about lying in the grass. ‘I’ll be right back.’ I winced hard. ‘Don’t move.’
‘Where are you going?’ one asked.
The cloister wasn’t that far away, and the sanctuary would still have sisters kneeling in the pews, which would provide a little cover. Then I could make it to the south stairs, and down into the secret room where I had my training. They wouldn’t find me there.
I used my canvas as a cover. ‘I need a new canvas,’ I announced, and I made a dash for it, making haste to the bell tower, looking for a place to stash the canvas, but then decided to ditch it for the doors.
The sanctuary was empty. Not one sister. Prayer candles flickered.
The chapel doors flew open and Sister Mary-Francis walked in swiftly, down the aisle and past all the pews to the altar where she crossed her chest with the sign of the divinity.
‘Sister—’
‘Shh!’ She bolted toward me, her habit swishing around her feet, but then whispered as she passed. ‘Out the back, far meadow. Hurry!’
9
I ran through the far meadow and found cover under a big willow tree, hiding in its spindly branches, where I waited, but for what I didn’t know. I felt like a turkey in the wild waiting to be shot, breathing heavily, then standing nervously, biting at my fingernails.
A crackling behind me nearly scared me into the branches, but then my stomach hit the ground in relief when I saw it was Marguerite. ‘Christ, it’s you—’
She rushed up, hands out, clamping them over my loud mouth. Her lips felt dry in my ear. ‘Shh…’ She peeled her palm away from my face and we looked at each other. ‘The police got a tip about the guns.’
I covered my own mouth. ‘The mole?’
‘Who else?’ she said.
‘Did they arrest Mother?’ I said, and she shook her head.
‘They only asked questions, and how many sisters and delinquents we had. She gave