shouted for someone to come outside and the door opened again.
A girl, someone who was not a nun, with a slick of mousy bangs pressed to her forehead and a blue smock hanging from her small frame. She clasped her hands behind her back and looked at the ground, waiting for the sister’s instructions.
Her eyes shifted once toward Marguerite, but just briefly.
‘This is Adèle,’ the sister said. ‘We’ve found our new mistress—she’ll join you with the girls. See that she gets settled.’
The girl clicked her heels and asked me to follow her, which I did, gladly. Halfway through the courtyard, I stopped and held my hand out to shake—I wasn’t going to make the same mistake I did with Marguerite; it was important for me to start off on the right foot. ‘Nice to meet you…’
‘Mavis,’ she said, just above a whisper.
Birds chirped in the trees, but even so, her voice was very soft. ‘Pardon—Mavis was it?’
She led me by the elbow toward the convent, nodding as we walked. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m a postulant.’
‘Oh!’ I said. ‘Just like…’ I turned around, pointing to Marguerite, only her and the sister were gone.
3
Rehabilitation, as Sister Mary-Francis had called it, was a place for the delinquents of France—girls between the ages of twelve and seventeen whose families thought they had strayed in God’s eyes. Just a few had been destitute from the war and placed with the convent out of desperation, until their families could reimburse the sisters monetarily or through service.
As their mistress, I escorted the girls to the sewing centre once a week in the city, inside a seventeenth-century building the sisters once used as their convent. The girls didn’t complain about the sewing. They knew the conditions at the convent were better than most. The summer heat was another matter entirely, and often on the mornings when the clouds were scarce and the sun beat down like a blister in the sky, they’d voice their displeasure in subtle ways. On these days, finding shade and staying in it was a necessity.
The bells in the tower clanged and clanged, and the girls scooted from the pews, hurrying out the side doors of the cool sanctuary into the warm outside. I clapped twice for them to make a line against the wall, but as soon as they felt the sun on their faces, they slumped against the convent as if trying to suck the last bit of morning dew from the castle’s weathered stones.
One girl picked at the crumbling mortar. ‘I’m sweating already,’ she said, pushing herself away from the wall to fan herself with her hand.
I snapped lavender sprigs off a nearby bush and handed each girl a piece big enough to rub under their armpits. ‘Pretend it’s your mother’s Chanel.’ They moaned.
Just as we were about to leave, Sister Mary-Francis burst through the door, out of breath and panting with her arms in the air. ‘Adèle!’ The rosary pinched between her fingers flung around her wrist. ‘Thank goodness! I thought I’d missed you. We got word there’s a special visitor in Lyon today and Mother Superior—’
I touched her gently, worried she was working herself into a state. ‘Sister, are you all right?’
‘Yes, yes…’ She glanced up at the convent behind me, taking a deep breath. ‘Mother Superior requests that you take the girls to the square—Place des Terreaux—to represent the rehabilitation centre.’ She took another deep breath, but this time exhaled very slowly.
The sisters counted on the money we made on orders. I couldn’t imagine who’d be important enough to interrupt our scheduled day of sewing. ‘Visiteur spéciale?’
She nodded. ‘Our beloved Pétain. He’s giving a speech—veterans for Pétain parade is to follow.’
‘Oh,’ I said with a gulp. ‘I see.’ Even I heard the snarl of disinterest in my voice.
‘The Vichy regime put God back in the schools, Adèle.’ Her face pruned, and I instantly regretted my tone. ‘We owe a debt of gratitude to Pétain.’
‘I understand, certainly, Sister—’ the girls lifted their eyes, pulling their collars from their necks ‘—I meant no disrespect. I’m merely concerned about the heat. The old convent feels like a wine cellar; it’s cool, and on a day like this…’
Her face loosened, though not completely. ‘It’s Mother’s wishes. In the main square in one hour—’ the girls groaned ‘—after the speech you are to come right back and take reflection on the convent grounds, in the cloister. No sewing at all today.’
No doubt there would be police in the square. Some may know Gérard,