Bitter Greens E-Book

Kate Forsyth

• Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Seitenzahl: 862

Beschreibung

Charlotte-Rose de la Force, exiled from the court of King Louis XIV, has always been a great talker and teller of tales. Selena Leonelli, once the exquisite muse of the great Venetian artist Tiziano, is terrified of time. Margherita, trapped in a doorless tower and burdened by tangles of her red-gold hair, must find a way to escape. You may think you know the story of Rapunzel . . .

Leseprobe

BITTER GREENS

Kate Forsyth

This book is dedicated to all my dear friends who are both women and writers – we are living the life that Charlotte-Rose dreamt of.

FOREWORD

The first known version of the Rapunzel fairy tale was ‘Petrosinella’ (‘Little Parsley’), by the Italian writer Giambattista Basile (c.1575–1632), published posthumously in 1634.

Sixty-four years later, in 1698, it was retold under the name ‘Persinette’ by the French writer Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de la Force (1650–1724), written while she was locked away in a nunnery as punishment for her scandalous life. She changed the ending so that her heroine’s tears healed the eyes of the blinded prince and the witch was redeemed.

Fairy-tale scholars have always been puzzled by how Mademoiselle de la Force could have come to know Basile’s story. His work was not translated from his native Neapolitan dialect for many years after Mademoiselle de la Force’s death, and, although she was unusually well educated for her time, she never travelled to Italy, nor could she speak Neapolitan. It is her version of the tale that we now know as ‘Rapunzel’.

As well as being one of the first writers of literary fairy tales, Mademoiselle de la Force was one of the first writers of historical fiction and was known to be a major influence on Sir Walter Scott, who is commonly regarded as the ‘father’ of historical fiction.

CONTENTS

Title Page

Dedication

Foreword

Prelude

A HEART OF GALL

DEVIL’S BARGAIN

CASTLES IN THE AIR

MIDNIGHT VIGILS

LA PUISSANCE D’AMOUR

DEVIL’S SEEDS

Cantata

A SPRIG OF PARSLEY

THE SORCERESS

HE LOVES ME, HE LOVES ME NOT

BITTER GREENS

PIETÀ

SUNSHINE AND SHADOW

THE TOWER

Interlude

WICKED GIRL

THE KING OF FRANCE

THE HUNT

Reverie

A KIND OF MADNESS

WATCHING THE MOON

TALLY MARKS

Lament

THE WHORE’S BRAT

THE ROYAL THIRTY-NINE

BELLADONNA

LOVE AND HATRED

THE LAZZARETTO

TOUCH ME NOT

EARTHLY LOVE

TIZIANO AND HIS MISTRESS

Nocturne

COUNTERFEITING DEATH

A MERE BAGATELLE

A COQUETTE

A LOCK OF HAIR

THE DEVIL’S OWN LUCK

ONE MORE GAME

BLACK MAGIC

Rhapsody

BELLA E BIANCA

FEASTING

UNBINDING

Fugue

THE AFFAIR OF THE POISONS

THE BASTILLE

BURNING THE WITCH

REVOCATION

EASTER EGGS

UNDER SIEGE

COILS

SKINNING THE BEAR

Fantasia

ALONE IN THE WILDERNESS

DEAD MAN’S BELLS

THE GODDESS OF SPRING

Postlude

A TONGUE OF HONEY

Afterword

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Copyright

PRELUDE

All day, all day I brush

My golden strands of hair;

All day I wait and wait …

Ah, who is there?

Who calls? Who calls? The gold

Ladder of my long hair

I loose and wait … and wait …

Ah, who is there?

She left at dawn … I am blind

In the tangle of my long hair …

Is it she? the witch? the witch?

Ah, who is there?

‘Rapunzel’

Adelaide Crapsey

A HEART OF GALL

Château de Cazeneuve, Gascony, France – June 1666

I had always been a great talker and teller of tales.

‘You should put a lock on that tongue of yours. It’s long enough and sharp enough to slit your own throat,’ our guardian warned me, the night before I left home to go to the royal court at Versailles. He sat at the head of the long wooden table in the chateau’s arched dining room, lifting his lip in distaste as the servants brought us our usual peasant fare of sausage and white-bean cassoulet. He had not accustomed himself to our simple Gascon ways, not even after four years.

I just laughed. ‘Don’t you know a woman’s tongue is her sword? You wouldn’t want me to let my only weapon rust, would you?’

‘No chance of that.’ The Marquis de Maulévrier was a humourless man, with a face like a goat and yellowish eyes that followed my sister and me as we went about our business. He thought our mother had spoilt us, and had set himself to remedy our faults. I loathed him. No, loathe is far too soft a word. I detested him.

My sister, Marie, said, ‘Please, my lord, you mustn’t mind her. You know we’re famous here in Gascony for our troubadours and minstrels. We Gascons love to sing songs and tell stories. She means no harm by it.’

‘I love to tell a gasconade,’ I sang. ‘A braggadocio, a fanfaronade …’

Marie sent me a look. ‘You know that Charlotte-Rose will need honey on her tongue if she’s to make her way in this world.’

‘Sangdieu, but it’s true. Her face won’t make her fortune.’

‘That’s unfair, my lord. Charlotte-Rose has the sweetest face …’

‘She might be passable if only she’d pluck out that sting in her tail,’ the Marquis de Maulévrier began. Seeing that I had screwed up my face like a gargoyle, waggling my tongue at him, he rapped his spoon on the pitted tabletop. ‘You’d best sweeten your temperament, mademoiselle, else you’ll find yourself with a heart of gall.’

I should have listened to him.

Palais de Versailles, France – January 1697

Full of regret, I clung to the strap as my carriage rolled away from the Palais de Versailles. It was a bleak and miserable day, the sky bruised with snow clouds. I was sure my nose must be red; it certainly felt red. I drew my fur-edged cloak closer about me, glad that I would not, at least, arrive at my prison looking like a pauper.

I still could not believe that the King would order me to a nunnery. Apparently, it was in punishment for some impious Noëls that I had written, but all the women of the salons made subtle mock of the church. It seemed a harsh punishment for such a petty crime. Surely the King did not believe the rumours that I was having an affair with his son? The Dauphin and I were friends, drawn together by our love of art and music and novels, and our hatred of the King. Perhaps I had been too bold in expressing my views. Perhaps my tongue – and my quill – had grown a little sharp. I had thought myself safe under the Dauphin’s protection. The Dauphin always said, though, that the one way for him to ensure his father punished someone was to beg his father to offer that person a favour.

Perched on the other seat, my maid, Nanette, gazed at me unhappily but I would not meet her eyes. ‘It’s all a great misunderstanding,’ I said. ‘The King will soon summon me back.’ I tried to smile.

‘Couldn’t you have gone to him and begged his pardon, Bon-bon?’ Nanette asked.

‘I did try,’ I answered. ‘But you know the King. He must be the most unforgiving man in Christendom.’

‘Bon-bon!’

‘It’s no use scolding me, Nanette. I’m simply telling the truth.’

‘But to be locked up in a convent. To become a nun.’ Nanette’s voice was faint with horror. ‘Your parents must be rolling in their graves.’

‘What were my choices? Exile or the convent. At least, this way, the King will still pay my pension and I’ll be on French soil, breathing French air. Where else could I have gone? What could I have done to support myself? I’m too old and ugly to walk the streets.’

Nanette’s face puckered. ‘You’re not old or ugly.’

I laughed. ‘Not to you, perhaps, Nanette. But, believe me, most people at Versailles consider me a hideous old hag. I’m forty-seven years old, and not even my closest friends ever thought I was a beauty.’

‘You’re not a hideous old hag,’ Nanette protested. ‘Not beautiful, no, but there’s better things than beauty in this world.’

‘Belle laide, Athénaïs calls me,’ I replied with a little shrug. The expression was usually used to describe a woman who was arresting despite the plainness of her looks. My guardian had spoken truly when he said my face would never be my fortune.

Nanette made a little tsk tsk with her tongue. ‘You’re worth twice the Marquise de Montespan. Don’t you listen to a word she says. And don’t you go thinking you’re a hideous old hag either. I wouldn’t permit anyone to say that about me, and in my case it’s true.’

I smiled despite myself. Nanette was not the most attractive of women. She was tiny and gaunt, dressed always in black, with sparse white hair screwed back into a knob at the back of her head. Her face and body were so thin that you could see all the bones underneath her withered skin, and she had lost quite a few teeth. Her black eyes were fierce, but her hands were always tender and her brain quite as nimble as it had ever been.

Nanette had been my maid ever since I was weaned from my wet-nurse. As a child, I would lie in my vast shadowy bed, a flame floating in the old glass lantern, and sleepily listen as she sang, ‘You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.’ Nanette was like the Lord in that psalm. Before a word was on my tongue, she knew it completely. She hemmed me in behind and before, and her hand held me fast.

‘You’d best write to your sister straightaway and let her know what’s happened,’ Nanette went on. ‘Marie’s not clever like you, but she’s got a good heart. She’ll beg that fat husband of hers to petition the King.’

‘I’ll write to the Princesses too,’ I said. ‘They’ll be furious with their father. He simply cannot go around banishing all the most interesting people from court, can he?’

Nanette humphed, but the thought of the King’s three pipe-smoking, bastard-born daughters lifted my spirits a little. Born of two of the King’s mistresses, they had been legitimised and married off to various dukes and princes, and they enlivened the court with their scandalous love affairs, their extravagance, their gambling and their constant bickering over precedence. Although they were much younger than me, we had become good friends, and I often attended their soirées and salons.

My smile slowly faded. The Princesses de Conti were no longer in favour with the King and his reigning mistress, Françoise de Maintenon, who had been queen in all but name for more than fifteen years now. Some even whispered that Louis had married her in secret. Yet Françoise had none of the beauty and brilliance of the King’s earlier mistresses. Not only was she over sixty, but she was also rather plain and dumpy, and altogether too pious for the King’s bastard daughters.

Remembering the Princesses, it occurred to me that their mothers, the royal mistresses, had all ended their dazzling careers within the austere confines of a convent.

Louise de la Vallière, the King’s first mistress and mother of Princesse Marie-Anne, had been transformed into Sœur Louise de la Miséricorde.

Athénaïs, the Marquise de Montespan, mother of Princesse Louise Françoise and Princesse Françoise Marie, had been forced to the nunnery by scandal and rumours of black magic and poison.

The frivolous Angélique de Fontanges, the girl who had supplanted Athénaïs in the King’s affection, had died in a convent at the age of nineteen. Poisoned, it was said.

I was a fool. Why would the King hesitate to banish me to a nunnery, when he had no problem sending his discarded mistresses, the mothers of his children? Women were locked up in convents all the time. Younger daughters sent as babies, so their parents did not have to pay so rich a dowry as they would for their wedding day. Rebellious young women, cloistered away as punishment for their disobedience. Widows, like my poor mother, banished by the King to a convent, even though she was a Huguenot and so feared and hated the Roman Catholic Church with all her heart.

Although I was pretending not to care, my stomach was knotted with anxiety. I knew little about convents except that once a woman disappeared inside, she stayed inside. Nanette had often told me the story of how Martin Luther’s wife, a former nun, had only been able to escape by hiding in an empty fish barrel. Certainly, I had never seen my own mother again.

The only life I knew was the court of the Sun King. I had lived at court since I was sixteen years old. What did I know about spending my days on my knees, praying and clicking away at a rosary?

I’d never make love again, or dance, or gallop to the hounds, or smile as I made a whole salon of Parisian courtiers laugh and applaud one of my stories. I’d never rest my folded fan against my heart, saying in the silent language of the court that my heart was breaking with love. I’d never be kissed again.

The tears came at last. Nanette passed me the handkerchief she had kept ready on her knee. I dabbed at my eyes, but the tears kept coming, making my chest heave in its tight cage of lacing, and no doubt making a terrible mess of my maquillage.

The carriage paused and I heard the sound of the palace gates being opened. Casting down the handkerchief, I swung aside the curtain that hid the view from my sight. Footmen in curly wigs and long satin vests stood to attention as the side wing of the golden gates was swung open by guards. Crowds of shabby peasants shoved forward, eager to see which fine lord or lady was leaving Versailles.

Holding my lace headdress in place, I leant out the coach window for one last glimpse of the palace at the end of the avenue, the marble forecourt, the prancing bronze horse, the green triangles of topiary in pots marching past like dragoons. The carriage rolled forward, the sounds of the wheels changing as they left the smooth marble flagstones and began to rattle over the cobblestones of the Avenue de Paris. I sank back into my seat. ‘Adieu, Versailles, adieu,’ I cried.

‘Come, my little cabbage, you must stop.’ Nanette took her handkerchief and mopped my face as if I was a child. ‘I thought you hated court. I thought you said it was filled with empty-headed fools.’

I jerked my face away and stared out at the tall crowded houses of Versailles. It was true that I hated the royal court. Yet I loved it too. The theatre, the music and dancing, the literary salons …

‘I should’ve whipped you more often as a child,’ Nanette said sadly.

‘More often? You never whipped me, though you threatened to often enough.’

‘I know. That’s what I mean. Such a tempestuous little thing you were. Either up in the boughs or down in the dumps – there was never any middle ground for you. I should’ve taught you better.’

‘Well, Maulévrier did his best to beat some sense into me.’

‘That cold-hearted snake.’

‘I always thought he looked more like a goat.’ I took the handkerchief back from Nanette and blew my nose.

‘Yes, a goat, an old devil goat. I bet he had horns under that velvet hat of his.’

Normally, I would have said, ‘Yes, and cloven hooves instead of feet, and a tail sticking out of his arse.’ Instead, I sighed and leant my aching head against the cushion. All I could see out the window were dreary fields under a dismal sky. Snow floated past, melting as soon as it hit the wet cobblestones. The clop of the horses’ hooves and the rattle of the wheels were the only sounds.

‘Ah, my poor little Bon-bon,’ Nanette sighed, and I passed her back her handkerchief so she could mop her own eyes.

Soon, we passed the turn-off to Paris, and I caught my breath with pain. Would I ever see Paris again? I remembered when I had first come to the royal court, still resident then in Paris. My sister had warned me to be careful. ‘It’s a dangerous place, Bon-bon. Keep a guard on your tongue, else you’ll be in trouble, just like the Marquis says.’

I had been on my best behaviour at first, charming and amusing at all times. I had thought the court like a gilded cage of butterflies, all beauty and wonder and movement. I had grown careless. I had enjoyed my own sharp wit, my boldness. I had played with words like a jongleur juggled swords, and I had cut myself.

A fool’s tongue is long enough to slit his own throat, the Marquis de Maulévrier had always said. I hated to admit that he could be right.

We crossed the River Seine and headed south through a dark and dripping forest. Although Nanette had packed a basket of provisions, I could not eat. The carriage came slowly down a hill, the postilion dismounting to lead the horses, and then we swayed and jolted forward on execrable roads into an early dusk. I shut my eyes, leant my head back against the wall and determined to endure. My name meant strength. I would be strong.

When the carriage came to a halt, I jerked awake. My heart constricted. I peered out the window but all I could see was the hazy yellow light of a single lantern, illuminating a stone wall. It was freezing.

‘Quick, my powder, my patches!’

Nanette passed me my powder box and I flicked the haresfoot over my face, squinting into the tiny mirror at the back of the box. My hands were deft and sure; this was not the first time I had had to repair my maquillage in the dark.

I snapped my powder box shut and thrust it at her, snatching the small jewelled container in which I kept my patches, the little beauty spots made of gummed taffeta that were very useful for hiding pimples or smallpox scars. My fingers were trembling so much I could hardly pluck out one of the tiny black shapes. For a moment, I hesitated. Normally, I would press my patch to the corner of my mouth, à la coquette, or beside my eye, à la passionnée, but it was a convent I was about to sweep into, not a salon or ballroom. Carefully, I fixed the patch in the centre of my forehead, just under my hairline, à la majestueuse.

I was Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de la Force. My grandfather had been the Marshal of France, my cousin was a duke, my mother second cousin to the King himself. If I must enter a nunnery – quite against my own wishes – it would be in my finest clothes, with my head held high and no traces of tears on my face.

The postilion opened the carriage door. I descended as gracefully as I could in my high heels, though my feet were numb and my legs trembled after the long hours rattling over potholes. Nanette caught up my train to stop it dragging in the snow.

The yard was deserted, a lantern hanging above a barred oaken door providing the only light. Above the door were carved rows of stern-faced saints sitting in judgement upon cringing devils and sinners, who pleaded for mercy below. In the wan and flickering light, the sinners’ stone limbs seemed to writhe and their faces grimace. Some had bat wings and goblin faces. One was a woman on her knees, hair flowing unbound down her back. Many had their noses smashed away, or their pleading hands broken. It looked as if the Huguenots had been here with their hammers and slingshots, seeking to destroy all signs of idolatry.

The postilion rang a bell beside the doorway, then came back to heave my trunk off the roof of the coach. Then we stood waiting, the postilion, Nanette and I, shifting from foot to foot, rubbing our hands together, our breath hanging frostily in the air before us. Minutes dragged by. I felt a surge of anger and lifted my chin.

‘Well, we shall just have to return to Versailles and tell the King no one was home. What a shame.’

As if in response to my words, I heard keys being turned and bolts being drawn. I fell silent, trying not to shiver. The door opened slowly, revealing a bent woman shrouded all in black. The glow of the lantern showed only a sunken mouth drawn down at the corners by deep grooves. The rest of her face was cast in shadow by her wimple. She beckoned with a bony hand and reluctantly I moved forward.

‘I am Mademoiselle de la Force. I come at the bidding of the King.’

She nodded and gestured to me to follow. Gathering up the folds of my golden satin skirt, I swept forward. Nanette came after, carrying my train, while the postilion struggled with my trunk and portmanteau. The bony hand was flung up, in a clear gesture of refusal. The postilion halted, then shrugged, letting fall the end of the trunk.

‘Sorry, mademoiselle, I guess no men allowed.’

I stopped, confounded. ‘Who, then, will carry my trunk?’

The black-clad nun did not speak a word. After a moment, Nanette released my train and bent to take hold of the end of the trunk. The postilion saluted and ran back to his horses, standing with heads bowed in the dusk, snorting plumes of smoke like ancient dragons. Biting my lip, I draped my portmanteau over my arm and seized the other end. Thus burdened, we crossed the step into a dimly lit corridor, as cold as the yard outside. The nun slammed the door shut and bolted it, secured three heavy iron locks and returned the jangle of keys to her girdle. I saw a flash of a scornful eye and then the nun jerked her head, indicating I should follow her. As we walked, she rang a handbell, as if I was a leper or a plague-cart. Swallowing angry words, I followed her.

I now understood what my guardian had meant by a heart of gall.

DEVIL’S BARGAIN

The Abbey of Gercy-en-Brie, France – January 1697

The portress led the way down a corridor intersected by archways, which held up the curving vaults of the ceiling. Each of the pillars was crowned with intricate carvings of leaves and faces and animals, the paving stones below worn in the middle by centuries of shuffling feet.

I followed close on her heels, propelled by anger and pride, while poor Nanette struggled to keep up behind me. When we came to a junction, with steps curving upwards on one side and an archway leading into another corridor on the other, the portress indicated that Nanette could remain here and leave the trunk at the base of the stairs. The old nun still did not speak, but her gestures were so peremptory that her meaning was clear.

Gratefully, Nanette dropped her end of the trunk and rubbed her lower back. I put down my end but kept a tight hold of my portmanteau, for it held my strongbox with my few jewels and coins, and my quills and ink and parchment. The portress led me through the archway, leaving Nanette alone in the corridor, her poor old face knotted up like a purse.

‘Will she be all right? Will someone look after her?’ I asked. The portress did not reply. I smiled back at Nanette reassuringly and followed the nun past a door that stood half-open. Glancing in, I saw a kitchen with women in plain brown robes busy around the table and bench, the familiar sight of pots and pans and skillets and kettles looking strange and dwarfish under the high vaulted roof. The servants looked up as we passed, and the portress clanged her bell and drew the door shut with a snap. There were more doors standing open, one showing barrels of wine, the next a storeroom filled with sacks and crates, and jars of preserves.

At the end of the corridor, the portress unlocked an iron-studded door with another key from the bunch at her waist. We passed through and she locked it again behind me. The sound of the lock clicking home caused my chest to tighten and my hands to clench. This place was indeed as bad as a prison. I wished I had not made my devil’s bargain with the King. Was it worth being locked up in this place of stone and old women, just so I could keep receiving my pension?

But what else could I do? Flee to England, that miserable damp country where no one knew how to dress? How would I make my living? No one there would be interested in my novels, which were all about the scandalous secret lives of French nobles.

Ringing her bell, the portress led me through an archway to a long walkway, open on one side to a square garden. I could see little more than a patch of lawn, brown and sodden with moisture, and what looked like a well in one corner with a pointed roof. Benches lined either side of the walkway, under beautiful graceful arches open to the wind. Snow whirled in and stung my face. I quickened my step.

Across the garden, I saw a great hulk of a building, its lancet windows shimmering with candlelight. Faintly, I heard the sound of singing.

‘Is that the nuns?’ I asked, for the portress’s silence made me nervous.

‘What are they singing?’

She did not respond.

‘It’s beautiful.’

Still she did not respond, so I gave up and followed in silence. At last, she led me into a small room, where a fire burned on the grate. I went to it and held my gloved hands to it thankfully. Without a word, the portress went out and left me there alone, shutting the door behind her.

Once again, I was kept waiting a long time and once again my temper was running hot, when the door opened and in came a group of nuns, their faces pale and sober within the black wimples. One carried a pewter bowl, another a steaming jug, the third a basket.

‘Welcome to the Abbey of Gercy-en-Brie, Mademoiselle de la Force,’ the one in the lead said. She was small and bent, with a sad face like a monkey’s. ‘I am the Reverend Mother Abbess. You may call me Mère Notre. This is the mistress of our novices, Sœur Emmanuelle; our bursar, Sœur Theresa; our refectorian, Sœur Berthe; and our infirmarian and apothecary, Sœur Seraphina.’

At the sound of her name, each nun bowed her head. The first was a tall aristocratic-looking woman with hunched shoulders and a hard white face. The second looked weary and haggard. The third was round-faced, plump and smiling, with the fresh rosy skin of a countrywoman.

The fourth, Sœur Seraphina, made the strongest impression on me. Once upon a time, she must have been a great beauty. Her face was a perfect oval, her nose slim and straight. Although her eyebrows and eyelashes were now sparse, their golden colour intensified the brilliance of her eyes, which were the colour of new honey. Her skin was like worn muslin, faintly spotted with age. She gazed at me with a troubled expression, taking in my luxurious gown, the lace fontanges on my head, fully a foot tall, and the heavy maquillage.

‘You have been ordered to take refuge at the Abbey of Gercy-en-Brie at the order of his most Christian Majesty, the King. Are we to understand that you enter our cloister willingly?’ Mère Notre said.

I did not know how to answer. No postulant had ever been more unwilling, but it was treason to defy the King. I could only hope that if I obeyed, he would soon relent and allow me back to the royal court. So I answered reluctantly, ‘Yes, Mère Notre.’

‘But are the de la Force family not … Huguenots?’ Sœur Emmanuelle’s nostrils flared.

‘Not any more.’ I did my best to repress my anger and shame, but it sounded in my voice nonetheless.

‘You abjured?’ she asked.

I shrugged one shoulder. ‘Naturally.’

Yet the question raised many a rattling skeleton. My grandfather had only survived the dreadful St Bartholomew’s Day massacre of the Huguenots because, when brutally stabbed, he had fallen to the ground and pretended to be dead. His father and his brother had not been so lucky; they were both stabbed till all life was gone. My grandfather had been a proud and fervent Huguenot all his life, as had all my family – at least until the King had later revoked the Edict of Nantes and made it illegal to worship according to your conscience.

After the revocation, many Huguenots had fled France rather than convert to Catholicism. My uncle, Jacques-Nompar, the fourth Duc de la Force, had refused to either flee or convert. He had been thrown into the Bastille, his daughters locked up in convents, his son given a Catholic education. Eventually, my uncle had died, and his son, my cousin Henri-Jacques, had abjured and sworn obedience to His Most Catholic Majesty, and so had been permitted to become the fifth Duc de la Force.

I too had abjured. What else was I meant to do? Follow other Huguenots into penury and exile? Allow myself to be burnt at the stake, like so many of my fellow réformés? The King had offered me a pension of a thousand silver louis to convert. I thought a thousand silver louis a year worth a mass or two. And it’s not as if I was the only one. Twenty-four thousand of us had abjured our faith.

‘You must come to this abbey with a willing heart, ma fille,’ Mère Notre said. ‘Is it your desire to submit to our Rule?’

‘Yes, Mère Notre,’ I said through stiff lips.

She looked doubtful. ‘You do understand what is required of you, mademoiselle? Perhaps, Sœur Emmanuelle, you will instruct our postulant?’

The novice mistress fixed me with her scornful dark eyes. ‘You must swear to abide by the Rule of this house, to be obedient and faithful and seek humility in all things. The first grade of humility is to keep the face of God always before you. Remember that He is always watching.’

‘Yes, of course,’ I replied.

‘The second grade of humility is to love not your own will or satisfy your own desires but only to carry out the will of God.’

Not wanting to repeat myself like an idiot child, I bowed my head.

She went on without pause. ‘The third grade of humility is to submit to your superiors in all things … the fourth is to patiently bear all hard and contrary things … to hide no evil thoughts but confess all … to be content with the meanest and worst of everything …’

By this sixth grade of humility, I was no longer nodding my head or murmuring acquiescence but staring at her in dismay. Sœur Emmanuelle went on inexorably. ‘You must not just call yourself lower and viler than all but really believe it.’

‘Surely you jest,’ I exclaimed, though of course I knew she was all too serious.

Do nothing that was not authorised. Do not speak unless spoken to. Do not laugh. Do not raise your voice. Do not lift your eyes from the ground. Remember every hour that you are guilty of your sins.

‘Well, that I can gladly do,’ I said in a tone of less than subtle insinuation.

A little flutter went around the circle of nuns, and Sœur Berthe blushed.

‘We must be honest with you, Mademoiselle de la Force,’ Mère Notre said. ‘It is against our practice to take court ladies into our house. It is rare that they have a true vocation, and they unsettle our sisters and disrupt the life of the cloister. However, we appealed to His Majesty the King for help, as we had suffered greatly during the recent upheavals. His response was to send you.’

‘A gift from God,’ I replied, folding my hands and turning my eyes up to heaven. From the corner of my eye, I saw Sœur Seraphina shake her head in warning.

Mère Notre’s wrinkled face was troubled. ‘I fear His Majesty may have made a mistake. Although it is true we are in need of your dowry, I cannot in good conscience accept a postulant …’

‘Mère Notre.’ Sœur Theresa wrung her hands together. ‘The roof! The altar plate!’

Mère Notre hesitated. I felt a sudden clutch of anxiety. What would happen to me if I was turned away from the abbey door? Nothing made the King more furious than having his will thwarted.

‘I’m sorry, Mère Notre, I didn’t mean to be flippant. I have spent too long at the court of the Sun King, where the quick and empty answer is always valued over more measured and thoughtful responses. I beg you to give me time to learn your ways.’

She bent her veiled head. ‘Very well. You come among us as a postulant. There is no need yet to swear eternal vows. If you find your call to God is mistaken, you may always return to the world you have left behind.’

I bowed my head, wondering to myself how best to frame a letter to the King so that he would relent and allow me to return. Begging letters were all too common at the court.

‘St Benedict himself said not to grant any newcomer easy entry but to test their spirit to see if they are from God. So we shall give you time to adjust to life here at the abbey, though I think it best if your instruction as a novitiate begins at once. The sooner you leave your old life behind you, the better.’ Mère Notre blessed me and then went slowly from the room. She was so small and bent she looked rather like a hunchbacked child.

As soon as the door had thudded shut behind her, the other nuns closed around me. ‘Now,’ Sœur Emmanuelle said in a voice of deep satisfaction, ‘it is time for the shedding of all temporal goods. Let us start with the dowry.’

‘Four thousand livres,’ Sœur Theresa said, ‘plus two hundred livres per year for board, three hundred livres for clothing, and ninety livres for food.’

‘But that’s outrageous. I paid less for my room at the palace.’

‘Once you have taken your vows, you shall be with us for all of your natural life,’ Sœur Emmanuelle replied.

I set my teeth. ‘What if I should change my mind and decide not to take my vows?’

‘The dowry need not be paid until the day you take your vows,’ Sœur Theresa said, ‘and, in any case, His Majesty the King has offered to cover that expense for you.’

Relief filled me. Imagine going into debt to pay for a cell in this cold draughty place.

‘However, we shall need you to pay us your board and lodging costs now.’ Sœur Theresa held out one hand.

Biting my lip, I dug in my portmanteau for my purse and handed over almost six hundred livres, nearly two-thirds of my entire year’s pension.

‘Now, you must give up all your clothes, right down to the last stitch. You have no need of such wanton luxury here,’ Sœur Emmanuelle said.

I stared at her. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You may not keep even a pin. Strip it all off and pass it to me. We have brought you a postulant’s robe.’ She indicated a small pile of rough homespun clothes that the refectorian, Sœur Berthe, had laid on the side table.

‘I shall not. Do you have any idea how much this dress cost?’

‘It’ll fetch a pretty penny,’ Sœur Theresa agreed. ‘Maybe even enough to have the church roof repaired.’

‘That’s stealing. You can’t sell my clothes.’

‘Oh, we’ll only sell them once you’ve taken your vows. They’ll belong to the abbey then.’

‘They’ll be long out of fashion by then.’

‘Not in Varennes,’ she answered. ‘Really, I wish Mère Notre was not so particular about the waiting period. If you were to take your vows straightaway, we’d be able to claim your dowry from His Majesty the King and sell all your clothes and jewels, and get that roof fixed. Then we wouldn’t have to celebrate the midnight office with snow swirling down on our heads.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said as calmly as I could. ‘I’m afraid I cannot permit you to pawn my belongings for your repairs. I am here at the request of His Majesty the King, but I am sure it will not be long before I am missed at court and called back. So, you see, I shall have need of my jewels and my clothes.’

Sœur Emmanuelle snorted. ‘I’ve never heard it said that His Majesty the King was prone to changing his mind.’

‘Are you so well acquainted with the King that you know his habits? Have you spent much time at court? If so, I am surprised not to know you. I have been at court since I was a girl.’ I smiled at her sweetly.

‘It is not something to boast about. Obviously, you are as frivolous and pleasure-loving as the rest of those fools at court, if you prefer to hoard what little you have of worth against an uncertain future instead of dedicating it to the glory of God. You’ll learn soon enough. Now, remove your garments else we shall strip you ourselves.’

I set my jaw and stared around at the circle of black-cloaked women. They closed in on me, Sœur Berthe seizing my shoulders. I tried to wrench myself away, but she was too strong.

‘Have a care for the dress,’ Sœur Theresa cried anxiously.

‘Bon grè, mal grè,’ Sœur Seraphina whispered in my ear, a gentle hand on my arm.

I knew she was right. It made little difference whether I submitted with good grace or ill grace. Either way, I would be forced to strip, and surely to do so gracefully would be a lot more dignified.

‘Besides, you don’t want your beautiful clothes to be ruined.’ Sœur Seraphina smiled at me. She had a faint foreign accent, which I thought might be Italian as she sounded rather like the Mazarinettes, the seven nieces of Cardinal Mazarin, who had scandalised Versailles for years. ‘You would not wish to work in the laundries or the kitchens in such glorious golden silk.’

I gazed at her in dismay.

‘An idle brain is the devil’s playground,’ Sœur Emmanuelle said. ‘Strip.’

I sighed. ‘Someone will have to help me. I cannot undress myself.’

Sœur Seraphina gently removed my lace fontanges. It was named for the King’s mistress Angélique de Fontanges, who had lost her hat while hunting one day and had hastily tied up her curls with her garter. The King had admired the effect, and the next day all the court ladies had appeared with their curls tied back with lace. Angélique was dead now, of course, and had been for sixteen years, but we still all wore the fontanges, vying with each other for height and elaborateness.

One by one, Sœur Seraphina unfastened my skirts. First la secrète, of heavy gold embroidered all over with honeybees and flowers, and then la friponne, of golden tulle, clipped to the outer skirt with jewelled clasps in the shape of butterflies, and last la fidèle, of pale gold silk brocade. The dress had cost me a fortune, but I had gladly paid it as a subtle compliment to His Majesty, who, like the King Bee, ruled the hive.

‘If you’d like to finish disrobing …’ Sœur Seraphina held up a black cloak for me to hide behind as I pulled off my fine chemise and put on the one of coarse unbleached linen that she passed me. I then unrolled my silk stockings and passed them to her, then stood waiting for more clothes to be passed back to me. None came.

‘I am sorry, mademoiselle,’ Sœur Seraphina said. ‘I must examine you to make sure you are not with child. Our abbey cannot afford the scandal of a baby being born within our cloisters.’

I stared at her in disbelief. ‘I’m not pregnant.’

‘I need to make sure. If you would please lie on the table.’ Sœur Seraphina indicated a sturdy table behind me, a white linen cloth spread over the dark oak.

‘My word should be enough.’

‘You may not know yourself.’

‘Zut alors. If I don’t know, how will you?’

‘I am the convent’s apothecary. Believe me, I can tell if a woman is with child.’

‘And no doubt tell her how to get rid of it too.’

Sœur Seraphina said nothing, though her face was grave. Sœur Emmanuelle hissed, ‘That would be a mortal sin. You sully our walls with your words.’

‘Please,’ Sœur Seraphina said. ‘I will not hurt you if you submit, but, if you fight, my sisters will need to hold you down and then it will be much harder for me to be gentle.’

I huffed out an angry sigh. ‘Make it quick then.’

‘Please lie down and lift your chemise.’

I lay down on the table, my legs pressed together, and shifted my body so I could lift up my chemise. Sœur Seraphina must have warmed her hands at the fire, for her fingers were not as icy cold as I had expected. Quickly, she poked and prodded my stomach and then gently squeezed my breasts. A flippant comment sprang to my lips. I shut my teeth and said nothing. She pulled the chemise down over my belly, saying softly, ‘Her womb is not distended.’

‘No. I did tell you.’

‘I need you to open your legs now.’

I squeezed my knees together. ‘Surely that’s not necessary.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said again. ‘I need to make a full examination.’

‘We know what the court of the King is like,’ Sœur Emmanuelle said.

‘Do you? For I must admit I wonder how. For your information, His Majesty the King is a pious man indeed these days and the whole court in an agony of ennui.’

‘If you please.’ Sœur Seraphina pushed my knees apart. For a moment, I resisted, gritting my teeth together, but once again I reminded myself I had nowhere else to go. I could only endure as she gently slid her fingers inside me. It lasted just a moment but I felt scalded with humiliation.

As she removed her hand and turned away to wash herself, I sat up and pulled my chemise down over my knees. ‘Satisfied?’

‘She is not with child,’ Sœur Seraphina said to Sœur Emmanuelle.

‘And?’ the novice mistress demanded.

Sœur Seraphina shook her head.

‘If she means am I still a virgin, then I must let you know that I … I was once married.’ I had to force the words out through a large lump in my throat. Tears were burning my eyes.

‘Once? Where then is your husband?’ Sœur Emmanuelle demanded.

I pressed my hands together. ‘My … my husband is …’ I could not say the words.

Sœur Seraphina made a soft sympathetic sound.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Sœur Berthe said. ‘We didn’t know you were a widow. The letter from the King called you “mademoiselle”.’

‘I am mademoiselle,’ I answered harshly. ‘Must I sit here shivering in this dreadful cold? Pass me some clothes.’

The nuns exchanged wondering glances. Sœur Emmanuelle’s face was alive with curiosity. I swear I saw her nostrils flare at the scent of scandal like a pig’s at the smell of deep-buried truffles.

I gave her my coldest glare, standing stiffly as Sœur Berthe tied up my stays for me. I then allowed Sœur Berthe to help me into a heavy black dress, which smelt unpleasantly of the lye in which it had been washed. Added to this was a long apron, like a peasant might wear, dark stockings in thick itchy wool, tied above my knee by a length of leather string, then the ugliest sabots I had ever seen.

I cannot describe the revulsion I felt wearing these clothes. They made me feel ill. It was not just their smell, their itch, their roughness; it was their ugliness. I have always adored beautiful clothes. I loved the sheen of satin and the sensuousness of velvet. I loved the beauty of the embroidery, the delicacy of the lace, the shush-shush-shush of silk moving against the floor. I liked to lie in my bed in the morning and think about what I might wear that day. With my choice of clothes, I could pay a subtle compliment to the King or win the attention of a man I wished to become my lover. I enjoyed planning some daring new fashion, like catching up my skirts with a ribbon to reveal my high-heeled slippers, or being the first to wear a dress of black ‘winter lace’ over a pale cream satin the same colour as my skin. I felt like a butterfly stripped of its gaudy wings by some cruel boy.

Sœur Seraphina carefully removed the pins from my hair and let the artificial curls tumble down. She then removed a pair of shears from her basket and, before I could utter more than a startled cry, chopped off all of my hair with a few quick decisive snaps. It fell to the floor in writhing black snakes.

‘Mordieu! Not my hair.’ I clutched at my head, dismayed to feel my hair bristle against my palm like the spines of a baby hedgehog.

‘I’m sorry,’ Sœur Seraphina said. ‘All postulants must have their hair cropped.’

‘Much easier to keep it free of lice,’ Sœur Berthe said.

‘You didn’t say … no one warned me …’ My hands were still clutching my head. I’ll have to buy a wig like an old lady, I thought. I can’t appear at court with cropped hair! But wigs are so expensive … Tears prickled my eyes. ‘You had no right. You should have warned me. I’d never have agreed to let you cut my hair.’

Sœur Theresa began to gather up the shorn locks.

‘Don’t do that!’ I seized her by the arm. ‘That is my hair. You probably plan to sell it to a wig-maker. Well, it’s mine. If anyone is to sell it, it’s me.’

Sœur Theresa shrugged and let me snatch the locks of hair and thrust them into my portmanteau. ‘You must give up your bag to us also. We shall keep it safe for you in the storeroom.’

‘But I have my writing tools in there. My quills, my ink, my penknife …’

‘You have no need for such things here,’ Sœur Theresa said.

‘Novices are not permitted to write letters,’ Sœur Emmanuelle said.

‘But I must write. I must write to the King, and to my friends at court. I must write to my sister so she knows where I am … and my stories. How am I to write my stories?’

‘Stories?’ Sœur Emmanuelle spoke scornfully. ‘You think you may waste your time here writing such frivolous stuff? Think again, mademoiselle.’ She seized my portmanteau, trying to wrest it away from me.

I struggled against her. ‘You have no right. How dare you?’

Sœur Berthe came to her assistance. The portmanteau was wrenched from my arms and emptied on the table. Sœur Emmanuelle snapped my quills in half, emptied the bottle of ink into the pail, and crumpled the sheets of parchment and threw them in the fire.

I tried to stop her but was held back by Sœur Berthe’s brawny arms. She did not release me, no matter how hard I kicked her with my heavy wooden clogs. ‘Salope,’ I cried, and, ‘Putain,’ and all the other curses and maledictions I could think of, but it did no good.

My quills and ink and parchment were gone, and with them any chance of writing my way out of this prison.

CASTLES IN THE AIR

The Abbey of Gercy-en-Brie, France – January 1697

That night, I lay in my bed and wept.

The tears came like summer storms, shaking my body and snatching away my breath. Eventually, I would stop, exhausted, but then I would think again of all I had lost, and the tears would flow again.

My writing tools were my most precious belongings. My best quill pen was made from a raven’s feather. When my husband, Charles, gave it to me, he told me it was as black and glossy as my hair, and as sharp as my wit. I only used it to write my stories; letters, gambling IOUs and billets-doux were all written with goose quills I had trimmed and shaped myself with my silver penknife, which had been the last gift from my mother. I was often so poor that I could not pay my mantua-maker, but I always invested in the best ink and parchment. I smoothed it with pumice stone till it was as white and fine as my own skin, ready to absorb the rapid scratching of my quill.

At least my bundles of precious manuscripts were safe in my trunk. Or were they? Perhaps the nuns had gone through my trunk as well and thrown all my manuscripts on the fire. The thought caused me actual pain, as if my chest was being compressed with stones. So many dark hours of the night spent writing by the light of a single candle instead of sleeping. So many hours stolen from my duties as maid of honour, writing instead of standing for hours on aching feet and pretending to smile at the antics of the royal dwarves. Three of my novels had been published – anonymously, of course, to avoid the King’s censors. To my surprise and delight, they had sold well enough and had even brought me in a little money. I had been working on another, a secret history of Gustave of Sweden, which I had hoped to publish soon. What would I do if it was all burnt to ashes?

As I moved my head restlessly on my limp pillow, I felt acutely the lack of my hair. I put up one hand and brushed it against the bristles.

My hair had always been my one beauty. Even when I was only a little girl, it had been Nanette’s pride and joy. Every night, she would loosen it from its ribbons and brush it for me, while I told her all about the triumphs or petty tribulations of the day. In those days, Nanette was only a young woman, with more tenderness than fierceness in her black eyes. Under her white cap, her hair was fine and fair, and she had a soft bosom I liked to lean against.

Once a week, she would massage my head with rosemary oil and carefully brush it with a fine-toothed comb, squashing any nits she found on an old linen rag.

‘Here’s a big one,’ she’d say.

‘Let me see. Oooh, it’s a grand-papa. He’s big enough to be a great-grand-papa.’

‘I don’t know where you get them all from. I could’ve sworn you were swept clean of the little beasts last week. Have you been playing with the miller’s children again?’

‘Well, yes, Nanette, but then who else do I have to play with?’

‘Not with snotty-nosed lice-ridden peasants.’

‘We’ve built a fort, Nanette. We’re playing the religious wars.’

‘Oh, my little cabbage, that’s not such a good game to play. Can’t you play something nice? Can’t you just play houses?’

‘But that’s so boring. We like to have battles. I’m the leader of the réformés and Jacques is the leader of the scarlet whores …’

‘Bon-bon! Don’t you speak like that. You must be careful.’

‘Of what?’ I twisted my head around to look at her in surprise.

‘Not everyone in France thinks like your mother, Bon-bon. The réformés lost the war, remember, and the King – God bless his soul – is Catholic.’

I sighed. It was so hard to understand how the King could be both our monarch and our enemy. Nanette was perturbed, I could tell, her hand heavy on the comb. ‘Ow. That hurts! Don’t dig so hard.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry. Is that better? Look, another big one.’

‘That one’s the great-grand-mama. Look behind my ears, Nanette. That’s the nursery, where all the babies are. Do you think nits have nurses too, Nanette?’

‘They’d need them with this many babies,’ Nanette grumbled, tilting my head to one side as she combed behind my ear.

‘When nits are all grown up, they climb the hill and look out for enemies.’

‘Invaders from the heads of the miller’s children.’

‘Yes. And then they fight them off … What would nits use for weapons, Nanette?’

‘Their teeth, I expect. Stop squirming, Bon-bon. If you sit still, I’ll tell you a story.’

Nanette had a great storehouse of stories in her head: funny stories about a wicked fox or a fisherman whose wife wished his nose was a sausage; scary stories about giants that ate little girls, and ghosts, and goblins; and sweet stories about shepherds and shepherdesses falling in love. Whenever Nanette wanted me to sit still – while doing up my boot hooks or sewing up a dragging hem – she knew that all she had to do was promise me a story and at once I would stop wriggling and complaining and sit as quietly as she could wish.

Where was Nanette tonight? Had she been given a bed or forced to endure the long journey back to Versailles with the carriage? She was so old and frail now, the journey would have exhausted her. I hoped she was sleeping comfortably somewhere. I would have to beg the nuns for some of my money back so I could pay for her to go home to the Château de Cazeneuve. She had left the chateau with me thirty-one years ago, when I had been summoned to court, and, like me, had never been back. I knew I could trust my sister, Marie, to have a care for her. How shocked Marie would be to hear I’d been banished to a nunnery. The thought brought a fresh rush of tears. I wanted Marie to be proud of me, her clever sister who served the royal family.

I heard a shuffle of feet, and then someone came into my cell. I tensed and lifted myself on my elbow. It was Sœur Emmanuelle. I could just see her long white face with its high-bred nose in the dim light of the lantern that had been left burning in the corridor. She was dressed in a loose chemise, with a shabby old shawl huddled about her shoulders.

Wiping away my tears, I rose higher on my elbow and opened my mouth to speak, but Sœur Emmanuelle lifted her finger to her lips and shook her head. I shut my mouth again. She nodded briefly, lifted the little clay pitcher next to my pallet and poured me a cup of water. She then sat beside me on the bed, passing me the cup. I drank obediently. The water was icy cold, but refreshing. I felt my shudders ease a little. She took the cup away and put it back on the table. Then she laid both hands beside her cheek, like a child pretending to sleep.

Exhausted, I lay down again. She dampened my handkerchief and gently washed my face as if I was a child. I felt tears rise again at this unexpected kindness but tried to smile at her in thanks. She smiled, a small grim compression of the corners of her mouth, and passed me a triangle of folded cloth that she had carried tucked inside her sleeve. I mopped my eyes and then blew my nose. When I shamefacedly offered her back her handkerchief, she shook her head and refused it. I scrunched it in my hot damp hand under my cheek. I felt her hand on my brow, stroking my forehead. I heaved a sigh, shut my eyes and felt my body slowly relax.

I was almost asleep when I felt the edge of my blankets lift. Cold air rushed in. Even as I stirred and opened my eyes, Sœur Emmanuelle crept into my bed, one cold claw of a hand sliding around my body to clutch my breast, her gaunt body pressing itself against mine.

I knew, of course, that women could have female lovers as well as male. I had friends at court who had been married against their will to ageing roués or vicious rakes, and who sought escape from their unwanted attentions in the tender arms of their women friends. Madeleine de Scudéry, whom I revered, was famous for her weekend salons, ‘Saturdays of Sapho’, which only women were permitted to attend. We all read each other love poems and wrote stories of a land of peace and harmony, where men were forbidden and women could be free of their brutish desires. I had even been propositioned by a woman once or twice, and had always refused with a smile. There was a difference, though, between the raising of a suggestive eyebrow and a cold bony hand groping at my breast, when I was already strung tight as a lute string with fear and dread and grief.

I spun around, shoving at her so violently that she fell to the floor. ‘Don’t you dare,’ I cried. ‘Get out!’

Sœur Emmanuelle landed on her bony arse with a thump that must have hurt. I heard a startled cry from the cell beside me. I sat up, clutching my blanket to me, and stared at her. I might have tried to say something but the look on her face thickened my tongue. It was a bleak black look, promising me that I would suffer for my rejection. For a moment, she stood there, looming over me, then she lifted the curtain and disappeared. I lay back, trembling inside.

Sœur Emmanuelle punished me every day.

I was made to empty all the chamber pots in the morning and scrub them out with water so cold that it formed a crust of ice in the bucket overnight. I was assigned to the kitchen and set to washing dishes in scummy water, and peeling endless mounds of vegetables. It was also my job to clean the ashes and charred remnants of wood out of the kitchen ovens and the fireplace in the parlour, the only room in the convent where a fire was permitted. I also had to keep the baskets of firewood replenished, staggering out into the snow to chop logs into kindling until my hands were blistered and sore. Sœur Emmanuelle kept a cane by her at all times and was quick to strike me on my back and shoulders if I did not obey her orders readily enough.

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.