“It’s executed well enough, I suppose. I’ve never worked on a miniature before. It was quite interest—” Juliette stared at Catherine in disgust. “Holy Mother, you’re not going to cry?”
“Yes.” Catherine looked up, the tears running down her face. “I’ll weep if I wish to weep.”
“I did it only because I wanted to learn how to paint a miniature and I wouldn’t have given it to you if I’d known you were going to blubber like this.”
“Well, I won’t give it back.” Catherine slipped the long, delicate chain over her head and settled the locket on her breast. “Not ever. And when I’m a very old lady I’ll show it to my grandchildren and tell them it was painted by my dearest friend.” She wiped her cheeks with the rumpled linen handkerchief. “And, when they ask me why she painted me as so much more beautiful than I could ever hope to be”—Catherine paused and met Juliette’s gaze—“I shall tell them that my friend was a little peculiar and could find no other way to tell me she loved me as much as I loved her.”
Juliette stared at her in astonishment for a minute before she shifted her gaze to the locket. “It’s nothing. I’m…glad you’re pleased with it.” She jumped to her feet. “I’d better get back to the abbey. Sister Mary Magdalene will be…” She trailed off as she plunged into the long grass and straggly weeds. Jumping over low tombstones, she hurried toward the gate in the stone wall enclosing the cemetery.
Juliette was running away. Catherine rose slowly to her feet, her palm closing caressingly around the smooth warmth of the golden locket at her breast. The locket’s warmth came from being in Juliette’s pocket, close to her friend’s body. How long had Juliette beencarrying that paint-smudged, clumsily knotted handkerchief around with her? How like Juliette to do something thoughtful and kind, then claim it as selfishness. Juliette was so much braver than she when confronted with life and death but scurried away like a frightened squirrel at the slightest hint of sentiment. Affection swelled through Catherine, tightening her throat and bringing the tears Juliette so despised to her eyes again. She cupped her mouth with her hand and called to Juliette, who had now reached the gate. “Remember to wash the paint off your hands before you go see the Reverend Mother.”
Juliette turned and waved in acknowledgment, the sunlight glinting on her wild mop of dark curls. Then she was running across the vegetable garden toward the abbey, her skirts flying.
Catherine started after her, picking her way carefully among the crosses. As she reached the gate of the cemetery, the Comte de Montard’s large berlin, now burdened with his daughter’s bags, was lumbering out the south courtyard gates. The coachman snapped his whip, urging the horses to a faster clip. Cecile de Montard was on her way to Switzerland via Paris.
Change. Catherine suddenly felt a chill similar to the one she had experienced when she opened the door to the crypt. She didn’t understand anything about this tempest threatening to disrupt their lives. Great and terrible changes had swept through France since the fall of the Bastille that signaled the beginning of the revolution. Riots and hunger, peasant uprisings, massacres, religious orders suppressed, the shifting of power from the king and nobles to the Legislative Assembly, the declaration of war against Austria and Prussia.
The nuns had taught them the revolution was caused by a combination of many things but most of them seemed to concern hunger. The terrible hunger for bread by the starving peasants, the bourgeoisie’s hunger for equal power with the nobles, the hunger of the nobles for additional power from the king, thehunger of the idealists for rights such as the ones won in America’s war for independence.
Catherine wished them all well with their aims, particularly those poor peasants, but none of it really touched her here at the abbey. She just wished all this turmoil would disperse, leaving tranquility in its wake.
She began to run toward the high, secure walls surrounding the abbey, feeling the blood tingling in her veins as the cool morning wind tore at her hair and stung her cheeks. There was really nothing to worry about. The sun was shining, she and Juliette were both young and strong, and they would be friends forever and ever and ever.
The bells were ringing!
Juliette opened her eyes to the pitch darkness of her cell. The darkness was not unusual. They always rose before dawn for matins.
It was the screams that were unusual.
Raw screams of terror shredded the silence. Was the abbey on fire?
Juliette shook her head to clear it of the last vestiges of sleep and scrambled off her pallet. Fire was always a danger. An ember left smoldering in the huge fireplace in the scullery, a lighted candle forgotten in the chapel.
She lit the candle in the copper holder on the rough cedar table before pulling on her gown, her fingers fumbling frantically with the fastenings.
“Juliette!” Catherine was at the door of her cell, her long pale brown hair tumbling about her shoulders, her eyes wide with fright. “The bells…the screaming. What’s happening?”
“How do I know?” Juliette jammed her feet into her slippers and grabbed the candle. “Come quickly. I have no desire to be roasted alive if the abbey’s on fire.”
“Do you think—”
“I’ll think later.” Juliette grabbed Catherine’s hand and pulled her into the corridor. A crush of frightenedgirls in various states of undress clogged the narrow passage.
“We’ll never get through to the courtyard. Come.” Juliette turned and began shoving her way in the opposite direction toward a small arched oak door. “The chamber of learning. There’s a window.”
Catherine followed her down the hall and into the deserted room. They dodged long writing tables as they raced to the deeply recessed window. Juliette slid back the bolt and threw open the wooden shutters. “Itisa fire. Look at the—”
Torches. Men with torches. Men with swords. Men dressed in rough striped trousers and flowing linen shirts, some with strange red woolen caps. It seemed there were hundreds of men. Shouts. Laughter. Curses.
And screams.
“Dear God,” Juliette whispered. “Sister Mathilde…”
The nun was lying on the cobblestones, her habit in rags, her legs obscenely parted and held by two laughing men as a third man wearing a red woolen cap brutally plunged his member into her body.
“We’ve got to help her.” Catherine started to clamber onto the recessed windowsill. “We can’t stay here. We’ve got to help all of them.”
The same horror was happening all over the courtyard. The nuns were being dragged from their cells, stripped, pulled to the cobblestones.
