But, ‘We do not allow you into God’s house to practice your brutality and wage your war on innocent people,’ said Clothilde. ‘We will never allow it, no matter the cost.’ Her eyes flickered to the two girls – one of them was trying to cover her poor shorn head, and the pity of it slammed into my throat. ‘No matter the cost,’ she said again.
One of the nuns added, challengingly, ‘And Belgium will never surrender. Even if you kill all of its people one by one, it will not yield to you.’
‘It will not,’ said Clothilde. She looked at the two girls and then at the avid-eyed soldiers. ‘If you wish to perform that act of savagery, take me instead,’ she said. ‘I do not care, and God will understand.’
The officer laughed, and the sound echoed mockingly around the chapel.
‘We prefer younger meat,’ he said. ‘But if we have to, we will take you one by one until you agree to let us into your convent. You understand me? One by one. All of us in turn.’
Clothilde stared at him. ‘I understand you,’ she said. ‘But we will resist you with the small strength we have.’
‘I think, Sister, that you will not resist for long,’ said the officer. ‘Perhaps after the third or fourth time – when your nuns are screaming with the pain and humiliation – you will be begging us to take over your convent.’
The two sentries from the door moved into the chapel then, whether to watch what was about to happen, or simply to make sure no one tried to escape, I have no idea, but it meant they now stood between me and the stone plinth with its statue. I managed to dart behind a stone column without being seen, but anger and frustration swept through me in a scalding flood.
The two novices were thrown to the ground, the soldiers standing around them, already loosening their belts. Two of the older nuns moved, as if trying to go to the girls’ assistance, but the soldiers barred their way.
The faces of all the men were avid, and in the light from the flickering altar candles and the rays from the setting sun, their eyes gleamed with lust. The anger surged up again, and I tensed my muscles, ready to make a run for the stone plinth. To hell with being seen or shot; if there was any justice in the world, I would manage to send the statue crashing to the ground and pray to whatever gods were listening that the nuns would have the wit to escape in the ensuing mêlée. But before I could do so, the same two nuns ran forward again, straight at the soldiers, their hands outstretched to push the men away from the two novices. It was brave in the extreme, but it was also foolhardy in the extreme, and of course it was fatal. As if by reflex, the two sentries lifted their rifles and fired several rapid rounds. Screams filled the chapel, and the two nuns fell, clutching gunshot wounds. Blood spattered over the quiet old stones, and across the lovely old organ, and Sister Jeanne screamed and recoiled from the bench, cowering against the wall.
‘Play the prayer,’ cried Clothilde. ‘God is listening – God will not abandon us. The Magnificat … “The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary, and she received the Holy Ghost …” All of you, join with me – trust in God, in our Blessed Lady—’
The terrible, the macabre and pitiful thing, is that they tried to obey her. Jeanne made her trembling way back to the organ bench, and fumblingly started to play, and after a few chords, the ragged, fearful singing came in. It was to the accompaniment of those sounds – that music – that the soldiers held down the two young novices – both of them too frightened to resist – and raped them. They did it there on the prayer-drenched stones, one after the other, with the blind, watchful statues, with the slippery tainting blood everywhere, and the nuns they had shot lying dead on the ground.
I am not ashamed of many things in my life, but I have always been deeply ashamed that I did not move sufficiently fast to stop that particular brutality. But hearing the sobs and the cries, I ran out of the shadows, straight at the stone plinth. I am no hero – I would like to repeat that for my reader – but I do not think any man could have cowered in hiding and done nothing to help those women. So I bounded across the chapel, straight at the statue.
To some extent I had the advantage of surprise – the soldiers had no idea I was there – and by the time they did realize it, I had reached the plinth and was throwing my whole weight against it. There was a panic-filled moment when I thought the statue was not going to move, then it shuddered and there was a harsh, hard sound of stone scraping against stone. The soldiers spun round, levelling their rifles. They saw me, and they fired, but by then I was behind the statue and the plinth, and the bullets buried themselves in the statue. Sprays of stone-dust clouded out, and under cover of this I pushed again at the figure. The teeth-wincing scraping came again, and then, with a kind of stately menace, Christ’s figure began to move. I pushed it for the third time, and this time it dislodged from its base. For a moment the emotive, legendary features reproduced in hundreds of statues and paintings, slowly – oh God, so slowly – toppled forward.