They say you often get more than you planned for in life and that was certainly the case in that chapel. Not only did the statue fall, it took the plinth with it. They both went crashing down, hitting the ground with an explosion of sound, painful and deafening. Lumps of stone and fragments of shattered marble flew out in every direction, and the sound of the crash reverberated through the small chapel, causing the glass to shiver and dislodging several of the Mass vessels from the altar. Huge eruptions of dust billowed out, snuffing the candles, plunging the chapel into an eerie, grey-tinged gloaming. But worst of all, the organ pipes, jarred by the crash, thrummed with angry discordance, sending out ugly confused sounds as if the organ itself were wounded and moaning in agony.
The soldiers were running everywhere, gasping and coughing from the dust that was clogging their lungs and causing their eyes to stream, trying to regroup. They could not see me – I could barely see them, in fact, but I had been behind the dust explosion and I was probably in better shape than anyone. Sister Jeanne half fell from her organ stool, looked about her in fearful confusion, then turned to where I stood, as if in appeal.
I pointed to the rood screens. ‘Get them all out at once. Get everyone into the convent then barricade yourselves in,’ I said. ‘If I can dodge the soldiers, I’ll get out and try to send help to you.’
It was a jumble of French and heaven-knows what other languages, but she understood well enough, and nodded, turning to the screens. One had fallen and was leaning drunken and splintered against a column. The other was still in place, and it was around this second screen that I stepped.
And saw what was behind it.
Nine
I ought not to have been surprised. I certainly ought not to have recoiled in pity. But, sadly, it’s an instinct most of us have – faced with the abnormal, the grotesque, with those poor specimens of humanity that nature has mistreated, we flinch and want to run away.
The scene that lay behind those screens was like something from one of the famous disturbing paintings or engravings by people such as William Hogarth or Bruegel or Goya. Scenes from asylums, from pauper hospitals. At first the canvas appears to contain normal, ordinary faces with normal, ordinary bodies. But as you go on looking, you begin to see something subtly wrong with every one of the figures. Deformities of body – perhaps even worse, deformities of mind that look out through the eyes.
Those cruel tweaks of Nature confronted me as I stepped around the screens. Twenty, perhaps twenty-five, young women, some barely fourteen years old, others probably nineteen or twenty, huddled together in a terrified cluster, their eyes wide, their faces streaked with tears and stone-dust. Every one bearing the vicious pawmark of deformity. Hunchbacked, crippled, malformed, some of the faces even bearing the unmistakable stamp of idiocy – it’s pitifully obvious, that last one. As if a malicious hand smeared the raw material before it had quite set. I’ve heard them called the sweet and holy fools of the world, but I don’t know if I subscribe to that.
But in one thing they were alike in that moment. They were all terrified, and as soon as they saw me they shrank back. God knows what terrors they must have gone through herded together here, hearing what was happening, perhaps glimpsing some of it. Many of them would not entirely have understood, but all of them would have known they were in danger.
All around us, the organ pipes were still thrumming with discordance, and through it I could hear the soldiers crashing everywhere and swearing. But the dust was already clearing, and it would only take minutes for them to recover and regroup. I had minutes to get these girls across the chapel and into the main part of the convent behind locked doors. The alternative – to get them out to the gardens and out into the countryside – was impossible.
The pitiful thing – the thing that still twists painfully at the root of my soul when I think about it – is that they began to sing again. It was as if they were offering the only defence they had, and despite the danger and the chaos, tears stung my eyes.
But mercifully Sister Jeanne was there as well, and they trusted her. She clapped her hands briskly, and I think she said, ‘Into the convent, girls, and quickly, please.’ They fell obediently into line, and Sister Jeanne nodded to me in a gesture that might have been a thanks or a blessing, and led them through the clouds of dust and the shuddering music from the disturbed organ pipes. I stayed where I was, seeing that despite the awkward gait of most of them they skirted the edges of the chapel nimbly enough, avoiding the soldiers, picking their way through the dust. They went through the far door, and Sister Jeanne turned and sketched the outline of the Sign of the Cross on the air. I put up a hand in acknowledgement, then they were gone, and I caught, very faintly, the sound of a key turning in a lock. I thought: they’ll barricade themselves in there, and if I can get away I’ll somehow get help to them.
If I could get away … One level of my mind – the professional burglar’s level – had continued to work at its usual pace. Almost without realizing it, I had worked out that I could get through a narrow window partly hidden by the remaining rood screen. It was just about accessible from the ground, and the glass would have to be knocked out, but thankfully it was plain glass. Even in that desperate situation I would have hesitated to destroy the beautiful stained glass panels in the other windows.
The soldiers were at the far door, trying to force the lock, and the officer was saying something about finding other ways in.
Praying that Sister Clothilde and the others had had the wit to make sure all doors and windows were secured, I reached up for the stone sill, grateful for the cover afforded by the screen. But before I could lever myself up on to it, there was a movement on my right and I looked round sharply, thinking one of the soldiers had found his way here, tensing all my muscles to fight him or dodge bullets, or both.