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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 failedspectacularly. 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