Our Lady of Pain by Marion Chesney Read Free Book Online Page A

hear a quick step coming along the corridor as someone knocked sharply at each cell door and called out, “Benidicamus Domino!” Sleepy voices called in return, “Deo gratias!”
    When the sharp knocking came at their door and the voice called, “Benedicamus Domino,” Rose huddled farther down under the bedclothes and her fur coat covering and pretended not to be there.
    “Rose,” the voice then called. “It’s time to get up.”
    “Daisy,” hissed Rose, leaning across and shaking her. “It’s time to get up.”
    “Shan’t.”
    “We’ll miss matins.”
    “I could kill Harry,” brooded Rose as they made up their beds. “My knees are already sore with praying.”
    I could run away, thought Daisy. I kept a bit of the earl’s money back. Matthew will have assumed it was money we’d already spent. If Rose won’t go, I’ll go myself.
    Another bell rang, summoning them to breakfast. The banisters outside the chapel were festooned with white aprons, the nuns having taken them off before going into chapel.
    The sisters filed in, followed by Rose and Daisy. Each stood behind her seat until the reverend mother had said grace. Breakfast consisted of two thick slices of bread and butter each. Cups in front of each plate were already filled with steaming coffee.
    “Where’s the sugar?” demanded Daisy.
    “Silence!” ordered Sister Agnes. “No sugar and no talking.”
    The silence was only broken by a nun reading from the Bible in a low voice.
    After breakfast, the sisters went about their duties. Sister Agnes said to Rose and Daisy, “You will both meet me in the hall after the service of terce dressed to go out.”
    The walk to the home for fallen women that Sister Agnes had selected them to visit was just outside the convent walls.
    It was a plain Georgian building, which, Rose guessed, had at one time been a private house. The windows, she noticed, were all barred.
    Sister Agnes knocked. A curtain at a narrow window twitched and then they could hear the sound of bolts being drawn back and a key turned in the lock.
    They entered a stone-flagged hall. Four women were down on their knees scrubbing the floor. Despite the cold, they were wearing plain blue cotton gowns and aprons and their hair was bound up in blue scarves.
    They did not look up and Sister Agnes led Rose and Daisy round them and up the stairs. “We have selected three women for you to counsel. You will impress on them the sin they have brought upon themselves.”
    She pushed open a door. The women sat on chairs, their heads bowed.
    “I will return for you later,” said Sister Agnes.
    “Thank God, the penguin’s gone,” said Daisy. “Let’s get the introductions over with. I’m Daisy, this here is Rose. Who are you?”
    They shyly volunteered their names—Freda, Cissy and Louise. They were in various stages of pregnancy.
    “You first, Louise,” said Daisy. “What happened?”
    “Daisy,” said Rose urgently, “we’re supposed to be giving them spiritual advice.”
    “Pooh! Go on, Louise.”
    She clasped and unclasped her swollen red hands in her lap. Too much scrubbing, thought Rose.
    “I was working for a very harsh mistress. She used to beat me. I was a kitchen maid. Then one day, madam said she was going to visit her sister. The master gave the other servants—there were only five of us—the day off but said I had to stay. When they had all gone, he … he forced me to pleasure him. It didn’t happen again but when I began to show the mistress called me a slut and dragged me round here.”
    The other two had similar stories. Rose listened in horror.
    “But did not the nuns confront the fathers of your children?”
    “That’s not their way,” said Cissy. “The women always get the blame. They work us like slaves and then, after the babies are taken away from us for adoption, the nuns find us places as servants. We either put up with it or we’re out on the street.”
    Their sad stories had taken up most of the rest of