The Book of Shadows Read Online Free PDF Page A

against me, against all the younger girls at times.
    That summer we remaining girls rose en masse in predawn darkness to dress and see to our toilettes. I can still hear that horrible bell shattering the silence of sleep. I can see the novitiates marching down the rows of cots, ringing that bell, banging it on the beds of the girls who lay in the deepest sleep. Its brass cup would send a shiver through the bed frame, through my very bones…. I lay feigning sleep, a sleep so deep I simply could not rouse myself from it. I lay listening to the sibilance of slippers shuffling across the floor, waiting for the novitiate or nun who would come and chide me with bitter breath. How skilled I became at deception! And for this I incurred their wrath, and chores beyond number.
    On appointed days, a rotating shift of girls rose early to fill the tubs with tepid water for bathing (heating the water had been my job previously, when I’d been resident in the pantry). These days we were expected to don our thin bathing dresses and dip, two at a time, into the tubs. I could not do this. I simply could not . I would sneak into icy baths in the predawn hours, when all the others slept, or I would rise late and slip into a tub of dirt-darkened water.
    Invariably, I would arrive late to Lauds. I would slide into a back pew beneath the heated, scornful gaze of the nuns, frequently disrupting the service. But I hadn’t a choice: I would suffer what I must in order to keep my secret, a secret unknown even to me.
    That first afternoon in the dormitory, Mother Marie had introduced me to several girls gathered around a certain cot. They knew me, and I knew them, but it was as if I’d come from another world. “This is Herculine,” said the Mother Superior. “We welcome her to the Upper School, where she will train for the teaching certificate.” There was snickering and bitter words; one girl estimated my height in hands, as one does for a horse.
    I kept far from that gaggle of girls, walked toward the dormitory’s far end. There was a broad window, giving out to the sea. Through it, I saw that same rainbow. A great arc of pure color, its bands distinct. Earlier, outside, before Sister Claire had dismissed it, Mother Marie had averred that the rainbow was a gift from God and, in a whisper, she’d added to me how lucky I was to be in receipt of such, on “this of all days.”
    That afternoon, with the girls milling about behind me, I stood staring at the rainbow a long while. It was beautiful, yes, arching over the summer fields of hay cones and crops, the sky a deepening blue behind it, its colors as elemental and pure as the storm it trailed. But I closed my eyes, clenched them tight as fists so as not to see, so as not to cry. For this is what I knew to be true: the rainbow was no gift from God. It was a promise He could never keep.

2
Peronette Gaudillon
    N OT LONG AFTER my “ascension” to the Upper School—it was 21 July, to be exact—as I sat on a stony bench in the shade of a tall chestnut, reading some ill-gotten novel, a girl came up behind me, unheard, and startled me terribly by asking: “What book is that?” (It was, I recall, Mathew Lewis’s The Monk —its utter and wonderful depravity cheered me.)
    The book slipped from my hands. It seemed my heart might pop. I stood and turned to the girl. Finally, when I was able, I said, “You gave me quite a fright.” I retrieved the book from where it had fallen. I showed the girl its imprinted spine; she shook her head, shrugged her shoulders. She did not know the book, and neither did she ask about it.
    The girl was Peronette. Peronette Gaudillon. With whom I fell instantly in love. My association with Peronette, lasting but a few short weeks, would very nearly cost me my life.
    She was beautiful. Tiny. Fine as a doll. Dark-complected. With long hair, black as jet, which she wound into a braid as smooth and sleek