The Convent Read Online Free PDF Page B

only daughter of Ellen and Kevin from Wongabbie Farm near Bendigo but … someone else entirely. The first step had been taken just on a year ago when she’d first walked through the gates, but today was the one that mattered. Today was serious.
    Cecilia lay in her narrow bed, staring at the pale-green ceiling. There were eight beds, four on each side of the room, seven of them occupied. There was the huge crucifix down one end, and the big round clock on the wall opposite. She saw the time and smiled. Five minutes to six. An extra hour’s sleep. The night before, Reverend Mother had granted the sleep-in because of it being a special day for the whole community. But to wake before the bell was a first if ever there was one! That terrible clanging sound usually crashed in on her dreams with the force of a hundred stampeding horses, making her hate everything in her new life for a few moments until she managed to gather herself and remember where she was … and why.
    There were no pictures in the dormitory, no ornaments, and no mats on the polished wooden floor. The uncovered windows were open in spite of it being winter. All the bedcovers were white.
    But Cecilia’s future spread out before her like an exquisite piece of finely worked cloth, with all the different coloured threads making a pattern as subtle and varied and difficult to read as the night sky. Poverty, chastity and obedience. There would be hard times, she didn’t doubt that, dark nights when she lost her footing on the steep narrow road she’d chosen, but there would be joy too. Of that she was even more certain.
    Downstairs in the large locker next to the communal basins, the lovely satin wedding dress her mother had made waited on a hanger. It had beaded embroidery around the neck, and a lace veil with three satin roses to hold it in place. Oh, Mum! she’d protested. I won’t be a bride for long. But secretly she’d been glad it was so beautiful.
    Now the day had arrived she couldn’t wait to put it on. Nor could she help hoping her family would come in time to get a front pew so they would see how lovely she looked in that dress, walking up the aisle with six other postulants to meet her future. Such vanity, Cecilia! This morning she planned to ask the Novice Mistress, Mother Mary of the Holy Angels, if she might leave her hair to hang loose, for this … her last day in the world.
    For the past twelve months the honey-blonde curls had been scraped back from her face into a tight little bun, held with pins under a little thing that was more like a bird’s nest than a veil. During today’s ceremony the postulants would file into the sacristy for a few minutes to have their hair shorn off. When they came out again into the main body of the church they’d be dressed in their new habit: wimple, bandeau, white veil and guimpe. Proper nuns for the first time!
    Her father had always called his only daughter’s hair her crowning glory, and she so wanted him to see it this last time .
    â€˜This is it, kid.’
    Cecilia turned to smile at the impish face of Breda Walsh, who was poking her head out from under a pillow in the bed beside hers. There were seven postulants in the dormitory, all more or less the same age as Cecilia and Breda, except for Joan who was twenty-seven, and the rest were still sleeping soundly. Cecilia put a finger over her mouth to remind her friend that it was totally against the rules to speak. The Great Silence was observed from the end of evening recreation until after breakfast the next day – on this of all days it must be so.
    â€˜You having second thoughts?’ Breda whispered in her deep, throaty voice.
    Cecilia shook her head. ‘You?’ She mouthed without uttering a sound.
    â€˜A few.’ Brenda nodded seriously.
    Cecilia had to stifle a cry of dismay. Four of the original group of eleven had left, just disappeared without a word of goodbye, because that