July (9 page)
Authors: Gabrielle Lord
Right now I was lying under the stars,
praying
it wouldn’t rain, and thinking about how my life had turned out so far. I’d been on the road for over three days, walking as far as my legs would carry me by day, and then sleeping in the bush, or wherever I could find a soft, quiet place, when it got dark.
Going to school and coming home to my family seemed such a long, long time ago.
Every now and then, more times than I liked, Winter came into my mind. I realised I would probably never figure her out, and while that drove me nuts, it was also kind of what I liked about her.
At last, I’d arrived in Redcliffe. It was another quiet, rural town in the foothills of the
mountains
.
I stopped and sat down on a bench next to a lonely town monument. I switched on the new mobile Boges had given me, and sent him a text message.
made it
Next, I entered my blog address, hoping I had enough coverage. It was taking some time to load.
I swung round, spooked by a distant siren, and started walking again.
Down the road was a sleepy country
graveyard
, with mossy headstones leaning at crooked angles and a small chapel among some trees.
Eventually, my blog page loaded up, and I clicked on another private message from Winter.
I dialled Boges as I stepped into the
graveyard
, stopping at a secluded spot behind the chapel, where a stone wall hid me from view. The phone rang out.
If what Winter Frey said was true, and Sligo had some leads on where I was, it could mean only a matter of time before tracing me to
Great-aunt
Millicent, and to Redcliffe.
Fear gripped me.
He might have found her already
.
Anxious to move faster, I spotted a guy working at the end of the stone wall, ripping
out blackberry bushes. He stopped what he was doing when he saw me, straightening up and pulling off his thick gloves.
‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘I’m looking for a property called “Manresa”. Do you know where it is?’
The guy looked surprised, pushing hair off his sweaty forehead.
‘Manresa? What business do you have there?’
‘Visiting a relative,’ I said. ‘Why? Is there a problem?’
He raised an eyebrow but didn’t answer my question; instead, he picked up a long stick and began drawing a rough map in the dirt at his feet.
‘You keep going along this road, until you pass a couple of big homesteads. You can’t miss them. Then you take a left turn here,’ he said, branching out with another line, ‘and keep go-ing another couple of kilometres. Manresa’s right at the end.’
‘Thanks, buddy,’ I said.
He was still looking at me strangely. ‘You sure it was Manresa you were after?’ he said, before his phone rang and he waved me on.
I set off as the evening drew in, keeping the rough map in my mind. Storm clouds were
gathering over the mountains and distant
lightning
split the air. Growls of thunder made me go faster. I was cold enough already. I didn’t want to get drenched as well.
After following the gardener’s instructions, I came to a small, faded signpost, pointing down a dirt track, which spelled out the name ‘
Manresa
’. I wondered what sort of place it was, hidden away on the edges of a small country town like Redcliffe.
I wrapped my hoodie tightly around me against the wind, and cautiously jogged down the track. I kept going over and over Winter’s message. I’d never noticed anything written on the Ormond Jewel, and neither had Boges, so I didn’t know what she could have been talking about.
A couple of lights shone in the distance,
urging
me to rush on. I hoped my great-aunt was OK, and that Sligo’s stooges hadn’t beaten me to her. I also wondered if she’d heard the news about her brother’s death. I sure didn’t want to be the one to tell her.
The wind suddenly stopped and the storm that had been threatening broke overhead, sending rain pelting down, hard and cold. Within
seconds
I was soaked, and the dusty surface of the road had turned into treacherous mud.
I kept running until I reached the iron and stone pillar fencing that circled the large
building
. The structure was imposing in the evening light, half-hidden behind tall, leafless trees. Some sort of spire reached high into the sky, and a driveway curved up and around the entrance, making the place look like some kind of
institution
—an institution like Leechwood Lodge. Was my great-aunt insane?
Another sign, now dripping with water, swung on the front gates. I rubbed some dirt from it and squinted in the poor light, trying to read it. I could hardly believe my eyes!
‘Manresa Convent,’ I read. ‘Enclosed order of the Sisters of Sancta Sophia.’
Great-aunt Millicent lived in a convent?
Would I even be allowed into an enclosed order? Didn’t that mean that the nuns had
virtually
no contact with the outside world?
Then it struck me: this could be the one place in the country that hadn’t heard about me—Cal Ormond, Psycho Kid.
A figure was heading down the driveway towards me. She was an elderly nun with a black umbrella. Her robes flapped in the wind, and raindrops shone on her black veil. Behind her, the convent loomed, dark and mysterious.
‘What are you doing here? Who are you?’ the
nun demanded, her sharp eyes in her wrinkled face checking me out.
I took a deep breath and a risk. ‘My name is Cal Ormond,’ I said.
She held the umbrella out and I stepped under it with her.
‘You can talk to me while I close the gates for the night,’ she said, straining to make her voice heard above the rain. ‘But first, please tell me what you’re doing here.’
‘I’m trying to find my great-aunt, Millicent Ormond,’ I said. ‘This is the address I was given for her. I must talk with her. It’s concerning a very urgent family matter.’
‘Millicent, you say?’ she asked, before
making
a humming, thinking kind of sound as she bolted the gates I’d come through. ‘Do you mean Sister Mary Perpetua?’
‘Mary Perpetua? No, I don’t know who she is. My great-aunt’s name is Millicent Butler Ormond,’ I said. ‘She’s my dad’s aunt.’
‘Come in out of the rain, boy,’ said the nun, looking me up and down again and leading us with a tilt of the umbrella. She looked pretty old, but her eyes were bright and her step was brisk as we walked quickly towards an open door on the side of the stone building. ‘When we come into the convent,’ she explained, ‘we take another
name. Your aunt took “Perpetua”. It means “eternal”.’
Eternal. I thought of Sligo’s ‘leads’ and
pictured
Bruno or Zombrovski heading this way. I hoped it didn’t mean eternal rest.
‘I don’t know what I’m going to do with you,’ the nun said, as we hurried up the front steps, ‘but it would be most un-Christian of me to leave you out here in this weather.’
I followed the nun to the heavy double doors, noticing a huge, gleaming brass bell hanging in the tower above the entrance steps. The steps were hemmed in by cactus plants, much taller than us, each one sprouting several long, stiff arms covered in wickedly sharp-looking thorns. They reminded me of giant sea urchins, with their massive, spiky arms spreading in all directions.
Through the doors was a cavernous entry hall. It was a gloomy, cathedral-like area, dimly lit with three wavering candles burning in front of the statue of a saint—a guy in armour who was standing in an alcove set in the wall. Next to the alcove were dangling ropes and the narrow bell tower stairs. I shivered, not only because of the cold. Something about being there reminded me of what it was like in the Ormond mausoleum, with the bones of my ancestors.
I stopped at the first of the three candles, my
attention caught by the very real-looking sword that was attached to the armoured saint’s right hand, held in place only by some thin wire.
‘Cool sword,’ I said, admiring its blade,
gleaming
in the candlelight.
‘Saint Ignatius, bless him,’ muttered the nun. ‘A warrior saint. And yes, that sword—it
is
real. It was a gift from a benefactor—a military man. A general,’ she explained as she led me further inside, shaking water from the folds in her clothes as she walked. I followed her down a passageway and into a large kitchen area at the end.
‘Thanks for letting me in,’ I said, pulling off my drenched hoodie. We walked to a large table in the middle of the kitchen, where a large
slow-combustion
stove warmed us. The walls were covered in old-fashioned copper cooking
utensils
and the counters were stacked with piles of clean plates. The kitchen smelled of a thousand meals.
