A door beside the statue opened and in walked my stalker.
I screamed in fright and grabbed Natalia. But she simply stroked my arm, calming me. The tall figure was motionless, one gloved hand still holding the door open. Then Natalia stepped away from me and dropped to her knees.
‘Oh, Mother Superior. Please forgive me!’
I knelt to shake her and hissed, ‘Natalia! What are you doing? Christ, we have to get out of here! This guy – he’s been stalking me –’
But she flung herself forwards, spreading her arms out on the floor. Her cloak and skirt rode up the back of her legs and above her white thighs I saw what knickers nuns wear. What looked like puffy cotton bloomers, the kind of thing a long-legged model might wear on the catwalk with teetering platforms and a military waistcoat. Her little white hands touched the man’s shiny black shoes poking out of his long black coat.
‘Natalia! Get up!’
The stalker turned in my direction and put one hand up to silence me. No need. I was already frozen to the spot. Then he started slowly undoing the buttons from the collar in a kind of creepy striptease, over the chest, down the front. And as it fell open I caught a whiff of that smoky scent, and with a sick lurch in my stomach I remembered my fantasy. It was incense, and it was coming off the burning candles and silver incense burners positioned all round the room.
‘So, Sister Benedicta.’
Natalia raised her head from the floor. ‘Yes, Mother?’
I stared, aghast, as the hat and coat came off and the stalker was not a man at all. At least, the figure was dressed as a nun, so presumably it was female. But she was still very masculine. Tall, thin, with an almost translucent white face, slightly hooked nose and large, glittering black eyes. She kept these eyes on me as she directed the inevitable question at Natalia.
‘Where have you been?’
Natalia’s eyes filled with tears. She said nothing.
‘She’s been with me!’ My voice clanged in the dank room. ‘I was lost in one of the back streets, and she helped me.’
The Mother Superior handed her disguise to a second nun with freckles and a dimple whose comely figure had glided silently into the room. She folded the clothes and held them in front of her, waiting. There was a long silence punctuated only by a bell tolling somewhere in what sounded like Morse code. It was as if they had all the time in the world. The angelic singing, which was louder now, trailed through the still open door beside the statue.
‘You’re lying. I don’t know who you are, signora, but you are evidently a woeful influence. I know exactly where, and with whom, Sister Benedicta has been. Not just today, but several times before.’
I clamped my lips shut. So, not stalking me at all. Stalking my little Natalia.
Mother Marta picked up a thin little switch from the table. I hadn’t noticed it before. It was black leather, like a riding crop, and had a bunch of fine leather tassels dangling off the end. Nine tails?
‘You have been out of the convent, which is forbidden, Sister. I think seven times. The seven deadly sins. That amounts to once a month since you arrived here and took your initial vows.’
I saw something shift behind Natalia’s eyes as she maintained her awkward prone position on the floor. She had visited Carlo much more than once a month, I was sure of it. Clever girl.
‘And you have been going into a house belonging to Carlo Martelli, and you have been alone with him there, naked with him there, and fornicating with him there.’
Natalia’s face was draining of all colour. I took a worried step towards her but the whip came down smartly in the air between us.
‘You have broken every vow, committed every sin it is possible to commit whilst a member of this house. Lying to us, hiding from us, scuttling through the city like a dung beetle, speaking to others and fornicating with a man. Do you wish to stay here, or do you wish to be expelled? Either way you will be punished. You know the rules. You vowed to keep to them when you entered.’
Expelled. I wish to be expelled! I was willing Natalia to say it. This horrible woman made normal activities, normal pleasures, sound so evil and dirty. Natalia was best out of it. I was even prepared to take whatever the punishment was alongside her if she would only come away with me.
‘I know the rules, Mother, and I vow to keep them. I want to stay here, Mother. And I wish to be punished in front of my Sisters.’
‘No! Natalia, no!’
The whip flicked down in the air again, so close to me that my hair lifted from my forehead in its breeze. I couldn’t believe it. Natalia was speaking in a low, warm voice, not a high, frightened one. She meant what she was saying!
‘What a mere novice like you wishes is of no consequence but yes, you will go now into the chapel and prostrate yourself. And your friend’s punishment can be to watch.’
Natalia nodded and stood up. She was still very white. She avoided my eye, as if I was the one who had done wrong, and walked calmly through the door. The freckled nun took my arm and led me into a long thin chapel. My eyes started streaming with the heavy scent of incense pouring out of a large silver basket swinging back and forth on a silver chain. There was a Gothic vaulted ceiling, plaster walls painted with faint, peeling frescoes, and a meshed grille running down the whole of one side. On the other side were pews, and in these pews were several more nuns and, I noticed with surprise, a priest standing behind the altar at the far end. They must have been waiting for hours. In their utter stillness they all looked like figurines.
‘Prostrate yourself, Sister.’
Natalia lay down in front of the altar and spread her arms and legs in a star shape. My heart started pounding with fear. The singing was still radiating from behind the grille, but it was no longer angelic. It had descended to a low, grim humming sound. Sweat started trickling down my back, gathering in my armpits, prickling in my hair.
The freckled nun planted her feet on either side of Natalia and folded her cape and skirt right up over her bottom so that I could see those awful bloomers again. Then freckle-face wrenched those down in one swift movement, right down to Natalia’s knees, so that there was nothing covering her but the black stockings.
I glanced round. ‘Someone stop this! It’s torture!’ I said, but it came out as a kind of dry squeak. The humming got louder, and no one was listening to me. They had all turned to look at Natalia, lying on the floor, her round white bottom and lovely thighs glowing in the dead, dim light of the chapel.
Mother Marta stepped forward, raised her arm, and with a swish like a wasp’s wing brought the whip down on Natalia’s buttocks. The sound was extraordinary. The sharp stroke on Natalia’s soft flesh rang out like a cruel gunshot. The tender flesh rippled under the blow. I gasped in horror, and lunged forward, but someone else pinned my arms behind me to stop me moving. Natalia jerked involuntarily off the floor, showing a quick flash of her unwaxed pussy between her open thighs, and I saw her fingers clawing at the polished wooden floor. But she made no sound.
‘Don’t you move, Sister, or you get double.’
But even as she spoke so harshly, Mother Marta leaned down and stroked Natalia’s butt cheek, where a livid red stripe had come up. And yet Natalia lay there as if she was asleep. A new respect for her bubbled up inside me, alongside the revulsion and hatred for the nun meting out such a caning to my powerless girl. We all watched as the nun stroked the other cheek, almost as if she was preparing it like prime steak. Then she quickly stepped back and swiped the whip down a second time, squarely on the second cheek.
Natalia turned her head slightly