July by Gabrielle Lord Page A

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?’ thenun 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 anothername. 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, myattention 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