Free The Angel Makers by Jessica Gregson

Sari?’
    Sari flushes. There certainly isn’t anything wrong with Judit’s ears.
    ‘Nothing, Judit. But we really do need some more wild chicory, and I thought that I should …’
    Judit sits down, sighs heavily, and looks at Sari with mock sorrow.
    ‘Ah, Sari, Sari. I never would have taken you for a coward.’
    ‘I’m not!’ Sari is outraged. Cowardice is the one accusation that infuriates Sari more than anything else, after a childhood where her father constantly praised her for her bravery and recklessness.
    ‘Don’t try and fool me, Sari. What is it that you’re so afraid of?’
    ‘I’m not afraid of anything! We have enough to do with – with people getting sick from hunger, and the people from outside the village coming to us – and we don’t need the extra work – and if you’re so enthusiastic about the idea, why don’t you go down there?’
    Judit, infuriatingly enough, is laughing at Sari’s distress.
    ‘Sari, it’s not as if Anna and the rest of them are going down there to act as whores for the prisoners,’ she says. ‘It’s just a bit of cooking and cleaning; where’s the harm?’
    ‘If it’s just a bit of cooking and cleaning, then why are you so keen for me to go?’
    ‘I think it would be good for you to spend time with people who are not from here. I think that you want to learn about other places, about the rest of the world, and that this would be a good place to start. I don’t like to see you cutting yourself off from things. What happened there, anyway, that’s got you so upset?’
    ‘Nothing, really. We just – we just saw a couple of the men.’ Sari swiftly describes the two prisoners, their appearance and their behaviour. ‘They obviously had ideas about us, and Anna and Lujza just laughed, and so I think that they had … the same sorts of ideas.’
    ‘And what’s so wrong with that? If it’s all right for the two of them, why isn’t it all right for you?’
    Sari’s had enough. Arguing with Judit is like arguing with herself, that rebellious part of her brain that never stops questioning all her actions. Deliberately, she shuts off from Judit, making her face expressionless.
    ‘We really do need some more chicory,’ she says. ‘I’m going to the woods for a couple of hours.’
    Somehow, fate conspires to prove Sari right, and over the next few days she and Judit are busier than they’ve been in months. Jozsua, Éva Orczy’s baby is ill, and Éva is panicking. Sari, who has a slightly baffled fondness for the boy, as the first birth she attended, spends her time running back and forth between the Orczy house and Judit’s house, as remedy after remedy fails to bring down Jozsua’s fever, and so it’s not until three days later that Sari meets Anna in town. Anna is looking enormously cheerful; it’s eleven o’clock and Sari is exhausted, on her way home from the Orczy house where at last an infusion of angelica has broken Jozsua’s fever and sent him into a sweat-drenched sleep.
    ‘Morning, Sari!’ The perky tone of her voice makes the back of Sari’s head prickle.
    ‘Morning, Anna.’
    ‘How’s Jozsua Orczy?’
    ‘Better, I think. He should be all right.’
    ‘Thank God,’ Anna says absently. Her eyes are sparkling in a way that strikes Sari as slightly child-like, and she is suddenly touched, remembering Anna’s life before the war. Surely Anna deserves a bit of excitement, if anyone does.
    Relenting, she asks, ‘So how’s it going, down there?’ She motions in the direction of the Gazdag place.
    ‘Oh, it’s all right.’ Anna’s face belies her noncommittal tone. ‘I’m on my way down there now. I got on the cooking rota in the end, so I’m off to peel potatoes for their lunch; what fun.’ Anna rolls her eyes, but the cynical pose doesn’t suit her in the least.
    ‘Have you met any of the prisoners yet?’
    ‘Well … a few. They come into the kitchen sometimes when we’re working – they have jobs to do down there, too,