Free The Sisters of St. Croix by Diney Costeloe Page A

Where’s that, then?”
    “Up at the convent,” the girl pointed vaguely out of the square.
    “Come on,” the woman said, and plucking Hannah from David’s aching arms, tucked her under her own. She rested her other hand on the handle of the pram. “You’ll have to help me push.”
    Together they skirted the square and headed in the direction of the tall, grey stone building that dominated the village.
    Sitting in her small office, the convent accounts spread out on the desk in front of her, Mother Marie-Pierre had been listening to the sound of gunfire. It had seemed a long way off at first, but now it sounded much closer, and planes had twice roared low over the convent before spiralling away into the sky.
    It’s happening again, she thought bitterly. The Germans are coming, and this time there’s no line of trenches to hold them back.
    She was right. Even in the comparative seclusion of the convent, news and rumour, often intertwined and indistinguishable, were circulating. News came in from the village with the lay workers. A steady procession of refugees straggled through St Croix, each with his tale to tell. The Germans were coming. The Allies were running. The advance had been stopped. The English were swinging south to save Paris. The English were scuttling back across the Channel to save themselves, leaving France to the mercy of her enemies. Perfidious Albion!
    To try and curtail speculation, Mother Marie-Pierre allowed the nuns who wanted to, to listen to one broadcast on the radio each day, and what they heard made desperate listening.
    The German Panzer divisions were racing across the country, sometimes as much as thirty or forty miles a day, forcing the allied armies to retreat, squeezing them back to the Pas de Calais. Many of the retreating soldiers, both French and English, had been overtaken, blasted by the tanks, machine-gunned from the air, captured or left wounded or dead at the side of the road. Bridges were blown up, roads destroyed as the Allies retreated, and still the Germans came on, shells flying, guns blazing, unstoppable.
    All this they had heard, piecing together the snippets they gleaned, blending them with the official news broadcasts.
    It sounds very close today, Mother Marie-Pierre thought. Too close. I must send someone to the village to find out what has happened.
    She got to her feet and went in search of Sister Henriette. Sister Henriette was one of the sisters who went visiting regularly in the village, never afraid to go into a house where there was sickness, always with a basket of food on her arm. She was well known and well liked and the people would talk to her.
    “See if you can find out what’s happening,” Mother Marie-Pierre said. “That gunfire sounded very close. It may be that the Germans have arrived in the village. If they have there may be those who need our help. Come straight back once you know what’s going on, and we can decide what we need to do. In the meantime I will call all the sisters together so we can discuss it when you get back.”
    “Yes, Mother.” Sister Henriette flung her cloak over her habit and let herself out of the kitchen door. She took the footpath to the village, cutting down through a copse and out onto the lane, which wound down towards the square. As she reached the lane she saw a strange little group of people coming towards her, a dishevelled woman pushing a pram with a child stretched across it, a small boy helping her to push, and tucked wriggling under the woman’s arm, a wailing baby.
    Sister Henriette hurried forward. “Good gracious!” she cried. “What has happened? What’s the matter with the little girl? Here, let me take the baby.”
    The woman relinquished the baby readily into the nun’s arms, and detached the boy’s fingers from her skirt. “There was a raid on the road. Air attack. These children lost their mother. I don’t know how bad the little girl is, but I’ll leave them with you now.” She let