Read Online The Sisters of St. Croix by Diney Costeloe - Free Book Online

appetite.
    One woman, who seemed to be alone, took pity on her and poured a little milk into a cup.
    “Here you are,” she said as she handed it over. “It’s all I can spare, but it’ll give the poor little mite something in her stomach.”
    “Thank you, you are so kind,” said Mathilde. “Let me give you this in return.” And she passed over the crust of bread that would have been her own supper.
    The other woman took it, thanking her gravely. “We must hope we can find more food tomorrow,” she said. “Albert is quite big. There must be some shops that still have food to sell.”
    Very early in the morning, with hunger gnawing at her insides, Mathilde took the children away from the others into a small park. Here she told David to sit with his sister and not to move while she went to try and find some food.
    The little boy nodded solemnly and sat on the ground with his back against a wall, Catherine on the grass beside him. Mathilde dare not leave the pram in the sole charge of a nine-year-old boy, anyone might take it from him, so with some misgivings she placed Hannah in the pram on top of their worldly goods, and made ready to push it ahead of her as she went in search of food.
    “Whatever happens, don’t move,” Mathilde told him. “Stay here until I get back. Promise me now. I shan’t be long.”
    David promised and, with an anxious glance over her shoulder, Mathilde set off into the town to find them something to eat.
    She was gone the best part of an hour, but when she returned there was a loaf of bread tucked into the pram beside Hannah. This she tore into pieces and gave to the two older children. For Hannah she tore the crumb out from the crust and soaking it in a little of their precious water, made it into a soggy pap that Hannah could suck from her mother’s fingers. The crust she ate herself.
    The town was awake now and people were going about their business. Many of the other refugees had already moved on, and Mathilde was anxious to leave as well. While searching for food she had become aware of the sidelong glances people were giving her, not exactly open hostility, but obvious mistrust. It was time to get out of this terrified town. She knew they had to travel westwards, so with the sun at her back she took the road out of town. The going was slow, the road uneven and very bumpy for the pram. With Hannah on her hip, she let the other children take turns riding in the pram, and that way they moved a little faster than the previous day. Even so, she knew that they had to keep stopping to rest or the children would never keep going.
    Once they heard planes high overhead, and Mathilde looked round wildly for some cover, but there was none. The land stretched away in all directions, flat and almost featureless except for a line of poplar trees away in the distance and the occasional straggling farm buildings. However, the planes were quite high and droned away into the clouds to the north of them. She could hear intermittent gunfire from that direction too, and once there was a big boom as if something had blown up, but it seemed some distance away and she tried not to think about it.
    As the morning progressed they began to catch up with other refugees who had set out earlier than they had. Old men and women, young mothers like her with children at their skirts, all plodding along the same straight road. Far ahead they could see the roofs of a village, above which towered a tall, grey stone building with a turret on one end, a chateau perhaps.
    We’ll stop there for a proper rest, Mathilde thought, and try to get something else to eat. Maybe there’s a farm that will be able to sell us a little milk for Hannah. But it would be at a price, she knew that, and her small supply of cash was dwindling at an alarming speed. Everything cost so much… and the price tended to rise when the person who was selling knew you were desperate.
    They were travelling in a much larger group now, about forty