The Sisters of St. Croix by Diney Costeloe Page A

dive bombing them. When I went down, I met a woman who was bringing three children up here. She said their mother was dead at the roadside. There are people in the village who have been wounded. We need to send help at once and prepare beds in the infirmary for the most badly injured.” She looked round at her assembled sisters and noticed that most of those who worked in the infirmary were not there.
    “Sister Jeanne-Marie has already set off for the village with three others. Sister Eloise is making ready in the hospital,” Mother Marie-Pierre said. “The rest of us need to prepare for an influx of injured and frightened people,” adding with the ghost of a smile, “just like before.”
    Mother Marie-Pierre was very glad that some of the nursing sisters who had worked so hard during the last war, caring for the wounded ferried back from the trenches, were still able to work in the infirmary. She would need to rely on their experience and expertise to help them all through this crisis and the many more she expected to come with the arrival of the Germans.
    Mother Marie-Pierre was a young reverend mother, but one of her great strengths was to use the gifts of those around her. When Mother Marie-Georges had died a few years after the war, her place had been taken by Sister Magdalene, the sister who had run the convent hospital so efficiently throughout the war. The new reverend mother had at once seen the potential in the newly professed Sister Marie-Pierre, and had put her to work in the growing orphanage. She had not been disappointed in her choice. Before long Sister Marie-Pierre had been given charge of the orphans and over the years Mother Magdalene had come to rely on her, respecting her judgement and seeking her opinion on matters which arose. Mother Magdalene had also been a comparatively young reverend mother, and had supervised the running of the convent for almost fourteen years before she had been summoned to the order’s mother house in Paris. Despite her youth and the fact that many of the other sisters were technically more senior than she, it was Sister Marie-Pierre she left in charge while she was away. Again her confidence was not misplaced. The strange English girl, who had arrived of her own volition to help nurse the wounded during the Great War, had proved her worth as a member of the community, and Mother Magdalene knew that she would one day be capable of taking over from her.
    Now in her mid-sixties, Mother Magdalene had moved to the Paris convent permanently as the overall mother superior of the order, leaving the community in St Croix in little doubt as to whom she wanted them to elect as her successor. There had been those who doubted the wisdom of her choice and one or two who resented that such a young sister—Sister Marie-Pierre was not much more than forty—had been placed over them, demanding their unquestioning obedience. On the whole, however, the choice had been considered a good one. She was always ready to listen to what anyone had to say, welcomed discussion, and when she finally made a decision her reasons were explained so that everyone understood her action. Thus, she soon had the complete loyalty of most of her sisters.
    Now, in a crisis, her unquestioned authority paid dividends as she quickly organised the sisters to deal with the emergency. Sister Danielle who, with Sister Marie-Joseph, now looked after the orphans, quickly took the Leon children into her domain and tried to make them comfortable. Catherine had been kept in the infirmary under the careful eye of Sister Eloise; David and Hannah were washed and dressed in clean clothes. Their few possessions had been retrieved from the pram, stored safely in the shed in the courtyard. David had visited Catherine in the ward and found her sitting up in bed with a large white bandage round her head with one of the lay workers, Marthe, spooning warm soup into her mouth. Catherine smiled when she saw him. “David,” she called