“What about the crossroads? We’re dropping them there to wait for Alice anyway. We can set up a reunification center.” Kate scrubbed her forehead with a dusty hand. Most of them knew only the people in their assigned villages, but Anne, with her special carpentry and sewing classes, knew pretty much every child in all of them. “If Florence can spare Anne, she can do it—she knows more of these children than anyone.”
The next time the two trucks met outside Roye, Kate shouted her plans across. Anne began sorting families by the crossroads and Florence went off alone, down the road to Margny.
“Be careful!” Kate shouted after her, and Florence waved her hat at her in response as the dust rose in her wake.
Kate was putting the jitney into gear when a sentry hailed them.
“Is something wrong?” asked Kate, and then realized what an idiot question it was. Of course something was wrong. Everything was wrong.
“It’s Albert, isn’t it?” Nell called down. “You directed the traffic for us in Ham!”
“Yes, miss,” said the sentry, showing crooked teeth as he grinned at Nell. “Well, you see, it’s like this. They want me to guard the Nesle–Roye road, but someone’s needed to direct traffic here.”
“I’ve always wanted to direct traffic,” said Nell, putting on her old ebullience like a cloak. She stood up in the jitney, shaking out her dusty skirt. “It’s a lifelong ambition of mine. You’ll be all right without me, Kate?”
“Right as rain,” lied Kate in the same cheerful tone, and left Nell standing at the crossroads, moving her arms left and right, shouting at camions and scolding cart drivers.
Kate’s shoulders were stiff and aching from fighting with the jitney. There was something wrong with it; she’d have to get Alice to look at it later. But there wasn’t time now. Every minute counted, every minute meant another person saved. It was harder without Nell, so much harder, and she was painfully aware of time passing, of the sun moving and the shadows gathering and the Germans coming on and on, unstoppable.
Mme Chevrier, from Bacquencourt, wanted her to tell Emmie that she had saved the curtains she was making for the social center in Canizy. Kate congratulated her and tried not to think that there probably wasn’t a social center left for curtains; she couldn’t let herself think like that.
A British soldier blocked her on the road to Ercheu. “It’s not safe anymore, miss—you can’t go that way. The Boche.”
Had they got everyone out? Kate hoped so. Her cheeks stung with sunburn and her eyes with dust as she drove the last load back to the crossroads.
She found Alice there, helping Anne get families into the White truck. “They say it’s not safe to keep going back,” said Alice anxiously. “Florence has gone on to Montdidier with the truck.”
“Does anyone know what’s going on?” asked Kate in frustration.
Alice shook her head. “Only that they’re closer.”
How much closer? What did that even mean? Kate was sick of rumors and half news, of not knowing what was going on. She felt as if she were in a snow globe, being shaken about, while someone was peering in from outside, watching her dance.
“All right,” said Kate hoarsely. She was stiff and grimy and, she hadn’t realized it before, sick with hunger. Her watch said it was past seven. She had been driving for thirteen hours straight. “We’ll regroup in Montdidier.”
They left Anne and Nell—Nell still directing traffic, Anne staying to keep her company. “It’s all right,” Anne promised them, as Kate took up her last load of refugees. “Dr. Baldwin says he’ll take us to Montdidier with him when he finishes closing down the hospital.”
In Montdidier, Kate found that Emmie had taken over a hotel. “The owner has been splendid,” said Emmie. “She’s let us have the whole building and found us straw for pallets. Julia’s taken over a room for a children’s infirmary. Mrs. Goodale—she’s one of Dr. Baldwin’s nurses—got onto someone she knew and came back with a regular bonanza of condensed milk for us, so we’ve been able to feed the babies now that we don’t have our cows anymore.”
“Emmie—” Kate looked around, dazed and amazed. There was a full canteen running in the courtyard, and rooms lined with pallets like dormitories. “How on earth did you do all this in one day?”
Emmie flushed, looking pleased and flustered. “It wasn’t just me. Some of our Quakers from Ham came by and have been helping. We managed to find enough stoves to make sure everyone’s had some warm food—there’s a schoolmistress who let us have the stove from her school and someone else donated tables and chairs for a canteen in the courtyard. . . .”