The Baker's Secret

by Stephen P. Kiernan

  Chapter 27

  In early evening on the fifth of June, Odette stood working in her kitchen when the café’s front door swung open, pushed so hard it clattered against a table.

  “Not open for dinner till six thirty,” she called, chopping an onion. “And go easy on that door, would you please?”

  “Here she is,” a familiar voice snapped. “As I told you.”

  Odette turned to find DuFour standing at her kitchen’s entry. Two soldiers hovered behind him with rifles. “Oh, you,” she said. “What are you sniveling about? Or have you finally come for that free dinner I offered you?”

  “You are under arrest for spying for the Resistance.”

  “Go shuffle your papers,” she replied, returning to her cutting board. “I have soup to make.”

  DuFour strode into the close room, clearing a way for the soldiers. “Arrest her,” he told them. “The Kommandant will want to hear everything.”

  Odette pointed the knife at him. “I’m busy, I said. Now get out of my kitchen.”

  One of the soldiers lowered his rifle. He did not speak. Odette sized up the three of them, only one in stabbing distance. Oh, the pleasure it would bring, to bury that blade in DuFour’s poochy potbelly. But he was not worth the repercussions.

  After wiping the knife, Odette placed it on the cutting board, raked the diced onion into her palm, and dropped it into a pot of steaming broth. Inside boiled a good-sized lobster, and Odette had intended for it to draw a high price that night.

  Now it would more likely go to waste. But hadn’t this moment been coming for months? Still, as she switched off the heat under the pot, Odette was surprised to find her throat tightening. So many foods for so many mouths, customers in fact expected within the hour, regardless of the bombing of the train station. Yet interrupting that meal’s preparation felt like an act of loss and surrender. It felt final.

  Odette knew what it was to relinquish something precious: throwing a handful of dirt on a casket, releasing the hope of ever marrying and having children. By placing a top on that pot, she felt as though she were taking leave of her oldest friend.

  “Go ahead,” she said to the soldiers. “I’ll behave.”

  Odette kept her buxom chest out and shoulders back as she followed the soldiers out into the street. Rather than the garrison, they turned toward town hall, and she understood that she would not be facing the Kommandant right away. More likely, she would be locked in the cell that had held Emma’s father. Odette cast her gaze about, wishing the sky were not so gray, nor evening coming on, while she took a last view of Vergers for what could be months. Allied planes buzzed in the distance, as they had all afternoon, and she suspected that this arrest was DuFour’s doing entirely. If she managed to survive, she would roast him on a spit.

  The town clerk shouted from behind, telling Odette to hurry, and she duly picked up her pace.

  “Aha!” he cried, rushing forward. “You did it.”

  “What did I do, you insect?”

  “You hurried.”

  “Yes, and so what?”

  “I said it in their language.” He pointed at the soldiers. “Not ours.” He seemed almost to skip beside her. “You know their language. You have been spying all this time, in your café.”

  At that, Odette felt her first flush of doubt. DuFour might be a first-class fool, but he had put her in serious trouble. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “Deny all you like. You have already revealed yourself.”

  They marched off together in silence toward the jail.

  Chapter 28

  There was unusual traffic on the dirt roads on the evening of the fifth of June as Emma pulled for the last stretch home. First she happened across the parcel that had dropped from the airplane. It sat in a field to the left, on land that had been plowed but not planted, which struck her as a perfect metaphor for the condition of her country: fertile, ready to continue the cycle of seasons, but thwarted by the endless occupation. Mémé hopped off the wagon before it had come to a complete stop.

  “Gifts,” she cried, feet wide for balance. “Sky gifts.”

  Emma considered ignoring the salvage opportunity, and continuing home. A reckoning with the captain was coming soon enough. She should feed Mémé, hide the fuel jug, and make other preparations.

  But seeing her grandmother excited like a child made Emma hesitate. Nothing she did now would alter what lay ahead. She slid from her harnesses and wedged a block behind one of the wagon’s wheels.

  Mémé paced at the edge of the field. The package lay a few steps down the embankment, but the slope was steep and the grass wet. Stepping sideways, Emma inched down. When one of her shoes slipped, she caught herself with a hand on the ground, and after a few steps more she reached the field’s roiled soil.

  The parachute lay flat on the dirt like the lung of a slaughtered pig. But a parcel wrapped in canvas lay alongside, making a strange sound. There was nothing remotely bomblike about it, so Emma began untying the cords. Anytime she jostled the basket it made that odd sound, familiar though she could not quite place it. She carried the package back to the wagon, fidgeting loose the canvas until at last she could see.

  A dove. The parcel was a bird cage. Inside, a small gray-and-white bird, head bobbing, skittered back and forth on his pedestal. His cooing she recognized from the belfry of St. Agnes by the Sea, where scavenging pigeons congregated more frequently than parishioners. The bird clambered about in its cage, clinging to the bars with tiny red talons.

  “What in creation?” Emma asked.

  Mémé did not answer, busying herself with something at the roadside.

  Emma unwrapped the package more. It also held parchment paper thinner than a blade of grass, two molded tubes as long as the tip of her pinkie but as thin as a fingernail, plus a cube of seeds pressed into fat that she understood at once was bird food.

  By instinct she unwrapped the cube first, sliding it between the bars. The dove immediately began pecking at his feed. Emma sat back, facing Apollo. “Why in the world would they drop a bird to us?”

  “Help me,” Mémé called from the field’s edge.

  Setting the basket aside, Emma peered at her grandmother. She had clumped the parachute into a ball in her arms, rendering her unable to climb back up the bank. Yet she was grinning wider than Emma had seen in years.

  “Oh, dear one,” Emma said, hurrying over. “What have you gotten yourself into now?”

  “Silk,” Mémé answered with a laugh, raising her arms to hold the parachute high. “For your wedding dress.”

  Chapter 29

  Emma had barely concealed her find, the basket tucked beside Mémé in the wagon, the parachute under a blanket, when the Monsignor appeared on the road, coming from the direction of their home. At first she did not recognize him, the man had aged so much recently. In another era she would have guessed cancer, and might have felt pity. But in the time of occupation, she bristled and prepared her defenses.

  “Emmanuelle, I have been searching for you.”

  “Once more your prayers are answered. What do you want?”

  “So unfriendly, after all this time.”

  “Our conversations lately have not been what I would call delights.”

  The priest stopped where he stood, as Emma saw that he was leaning on a cane. “I have always been a poor evangelist.” He coughed into his hand. “I daresay you’ve won more people to your viewpoint than I have won to God’s.”

  “Perhaps that is because God has deserted us.”

  “Blasphemy,” he said weakly, shaking his cane. “Why must you always speak sinfully to me?”

  “Do you see God anywhere around here?”

  “Well.” The Monsignor’s hands revealed a bit of a tremor. “His works are far between, I concede.” He darted a tongue over his lips. “But only if you do not consider the air in your lungs, the ground you stand upon, or the stars at night in the firmament.”

  “Creation
happened a long time ago,” Emma said.

  “Please,” he said, raising an open hand. “It is difficult enough to sustain my own faith in such cruel times. And your deeds reveal faith more strongly than your denials refute it. I did not seek you for another argument. I came to bring you news.”

  Emma folded her arms on her chest. “I’m listening.”

  “Your friend Odette has been arrested—”

  “What? When? How do you know this?”

  “—accused of eavesdropping on the officers in her café, for the Resistance. DuFour caught her, and apparently he has proof.”

  Emma stumbled backward, the wagon following her steps, so that she had to pull to recover her balance. Glancing back, she saw Mémé listening to everything with wide eyes.

  “What will they do to her?”

  “What they do to everyone.” The priest tapped his cane on the ground. “Why do you think I own a wheelbarrow?”

  Emma considered the trinkets in her wagon, the bird, everything suddenly trivial. She had delivered the lobster to Odette not two hours earlier. “Is there anything we can do?”

  “Pray.”

  “I mean anything real,” she snapped. “Where are they keeping her?”

  The priest sighed. His head seemed too large for how thin his neck had become. “The town-hall cells. They would have shot her already, if not for the bombing of the train station. It has given the Kommandant, for now, more pressing concerns.”

  As if to confirm that observation, another wave of bombers swept in from the north, at the far edge of sight but approaching at high speeds. The sound of their engines grew as another wave followed close behind, then a third and fourth. The gathering dusk made them barely visible, but the sound gave a sense of their place in the sky.

  The priest, Emma, and Mémé stood watching for a full minute, Apollo dipping his head into the wagon to satisfy his curiosity about the bird cage. They could not tell where the bombs fell, but they heard the explosions, as well as the subsequent report of antiaircraft fire. In one or two places they could spot a flash of light from the blasting guns.

  “I suppose, Emmanuelle,” the Monsignor continued at last. “I suppose I am here to warn you. If they have arrested Odette, they will come for you, too. It is a matter of time. You should flee.”

  “But I have told you. I am not a member of the Resistance.”

  “Do you honestly believe that it will matter?”

  “I cannot abandon the people. It’s not only Mémé. They all depend on me now.”

  “I suspect that will not make a difference either.” He gazed at the ground, nodding to himself. “Our uninvited guests may be God’s children, but they do not seem to place much value on the needs of people here. On the lives of people here.”

  How defeated the Monsignor was, Emma thought. She liked him better when he was full of vinegar and damnation. “Why are you suddenly so concerned with my well-being?”

  “One hundred and two,” Mémé called from the wagon.

  “That’s right,” the priest said, lifting his face again. He pointed a shaking finger. “That’s it exactly.”

  Emma turned to her grandmother. “What are you talking about?”

  “That is how many people I have baptized since the bishop assigned me to this parish,” the priest explained. “One adult, one hundred and one babies. It is a bond the likes of which you will never understand. But for a man whose vows forbid him from knowing fatherhood, it is the sacrament that brings me nearest. Many have moved away, because of the war. Thirty-one were conscripted. Twenty-six have been killed, and to my unending heartbreak, I personally witnessed one of those deaths.”

  “Thirty-four,” Mémé said, licking her thumb and making the sign of the cross on the brow of an invisible child. “Thirty-five.”

  The Monsignor’s face wrinkled and Emma thought he was about to cry, but then he smiled. “Your grandmother never misses a baptism.”

  “What?” Emma asked. “How is that possible?”

  “Marguerite brings her, I assume while you are busy with your affairs.”

  Emma faced Mémé with hands on her hips. “Is this true?”

  By way of reply, the old woman cradled an imaginary baby and whispered to it, “Thirty-six.”

  “You are among my one hundred and two.” The priest switched the cane to his left hand, raised his right arm, and although it shook with palsy, he made a sign of the cross. “God bless you, Emmanuelle. May He grant you the wisdom, in your final hour, to seek His grace and beg His protection.”

  On hearing that word, Emma remembered that she was wearing a knife, snug against her leg, inches from her fingers. She hooked a thumb under the wagon harness. “Sorry to give you the bad news, but my final hour is a long way off.”

  The Monsignor made no reply, only lowered his arm and returned the cane to that side. Then he shuffled past, heading for the crossroads and the lane back to his rectory, across the road from St. Agnes by the Sea.

  Emma watched the old priest go, and saw Apollo make the choice to amble after him. They made a picturesque pair, she thought. Those once powerful, marching into the twilight.

  Oh, but wait: the Monsignor had not mentioned the bread she left on the altar. Perhaps he had not been to his church all afternoon. In that case, a surprise was awaiting him at seven thirty Mass the next day. Let him repent of his judgments then.

  Emma pulled away at her harness. She could hear more planes in the distance, and she wanted to be home. An old fantasy returned—that Philippe would somehow be waiting there for her—but she pushed the idea out of sight.

  “Grandmother,” she called over a shoulder. “Did he announce the count at the end of each baptism?”

  Mémé had circled her arms around the bird cage, cooing to the creature within. She nodded to the cage, as if the bird had asked the question. “Yes.”

  Emma took several steps, thinking. “What number was I?”

  “You were . . .” Mémé furrowed her brow.

  She examined her hands, she searched the sky. “You were. You were.” Mémé scratched her head, fidgeted her clothes all over, wiped her face with both hands. Only then did Emma see that the woman was crying. She hurried out of her harnesses, back to her grandmother’s side. “Dear one.”

  “Can’t remember,” the old woman chattered to herself. “Beautiful baby. Can’t remember.”

  “It’s all right,” Emma said. “It doesn’t matter.”

  Mémé yanked off her shoe and threw it in the road.

  “Grandmother, really.” Emma trotted back for the shoe. “We need to be getting home now.”

  “Can’t remember,” the old woman roared. “Damn it.”

  Monkey Boy and the Goat lurked by the eastern well, glancing around from time to time to make sure no one was watching. As Emma trudged her slow approach, it seemed as if they were playing a game. The boy was prancing, making the strange two-step he had done around the mansion on the bluff, the one with a guard outside. But as Monkey Boy hopped sideways, the Goat crawled along with a strip of tailor’s tape, attempting to measure the width of each step.

  “Please slow down,” the Goat chided. But the boy could not contain himself, and polkaed halfway up the lane. The Goat hung his head, then noticed shoe prints in the dust. “Oh, now there we go,” he called out, stretching the measuring tape between four or five prints, then sitting back on his heels to calculate on his fingers. “Good lad.”

  Monkey Boy came skipping back, followed closely by Emma towing the cart, her grandmother in the back banging the side of the wagon with the flat of her hand. The Goat straightened and addressed Monkey Boy.

  “And you say there are seventy-seven of your hops between the mansion and the bluff? And you’re certain you measured the one with the army inside, and not the young couple, correct?”

  Monkey Boy skipped in a circle large enough to contain the Goat, the well, and the wagon. Day was done and Emma’s head hanging, but he showed no lack of energy. “Seventy
-seven,” he sang, as though it were a nursery rhyme. “Seventy-seven from the bluff. One hundred sixty-four from the road.”

  “What’s going on here?” Emma demanded, straightening, pressing both hands at the small of her back.

  “Coordinates,” the Goat replied. “Targets.”

  “Seventy-seven,” Monkey Boy chimed, skipping past Mémé.

  “Grrr,” she replied, making her wrinkled hands into fleshy fists.

  “One hundred sixty-four,” he sang, bouncing out of reach.

  “Give her room or she’ll brain you,” Emma warned. “Mémé’s in a foul humor. And you—” She pointed her chin at the Goat. “Is that my measuring tape?”

  “I confess that it is,” he answered. “But I needed it for an extremely important reason.”

  “You entered my house and stole it.”

  “I cannot claim innocence of the crime. But you see—”

  Emma snapped her hand out. “Give it back now.”

  “Let me explain, please.” He placed the tape in her hand, immediately bowing backward a few steps.

  “If you ever enter my house again”—she stuffed the tailor tape into her pocket—“I will wait till you are asleep in the hog shed and then I will set it on fire. Do we understand one another?”

  “Emmanuelle.” The Goat shook his head. “Don’t you see what is happening? Don’t you feel what is coming, any minute now? Our possessions—tape measures, anything—are not going to matter anymore. Not when our lives are at stake. Believe me, if only because of our long friendship. We need to join—”

  “We are not friends.” She slid back into her harnesses. “We have never been friends.”

  “You are mistaken, Emma. All we have left is one another.”

  She started pulling the wagon. “I want you out. Pack your things and vacate the hog shed tonight.”

  The Goat flapped his arms against his coat. “For God’s sake. What would it cost you to give me half a minute to explain?”