The Baker's Secret(10)

“You will show respect, Emmanuelle.” The priest raised one finger in rebuke. “At once. I have friends among the officers. Indeed they worship the same Christ as you, and come to Mass accordingly. I imagine they might frown on your secrets.”

Emma paused, calculating. Pirate stirred behind the brick wall, growling like an underfoot cur. She approached the priest, quieting her tone to match his. “If you have been hearing those villagers’ confessions, you know I am keeping half of them alive.”

“Perhaps,” he conceded. “But your ministry of the pragmatic is performed without faith.”

The priest peered into the well, addressing his words to the darkness. “I did not come here to preach, Emmanuelle. But I must say this, which I know with all my being: to live without faith is to make a hell on earth.”

Emma threw her hands up. “Why did you come here, then? What do you want?”

“Two things, as I said. The first—” He straightened, tucking his hands into the wide opposing sleeves of his tunic. “Bread.”

Emma’s eyes went wide. “You are so corrupt it is comical.”

“The broken rail lines mean I have not received Communion wafers. You have extra loaves, don’t deny it. Your pride is a sin before God, and your penance is to provide me with half a loaf each day, henceforth.”

She snorted. “For you to feed your face.”

“For the holy sacrifice of the Mass, Emmanuelle. For my flock, which in this dark hour hungers more than ever for the bread of life. And yes, young lady, though you scoff at me, my second request concerns the salvation of your immortal soul.” He lifted the crucifix that hung around his neck and kissed it. “Attend Mass this week, and be saved.”

Emma strode to the door in the barnyard wall, where she paused. “You know, Monsignor, I still remember the day I made my first Holy Communion. I thought you were a living prayer, a direct connection to God. But I am older now. And it turns out that you are merely selfish.”

“I say again: Life without faith is a hell on earth.”

“Please.” She passed through the opening. “Don’t come here again.”

“A hell on earth,” he yelled after her.

Out of the Monsignor’s sight Emma pressed a palm to the bricks to steady herself. Would he actually betray her to the occupying army? Should she return to the Church? Life was difficult enough without these questions.

“Bastard,” she whispered.





Chapter 4




Did Emmanuelle feel afraid? Of course. No one in the village was immune. Fear, they learned, did not live in the heart or mind. It inhabited the stomach like a bad oyster. There was nothing to do but endure it. Neither could anyone deny it, because everyone had witnessed what the occupying army did to Uncle Ezra.

First they made him wear a star. They ordered it, commanded it on one of their posters. Odette was certain he would refuse. This thorny man who showed contempt for his best customers, who bowed to no one, who held himself and all to the same impossible standards? Never.

But there he was, the day the order took effect, with a six-pointed star sewn onto his tunic. It was yellow, the size of the palm of his hand. He stood in front of his shop, giving everyone an unambiguous view. Others wore the same star, of course, people who villagers might have known were of another faith—had they ever thought about it—because they did not worship at St. Agnes by the Sea. For some reason, the compliance of Uncle Ezra mattered more.

“Yes,” he barked from the doorway of his shop, slapping the star on his chemise. “Here it is. My mark of David, the house of David. Look all you like.”

Though his neighbors were obviously not the source of the star regulation, Uncle Ezra directed all of his indignation at them. He paced in the street flexing his fists, spitting in the dirt. In response, people were never kinder: praising his baked goods, buying extra, calling a greeting from down the lane. One day after a thick fog rolled in off the ocean, when he locked his shop for the evening, someone had left a new lantern on his stoop.

“Here it is,” he nonetheless proclaimed to the square the next morning, slapping his star. “I am doing what I am told. I am an obedient knave.”

Soldiers entered the library and confiscated all books by Jewish authors. Jews had to carry papers and leave jobs. They would realize that they were under surveillance. Then they would vanish. No one under surveillance was ever found innocent. First you were identified, then you were watched, then you were arrested. A plus B equals C.

“Here I am,” Uncle Ezra railed in the street, his apron stained with butter, dusted by flour. “Son of Abraham. Child of Isaiah. Here I am.”

One day soldiers came to the shop. Emma, busy at the giant mixer, did not hear them until one put his rifle butt through the front door’s window and the shattering glass startled her. She switched off the mixer and hurried out front. Soldiers stood on all sides of Uncle Ezra, hollering at him in their harsh language.

“I don’t understand you,” he said. “What are you saying?”

The men continued to shout until an officer swaggered into the shop and they silenced. The captain wore his helmet angled forward, hiding his eyes. His mouth was pinched, as though he had bitten into something sour.

“Unless you are going to buy something, please leave,” Uncle Ezra told the men. “You make my life hard enough, with the flour rationing. You have already emptied my bank account.”