The Baker's Secret(11)

The captain studied the shop without haste. “We will search,” he said. He barked a word to his men and they began ransacking, breaking shelves, spilling bowls, knocking a cake to the floor. He spoke in a bored tone. “You have nothing to fear, if you have done nothing wrong.”

“Go home,” Uncle Ezra called to the back of the shop. “Leave now, Emmanuelle.”

He had never before used her name. But before she could take one step toward the back door, all of the soldiers made the same loud sound: Ahhh. Feigned surprise and genuine joy. One of them had punctured a sack of flour, and from it he seemed to have pulled a pistol—though Emma could see that the gun was as black as a locomotive.

“What is this?” the captain asked Uncle Ezra, dangling the pistol in front of his face. “What have we here?”

“I’ve never seen it before,” Uncle Ezra said. “Please leave my shop.”

“Never seen it? What are you making imply? Did I put it there? Or one of my men? Which one? I will punish him at once.”

“I don’t even know how to load a gun. What use would I have for possessing one? I know the laws.”

“I’m sure you do,” the captain said, shaking his head, as if hurt with disappointment. “The penalties as well.”

He handed the gun back to the soldier who had found it. The others seized Uncle Ezra and pulled him from the store.

“Go home,” Uncle Ezra called to Emma, but a soldier jammed a rifle into his belly and he said no more.

They dragged him away. Emma followed at a distance, as did others from the village. This was something wholly new. Although eventually there would be so many incidents of this sort the villagers would lose count, this day was a first, and they were ignorant about what might happen. Naive. Along the way someone had tied Uncle Ezra’s hands, and though the soldiers buffeted him about, he held his head high. Emma saw that his lips were white with rage.

The crowd arrived at the churchyard, where a row of poplars stood with their pale bark and heart-shaped leaves. The soldiers shoved Uncle Ezra back against one tree and stepped away. Suddenly the people knew, could not believe that they hadn’t known, felt ugly and wrong for being there.

The captain stood to one side, smoking a cigarette with the rich odor of real tobacco. He had wanted an audience, obviously. The whole event was theater. Emma kept a hand to her mouth as though she might be ill.

“Have you anything to say for yourself?” the captain asked.

“I have never seen that gun before,” Uncle Ezra said. He tried to use his best gruff voice, the one the villagers knew and feared, but he was nearly stammering. “If I had hidden it in the flour, it would have been white.”

The captain laughed, smoke dragoning from his mouth. “Are you defending of yourself? In the face of clear evidence, are you protesting of your innocence?”

“Of course I am innocent,” Uncle Ezra cried. “I am a baker, a danger to no one. I make bread. Let me go.”

“Of course you are innocent,” the captain mimicked. He dropped the last of his cigarette on the grass, grinding it with his heel. He sauntered closer to Uncle Ezra, unclipping his holster, pulling out a pistol.

“I am Captain Thalheim,” he said. “By the way.”

“For God’s sake,” Uncle Ezra pleaded.

“Let us pause for a moment here,” Captain Thalheim said, raising the pistol till the barrel was an arm’s length from Uncle Ezra’s face. “Contemplate your mortality.”

And he waited. The wind blew, just then, pressing Uncle Ezra’s apron against him so that everyone could see the spreading stain and know that he had wet himself, that his last moment on earth would be one of humiliation, the fierce expression gone utterly from his face as his head lowered and all the people saw the bald spot on top.

“That’s right,” Captain Thalheim said, and he pulled the trigger.





Part Two

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Chapter 5




The following morning, for all to see, someone had carved a V into the poplar’s bark. It was undeniable, an arm’s length above the blood spatter. Revealed, the green wood within wept and then hardened.

Captain Thalheim gave an order, and a private whose trousers were rolled at the cuff because he was too short for them came and stood before the tree, pondering. Later he returned with a stool and a chisel, peeling away the dappled bark until the V became a carved square. The next day the poplar bore a new V, half a meter higher. Word spread through Vergers like fire through a wheat field. Who had dared? Villagers snuck past, confirming it for themselves, in part to honor Uncle Ezra, in part to see what would happen next.

The small private fetched a stepladder, reaching up to chisel away another square. A second private stood guard over the tree that night. Yet somehow in the morning a new V appeared, more than two meters up the trunk from the bloodstain. People gossiped about it before Uncle Ezra’s funeral began. Following the execution, the Monsignor had come with a wheelbarrow and brought the body inside St. Agnes by the Sea, wrapped Uncle Ezra and placed him in a casket at the front and center of the church, performing a memorial service as though they had been of precisely the same faith. Normally the villagers would have discussed this oddity for days, but the new V on the tree took precedence. It gave a strange electricity to their grief. On the way out of the church they stared, confirming it for themselves. Emma alone could not bring herself to pass that way.