The Baker's Secret(49)

The soldier accepted Monkey Boy’s gift, and took a hearty bite. He winced then, puckering from chin to forehead, while the boy clapped his hands and skipped away. Once he had rounded the corner of the great house, the capering changed again, back to that methodical sidestep. As he tottered out of sight, Emma wondered what it was all about.

“Silly boy,” Mémé said.

“Yes, dear one,” Emma answered. She untied both of Mémé’s shoes, sliding out the laces and placing them in her lap. “You put these back together, and I’ll return in one minute.”

Mémé scowled. “Work.”

“Sorry,” she said, kissing her grandmother on the crown. “I’ll try to improve.”

The old woman did not answer. Already she was threading one lace through a shoe’s eye, her tongue poked out in concentration. Emma grabbed the sack with the remaining spider, marched to the mansion’s door, and swung the great brass knocker.

The young man Argent pulled the door open with a finger to his lips. He wore round spectacles and appeared deeply tired. Emma stood in the foyer for a moment, adjusting to the gloom, aware of a quiet so deep it felt as though someone had recently died. Although it was the fifth of June, the place was chilly and damp: those high ceilings, all that stone.

She followed him to the kitchen, where coals glowed in the hearth. He stirred them with a poker, then reached to a ready pile of broken chairs, backs and legs and arms pointing this way and that like debris from something violent. He took pieces and triangled them on each other in the hearth, and in a moment the wood caught and the room began to warm and brighten.

Then Emma noticed, on an intact chair, a woman wrapped in a blanket, her hair down and face beatific, a bundle in her arms. Emma approached, and saw that the woman was nursing.

“Two hours old,” the young man said. “Our miracle.”

Not a miracle in the least, Emma thought. All it required was mating, for which, based on the evidence, humans apparently possessed an abundant appetite.

“She’s dozed off,” the mother whispered. “Here, you must hold her.”

“No thank you,” Emma said, backing away.

“But yes,” the father said, lifting the baby, placing it in her arms.

The infant weighed nothing and did not move, yet Emma struggled, elbows awkward and shoulders raised, until her hands found their place and settled. She had never held a newborn before. The mother rose from the chair with fragile dignity. As the blanket trailed behind her, she waddled to a wide chaise by the window and lay down.

Emma thought this was the most exhausted person she had ever seen. Tucking the blanket around herself, the mother curled up like a dog after a long hunt. Emma studied the miniature being in her arms, a little eggplant, bones and a wrinkled brow like an old man, yet possessing such a powerful calm. A deep, deep quietude.

The father stood at Emma’s elbow. “Isn’t she beautiful?”

Emma gazed at the baby, her tiny upturned nose. One hand curled outside the blanket, little fingers with tiny fingernails.

What were they thinking, to bring a child into a time of war? What did they imagine her life would be like? An impulse surged in Emma, to murder the girl then and there, to smash her head against the fireplace stone, or wring her neck like one more chicken destined for the pot. Spare her a lifetime of misery. Save her parents from the folly of hoping for good things on her behalf. Protect the whole village from wanting something as unlikely as an infant’s well-being.

“You are the first person other than her parents to hold our baby,” the father continued. “Her name is Gabrielle.”

Emma found it difficult to speak. “Is that a family name?”

“No, mademoiselle. After the archangel Gabriel.”

“Why did you choose him?”

“Because she will be the one who tells our story,” he said, adjusting his spectacles. “Gabriel was God’s messenger, who delivered news of salvation. Long after you and I are gone, the child who was born into this broken world will be our messenger to the future. She will describe how it was in this time and place, what happened, and how we survived till the Allies came.”

“They will never come,” Emma said.

“She will tell it better than you or I could,” he continued, as if Emma had not spoken. “Because she cannot recall, as we do, what life was like before this war. These circumstances are all she will know. Thus she will be the perfect voice for our time.”

Emma held the bundle out, handing the baby to her father. “That is quite an expectation of someone so small.”

“But she will have her own private professor,” the mother called from the chaise. “Her own schooling, here in this kitchen.”

“Also,” the man added, one finger raised. “This is the size at which all of us begin. Fools and heroes, paupers and kings. All were babies once.” He lowered his face till his nose touched the child’s. “And so lovely.”

Emma could not imagine any of this happening for her: Philippe returning home intact, the means and opportunity to marry, a secure home, the lovemaking, a healthy pregnancy. Every stage of the sequence was impossible, the whole of it inconceivable. No, Emma thought, she might as well be barren.

“I must go,” she said. “But I brought something for you.” She dropped the sack on the table, a sound like castanets. “Boil it for twelve minutes and you’ll have decent meat.”