The Baker's Secret(54)
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.”