The Baker's Secret(67)

The astonishing thing? The thing which he did not understand? Behind every landing boat, despite all those bodies lolling in the surf, more landing boats waited, foam at the bows as they surged forward. The ramps dropped and their men fell, and yet the next ones poured in immediately like an unstoppable tide of humanity.

Of ships, he had observed them left to right and out to the horizon more than a thousand, which was as high as he could count, and more. But there was a sense to it: behind the boats that carried soldiers, warships blasted away with their big guns. From time to time a detonation came from the distance, some even bigger battleship too far out to see, which flung missiles inland high over his head. The projectiles were huge. It was as though they were firing Jeeps. Long after the shell had passed overhead, there came a roar like a giant opened furnace, like a detonation of the planet itself, the sound of the shell’s firing delayed by distance, and Monkey Boy cupped his hands over his ears.

Still the sight remained, extending from the beach below him all the way to the horizon. It was the most elaborate, terrifying, beautiful thing he had ever seen. Someone else needed to witness this, and explain to him what it meant. Monkey Boy clambered down his special sycamore in search of someone to tell. But who?



Fleur pulled a quilt over the shoulders of her mother, who lay in bed facing the wall and shivering. Outside the world snarled and convulsed, as if the house sat on a strategic bombing target rather than in a small meadow away from the village center. A fly buzzed into the room; every window in the house was already shattered. Fleur had spent the hour after daybreak with tweezers, picking splinters of glass first from the skin of her mother and then from herself. She had learned patience with instruments from her father, the outspoken veterinarian who hushed while treating the animals. Now Fleur sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed Marie’s quaking back as a breeze blew straight through their house. The torn curtains rose and fell like a sigh.



The priest awakened to feed his chickens and prepare for seven thirty Mass. His right leg was worse than ever, almost useless as he dragged it along behind him. There was nothing wrong with his body, he felt sure. The fault lay in his faith, which could no longer be reconciled with the world around him. He prayed constantly now. But the gap between heaven and earth had grown too large.

As if to prove the point a nearby bombardment rattled his house, interrupting his Ave Marias. On such a day, would anyone come to St. Agnes by the Sea? If someone did, what strengthening of faith could he offer? What vision of salvation remained?



Pirate lengthened his neck to crow with all of his might. There was a body rolled against the chicken coop. A person. It smelled unfamiliar, and therefore unwelcome. The rooster declared his discontent, but the body did not obey. Hopping down from the coop roof, Pirate noticed that the barnyard door had been left ajar. Beyond lay a world of potential threats, but a universe of possible meals. Bobbing his head with each step, glancing sidelong, he dashed across the open space and out the door. There was a well, and beyond it a wall of green. Freedom at last.



Mémé snored away on the couch, exhausted after a long night of nursing her granddaughter. Emma stood in the doorway, angling her heel back and forth to put on her shoe without bending over. Pain flared down her right arm, but she only winced and gritted her teeth, then dragged herself out to the baking shed. The Kommandant’s aide would arrive at 7:40, which meant she was behind schedule and he did not like to wait.

For once, Pirate failed to make his ruckus around her ankles, but Emma was numb to that information. Pain occupied the full of her attention, forehead to ribs to shins, so that she tossed barley kernels underfoot without noticing the barnyard’s silence. One thing halted her, though—the place where the Goat’s blood had stained the earth. It made an odd, curved blotch. How much rain would it take to wash the mark away? It did not matter. Emma memorized the shape, in order to keep it forever, before shuffling on into the barn.

In the shed the rounds of dough had grown fat under their cloth covers. Emma set her kneading board onto the table just so. She ran her palm over the smooth wood of what had been Uncle Ezra’s execution tree, then lifted the cover from one bowl and with her left hand punched the dough. Her aim erred, though, caving in one side, the other half still risen and rough. She struck again, and the mound fell into itself. As she went to turn the bowl over, the dough nearly slipped and she had to jerk her hip against the table to prevent a spill. Pain shot through her arm and the side of her face like an electric charge, and she had not even begun kneading yet.

Emma took deep breaths, calming herself, trying to bring her right arm forward. But it would not obey, dropping from the board back to her side. If only she had stabbed the captain upward, as Guillaume had instructed. If only she had shot those officers when they stood in a row. She might be dead, but they would have been stopped. Emma started kneading with her left hand, it began well enough, until the board tipped. She jerked forward again, but too late. The dough fell to the shed’s dirt floor, the kneading board toppling after.

Emma was on her knees instantly, fumbling the board against her chest and back into place. She scooped the empty bowl under the dough but its white skin was marred with dirt. When she tried to brush it away, the brown spread. A spot of red, her chin cut reopening, dropped onto the mess.

“All right,” Emma said, wiping her good hand on her dress. “It’ll be nine loaves today. And if he doesn’t like it, he can take it up with Thalheim.”