The Baker's Secret(69)
Monkey Boy ventured toward the beaches only as far as the bend in the road, where he could see the mansions on the cliff. The one on the left, with those flags of the occupying army flapping in the wind, looked dead. No one entered or departed, no soldiers appeared outside at all. The one on the right, with wires coming from every corner to reach in seemingly every direction, was fully engulfed. Flames poured from the upper windows, and no one was attempting to put them out.
The center house, where the young Argent couple lived, was gone. Its crumbled stones sat in heaps or lay tossed onto the lawn, as a bored child might scatter his blocks. Two signs indicated what the rubble had been: First, a downstairs corner remained undamaged; the place two walls met and a bookshelf hung gave evidence that this pile of rocks had once been a dwelling place. Second, the chimney remained somehow intact, rising by itself into the sky. Monkey Boy thought it resembled a finger pointing: here; once upon a time people lived here.
The Monsignor was well along in the seven thirty Mass, celebrated that morning for three hardy souls who came to spend the warring hours in the presence of God. The priest was moments away from elevation of the Eucharist, when a soldier no taller than a child burst through the main doors. He ran halfway down the center aisle before slowing, then coming to a complete stop.
“You there,” the priest called from the altar, interrupting a prayer. “No guns are permitted inside the church.”
“You had better run for it,” the soldier said, pushing the rifle behind his back. His face was smudged with dirt and his pronunciation crude. “No one will be spared.”
The Monsignor limped down from the altar, leaning on his cane. Was this soldier a child? His voice sounded unusually high.
“They’ve blown up town hall,” the private continued. “And I hear they are winning at the beaches. They will kill everyone.”
“You have no authority here,” the priest said.
“Leave this place,” the soldier cried. “Save yourselves.”
The Monsignor felt a swell of power, as if a moment had arrived for which there had been years of preparation. Uncertainty fell away, and he now knew his role for that day’s conflict, and for the rest of the war. The waiting and doubting had reached its zenith, faith and reality reconciled at last.
Throwing aside his cane, he strode to the Communion rail and raised both arms high. “This is not a place of men and their wars. This is the house of Almighty God. You may stay, if you adopt an attitude of humility and prayer. Otherwise begone, sinner, and may God have mercy on your soul.”
The tiny soldier ran before the priest had finished. He left the door wide, and the noise of combat spilled buzzing and snapping into the church. But the Monsignor returned to his place at the altar, hands trembling with the power and the glory. He glanced at the Mass book to find his place. Yes, the elevation.
He faced the crucifix, while with both hands he lifted Emma’s one third of a loaf as high as he could, crying out in Latin: “Do this in memory of me.”
Then the priest bowed his head, two of the three other heads in the church replicating his motion exactly.
The third head, in the front pew, belonged to Pierre. He inclined in the opposite direction, eyes raised to the heavens. His hands were folded in prayer, and his fingers—as worn as old leather, but strong like ropes from a lifetime of milking—were interlaced and extended, so that anyone from above could see that they made a V.
The town-hall stairway survived the explosion, but Odette had a difficult time climbing them with no railing and a wide opening on one side. Parts of the building dropped randomly from above, keeping her snug against the wall.
The hallway to DuFour’s office remained intact, and the door closed. He had always made such a show of locking and unlocking, probably he was cowering in there right now. Out the window he would go, that was her thought. For all he had done to her, to Guillaume, to all the people of the village, DuFour must go out the window. But when she touched the door it swung back on its hinges, and there was no office on the other side. Just open air, and a smashed desk amid the rubble below.
She held the doorframe, scanning the debris. Was DuFour buried in there? One could hope. Odette spat with satisfaction and began to make her way back down. She considered her good fortune at surviving a bomb so near, at being free.
The contentment did not last. As she reached the street Odette could see, despite the litter of downed trees and broken buildings, that the blue bicycle was gone. The scoundrel had run before the bombs fell. Frustration redoubled her anger.
She straightened her clothes and decided: next stop would be the cottage of that whore Michelle. The day before, Odette had listened on her illicit radio to reports from Rome, where the occupying army fell, the Allies gained control, and the people took it upon themselves to punish some of their neighbors’ conduct. Yes, Odette hurried across the square to the concealment of the hedgerows. She knew exactly what to do with a collaborator.
Chapter 34
Emma stood before town hall, stunned. The right half of the building was gone, flattened, a jumble of rock with pipes and wires protruding like some industrial monster was buried beneath. The left half was intact, but with a gray coating of dust. It was an odd joke, that the building’s damage mirrored her own, but she slipped out of the wagon straps and, leading with her open eye, ascended the rubble. From above, she could peer unimpeded into the basement, and see for herself that no prisoner remained in the cell below. Nor, Emma was reassured to note, was there any bloodstain on the floor or walls.