“I would prefer that for you, too, friend.”
Emma pondered that sentence a moment. Had they ever been friends? In school, or since? She could not remember.
“I know I do not look it,” Michelle said. “But I am starving.”
“You are right. You appear to be very well.”
“Oh, but if you could see—” She reached to unbutton her chemise further.
“No, no.” Emma waved her wet hands. “That isn’t necessary.”
“I am all bones. I have sores on my skin.”
“I’m sorry to hear it, Michelle. Of course I have sores, too.”
“Yes, but you do not depend upon your skin as a means of survival.”
Emma turned and began churning a dress in the water. Michelle was being too familiar. Philippe had always shown Emma’s skin such respect. It was part of her, but the lesser part of what he desired. Or so she believed.
Michelle knelt in the dirt after all. “I beg of you.”
“What do you want from me? Stand up.”
“You have ways of getting things. Everyone knows. Everyone is talking about it.”
Emma flipped the dress over and spanked a stain out of it. “I have no such ways.”
Michelle wrung her hands. “If only I had some eggs—”
“What?” Emma spun at her. “My Mémé is hungry every day. I might actually grow a bit peckish from time to time myself. If I had eggs, do you think I would give them to a whore?”
Michelle jumped to her feet. “I am no whore. How dare you?”
“You said your own self that you survive by your skin.”
“With a man I love. A brilliant lieutenant who is an engineer, who accompanies me to church, who shows me kindness. Something my fellow townspeople cannot manage.”
“Because you chose him, of all men. An enemy of our people.”
“You have no idea what it was like. Being beautiful was going to be my doom.”
Emma scoffed. “I am so full of sympathy it is spilling out of my ears.”
“Men were circling my house like dogs who have cornered a rabbit.” Michelle had begun to pace, her skirt billowing at each change of direction. “I know what soldiers do. We have all heard the stories. What defenses did I have? I had spent so many years keeping the hounds of our village at bay, all those men with their attentions and appetites, regardless of my honor, regardless of their wives. I could not trust any of them to protect me, not one. But then, my lieutenant—”
She stopped pacing, composed herself, folded her hands as if attending a cotillion. “Lieutenant Planeg behaved decently, a proper courting gentleman. He brought me flowers. He called me lady. On the day I finally allowed him in for tea, all the rest of them went away. The soldiers gave me peace. Besides . . .” She paused, seeming to wipe away a tear with the tip of a pinkie. “Who knows how we choose, Emmanuelle? Do you remember choosing Philippe? Or did you simply accept one day that there was a feeling, so powerful and right, and you could not resist?”
Emma’s hands went still in the water and she did not speak.
“I am no strumpet.” Michelle adjusted her bodice. “I love this man. I believe he will keep me safe, because our liberators are never going to come.”
“On that, I happen to agree with you.”
Michelle wiped dust from her dress where she had knelt. “If you can give me eggs, perhaps I can provide you with something in return. The benefit of his protection, perhaps.”
Emma drew a blouse up and down the scrubbing board. “I am already safe, thanks to the Kommandant’s infatuation with my bread.”
“You see?” Michelle said, softening. “We all make deals to stay alive.”
“This conversation is moot.” She took up a new dress, plunging it under and back. “I have neither eggs, nor any means of obtaining them. But I do wonder what made you think that I might. Why did you come to me?”
“Because Uncle Ezra helped me.”
Emma paused in her work. “He did?”
“Eggs, if he could spare them. Butter. Whenever you made something too botched to sell, he would give it to me. That is how I first bought favor and delay from the soldiers. Lieutenant Planeg in particular loved your éclairs.”
“Too botched to sell?”
“He couldn’t bear the idea of you being ashamed.”
Emma laughed. “Are we talking about the same Uncle Ezra?”
“We will never know his equal.” Michelle sidled to the edge of the washing basin. “But with all my heart, I hope that you will come close.”
With a bow, she swept away.
Emma sat back on her haunches. Uncle Ezra had been helping people all that time? How had she seen only a gruff disciplinarian, a baker more exacting than a physician? And had he aided the others, too—Yves, Pierre, Marguerite?
It was all too much. In the past she could have discussed a quandary like this with Philippe, depending on his patient listening and quiet practicality. Instead she was utterly alone.
Emma frowned at the chore still ahead of her. Clothes drifted in the shallow pool like so many floating bodies.
Chapter 10
Some days, the bread turned out perfectly. The dough was responsive, the oven consistent, the results superior. Some days, events conspired to help Emma’s purposes succeed. That morning she felt the slightest sensation of ease, of generosity.
Perhaps want was not a catastrophe. Perhaps it was foreseeable, a predictable result of necessity, a remembering of when life had been easier.
She stepped out of the baking shed into northern glory: a pale October morning sun, the verdant landscape awaiting harvest, a meek breeze scrubbing the air of all but the fragrance of sea. A bumblebee labored close in curiosity before flying off on his noisy errands.
Emma heard Mémé humming tunelessly in the kitchen. The baguettes were baking, ready in time for the Kommandant’s aide. Here was a moment of calm, a pause, and Emma lingered in the barn doorway, indulging in an arched back, a full wingspan stretch. Which was when she heard a horse flutter his thick lips.
There, his neck craned over the door in the barnyard wall, stood Apollo. She felt an impulse to rub his nose, and she surrendered to it. He held still at her touch, calm and gaunt.
“You, too?” she whispered. “You want something, too?”
The enormous animal did not move, except to cup both ears in her direction. Emma reached to rub Apollo’s withers while her eyes inspected his body: the once-powerful legs now drawn with hunger, the visible ribs, the great warmth that remained to him.
“Somehow the world provides for you, doesn’t it?”
Apollo remained mute. But he leaned forward, pressing against the door. At Emma’s feet there grew a clump of clover, flowering and summer-sweet beside the stone wall, probably the last of the season. The horse stretched his neck toward it, lips smacking, but he could not reach. He tried again, then lifted his head and looked at her with both eyes.