“Don’t you understand, Private Zugspitze? I am not the danger. I am nothing at all. The thing you should fear is the order they gave you to stay, when they have all moved to somewhere safe. The thing to fear is out there, falling from the sky.”
As if she had conjured it, another shell struck, this time hitting the town hall directly. The northern half of the building was sheared away, caving into itself as though its ancient stones were cubes of sugar. The basement jail, located at the opposite end, nonetheless shook as if in an earthquake, flinging Odette to the floor. She lay there, arms shielding her skull, waiting whole minutes for debris to stop falling and the air to go still. When at last she found the nerve to lift her head, she saw that the explosion had bent the cell door, its base had gouged an arc in the cement floor. Now it stood wide open.
Odette considered it a favorable omen that the door would never close again. She poked her head into the damaged hallway, walls buckled and light fixtures shattered on the floor. The boy, her guard, her captor, was gone.
Chapter 33
“No,” Mémé said, arms crossed, feet planted in Emma’s path.
“People are expecting me,” Emma said, adjusting the wagon harnesses, her right arm now in a splint. She had given up on the bread that day, unable as she was to knead with one hand, but the Kommandant’s aide had not come for the loaves anyway. Still, there were eggs to be gathered and given. “I cannot sit idle while our neighbors go hungry.”
“No,” Mémé said.
“With respect,” Emma said, lowering her head, then raising it again with effort. “I understand the dangers. But Odette sits in the same jail that held your son-in-law, my father. We did not act to help him soon enough, and I will not repeat that mistake.”
Mémé scowled on, her face cragged with age and determination. “No.”
“Look at me,” Emma whispered. She could well imagine, with her closed eye and swollen lips, what her grandmother saw. “Would you have me wait here till the captain returns?”
Mémé’s lips began to tremble, but she pressed them hard together, wringing out any room for sorrow. “No Gypsy.”
“Dear one.” Emma laid her good hand on the old woman’s crossed arms. “I am stubborn, like they say my mother was. I am almost as stubborn as you. Helping others may keep me alive.”
Mémé turned away. “No.” But this time she said it quietly.
“I’ll return by midday.” Emma gave her grandmother a kiss on the cheek. “Noon, and no later. I promise.”
Mémé held still as Emma pulled the wagon around her and through the barnyard doorway. Though the straps chafed her shoulders, she felt a measure of relief. If she found the captain somewhere along her route, perhaps he would spare Mémé.
A few steps past the well, however, Emma stubbed her foot on a stone, and a whip of pain cracked from her heel to the back of her head. She stood reeling for a full minute before shuffling on again. Perhaps this plan was a mistake. Either way, she would not be suffering for much longer.
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.