And a splinter.

"Merde." Alexandre had gone pale, his hands clasped over his head.

I would have chosen a more descriptive, more particular word. The cart had come apart, the coffin had gone over the hill, and who knew how we were going to get that body to Signy-sur-vaux now?

The ox was standing down the hill near the turn, looking up at us, the lazy creature. I left Alexandre where he was and ran across the rocks toward the coffin, my boots sliding over the gravel.

As I was slipping down the hillside, he finally started after me, and in the end, it was he who reached the coffin first.

But once he reached it, he stopped. When I got there, I could see why he wasn't moving. The lid had levered off, and the body had come out. The stench was horrendous. Birds had settled on the corpse, and they were already pecking at his throat. One of them had begun to pluck a packet away from the man's coat.

"Vas-y! Allez-ouste!" I ran at them, waving my hands.

They rose with an indolent flapping of their wings, dropping the packet as they went.

I bent and took it up. It seemed to be sprouting string. I held it out so Alexandre could see it.

"Put it down."

I was going to, but whatever was inside slid out. I dropped the packet and reached to catch the contents with my other hand. It was...a length of...lace. And it was exquisite. I flattened my hands as completely as I could, holding out that offering toward him, unwilling that I should contaminate it. "It's...lace."

He said nothing, though he took it from me, picked up the packet, and tucked it back inside.

"What would a dead man want with lace?"

He just stood there, looking not at his cousin, but at me. Then he threw the packet back into the coffin. Gestured for me to take the body's legs while he reached for its arms. Once we'd returned the body to the coffin, he bent to pick up one of the boards for the top.

I picked up the other.

Lace.

What was it about lace? What made it so important that people would smuggle it? For that matter, what made it so important the King himself would forbid its import? It seemed a lot of trouble for such a flimsy thing. But more than that, what did its presence mean? That had been quite a bit of lace. Quite a bit more than any dead man would need.

I beat the nails back into place with the butt of my musket and then, each of us taking an end, we carried the coffin back up the hill. We left it on the road while Alexandre went to the fetch the ox and I retrieved the pieces of the cart.

Some of the boards on the floor had broken off, but if the coffin were placed at an angle, and if the ox didn't make any more sudden movements, I thought it might just reach Signy without any more trouble.

Alexandre arranged the floorboards and then harnessed the ox to the cart.

There was just one thing I wanted to know. "Why did you do it?"

He slapped the ox on the shoulder to get him moving. Looked over at me. There was no surprise in his eyes, though I had expected there would be. "Do what?"

"Why did you smuggle the lace?"

"I already told you. For honor's sake."

"But-it's dishonorable. And now I'll have to have you arrested when we reach the next village." At least I'd be able to prove to the lieutenant and everyone else I was worthy of my uniform now.

The ox was pulling the cart down the road without us. Alexandre jogged a few steps to catch up. "You don't have to."

Don't have to? "It's my job." Or it was, in any case.

"But who will know any different? Whether you do or whether you don't?"

I ran to catch up with the both of them. "I will!"

"But what does it matter? Truly?"

"What does it matter?"

"Whom does it hurt?"

"Whom does it hurt?!" Whom did it hurt? It hurt the King. It hurt the border officers. And most of all, it hurt me. I had thought he was my friend. I swung my musket from my shoulder, grabbed a cartridge from my bag, and tore off the top of it.

"Put the gun down."

"Non!" I poured some of the powder into the priming pan and then poured the rest of it down the barrel.

Alexandre was still walking down the road with the ox and the cart.

I dropped a ball and the cartridge paper into the barrel. Tried to pull out the ramrod. It stuck.

"You don't need to-"

"Stay back!"

I freed the ramrod, tamped the ball, and leveled the musket. Drawing the cock back, as I pressed my cheek against the stock, I knew in that instant I would shoot. If I had to shoot him, I would do it. The shock of that realization nearly made me drop the gun. "Stop. Right now!"

The dog beside him snarled.

He put a hand to the ox and moved so the cart was between us. "Whom will it hurt if you let me go?"

"Whom will it hurt?" What did he mean? What did he mean whom would it hurt? Why did it matter whom it would hurt? I tightened my grip on the gun.

"What will happen if you don't arrest me?"

"I-what do you mean?" His form had begun to waver above the barrel of my musket.

"If you don't arrest me, what happens is I will go on my way, and you will go on yours, and no one will ever be the wiser."

"Except for you and me."

"You will know, and I will know. But does that really harm anyone?"

"It harms the King. You shouldn't have done it."

"Non. I should not have. But will the King care if it doesn't get confiscated? Will he even know? What do you think happens to lace like this? You must know that even if you turned it in, it would never reach His Majesty."

"I...I don't-" Suddenly the memory of a frill of lace at the lieutenant's cuffs filled my head, and a remembered conversation echoed in my memory. Do you know how old this lace is? Six months old. And do you know why? It's because you haven't brought me any that's newer! Alexandre was right: It would never reach the King.

"The King doesn't care. But the one who rescued me will. If you arrest me, it will mean his complete and utter destruction. And his daughter's, as well."

His daughter: a girl. Girls were such a mystery. A complete and utter riddle with no sense whatsoever. Thinking of girls made me think of Cecille and the way she hadn't taken that flower from me. Why hadn't she taken it? "A girl shouldn't be ruined."

"Non."

"So if I let you go, you can rescue her. But...then who will save me?"

He blinked. "You?"

"Who will save me from my dishonor? In letting you go?"

"I already did. I saved your life. You said so yourself."

"I'm not talking about my life." I was talking about...I was talking about my soul. Who would save my soul? If I didn't arrest him, then what kind of person would I be? "Who will save me?" I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what to do!

Alexandre approached, hands raised. "Put the gun down. You have no need of saving. You will have done a favor for a pitiful and quite undeserving man. It would be to your credit, not your dishonor, if you failed to arrest me."

To my credit? I couldn't quite keep up with his reasoning. "I'll shoot you if I have to."

"I know you will."

"You-but how do you know?"

"You're a soldier, aren't you?"

Was I? Truly?

Now I understood everything. The lieutenant had thought I had no imagination, but he was wrong. Now I could imagine anyone could be a smuggler, just as anyone could be a soldier. A person didn't have to be wicked to disregard the law, and a person didn't have to wear a uniform to shoot someone. If I had this man arrested and confiscated his lace, then I imagined I would become just like the lieutenant. The lieutenant who had kicked a crutch away from a cripple and left an old woman sprawled in the mud. If I returned with this man to the border, I could imagine exactly what would happen. The lace would end up adorning the lieutenant's own wrists. And how would that be right? That the cruel should be rewarded and the poor mocked?

Coffins and uniforms.

Guns and lace.

What did it all mean?

I felt as if all knowledge had passed away. As if everything I had once known had been proved to be false. But if that were the case, then what was true?

Anyone might do anything all. Perhaps...perhaps this whole journey was a sign. Perhaps I had never been meant to leave Signy-sur-vaux. Much as I had wanted to leave, destiny had conspired to bring me back. I may not have been as good a baker as my father, but fate had proved I was much less of a soldier.

"Are you...going to put down your gun?"

"Oh. Oui." It had grown so heavy. Too heavy to carry. I might have left it right there on the ground if it had been my own. But it was not mine; it belonged to the King. I tucked it under my arm with sweat-slicked hands.

"Are you well?"

Was I what? "Pardon?"

"Are you well?"

Well? What did it matter if I was well? I could shoot someone. I knew now I could. But I had just discovered I didn't want to. If I wasn't meant to be a soldier, then what was I meant to be?

Alexandre patted my forearm, pulled the ox into a walk, and together we started around the corner. Here, the road leveled out and widened. "Perhaps you can tell me when we get to Signy-sur-vaux, where Father Lemaire lives."

I glanced behind me at the coffin. "We are not so very big a village. We have only one church. But...does that man even belong in Signy?"

"No."

That thought bothered me less than I might have expected. "Do you know who he is?"

"He's an evil man who happened to die at just the right moment. It's probably the only decent thing he ever did."

A dead man needed a cemetery. "When we get there, I will show you the church." And then I would forget I had ever met Alexandre or seen his coffin. As we walked along, I pondered my newfound knowledge.

I had turned into a soldier; I could shoot someone. But I had also committed treason. I had let a man go free when I had every right to arrest him.

I had done the right thing: I had done the wrong thing. But the right thing seemed so wrong, and the wrong thing had felt so right. There was no wide chasm between yes and no, between right and wrong. There was just a wide, vast plain, and I did not know how I could live there, in the middle of it, without the absolute certainty offered by either side. It was so much easier when I had thought right and wrong were two separate countries. That there was some warning, some point when one crossed from one to the other.

But if the right thing meant obeying the lieutenant, and the wrong thing meant letting a good man go free, then I had done the right wrong thing. Given a choice between being a not-so-good soldier and a not-so-good baker, I would rather live with flour between my fingers than a gun between my hands. Then I could decide for myself: rye or barley. White or brown. An honest choice for honest pay. It would make life so much less confusing.

Chapter 32.

The Dog Along the road to the Chateau of Eronville We left the man with the glinting hat, along with the ox and the cart and the box, with De Grote's terrible unlife smell. But then my master got a horse.

I didn't like him.

He went along much too quickly and paid no mind at all to where I was when he pissed. But the horse did make people move off the road. And if that let us pass them more easily, then I could not much complain.

Though I did bark at them a time or two.

At least the sun glared at us no longer. It had let us go, warming our backs and our behinds, though my master kept me plenty warm as I trotted to keep up with him and his horse.

One morning, before the sun had risen far, we overtook a group of men wearing glinting hats. Though a marsh bordered the road, I whimpered and slunk back toward the mire.

I could not help it. I wasn't brave.

I watched from the safety of the grasses while the men formed a line across the road.

One among them pointed a gun at my master.