The Death-Defying Pepper Roux by Geraldine McCaughrean Page B

sin, there was no point in even trying.
    She had said this one day while a leg of pork was roasting over the fire. Together, hand in hand, they had stood and watched the fat run down the roast and drip into the grate, making the flames jump, and Mireille had held his hand so tightly that his knuckles crunch-crunch ed inside her fist. “That will be you,” she whispered under her breath, “if you don’t go to visit Father Ignatius every day.” Aged six at the time, Pepper had been deeply impressed.
     
    Running and fear made him warm, but midnight turned his sweat to rivulets of cold under his clothes, and he took refuge in a church. Curling up on a pew, he slept like a sardine on a drying rack until, rolling off onto the floor by accident, he discovered a row of little cushions hanging from the pews in front and lined them all up into a bed.
    As the first light of day jimmied its way through the stained-glass windows, Pepper parted his eyelids and whimpered. On all sides, saints were emerging from the shadows. Invisible at midnight, a dozen of them stood there now, plainly shocked into stillness at finding Paul Roux on their premises. Gradually other familiar sights loomed out of the gloom—memorials,plaster angels, candle sconces, flower vases, and shining brass—and Pepper surfaced from sleep cramming his terror back into his chest. But a moment later he found himself looking at a banner embroidered by local housewives:
     
    MOTHERS’ UNION OF THE CHURCH OF SAINT CONSTANCE
     
    it said in cross-stitch.
    “Damn, damn, damn,” said Pepper, though he never ever swore. How could a boy hope to win against such odds? Of all the churches he could have hidden in, he had to pick the one devoted to blessed Saint Constance: the saint who had spoken his doom to Aunty Mireille. He did not believe in coincidences. Whole churches were probably moving around like chess pieces within France, just to demonstrate to him the pointlessness of running, the hopelessness of hope.
    So which of the plaster figures was Saint Constance, then? Pepper picked out the statue that looked most like Aunt Mireille and knelt down in front of it.
    “Oh, excuse me a minute,” he said, and went back to fetch a hassock to kneel on. The church at home did not have these little cushiony things. (And Aunt Mireille would never have let him use them.) ButPepper could not resist placing one at the saint’s feet to protect his poor knees from the chipped stone floor.
    “Please, could I—” No, no. He was forgetting his manners. He must not ask for something until he had made the right polite remarks. “Blessed art thou, Saint Constance, and I hope you’re well. I have a message for you somewhere. From my aunty.” He pulled out the wad of crumpled, torn, dog-eared prayers he had been carrying around for months, and leafed through them for the one addressed to Saint Constance. “I’m sorry. I was supposed to give this to you myself. In person. In Heaven. But just in case I don’t…for a while…” He looked for somewhere to lodge the slip of paper, but statues come in one big lump, and the sculptors never think to give them pockets. Looking around, he saw that the carved eagle holding up the Holy Scriptures was looking at him all too keenly, its glass eyes fixed on him as on a small, edible rabbit.
    Quickly, Pepper lit a candle for the Duchess, and another for Roche, then moved the second farther along the candle rack, because Duchesse could never abide Roche, the pig. In between, he lit a candle for his father (in case he was languishing in jail on account ofPepper’s snitching newspaper article). He lit another for his mother—and quickly a fourth for Aunt Mireille, because Aunt Mireille had always held his hand over the candle flames if he forgot this little courtesy. For a moment he thought he could almost feel the burn on his palms, but it was only the holes made by the barbed wire, getting infected. He lit a fifth candle for himself and