A/N: In this chapter, Anne thinks about her religious beliefs. I do not believe precisely what she does, nor do I hold her beliefs up as a cosmic truth. I do stand behind them as being what Anne thinks and believes.

Approximately three chapters into this fic, I realized that Anne was going to think, say, and do things I wouldn't (and sometimes disapproved of), and that if I changed that, I was going to be writing a wish-fulfillment fantasy (AKA a Mary-Sue). I decided to be true to the character, and let her develop as seemed natural to her.

As for my own beliefs, I would have to know you for a while before I would be comfortable discussing them with you. Some things are not for public consumption.

Anne:

"Good afternoon, Madame Touchet. And this must be your little boy. What's his name, Erik?"

My son nodded. I stroked his hair. He was leaning up against me, and he'd wrapped the sides of my skirt around him like a shawl, hiding himself in them as best he could.

"It's very nice to see you. Is this for me? Why, thank you. How kind.,."

I'd made tea-cakes, both for M'sieu Roget and for Father Anselm, with grated carrot and courgettes in them, and with a bit of chocolate drizzled over top. I'd done it out of politeness, and to help turn them up sweet, if need be. I had more sweetening in my hand bag: my wallet of checks. If they was willing to teach my boy, I was willing to show I was thankful.

We was in the music-practice room downstairs from the church, where there was a piano and chairs and such. "Now, Erik, your mother tells me you're musical. You've even got a little violin! How sweet…Could you sing a song for me, Erik?"

I could tell straight off this wasn't going to work. Monsieur Roget wasn't smiling at us, he was just baring his teeth. His face was stretched out till it looked shiny and brittle, and he was using a fake cheery voice what sounded as forced as it was. My boy isn't a fool. He can tell when folk is being nice, and when they're only trying to sound it. Could be as I should have taken Erik and left right then, but I didn't.

"Must I, Mam?" he turned his face up to me.

"It's only polite. Go ahead."

"But I don't know any songs! I can't remember none!" He didn't want to be here doing this. I couldn't blame him.

"What about the Gaudete from Christmas, then? You been singing it around the kitchen for months."

"All right…" He stood up straight, let go my skirts and sang. "Gaudete! Gaudete, Christus est natus ex Maria virgine, Gaudete! Tempus adest gratiae…"

I sat down and took out my crochet. It helps me to have work in hand, it's soothing.

So. He was here. I'd counted on him not finding us, on his staying under his opera house or on his dying. I could have chosen any name. I could've gone to any cemetery and picked out a name of some man what wasn't going to turn up no matter what, but no. I had to go and give my son the name he had a right to.

"Very well sung…" M'sieu Roget wasn't faking that time. He said, "Amazing. I don't know that I've ever heard a better boy soprano. I wonder if not having a nose…" Then M'sieu Roget saw me looking at him. I wasn't glaring or nothing…just looking, but he remembered his manners. "Ah, that is, let's try you on some scales, shall we?" The fake heartiness was back. He struck a key on the piano. "We'll start here, and I want you to sing 'Ah-ah-ah' up the scale and back down again. Like this." He sang it once, to show my boy what he wanted.

"Ah-Ah-Ah," Erik sang.

One thing what both the Countess and Doctor Bayre said of him was that he was cleverer than anything. If he'd been to Lyons, like M'sieu Khan said, he'd have found the marriage register. He might even have got the whole story out of the Registrar.

My boy was going up higher and higher, a bit at a time. I kept on looping yarn and hooking.

He might know what it was I done to get it written in. I don't like to remember that night. It was a dreadful long one, him clutching and sweating. I felt dirty, afterwards, in ways I couldn't wash off. I can't go dwelling on it, though. That wouldn't do me any good.

If he found out about the Bontriomphes, and if they talked, if they told him I owned the place—then I was in for it. What could I do? Pay him with money he could go to court and say was rightfully his?

Why'd he have to come here, anyway? Did he hear about the inn where the cook had an ugly little boy, and come on purpose?

"Did I do something wrong, M'sieu? Is that why you stopped?" asked my Erik.

"I stopped because the piano doesn't go any higher—even if your voice does." There was a right nasty edge to his voice. "How much higher can you go?"

"I—I don't rightly know, cause folks say they can't hear me no more, and dogs start howling something awful." said my lad, in a tiny little voice.

M'sieu Roget was giving him a look what wasn't nice at all. "That isn't—."

"I imagines you must be about done, then," I said, as pleasant as I could manage. "Erik, love, I want to light some candles afore we sees Father Anselm, but I don't know who to choose. Can you go up and help me choose the saints? I'll follow in a moment, there's a good lad."

"Yes, Mam!" He ran off.

I turned back to M'sieu Roget. "Sir, you can't say as he isn't musical." I put in, before he could get a word out.

"I can say he isn't natural! No living creature ought to look like that! Or sing like that—."

"Sir, I understand. I do. He rattles most folk, at least at first, but it—it's only his face. It don't go no deeper nor that. We've been coming here for years, and you must have seen him before—."

"From a distance! You and your family always sit in the back, and no wonder!"

"Sir, please! There isn't nothing wrong with my hearing—nor his. I've heard of a fellow called Mozart, what was writing music when he weren't no older than my little lad—."

"Mozart couldn't sing notes outside the range of human hearing!" He was somewhat quieter.

"Then you don't want to do it?"

"No." he bit out.

"I see." I got out my wallet of checks and my fountain pen. "Might it be, sir, that there's something needed about here, in the music line? An electric bellows for the organ, p'rhaps? Or new robes for the choir? Maybe a new piano? Just tell me how much you might be needing." I waited.

"It isn't—I shouldn't—."

"In the years to come, it may be as he'll be making a name for himself in the world of music, sir, and you could say you was his teacher."

"I—if you were to put a mask on him, then perhaps—." M'sieu Roget began.

"Ah." The wallet and pen went back in my handbag. "There you've hit on the one thing I wouldn't do to further his education. You'd only have to look at him for a couple of hours twice a week, sir, but I got to be his mother every day of his life. I've always told him he shouldn't and can't hide from the world, that he's got nothing he's got to hide from the world, and if I has him put on a mask, I'd be proving myself a—a hypocrite. Thank you for your time, sir, and I hope you'll enjoy the cake."

I went up to find my boy in the tiny side chapel, what isn't hardly bigger than a closet. He looked up at me, and I could see tears glinting all around in the lashes of his eyes.

"He don't want to teach me, do he, Mam? He thinks I'm too ugly to teach."

He was getting older fast. "Dearheart, after talking to him—and he was willing to be your teacher—I don't want him teaching you. He isn't near good enough."

He looked at me for a long time, not blinking, and then he nodded. "I like M'sieu Makepeace better—but—do you think he'll get all mad like M'sieu Roget did, once he sees me?"

"No, love. I'm sure he wouldn't, cause—cause he has seen you, from out of his window. Now, who shall it be?"

"The Virgin, cause's she's God's Mam, and Saint Anne, cause she's yours, and—Is there a Saint Erik?"

Times like this, when he's being so brave and good, it seems to me as I'm looking at him. "I don't think so, love, cause I checked years ago."

"Then Saint Francis of Assisi, cause he loved animals and we do, too." he decided.

"Then put the coins in the box, love, and pass me one of those long matches, please."

We stood there in silence for a space.

It's been years since I made a full confession. When I'd got into the box and tried to explain what all I done, what with the babies and the deceiving and the registrar, I couldn't, no matter how I wanted to, cause I couldn't see how I was going to make things right, and stop lying and deceiving. I've never lied to Father Anselm, or any other confessor—I just don't tell him about those things.

I did tell him that Erik's father and I wasn't married in the church, cause his father didn't believe, but the record was in the registry at Lyons—all true, as far as it went. He did read me a lecture on how I'd been living in sin, but all told, he wasn't so harsh on me. Not like he could've been. He seems to be a practical minded sort—after all, I was here, my boy was here, and the important thing was to live right, now and in the future. He did tell me that when my husband returned, I shouldn't go back to living with him as his wife until we was married proper.

Back then, that made me smile to myself.

I think about God, now and then. For a while, now, it's seemed to me that the Bible is to God what a map is to the country—something put down on paper by men, trying to describe something what can't truly be put down that way.

As for Heaven and Hell—it seems to me that when you come to the end and die, it's like coming home from school or from work, to your Mam and Da. And they ask how your day went, and you tells them, and then there's a bit of supper, and comfort and rest. It may be that your day wasn't such a good one, but it was the day you had.

Maybe you done something bad, and then you've got to take your punishment, as I might make Erik go stand in the corner. "I told you, thou shalt not kill. How much clearer do I got to put it? Go get in that lake of fire and don't come out until I say you can." Not out of meanness, but because they want you to be better. And after a while, they do let you out.

"Do you understand now, what it was you done wrong?"

"Yes."

"And you're not going to do it again, are you?"

"No—do you still love me?"

"Of course I do. Come here and let me give you a hug."

And then you go off and get some rest, cause it was a long day, no matter how what went on. I'd have there be Heaven for everybody, the best and the worst of us, all ending up the same, because from what I know of people, we're all guilty of something, but we're also all of us lost, hurting, tired, cold and hungry. There isn't none of us as isn't in need of a bit of supper and a rest at the end of it all.

I don't tell these sorts of things to anybody, especially not a religious man, cause I don't need to hear how bad I'm wrong or get laughed at for trying to think all these big things, and me only a cook. But I think them, and that's enough for me.

"All right—it's time we went to see Father Anselm." I said, after a while.

"Mam—do we have to? Can't we just go home?"

"Yes, love, we have to. He said he'd see us, and I promised we'd come. Then we'll go home. Can you be brave and growed up a little longer, for me?"

"Yes, Mam," he said, dutifully.

I could tell straight off that it was going to go better with the priest. He greeted us, thanked me for the cake, which he turned over to the housekeeper, and offered us seats in his study, which smelled a little of pipe-smoke.

"Now, Madame Touchet, what is it that I can do for you and your son? Hello, Erik." His smile was real. I liked that.

"Father, my Erik here is an awful clever boy. He's so bright that he's already learned near everything I can teach him. He can read and write all ready…"

It ended with Father Anselm agreeing to teach him for two hours on Mondays and Wednesdays, providing Erik did well, paid attention, and didn't wiggle.

It might even be as I'd get them two hours to myself. That'd be nice.

And, as I'd sat there while Father Anselm tried Erik on his different books and suchlike, I'd got to thinking. It wasn't no use for me to go wondering what I was going to do, and not doing it. Maybe it would be the right thing to do, and maybe it would be wrong, but I was going to send a note along on the supper tray, for 'M'sieu Makepeace', saying as I'd go by the cottage after I'd put Erik to bed, so's we could meet and talk. I'd let the lad play for him, as was planned.

M'sieu Khan said as he thought he'd loved the boy from the moment he laid eyes on him.

If I found him to be a rational, reasonable sort of man it might be as we could work something out…

Carrot-Zucchini Tea Cakes with a Drizzle of Chocolate

The courgettes which Anne mentions are the same thing as zucchini—but Anne isn't Italian!

2 ¾ cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1 teaspoon ground nutmeg

½ teaspoon ground cloves

½ teaspoon salt

1 cup raisins or dried cranberries

1 cup walnuts, coarsely chopped

1 ½ cups finely grated carrot

1 ½ cups finely grated zucchini

(You can substitute canned pumpkin puree for either or both of these ingredients, or alter the proportions—1 cup zucchini to 2 cups carrots, for example. The important thing is that you add 3 cups of whatever you want to use.)

4 eggs

1 ½ cups light brown sugar

¼ cup walnut oil—a gourmet or specialty store should have it. Once open, walnut oil can go rancid. If you smell it and it smells bad, don't use it. It should have a pleasant nutty aroma.

¾ cup canola oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Begin by toasting the walnuts in a non-stick pan on the stove top. Toast on medium heat until golden-brown, stirring with a spatula and watching carefully to make sure they don't get too brown or burn. This will fill your house with a wonderful roasting nut smell. Toasting times may vary, and they will start to go brown very suddenly. Remove from heat and allow to cool.

Sift the flour, and all the dry ingredients down to the salt, into a large bowl. Add the raisins (or dried cranberries) and the walnuts, and stir to combine.

In a separate bowl, mix the grated vegetables. Set it to the side, but handy.

Beat the eggs, sugar and oils together in your largest mixing bowl until thoroughly smooth. Add the carrots and zucchini. Blend until just smooth. Add dry ingredients a cup at a time, beating them in well.

Pour into greased and floured cupcake pans, or into two loaf or ring pans, no larger than six cups each. For cup-cakes, bake 20-25 minutes, or until tester comes out clean. For the other pans, bake 30-35 minutes or until the tester comes out clean.

Allow to cool for ten minutes on a rack before removing from pan.

Store for one day at room temperature in an airtight container, to allow the flavor to develop. Can be kept in the refrigerator for 5 days after that. They freeze beautifully.

Before serving, apply:

Chocolate-Walnut Drizzle Glaze

1 ounce bittersweet chocolate

1 ounce milk chocolate

1 tablespoon walnut oil

Break the chocolate into pieces and put them into the top of a double boiler. If you do not have one, fill a large saucepan halfway with water and bring it to a simmer. Put the chocolate into a small stainless steel bowl that will fit in the saucepan comfortably. Add the oil. Put the bowl with the chocolate into the saucepan of simmering water, being careful to get no water in the chocolate and oil mixture. Stir while heating, until smooth. Remove from the heat, and, using a spoon, drizzle over the tea-cakes, like a Jackson Pollock painting. Allow to set for at least three hours at room temperature before serving. You may lick the spoon afterward as long as it is not too hot.

A/N: Next Chapter—The Meeting of Anne and Erik Sr!

This particular'Gaudete', which is part of the Christmas Mass, is very old and traditional. If you'd like to hear a sample, go to Amazon, and search for the musical group Steeleye Span. It's on their album Below the Salt. You can hear a 30 second clip of it.

Shout-Outs: Allegratree: Quite all right. I understand completely.

Lucia: Thank you. You can expect a proper e-mail soon…

Bella: As you yourself was so kind as to say, take your time on getting back to me. I'll be here.

Nota Lone: ;-) Love it. I have baffled you. Here's the update.

MetalMyersJason: Thank you. Mysteries, plots and sauces are best when well thickened.

Butterfly Guitar: Just as a hint, there is an important clue in Chapter 14, Planning a Wedding Feast, which no one has commented on as yet…

Alittlerayofsunshine: Oh, lots and lots of chapters and story left to go.

HDKingsbury: Oh, no! I did that once, and it was awful. I'll write you soon.

Sat-Isis: Glad I've got you puzzled. Did you like Erik's imagined version of your scenario?

Sue Raven: Well, next chapter, Erik's going to find out Jules got some of his information straight out of a newspaper article…

Sarah Crawford: Hardly sooner said than done.

And of course, thank you to Pickledishkiller and Erik For President.