The Stone that the Builder Refused

by Madison Smartt Bell

  The explanation had not reassured her. However, the farther they got from the hospital, the more her hips and back and shoulders relaxed, until she had resumed that smoothly flowing, floating gait, so beautiful in the black and colored women of the colony. Glancing back at her, the doctor thought with a slight pang of his own wife. But he had sent her with the children over the mountains to Ennery, the moment he’d recognized these sailors’ fever for what it was.

  “M’ap rantré,” Zabeth said. I’m going in. She paused on the corner of the street which led in the direction of the house the doctor was currently sharing with his sister, Elise.

  “Tell my sister I will be there within the hour,” Doctor Hébert said. Picking up his pace, he went on down the hill, turning his face into the breeze that blew back from the harbor. He emerged on the waterfront near the customs house, which was just shutting its doors for the night. Beyond the shelter of the buildings the wind was stiff indeed; he took off his hat and held it fluttering in his hand as he walked into the wind down toward the battery of the Carénage. The wind whipped his few remaining strands of hair around his bare sun-freckled crown, and stuffed wisps of his beard, which wanted trimming, into the corners of his mouth. He continued until he came to the fountain at the end of the esplanade, then stopped and turned to face the wide oblong of the harbor.

  Black mouths of cannon poked from the embrasures of the Carénage battery, aimed fanwise across the water. The Merry Bell was moored far out, beyond the reef, the colors of the North American Republic just discernible to the naked eye. She had already exchanged her cargo, but would not put to sea without her captain. Doctor Hébert had ordered the ship quarantined as soon as he’d remarked the yellow fever. His close relationship to Toussaint Louverture gave him the power to enforce such measures, though he had no official function in the port.

  By irony, the Merry Bell had brought him out of South America a substantial shipment of cinchona bark. At first the doctor had taken it for Providence, when the men from the ship began to fall ill, and had so informed James Howarth. The bitter brew of cinchona bark was almost magically effective against malaria in the early stage. He’d begun the treatment straight away, but a day or so later, when his patients suddenly turned yellow, he’d known it to be useless. Therefore he had substituted herbe à pique, an herb he’d learned long ago from Toussaint to be effective in many fevers. It too was useless against la fièvre jaune but could be harvested locally, unlike the precious cinchona. It was necessary to give the sick men something to shield them from despair.

  Then the black vomiting had begun. Such was always the course of the yellow fever. A man would reduce his bulk by half before he died, in three days or two or sometimes one. Or if he lived. The difference lay in the will to live and the grace of God.

  Above Fort Picolet, a great frigate bird was wheeling against the rapidly paling sky. The doctor’s spirits lifted when he saw it. It was rare to see one of these huge birds so close to land, and somehow it felt to him like a good omen. Then a huge wave slapped against the pilings, showering him with spray, and he let the dousing chase his frustration with the fever from his mind. Turning his back to the wind, he walked back in the direction he had come, whitecaps hurrying behind him over the water.

  When he reached the townhouse he shared with his sister, he found her in the company of her bosom friend, Isabelle Cigny. No surprise, for her own house was just around the corner. Till recently, both he and Elise had used the Cigny residence as their base when in Le Cap. But two months ago, Elise, who enjoyed a considerable inheritance from her late husband Thibodet, had purchased the present house at a very advantageous price; it had been left vacant by the demise of one of the colored gentlemen who had for a season ruled the town, but had then been so unwise as to mount a rebellion against Toussaint Louverture and his overwhelming black armies.

  Isabelle turned her bright black eyes on the doctor the moment he walked in. “What news?” she cried, flirting her skirts around her hips as she rose and resettled herself. The doctor smiled on her; he and Isabelle had been friends for most of a decade, but her coquetry was automatic.

  “The men from the Merry Bell are like to die, I think, by morning,” he advised her, dropping his weight into a wooden chair in a corner of the half-furnished room. “Except the captain—he may live. I hope so, for I rather liked him.”

  “I share your wish, of course,” said Isabelle, and tapped her slippered foot in token of impatience. “But what interests me more is news of the port.”

  “Ah,” said the doctor, turning toward Zabeth, who had just entered the room with a tray bearing a concoction of rum, lime juice, and sugar, and a letter from his son Paul at Ennery. He took the drink and smoothed the letter on his knee.

  “No news,” he said. “You must not worry.”

  “It has been weeks!” Isabelle protested.

  “Yes,” Elise put in. “But you know Xavier. His routes are ever indirect.” It was the sort of thing she would normally say with fondness, but tonight there seemed a bitter flavor to it. Isabelle had noticed it too, the doctor thought, for at once she dropped her own subject and began to chatter of fabric for curtains and the possibility of imported paper for the walls.

  It was the new prosperity—new security really—that had moved Isabelle to send for her children, who had these last few years been sheltered from the turbulence of Saint Domingue in a boarding school at Philadelphia. But Isabelle’s husband was not free to fetch them, and for some reason she had not elected to make the voyage herself. Xavier Tocquet, who was Elise’s current husband, had volunteered to escort the children. It appeared that he had some business with certain Philadelphia factors, whose nature was not yet precisely known.

  The doctor took a long pull at his rum, then broke the seal of his letter and unfolded it. His eldest, Paul, was eight years old. His formal education had been scattershot thus far. Sessions with the village priest at Ennery. There was a regular school here in Le Cap, but his attendance was sporadic since he was often absent in the country. The doctor supervised him intermittently, as he had time. His mother, Nanon, could read reasonably well but her writing ability was negligible. However, it had been her idea that Paul must write and send a weekly letter to his father whenever they were parted.

  The boy’s penmanship was passable, his spelling insecure. He conveyed the news in a sufficiently engaging manner. Their trip over the mountains had passed easily. They’d arrived at Ennery with a great supply of cassava and fruit collected along the way. Paul had reconnected with his great friend Caco, a black boy a couple of years older who lived on the plantation at Ennery. But Caco, because of the new work codes lately issued by Toussaint, was obliged to devote part of his time to either the cane fields or the coffee. Paul had followed him for a day or so. He found both occupations disagreeable, the coffee somewhat less so. There was to be a bamboche on Saturday, with pigs killed for the boucan. Paul’s younger twin siblings were well. Likewise his mother and his cousin Sophie, Elise’s child. Paul sent his kisses to his honorable father . . .

  “A good report of the twins,” the doctor said, passing the letter to Isabelle, “if not especially detailed.”

  Isabelle snapped the letter open on her crossed knee and scanned it rapidly for the mention of François and Gabriel, relaxing perceptibly when she had found their names. Elise cocked an eyebrow at her, but she did not seem to notice. The doctor sipped his rum. When Isabelle had read the whole letter through, she leaned to give it back to him.

  “He writes appealingly, your boy.”

  The doctor nodded as he swallowed. “And never mind the spelling.”

  Zabeth came in, bearing Elise’s year-old baby, asleep on her full bosom. She passed the infant Mireille to her mother, who accepted the bundle absently. Zabeth turned toward the doctor’s empty glass.

  “I’ll just come with you,” he said, standing up to follow her from the room.

  Zabeth’s own infant slept in a basket in the pantry at th
e rear of the house. While Zabeth prepared his second drink, the doctor stooped to peer at him. The child was vigorously healthy, substantially bigger and more robust than his nursing partner. The father was dead, executed by Toussaint the previous fall for some military infraction. Because the two babies were roughly of an age, Elise had turned her own over to Zabeth to wet-nurse. By virtue of Zabeth’s excursions to the hospital, the babies were beginning to be weaned.

  “What time is supper?” he inquired, rising to accept the freshened glass.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Zabeth said, mildly flustered. “Madame said she will go out, and perhaps you with her? But I will speak to the cook, what will you take? There is either fish or chicken.”

  “Chicken,” the doctor said. When he returned to the parlor, Isabelle was standing to make her farewells. She teased the baby’s chin with a fingernail, exchanged a maternal glance with Elise, kissed the doctor on both cheeks, and then went out.

  “Now then,” Elise said, giving him a measuring glance. “Your beard is a bit bedraggled, sir.”

  The doctor took a great gulp of his drink. “It’s hardly worth troubling a barber with the few hairs which remain on my head,” he said.

  “Perhaps you’re right,” his sister returned. “But just you come with me.”

  In her boudoir, Elise laid the baby on the bed and hemmed her in with cushions. Mireille mewed and smacked her lips, but did not wake. Elise motioned the doctor to a chair by the french doors onto the balcony— there was still enough light in the sky to see clearly there.

  “Now then.” She extracted a small pair of scissors from an enameled necessary box. “Be still.” For a moment she clipped in silence. Then—“I wish you would excuse Zabeth from the hospital.”

  “Well, if you—”

  “Don’t talk—I’ll nick you if you wag your jaw.” She flashed the scissors. “Mireille is restless in the daytime when Zabeth is gone. And Zabeth is so fearful of the fever, no matter what you say. You know it upset her terribly when Toussaint ordered Bouquart to shoot himself. Here, turn your head this way. This way . . . Perhaps they ought to go to Ennery with the other children.”

  “Oh indeed, if you think it best . . .” the doctor began. This had been his own original suggestion, when the yellow fever first appeared among the crew of the Merry Bell, but Elise had not wanted to be parted from Mireille. “And would you go with them, then?”

  Elise drew back to study him, scissors poised. “You are presentable,” she declared. She put the scissors away in the box, and went to her dressing table to light the two candles either side of the mirror, for the room was rapidly growing dim.

  “No, I don’t think I will go to Ennery just now,” she said. “Not when I expect my husband hourly into port.” The wry expression accompanying those last words brought out faint wrinkles at the corners of her mouth, which the doctor could see in the reflection. Elise must have noticed them too. She brushed at them with powder.

  “You’re going out, I gather.” The doctor touched a fingertip to the shortened hairs of his beard.

  “The soirée at Government House,” Elise said, catching his eye in the mirror. “Will you come?”

  “No, I think not, not tonight. It has been a weary day at the hospital. They are already stewing me a chicken here.”

  Elise had stopped listening. She adjusted her décolletage in the mirror, then returned her attention to her face. Though the flush of her youth was gone, she was certainly still a handsome woman, her natural graces now requiring just the slightest, most subtle assistance of art. The doctor was reluctant to disrupt her concentration. Much as he tried not to think about it, he knew very well she had recently taken a lover.

  “Madame ma sœur,” he said hesitantly. “It strikes me that you have chosen a very dangerous divertissement . . . and for so many reasons.”

  “Reasons for the danger, you mean?” Elise made another minute adjustment to her bosom before rotating on her stool to face him. It was to preserve that asset that she’d elected not to nurse her second child herself. “Or the reasons for my choice of diversion?”

  The doctor, who felt he had already overspoken, said nothing more.

  “Well then,” Elise said, snuffing the candles decisively as she rose to leave the room, “don’t let us dwell on it.”

  As was his habit on any ordinary day in town, the doctor rose just at first light, took nothing but coffee as his morning refreshment. He’d arrived at the hospital gate by the time the sun began to spread fingers of light down the sloping street from the mountain above. Two corpses lay on planks under the tall palms of the enclosure, covered with a single sheet of sailcloth.

  “I will send for the cart from La Fossette as I go down,” Guiaou told him.

  The doctor inclined his head, and touched the black man on the shoulder as he went out the gate. As the hoofbeats of Guiaou’s horse receded over the paving stones, he lifted the canvas from the stiffened visages of the two dead crewmen, then let it fall.

  In the dormitory the ship’s second officer still tossed in delirium. One of the night-shift women stayed by him. Captain Howarth and the surviving crewman slept calmly. The doctor touched Howarth’s head and hands, then took his pulse, which had slowed remarkably. The night-shift woman watched the procedure, her eyes grave below the crisp line of her white headcloth. The doctor nodded to her and let out a sigh that almost amounted to relief.

  When he heard the creaking wheels of the cemetery cart, he went out to supervise the loading of the bodies. He directed that they should be buried deep—futile instruction for La Fossette, a swampland where the single length of a shovel blade was likely to strike water.

  Captain Howarth sat propped on a bolster when the doctor returned to the dormitory, sipping from a cup of tea his own hands now had strength to hold. His eyes were very weary, ringed with shadow, but looked clear.

  “I think you’ve saved my life,” he said, and raised his cup a quarter inch in token of a toast.

  “Not so,” the doctor said. “You must give thanks to God, and the strength of your own constitution.”

  Captain Howarth looked at him narrowly. “Are you a religious man?”

  “Sometimes,” the doctor said, inclining his head toward the sunlight that now streamed over the doorsill. “When I see miracles.”

  In the following days, both Captain Howarth and the third crewman rallied rather quickly, while the second officer passed through the crisis of the fever and looked likely to recover altogether. Doctor Hébert took private note that this rate of recovery was quite unusual for the disease in question, and that he had no idea what had brought it about. Midweek, Captain Howarth had himself rowed out to the Merry Bell, where he learned that all surviving members of his crew were sound. Unlikely there would be an epidemic in the town. Lifting the quarantine, the doctor breathed out the last vapor of his relieved sigh.

  By Friday, he pronounced Captain Howarth fit to attend one of the evenings at Government House, about which the American had expressed great curiosity. At this good news Isabelle Cigny claimed Howarth as her escort, since her husband would give little time to such social exercises, and in any case was absent from the town, tending his plantation on the Northern Plain. Accordingly, the four of them descended on the palace together, Isabelle on Howarth’s arm, and Elise on the doctor’s.

  The doors were swung open for them by Guiaou and Riau, the latter a black captain of the Second Colonial Demibrigade. The doctor clapped his hand on the shoulder of Riau, who had often served as orderly in the hospital or on the battlefield, and who now returned his smile. Within the main reception hall, several dozen people were circulating: the principal white men and women of Le Cap, along with some visitors from other regions or abroad; a sprinkling of the colored men still trusted by Toussaint, some accompanied by their wives or daughters; and numerous of the senior black officers, looking a little stiff in their dress uniforms. At the rear of the room, a small musical ensemble was tuning up—a flute, a pai
r of trumpets, a violin, and an African drum. There was a long table of refreshments, and servants roamed the room with silver trays. The doctor accepted a glass of red wine, wet his tongue in it, and stood holding the glass in his hands. When he glanced around for Isabelle, he found her congratulating their mutual friend Maillart on his recent promotion to the rank of major.

  “Well, let me see you.” The doctor embraced Maillart, then held him at arm’s length to admire the new insignia. “Why, yes, the change becomes you.”

  “And leaves my accomplishments much as they were,” said Maillart with a wink. He’d languished so long in the colonial service without promotion, through the period when the black officer corps was rocketing higher and higher in rank, that the matter had become almost indifferent to him.

  “What news have you?” said the doctor. Because of the fever outbreak he had not seen Maillart for nearly two weeks. The major rolled his eyes and caught him by the sleeve.

  “Vincent has been exiled to Elba.”

  “What?”

  The doctor contained his response to a hiss, and yet he felt it had been too loud. Isabelle and Elise were taken up in an exchange of compliments with Colonel Sans-Souci and a couple of other black officers, but Captain Howarth, unattached for the moment, seemed to be looking at them curiously.

  Maillart pulled the doctor a step further away and stooped to mutter in his ear. “I had a letter sent direct to me, or rather it had been smuggled out, I—”

  The sounding of a trumpet stopped the conversation. All around the room people left off their chatter and turned to face the entrance, where Guiaou was just lowering the horn from his lips. Those who had been seated got quickly to their feet. The doors swung wide for the entrance of Governor-General Toussaint Louverture.

  The doctor stole a glance at Captain Howarth to measure his reaction. The Merry Bell put out of Charleston, South Carolina, where slavery was quite vigorously in force, and before he fell ill Howarth had passed a couple of remarks about the oddity of finding himself landed in a “nigger republic.” Might Toussaint cut a comic figure in his eyes? The black general was slight in stature, with a jockey’s build and the slightly bowed legs to go with it. When he was dismounted, his head, with its long heavily underslung jaw, looked ill-balanced and distinctly too large for his body. General Henri Christophe, commander of the Second Colonial Demibrigade, seemed to tower over Toussaint as he walked beside him, stooping to catch his murmured words.