“No, no.” Isabelle renewed her smile. “I have only a little way to go. But you must bring me your news later.”
She spun the parasol gaily as she turned away. The two men watched her to the corner. If she’d seemed to falter when she first encountered them, now her steps were quick and sure. On her left shoulder, concealing her whole head, the parasol continued to revolve.
Beneath the shaded portico of the Governor’s house, Daspir waited, a little impatiently, for Cyprien and Paltre to return. Dermide raced up and down the stone-floored gallery, awkwardly rolling a hoop with a stick, his hot face patchy red and white. The space was too confined for this exercise, and crowded with basketwork furniture Pauline Leclerc had recently acquired, and Dermide seemed to take special pains to collide, again and again, with the legs of Saint-Jean Louverture, who leaned against a piling of stone, looking with a certain stoical indifference across the flagged courtyard toward the gate.
The company of Dermide was the worst cruelty of Saint-Jean’s situation, Daspir thought. Otherwise the young hostage had been quite kindly treated ever since Hardy captured him on the road from Gonaives—if adoption into the Captain-General’s family were to be considered a kindness. Dermide was now smacking his stick against the older boy’s calves, but Saint-Jean, his eyes distant, paid him no mind.
Guizot appeared in an inner archway; Daspir acknowledged him with a nod.
“Where are the others?” Guizot said. “We ought to have started an hour ago.” He stepped past Saint-Jean, out into the open, and squinted fretfully up at the sun.
“There,” Daspir gestured. Cyprien and Paltre were just being admitted by the sentry at the gate.
Before they could be on their way, Pauline rushed down, to tighten the string of Dermide’s straw hat, and drape him with a strip of cloth against the sun. Cooing, she pressed two gigantic hampers of food on the captains, then caught Daspir by the arm.
“Do be careful of the sun,” she said.
“Of course, Madame,” said Daspir, unbending. Before Isabelle, this contact would have thrilled him. Now he had to subdue his impulse to pull away.
“Ought you not to take a carriage?” Pauline’s face was a mask of concern. “Perhaps my litter? Or no, I shall want it myself, I think . . .”
“Not at all, Madame—it is no distance, and the boys are so restless, the walk will do them good.” Carefully Daspir disengaged his arm, for he now saw that Leclerc had ridden in at the gate.
The four captains saluted the Captain-General as they passed, and Dermide imitated them, eliciting a smile from his father. Saint-Jean went by obliviously, eyes already fixed on the sea. Pauline called from the shade of the portico: “Be careful of sharks! and the urchins, especially.” On the street, the captains made a formation around the two boys, which was constantly broken by Dermide rolling his hoop out of it. Paltre had the task of chasing the hoop, muttering as he dodged between the heavy hand-drawn barrows and mule carts hauling up goods from the port.
Once they had passed the Quai d’Argout, traffic on the street diminished. The road became a wide expanse of dirt, rippling over the indentations of the coast. Dermide lost interest in his hoop, and persuaded Saint-Jean to carry it for him. Daspir shifted his heavy fruit basket from one hand to the other.
“We’ve got wares enough to open a market stall,” he grunted.
“And we’ll be carrying half of it back again,” Guizot said.
There were others on the beach before them—a gang of children of all ages, splashing in the shallow water. A gangly mulatto youth stood watch on the shore, holding an ancient musket whose barrel was bound to the cracked stock with wire. The woman standing with him looked very much like Nanon. Daspir sucked in his stomach, hoping Paltre would not notice her. He set down his basket in the shadow of a sea grape, well short of the other group, and shaded his eyes to look at the swimmers. Certainly these were the children of the Cigny house: Robert, Sophie, Paul . . . Daspir had not learned the names of the smaller ones. The maid Zabeth sat cradling an infant in the shallows, but Daspir saw no sign of Isabelle.
“Nursemaids again,” Paltre grumbled, plumping down into the coarse sand. He shot a challenging look at Guizot. “Here’s what’s come of your fine notion to capture Toussaint Louverture—now we’ve got the least of his brats to look after . . .”
Daspir checked to see if the boy had heard, but Saint-Jean was standing some distance off, upwind, and the wind was fresh. Ignoring Dermide’s anxious teasing, he stripped off his clothes and walked down to the water. There he was relieved of the pestering, for Dermide was hesitant to go in. He dithered on the water’s edge, retreating from the dying ripples, as Saint-Jean swam away from him toward the other children.
“I don’t know about that,” Cyprien was saying. “A shrewder general than the one we’ve got might use the boy in a trap to snare Toussaint.”
“What, here?” Paltre turned his head to spit.
“By no means impossible,” said Cyprien. “There was a raid two nights ago that carried as far as Morne des Capucins.”
Daspir looked about himself. “If you’re serious,” he said, “I think our ambush is a little undermanned.”
“He’s not serious,” Paltre snorted. “They never raid by day.” But he too seemed to be inspecting their surroundings somewhat more thoroughly. “Who’s that scarecrow?”
He pointed toward the youth with the musket, whose figure for the moment blocked Nanon’s. Guizot shaded his eyes to look. “It’s only Moustique,” he said. “He traveled here with us from a plantation of Acul.” On the point of mentioning the doctor, Guizot cut himself off. “No harm in him,” he said. “I’ll just go say hello.”
As Guizot made his way across the sand, Daspir pulled off his boots, shoved up the hems of his tight trousers, and waded shin deep into the water. He’d hoped for a flash of refreshing cold, but under the sun these shallows were tepid. There was no risk of sharks whatsoever—this bathers’ cove was closed from the ocean by a reef augmented with a wall of mounded stones, but he did look carefully for urchins before he took each step. One day he’d seen a black child skewer a foot on the long, dark shiny spines—and if any such thing ever happened to dear Dermide they’d never hear the end of it.
Saint-Jean and Paul were dunking each other, and suddenly Sophie erupted from the water behind them, laughing, shaking back her salt-weighted hair. There was something in that movement that reminded Daspir of Isabelle, and certainly the white shift she wore for a swimming garment clung to her most revealingly in the wet. Sophie caught his eye and sobered and concealed herself again beneath the water. Embarrassed, Daspir looked away. Dermide was hopping down on the hot rocks of the sand. Finally he found the courage to wet his feet, though he came in no deeper than his ankles. Beyond him, two men were coming from the direction of the town, one with a major’s epaulettes and the other wearing a blue headcloth and a pair of spectacles that glinted in the sun.
Daspir walked briskly out of the water. Guizot was standing with Moustique; Cyprien sat by Paltre, drawing circles in the sand with a fingertip.
“Who’s that coming?” Cyprien said, glancing up.
“I believe it is Major Maillart,” Daspir said. “It looks like Doctor Hébert is with him.”
“Come after his yellow wench, no doubt,” Paltre said. He tossed up a handful of sand, which blew in the direction of Nanon and her group.
“Ignore them, can you not?” said Cyprien. “Or still better, why not walk down to see who’s standing the watch at Picolet?”
“I’ve no reason to skulk away from such people,” Paltre said hotly. “I’ve as much right to be here as they.”
“You haven’t self-control enough to avoid another quarrel,” Cyprien said shortly.
“But why should I have to give way before them?” Paltre snapped. “They’re collaborators—the lot of them.”
“Not Maillart,” Daspir said in his most reasonable tone, though his throat was swollen with resentment of Mailla
rt.
“You think not? He commanded for Toussaint, and took his orders from black officers—Cyprien, you saw it too. And your precious doctor did that devil’s correspondence for him.” Paltre jumped up and pointed to the water. “Look at that litter of half-breeds they call their children. Evidence enough to ship those bitches back to France—the fair one and the dark one too.”
“Enough.” Daspir’s hand clenched on his pistol grip. Guizot, seeing the trouble, ran up behind him to catch his wrist.
“And more than enough,” Cyprien hissed. “Come on, Paltre—go look over the post at Fort Picolet. And you, Daspir, you may as well go back to the town.”
Daspir let go of his pistol and in the same motion shook free of Guizot’s grip. “We ought not both to leave you here,” he said, with a wave of his arm toward Dermide and Saint-Jean.
“No, it’s all right.” Guizot pointed toward the road, where a handful of noncommissioned officers had just appeared. “That is Sergeant Aloyse there, with some of his people. You may consider that they have relieved you. And there is no trouble likely here by day.”
Cyprien was nodding his agreement. Daspir watched Paltre, trudging grimly across the beach in the direction of the fort, his boot heels slipping in the sand. He picked up his own boots and started in the opposite direction. When he passed Maillart he snapped him a quick salute, and briefly took the hand the doctor offered him. Half-consciously he acknowledged the salutes of Aloyse and his companions. Where the road climbed from the beach, he sat down and hastily brushed sand from his feet before slipping his boots on, and took a last hard look at Maillart before he headed back toward town. In fact, he had thought of a way to spend this unexpected morsel of free time in a way that might be advantageous to himself.
The ocean air swept away the pall of sickness which the doctor had been breathing all that morning. He stood facing the shimmering lagoon, inhaling deeply with his arms crossed over his chest, recalling that someone, perhaps Riau, had advised him one ought to breathe ten times each day before the sea.
Nanon had waded shin deep toward the children, holding her skirt bundled about her hips. Sophie made a sudden lunge and pulled her under. Nanon’s yellow dress bloomed on the water like petals of a sunflower. Her laughter carried back to him on the sea breeze. The doctor began counting the heads of the children. Zabeth had carried the two infants into the shade next to Moustique. In the further distance the doctor made out a uniformed figure scrambling up the rocky path to Fort Picolet.
“You probably ought to have killed that wretch,” Maillart said.
“What?”
Maillart pointed. “There. That’s Paltre.”
“Sharp eyes,” the doctor said. “It was your idea I shouldn’t.”
“Theirs, actually.” Maillart nodded toward the sea grape where Cyprien and Guizot had settled.
“So we have the whole quartet,” the doctor said. “Let’s stop where we are, then.” He backed up and sat down on a chunk of stone in the shade of an overhanging almond tree.
“Guizot’s a decent fellow,” Maillart said.
“Of course. But I don’t want to talk to any of them, not now.”
“What’s on your mind?” Maillart looked away as quickly as he’d spoken. It was not his habit to press a point so. But their meeting with Isabelle troubled him, together with the doctor’s mood. The doctor made him no reply. Maillart stared at the point of rock where Paltre had disappeared, then lowered himself to the stone beside the doctor.
“You shamed him,” he said. “He’ll never forget it. He sees it in the eyes of everyone he meets, whether they throw it up to him or not. And I mislike the way he slinks about. He’d do us any harm he could.”
“He shamed himself,” the doctor said. “And what harm do you suppose he can do us? He won’t stay here forever, in any case.”
Maillart saw he’d come upon his subject from another angle. Perhaps this subject would lie in every road he might choose to take. He cleared his throat, but was distracted by the sight of Nanon rising from the water. The wind plastered the yellow cloth of her dress against her legs and torso. She caught up the wet rope of her hair and twisted it over her shoulder as she arched her back. My God, what a beauty she still is, Maillart thought. It was a rare thing to see her so completely at ease. The children were coming out of the water too, scattering across the sand. Paul and Saint-Jean spun each other down, wrestled for a moment, and got up again, kicking up showers of sand as they raced on. Gabriel, meanwhile, was galloping toward the doctor and Maillart, naked and unconscious. He smashed into the doctor’s side, backed up and made another charge into Maillart. Then he shook his head, wriggled all over with his satisfaction, and trotted back toward the water’s edge, where the milder François waited for him.
Maillart rubbed the point of impact on his upper arm. “That’s no ordinary child,” he said. “I swear his bones are made of stone.” And there was the subject again, lying in his path like a boulder.
“Antoine,” he said. “Have you never seen the boy isn’t yours?”
“He’s mine because I claim him.” The doctor gave Maillart a quick, sharp look, then lowered his head and picked up a fallen almond. With the ball of his thumb he dug into the soft husk for the nut shell. Nanon and Sophie were parading past, arm in arm, letting their garments dry in the sun and wind.
“He isn’t Nanon’s either, in that sense.” The doctor took off his glasses and shot another glance at Maillart. “He’s Isabelle’s.”
Maillart swallowed. “Yes. I know.”
The doctor flashed him a startled smile. “I didn’t know you knew that.”
“I didn’t know you knew it either.” Maillart shook his head. “She’d let me know she was with child by Flaville before she went off to Vallière with Nanon. In fact I helped to arrange that expedition.”
“Why, you astonish me.” The doctor pulled the kerchief from his head and began to polish his glasses with it.
“Surely I’m no more astonishing than you,” Maillart said. “Bertrand Cigny—God rest him!—overlooked a great deal, but he wouldn’t have missed her giving him a child the color of Gabriel. And Isabelle—well, I can’t say I was pleased by her news, but I found I would have done anything to help her.”
The doctor replaced his glasses and went on studying Maillart’s face through the lenses.
“I thought the child had died at birth, or had miscarried,” Maillart said. “Well, I was ready enough to believe it—but now . . .”
The doctor nodded and looked away. “He’s growing into Flaville’s face.”
“It’s so,” Maillart said somberly.
“Flaville was a strong man,” the doctor said.
“I thought well of him,” Maillart said. “In spite of everything.” He gazed down the beach to the point where all the children had begun to gather around a couple of hampers Cyprien and Guizot were unpacking. Dermide was doing his best to start a quarrel with Saint-Jean over a ripe mango, but Saint-Jean backed away and let him have it. Nanon had settled some distance from the rest of the group, but when Moustique carried her a napkin full of food she accepted it. Zabeth came to join those two beneath the shade tree they had chosen.
“It’s strange,” the doctor said. “One doesn’t look for such peculiar histories to repeat themselves.”
Although the sun was bright as ever, Maillart felt chilled as if it had vanished from the sky. “Your sister,” he said.
“Indeed, my sister.” The doctor shook his head. “She came to me this morning—I don’t know what prompted her.”
But I do, Maillart thought. “You see?” he said. “That’s how that miserable Paltre might scheme to get his own back.”
The doctor looked at him. “What do you mean?”
“Leclerc has a secret order—on proof of any such liaison a white woman is to be disgraced and deported to France.”
The doctor clicked his tongue. “What other secret orders has he got?”
Maillart didn’t an
swer. He looked at the water, where Sergeant Aloyse paddled among his comrades, his gray pigtail floating on the water behind him. Guizot crossed the strand toward them, signaling them to come share in the meal. Maillart watched as the sergeant stood up and shook bright drops of water from himself like a dog. He remembered Aloyse’s misgivings beneath the walls of the fort at La Crête à Pierrot, and the extent to which he’d shared them, but none of that bore thinking of now.
“Paltre has a suspicion of Isabelle, I know,” he said, to stifle one ugly thought with another.
The doctor laughed harshly. “Elise wouldn’t need to be betrayed by Paltre. As you can see, she’s got no place to hide.”
“How do you suppose Xavier will take it?” Maillart said.
“No idea,” said the doctor. “It’s as well he’s gone to La Tortue.”
“I don’t suppose he’ll stay there six months.”
“No,” said the doctor, rubbing the few sprigs of hair that remained on his freckled head. “She came to me in hope I would . . . arrange the problem. But it lies outside my competence.”
Maillart passed a dry tongue over his lips. “That’s why she’s gone to the midwife, then.”
“Yes, exactly.”
“Is it safe?”
“No,” said the doctor. “You wanted to know what was on my mind? Well, there you have it.”
He stood up, brushing sand from his trousers. Guizot caught sight of him and beckoned. The doctor shook his head.
“No reason to refuse that offer,” Maillart said. “That lad Guizot’s as loyal to you as a spaniel, ever since you saved his arm, and Paltre has gone off—to the devil, we may hope.”
“I never asked for a spaniel.” The doctor cocked an eye at him. “And do you suppose I have an appetite?”
“No more than I do,” Maillart said and spread his hands. “But one must eat to live.”
“I suppose you’re right,” the doctor said. In fact the suddenness of his rising had left him a little light-headed—he had not eaten much that day, and Guizot did mean well. Still he felt hesitant to join the others. Again he folded his arms and faced the sea, watching the surf foam on the line of rocks that closed the cove, and counting his breaths carefully, though he was too distracted to know when he’d reached ten.
The Stone that the Builder Refused Page 87
