The Stone that the Builder Refused
Page 24
The slam of the corridor door cut off his querulous voice. Baille looked down at Toussaint. “Do you mean to murder me?” he said.
Toussaint raised his hands to massage his aching temples. “That question might be better put by me to you.”
Baille colored, coughed, and bowed out of the cell. Snap of the lock, shuffle and splash of boots retreating. Then silence.
The door had never looked so solid. It did not matter. With the force of the fever at his disposal, Toussaint might shrug himself out of his skin and travel anywhere at all, free and fast as a loup-garou. Already he could feel the walls dissolving, and as he began to drift, Dormoy’s broken sentence mended itself in his mind: Then they have lost, and you have won.
Part Two
RAVINE À COULEUVRE
February 1802
Je pensai que la conduite du général Leclerc était bien contraire aux intentions du gouvernement, puisque le premier consul, dans sa lettre, promettait la paix, tandis que lui, il faisait la guerre. Je vis qu’au lieu de chercher à arrêter le mal, il ne faisait que l’augmenter. <
—Mémoires du Général Toussaint Louverture
I thought that the conduct of General Leclerc was much contrary to the intentions of the government, since the First Consul, in his letter, promised peace, while he, Leclerc, made war. I saw that instead of seeking to stop the evil, he did nothing but increase it. “In maintaining such a conduct,” I said to myself, “Does he not fear to be blamed by his government? Can he hope to be approved by the First Consul—that great man whose impartiality and fairness are so well known—while I will be disapproved?” So I took the part of defending myself in case of attack, and in spite of the small number of troops that I had, made my dispositions accordingly.
11
In the fresh damp cool of morning, Elise walked from the rear of the grand’case of Habitation Thibodet, following the shallow canal her brother had designed to the peak of a low rise, then diverging from it, moving downhill again, through the small mud-walled cases and their patchy gardens. Her daughter, Sophie, and her brother’s wife, Nanon, accompanied her, but they did not converse. Nanon seemed abstracted (perhaps she was merely sleepy) and Sophie was busy running after butterflies, laughing and swinging her empty basket round her head.
Elise watched her, reserving judgment. When they left the house this morning, she’d been unable to influence Sophie to put on shoes. The black women who were just coming out of the little cases, waisting the cotton door-curtains with string to admit light and air, smiled at the flashing of the girl’s dusty heels, then turned on Elise just slightly more fixed smiles. Even now she must still be the white mistress to them, after so much upheaval and change.
The day seemed ordinary, tranquil as any. If these black women had breathed any rumor of the trouble fermenting at Le Cap, they gave no sign of it . . . and Elise knew them well enough to sense when some such knowledge was quietly shared among them. She herself knew little more than they. No news had come, since their departure, of the impasse between Christophe and the French fleet. No word from the doctor either, and of course Nanon’s slight aloofness might be explained by her concern for him. It was like her not to speak of it.
Now they had come to the border of Habitation Thibodet with Habitation Sancey, a citrus hedge on the near side and a cactus fence on the other, punctured by gaps through which spotted goats came wandering. Here was a crossroads, at the meeting of a path which crossed the stream between the two properties with another trail running parallel to the tumbling water. In the dark green shade of an old manguier there was a little market; women had come down from the heights of the surrounding mornes with baskets of oranges, limes, papaya, and corrosol, stalks of bananas and plantain, bunches of manioc root still crusted with black earth. Today Elise had come for mangoes. There were several different sorts: mangues fils rouges, mangues baptistes, and the small sweet rosy mangoes, no bigger than a peach, for which the region of Ennery was known.
Elise negotiated, while Nanon, once a price had been agreed, packed the purchases into one of their baskets. Elise bargained with determination, sometimes miming a flat departure if the price would not come down. She was thinking as she often did that many of these mangoes must have been harvested from her own fruit trees on Habitation Thibodet. In the end the baskets were full and Elise added a couple of avocados and two pineapples to the store. Reaching into the pocket tied below the slit of her skirt, she withdrew a small bag of soft Spanish leather and shook out a few coins to pay.
“Be so good as to carry these baskets back to the house,” she said. “I have an errand in this direction.” She glanced across the stream toward the gap in the cactus, through which the path wound on through Habitation Sancey.
Nanon simply nodded to this announcement, leaving her eyes lowered, but Sophie shook her head. She could not speak immediately, because one of the market women had given her a mangue fils rouges and she was busy sucking the pulpy seed, unconscious as any bossale fresh off the coast of Africa.
“I want to go with you, Maman.”
“You may not,” Elise said, and then more mildly, “Not today.”
Sophie flung the seed into the stream and stamped her foot. Her full lips parted, but Elise cut in before she could pronounce a word.
“You are impertinent,” she said. “If you persist, I may as well send you to Madame Arnaud to be corrected.”
Sophie’s eyes widened, a flash of white in her olive face. In her complexion she favored Tocquet; moreover she took no care against the sun. Elise did not know if those round eyes were meant to mock her or if Sophie had been genuinely impressed. But all the children of their circle were a little afraid of Madame Arnaud, perhaps with reason, though it had been long since Claudine’s madness had bloomed in its full flower.
“Au revoir, Maman.” Sophie picked up her basket, docilely enough, and followed Nanon through the wooden gate in the citrus hedge. When she had gone a few paces up the trail on the other side, she swung her basket up to her head and walked on with it balanced there. Elise opened her mouth to reprove her—to carry a burden so, like an African!—but then said nothing. Nanon was managing her load in the same fashion, her empty hands flowing idly in the current of her swinging hips. This exercise trained a grace of movement which no other schooling could imitate. Elise knew that she lacked it herself, though she had other graces.
She watched Sophie away along the trail—the slim straight back, the posture sinuously erect, the buds of her new breasts pushing out her muslin delicately. Thirteen years old . . . Elise ought to have sent her to school in France long since. But she had never had the heart for that. And Tocquet had never shown the least support for such a program. There had been a rumor that Toussaint’s two eldest sons had come back with the fleet now standing outside Le Cap, and Elise wondered now if it might be true.
She walked down to a point where the stream widened over a gravel shoal and crossed in the shallows, skipping from stone to stone. A couple of women washing clothes on the shoal grinned up at her as she passed. A little goat bleated and trotted to one side as she came through a hole in the cactus fence. She followed the foot-worn rut on a meander around a field of sprouting corn, then up a slope through coffee trees. A gaggle of children, strangers to her, scattered at her approach and ran laughing over the top of the hill. No chance of arriving unobserved or unreported—not anywhere in this country.
Now it was beginning to grow hot. Elise, who had let herself hurry more than she ought, came to a full stop in the shade of a big coffee tree. She took off her straw hat and remained standing there until the light sw
eat she’d raised had dried completely on her forehead. Then she tucked up a stray lock of hair, pinned her hat back into place, and went on more deliberately, fingering the edges of the letter she carried through the fabric of her dress.
Crossing the hilltop brought her in sight of the long rectangular grand’case of Habitation Sancey. Her approach was from the rear. Some of the women and children stirring between the house and its outbuildings glanced up, startled at the sight of a blanche coming from this direction. Outside the doorway of the kitchen a black woman in an ordinary cotton dress was tending an iron pot set on a tripod above a charcoal fire. If she were struck by Elise’s arrival, she gave no sign of it. She stirred the pot with a long wooden spoon. A shift in the humid currents of the air brought Elise the scent of simmering goat and plantain.
She circled the grand’case to the left, emerging onto the oval drive in front. A long allée of royal palms ran down the slope to the main gate. Elise might have ordered out her coach and driven in from that direction, with all due formality. When she asked herself now why she had not done so, she could form no clear answer.
A pack of noisy little dogs swarmed out the door of the grand’case. At the foot of the gallery steps, Elise stood completely motionless. The dogs raced partway down the steps, yapped at her, and retreated. Saint-Jean, who was Toussaint’s youngest son, came out the front door and called them back, smiling down at her apologetically.
As Saint-Jean herded the dogs around to the side porch, Suzanne Louverture appeared in the doorway. In her passage through the house she had slipped on shoes and laid aside the spoon with which she’d stirred that cauldron. She stepped onto the tiles of the gallery floor and with a slight smile beckoned Elise to come up.
“Madame Tocquet,” she said. “I am surprised.”
Elise climbed to her level, and stood a moment to catch her breath. Suzanne waited on her calmly, her eyes serene beneath the forehead knot of her blue mouchwa têt. Unlike most prosperous black women, she had put on no great storehouse of fat, though she had thickened somewhat with her years. A curl of hair that escaped the blue headcloth was white, but she still had in her least movement the grace which came from carrying large burdens on one’s head.
“Vous avez l’air d’une tête chargée,” Suzanne said quietly. You seem to have a heavy-loaded head.
“No, not at all.” Elise felt herself verging on a stammer—it was unnerving to have one’s thought read in that way, even if it were only by coincidence. Her fund of social banalities seemed to fail her before Suzanne Louverture. Isabelle, she thought fleetingly, would surely have done better in this situation. Suzanne did not go much into society, though she had been sometimes a guest at Habitation Thibodet, when Toussaint happened to be in the neighborhood. But Suzanne seldom attended his larger celebrations at Le Cap or Port-au-Prince, preferring to remain secluded here at Ennery.
“I am charged only with this missive.” Elise produced the letter from the folds of her clothing and held it out.
Suzanne looked down to see her own name inscribed—if she could read so much Elise was not certain. Saint-Jean was watching them, from the shadows of the doorway. Suzanne took the letter into her hand and looked from it into Elise’s face.
Piqued, Elise took off her hat and shook down her blond hair, which fell below her shoulders. As she tossed her head, she felt herself flushing. Well, even a blush was a white woman’s charm, though she must walk closely covered against the sun, to guard the responsiveness of her complexion.
“You must come in,” Suzanne was saying. “Take coffee.”
“No, no, I cannot stay . . .” Elise set about pinning up her hair again, turning her head to show her neck, a glimpse of her milky shoulder; she was after all a great many years the black woman’s junior.
“Let me,” Suzanne said and moved behind her to help with the hair. A few light flicks of her cool fingers, and it was arranged.
“Do come in,” Suzanne repeated, motioning toward the shade of the doorway, from which Saint-Jean had disappeared.
“Thank you, but no.” Elise could speak more easily now. She glanced down at the letter. “I had better leave you to the company of your husband.”
To this Suzanne only nodded and held out her hand. Elise clasped it briefly, let go, and turned to the steps.
After all, she did feel somewhat relieved, once she had crested the ridge behind the house and begun her descent through the coffee trees. It was not Suzanne’s jealousy that had been in question, but her own—which had obscurely plagued her from the moment she’d seen that the letter Toussaint had passed her at the church in Le Cap was meant for Suzanne, not for herself. And had Suzanne the skill to read it through? Well, Saint-Jean had some instruction, and might read it to her if need be.
The same laundresses smiled up at Elise again as she followed the stepping stones across the stream. Indeed, she thought she recognized some of Tocquet’s shirts in the hands of one. Well, perhaps Suzanne had learned to tolerate the wanderings of her husband, as French wives were obliged to do. And Toussaint’s dalliance with Elise had been so brief—a single instance—that it was likely Suzanne did not know of it. It was possible that no one did.
For the first time in a long while, Elise thought of her first husband, Thibodet, dead for the last decade, of yellow fever. By the luck of his draw, for he might equally have expired from excess of drink, or been shot dead for a gambling debt, or succumbed to the pox which his lechery had won him, or to the mercury treatments he took for the pox. But Elise had gone off with Xavier Tocquet before Thibodet fell ill with the fever. She had a horror of the pox, and had been lucky enough not to take it. In truth she had never loved Thibodet, though his dash had impressed her when they first met in Lyons, and of course he was reputed wealthy. It was her brother who’d attended his last illness, while Elise was away across the Spanish border with her paramour. And now she herself was two years past the age of Thibodet when he had died . . .
These reflections carried her as far as her own backyard, where a gang of the older children—Paul, Caco, Sophie, Yoyo—were hopping up and down with the excitement of watching a kitchen maid wringing the necks of a brace of ducks. This task completed, she caught their blood in a gourd bowl into which the juice of several lemons had been squeezed. Elise looked on, approving the procedure.
Merbillay came out of the kitchen case, took the beheaded ducks, and strung them up by their feet from the low eaves of the building. In this climate, a fowl need not be hung for longer than a day. These ducks would be plucked and stewed and served with their garnish of mango this same evening.
Merbillay beckoned Yoyo into the kitchen to help with the peeling and dicing of mangoes. Elise put her head in the door to observe. It was just lately that she had taken account of Merbillay’s talent for cooking and incorporated her into the service of the grand’case, though the woman had been at Habitation Thibodet for years and often used to cook for the soldiers when they were encamped nearby. Her oldest, Caco, was Paul’s great friend. And Sophie often played with Yoyo, though the difference in their ages was greater. But now Sophie, though she was the elder, had run off squealing with the other children, leaving Yoyo to work at her mother’s side.
Merbillay gave Elise the ghost of a smile and turned to grinding spices in an old stone mortar. Her elaborately turbaned head lowered over this work. She took some pains with her appearance, was a lover of beads and gold bangles and colorful cloth. Elise did not know her age, but for the several children she had borne she still seemed youthful—her flesh plump and taut and not a line on her full face. Furthermore, she seemed to manage the two men who were her children’s fathers with no trouble.
What was the secret to that, Elise wondered, with an admiration which did not quite rise to envy. She walked around the house and up to the gallery of the grand’case. Tocquet and Nanon were seated there, drinking coffee. Elise was a little surprised at this, for it was now late morning, and Tocquet would usually be away on his own aff
airs at this hour. She sat down with them, spreading her skirt, and Zabeth came at once with a fresh cup and saucer and the silver coffeepot.
“Successful in your foraging?” Tocquet said.
“But of course,” Elise replied. “I should think Nanon would have showed you our booty.”
Nanon smiled, looked here and there, and suddenly caught sight of her one-year-olds, François and Gabriel, tumbling toward the edge of the pool below the gallery.
“Oh,” she said. “You will excuse me.” She jumped up and ran trippingly down the steps, her skirts caught up and bunched in one hand. Elise watched her rush across the lawn; there was more than mere pretext for her haste. Gabriel, the black one, bolder of the two, was making a long, precarious reach for a violet flower of the bwa dlo ornamenting the pool, and if Nanon had not caught him up by the scruff, he would quite likely have fallen in. Though the water was scarcely knee-deep, a child of that age did not need much water to drown.
Elise watched the scene, a little sourly. Gabriel made no sound, but his eye was on the flower and his arms and legs kept churning, without purchase, toward the goal. It was François, the pale one freckled by the sun, who gaped his jaws and began to wail at the sight of his brother’s frustration. The two boys were not much alike for twins, and Elise rather doubted that her brother was father to either of them.
But this was a subject not to be explored. She felt Tocquet’s eyes on her now, as if he’d press into her thoughts. In truth, Nanon had been the reason of the first rift between them. Not that Tocquet had strayed in her direction, not at all. But Elise had turned her energy toward breaking her brother’s liaison with Nanon, after their first child was born—she had disliked the notion that he might marry this mulattress. Over this issue she and Tocquet had quarreled, bitterly though not openly, for Tocquet kept his displeasure close to his chest; his way was simply to withdraw from her. And in the end she’d recognized and owned her error. She and Nanon were good friends now, and she and Tocquet had stood together at her brother’s wedding.