The Stone that the Builder Refused

by Madison Smartt Bell

The doctor squinted up at him through his dust-coated glasses. He ran the brim of his hat through his fingers. “I can’t say for certain where he is himself,” he said. “His house is a little way further on.”

  “Then we can’t stop here,” Cyprien said, glancing at Isaac and Placide, who sat their horses quietly.

  “Oh, but you will,” said the doctor, “if you don’t want to drown.”

  Indeed the wind was bringing heavy clouds in quickly from the east, and the first fat drops were slamming down, raising little puffs of dust. One splashed into the bald center of the doctor’s head. He remembered Cyprien vaguely from the Hédouville mission, and there’d been something about the captain then that he hadn’t liked. Certainly he didn’t much like the way Cyprien was looking at Sophie now. Nevertheless he stretched out his hand to him.

  “Don’t be hasty,” he said. “Once the deluge starts, you won’t be able to see as far as the end of your nose. If you wait out the rain here, we may still bring you to Sancey before dark.”

  Cyprien hesitated a moment more, then slid down from his horse, though without accepting the doctor’s proffered hand. Isaac and Placide exchanged a quick glance, and then they too dismounted. Grooms were already coming out from the stables to take their horses from them.

  “Then there will be peace after all,” Elise was saying from her place at the foot of the gallery table. “In spite of everything.”

  The tale of Le Cap’s burning seemed to have shaken her only slightly. Indeed her composure was such that the doctor wondered if she’d properly understood the news.

  “Our mission is to achieve a peace, Madame,” Placide said courteously. “And our resolve.”

  “Oh, I do not see how you can fail,” Elise said, with a meaning look at her husband. Tocquet sat with his back to the railing, his eyes remote, rolling an unlit cheroot between his fingers. Behind him, a wall of rain came down.

  “How well you have grown,” Elise said, returning to Isaac and Placide. “I would hardly have known you—you are such young men now.”

  Placide smiled easily and replied with some nicely turned compliment. The doctor studied them, not much attending to what they said. Nanon sat by him, leaning just slightly against his shoulder, her hand warm in his beneath the table.

  The sheen of the boys’ dress uniforms had been a little blunted by the dust of the road. Isaac was the darker, shorter, and thicker; Placide a head taller, distinctly more slender, his tone a rich coppery red. One might not have taken them for brothers at all, and it had long been rumored that Placide, born before his mother’s legal marriage to Toussaint, had been fathered by another, possibly even by a white man. But the doctor thought he saw resemblances now, in the long oval of Placide’s face, the shape of his long-fingered hands, even the habit of floating a palm across his mouth between his phrases, as if to hide a smile. And Toussaint had always given him a first-born’s preference.

  All around them the rain came rushing down, pouring over the gallery steps like a waterfall. The doctor stretched his neck to look over the railing; below, the lily pool he’d designed and dug was overflowing its border of stones, drenching the turf around it. Captain Daspir, munching contently on a concoction of desalted cod Elise had cunningly expanded for the unexpected number, asked him some question about the flowers. The doctor scarcely paid attention to his own reply.

  Five years since he had seen these boys, and they’d been as long apart from their mother and father. The invitation to send them to school in France was one which could not be refused. In effect, the boys had been given up as hostages. The doctor was one of the party that conveyed them from Ennery to Le Cap, where then-Commissioner Sonthonax had embarked them for the fatherland and the Collège de la Marche. Toussaint had seemed willing, even pleased to send them, then. Such an education was a privilege, after all, and one that opened the way to many advancements once the graduate returned to the colony. And in those days Toussaint had freely professed that the more French his sons should become, the better. Though later on, the doctor knew, he’d launched a couple of unsuccessful plots to get them back.

  Now here they were. What would Toussaint think of them? Bedizened in their military ornaments, as yet unearned. Certainly he could retain them permanently now, if he chose—if in fact he was here at Ennery. If he was not, his order would suffice. Ennery was Toussaint’s personal redoubt—though they’d seen no military movement as they came through the narrow passes to this place, no one could come or go from here against his wish.

  The doctor wondered if the young French captains knew as much, or if Leclerc had realized it—in their brief encounters, the Captain-General had struck him as a little ill-informed. A crash from inside the house, followed by Zabeth’s voice sharply raised, cut off his train of thought. The older children, shut up by the rain, had been chasing each other around the inside of the house for the last hour. Isabelle jumped up hurriedly and went to see what was the matter. Nanon made to rise as well, but the doctor gave her fingers a surreptitious squeeze to keep her by him. Soon enough the giggling indoors was stifled. Weary from the long ride and groggy from the meal that followed, the doctor sank deeper in his chair and dozed.

  The night was clear after the rain, clean and sweet-smelling as fresh laundry. Saddlesore as they were, the party that had come down from Le Cap continued toward Sancey on foot. All but a couple of their cavalry escort were left behind, snoring on cots or pallets made up for them in the cane mill. Elise had convinced the French captains that there was nothing to fear between Thibodet and Sancey. The older children had been allowed to come along and were making a festival of it. Paul and Robert and Sophie, with Caco and Yoyo too, were racing and tagging each other in circles around the path, shrieking when they surprised each other from the shadows.

  In the light of the oblong moon, Isaac and Placide watched their play. The doctor thought that Isaac, especially, might have liked to join in the game. But he was on his dignity now and kept to the path, which was a little slippery from the rain, hitching up his belt to keep the tip of his ceremonial sword from dragging in the mud.

  They came to the crossroads beneath the mango trees and, with some splashing and tittering from the children, picked their way across the stream. As they passed through the hedge onto Sancey lands, the doctor noticed a couple of shadows slipping away from them, over the hill. Their incursion would not go unreported. But no one waited for them behind the Sancey grand’case except an old woman dozing on a woven stool, her feet stretched toward the dying coals of a cook fire. She jumped up, stared at Isaac and Placide in the moonlight, then clapped a hand over her mouth and ran for the grand’case as fast as her legs would take her.

  The front approach to the Sancey grand’case was considerably more impressive than the jumble of outbuildings and shanties to the rear. The house loomed over them in the moonlight. Even Cyprien seemed a little abashed as he stood below the portico, clearing his throat to announce their visit. But before he had pronounced a word, the front door popped open and Suzanne Louverture appeared, flanked by two servants holding tall candlesticks. The boys met her halfway up the stairs; the three of them clumped together in a tight embrace.

  Coisnon, who carried a small valise, put his foot on the first step and turned an inquiring look on the two French captains.

  “Go up,” said Cyprien. “We’ll wait where we are.”

  Suzanne was already leading the boys toward her lighted doorway, her arms around their waists, and theirs across her shoulders. Like soldiers supporting a wounded comrade, Daspir thought, except it seemed more that she was supporting them. Then they had passed through the door, and Coisnon with them. The candle flames glowed inside the jalousies of a room just off the entryway.

  “But Toussaint,” Cyprien said. “Is he here? Or why does he not show himself?”

  The doctor only shrugged in the darkness, and no one else had any answer. Then a girl’s wailing erupted in the shrubbery at the side of the house, and Sophie flung out of the b
ushes to bury her face in her mother’s bodice.

  “Now then, what can this be?” Elise cupped her head with one hand.

  “Oh, see how late it is,” said Isabelle. “We ought to get these children home to bed.”

  With that, the women began to collect their flock for the return to Thibodet. Only Cigny and Daspir lingered behind, below the portico of the grand’case. The two cavalrymen of their escort stood at a polite distance from them.

  “Ah,” said Cyprien at length. “We may as well go back with the others. Find ourselves some place to sleep.”

  “Ought we to let them slip from our charge so easily?” Daspir asked.

  “This is an effort of diplomacy,” Cyprien said in the tone of one reciting orders. “The sons of Toussaint are to be treated with all consideration— not as prisoners, nor as hostages. It is hoped that through their persuasive influence and the power of their sentiments, their father’s loyalty may be bound to France.” Cyprien smiled as he turned to go. “Coisnon is with them, in any case, and he has been schooled to the task.”

  “Wait,” Daspir hissed.

  A lamp came alight in another room, throwing a shadow on the blinded window. Daspir touched Cyprien’s hand and pointed. It looked as though a shadow hand removed the shadow of a bicorne hat, leaving a bare-headed profile to waver on the slats of the jalousies: heavy underslung jaw and high sloping forehead.

  “Do you see that?” Daspir hissed.

  “Are you so sure?” But Cyprien was whispering too. They went on watching. With the light breeze that rose behind them, the shadow image rippled in the window frame.

  “If you are certain,” Cyprien said, forcing his more supercilious tone, “then now is your chance to collect on our bet.”

  “No,” said Daspir. As he spoke the shadow image dissolved into a blur. Then nothing, as the lamp was snuffed. Had he really seen anything at all? But the wet and heavy darkness all around him seemed suffused with invisible presences. Daspir recalled what the doctor had said, in the garden of Habitation Héricourt. What you don’t see means more than what you do. The doctor was well away down the path already, with the others, and Daspir felt an urgency to overtake them.

  When Sophie’s most violent crying had subsided, Elise drew her a little way from the others on the path, to ask her privately what was the matter. But the girl only stiffened and pulled away from her; she would not give up the source of her distress.

  “I think you’re only tired,” Elise said.

  “I’m not at all tired!” Sophie shook her hair forward to hide her face and went stalking ahead of them all on the path.

  Elise kept her distance from her daughter, resisting the sourness that spread over her own mood. These tempests of unreasoning emotion had come more frequently, the last few months. Let it go—it was too lovely a night to spoil. She wished Tocquet were with her, but he’d chosen to remain at home, aloof.

  By the time Elise had reached the hallway of the Thibodet grand’case, Sophie had already slammed into her bedroom, forgetting that she shared it, for tonight, with Héloïse. Isabelle stood hesitating, just outside the door.

  “Best leave her to it,” said Elise. “She’s in some pet.”

  “I wonder if Robert has been teasing her too much,” Isabelle said, looking toward the room where Paul and Robert were meant to sleep.

  “I’ll just look in.” Elise cracked open Sophie’s door, just wide enough to slip inside, then pulled it to behind her. Sophie was rigid on her bed, feigning sleep, though not convincingly. But at least she had not wakened Héloïse, who slept peacefully with her round face turned to the stripes of moonlight spilling through the jalousies.

  She looked for Isabelle in Paul’s room, but only the two boys were there, scuffling and muttering in muffled voices as they jokingly disputed the space in the bed they were to share. Elise ordered them to quiet down, then withdrew. Isabelle had gone to the room of Nanon’s twins, and was kneeling at Gabriel’s bedside, her finger clasped in his sleeping fist. Elise moved toward her in the striped moonlight. She wanted to let Isabelle know she understood—though she did not understand, entirely. But as she floated across the floor, she saw Nanon waiting quietly in a corner, out of the light, and was repelled by a flash of jealousy. These two now kept a secret deeper than any Elise had ever shared with Isabelle, and they had been keeping it close for quite some time.

  “I’m sorry,” Elise said, too loudly and rather coldly, and turned to leave the room. But Isabelle overtook her in the hall and caught hold of her hand. Elise relaxed, then returned the pressure. She thought she’d try some other subject.

  “Is it really all destroyed?” she said. “Your house and mine?”

  “With all Le Cap, from one end to the other.”

  “Ah,” said Elise. “We had it such a little time.”

  Isabelle pulled her toward the front doorway. “It’s only buildings,” she said, swinging her hands toward the moonlight beyond the gallery. “And those can be rebuilt as well as burned.”

  Tonight Coisnon did not share quarters with Placide and Isaac, though Placide could still hear his stentorian snoring from the room next door. Their tutor was exhausted, from the arduousness of their travel and the unfamiliarity of everything they’d encountered on their way. Isaac was in the same state, though his sleeping breath was quiet, just barely audible through Coisnon’s wall-muffled snoring and the ticking of the clock on the mantel.

  Placide himself lay calm but wakeful, though he had every right to be weary himself. They’d spent some joyful hours with their mother, who’d insisted on serving them a second supper. Afterward she’d taken pleasure in showing them over the house, which was much more elaborately furnished than any residence Placide had known in the colony. He could remember when the five of them had shared a one-room case at Habitation Bréda (though Isaac had probably forgotten those days), and their lodgings around Saint Michel and Saint Raphael, where Toussaint had sent them for shelter from the first months of the fighting, had not been much better. Perhaps Isaac was not so much impressed—the grand’case of Sancey was no palace in comparison to the Tuileries—but everything here spoke to Placide of his father’s sagacity and power.

  Beside the clock on the mantel (the mantel itself no more than an ornamental shelf, as there was no need for a bedroom fireplace in this climate) there stood among other smaller bibelots a gray-and-green vase decorated with images of certain battle triumphs of Toussaint Louverture—victories over the Spanish and the English, rendered in the classically heroic manner. This article had been commissioned and presented to him as a compliment by some French general. Isaac had been fascinated with the vase, earlier that night, and had taken it to turn in his hands and study very closely.

  Placide would have liked a closer look now, but fatigue and a growing somnolence held him in his bed. The clock ticked to the swing of its pendulum. Above the face it had a dial on which revolved a painted sun, smiling down on scenes of a European landscape. Then it seemed to be beating faster, faster, triple time—

  Placide snapped upright in the bed, realizing that what he heard was the beat of shod hooves in the drive outside. He jumped into his trousers and in a flash was out the front door—his mother only a pace or two behind him. A squadron of cavalry had pulled up in the oval drive below the gallery, and the men were just beginning to get down from their horses, their figures dark and crisp in a wide spill of moonlight. There was his father, his silhouette plainly recognizable, between two banners hanging slack against their poles, sitting a horse Placide did not recognize.

  “But where is Bel Argent?” Placide blurted. It seemed an idiotic question, but in his mental image of this moment, he must have placed his father astride the great white stallion.

  Toussaint did not answer, or even appear to have heard. When they wrapped their arms around each other, Placide realized he was much the taller. How long could that have been so? Then Isaac rushed to join them with an impact that rocked them on their feet.


  Awkwardly they climbed the stairs, loath to let each other go. They’d just begun to settle in the parlor opposite the entrance way, when Coisnon appeared in the doorframe, the remains of his gray hair sticking up around his bald spot like a tonsure. The white nightshirt fluttering around his shins was the reverse image of the black cassock he ordinarily wore by day.

  “Father, it is Monsieur Coisnon, our preceptor.” Isaac’s voice creaked like a rusty gate, and when he turned toward Toussaint, it stopped altogether. But Coisnon stretched his arms theatrically wide.

  “Is it Toussaint, the servant and faithful friend of France, who holds out his arms to me?”

  “Could you ever doubt it?” Toussaint folded Coisnon into an embrace fully as powerful as the one he’d given his sons. Then he held the Frenchman at arm’s length.

  “So it is you who has schooled my boys,” he said. “They have learned Latin. Mathematics.” Toussaint’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Engineering, perhaps, and something of the science of fortification.”

  “Indeed they have learned many things.” Coisnon held his wide smile fixed. “But you shall hear all from themselves—they come to you now as faithful interpreters of the First Consul and the Captain-General Leclerc. Believe in their innocence and the purity of their sentiments—every word they say to you will be the truth.”

  As Coisnon was speaking, Placide noticed that, while several of Toussaint’s staff officers were filtering in to stand in grave silence around the walls of the room, Isaac had slipped out. It was not long, however, before he returned, fully dressed now in the elegant uniform Napoleon had given him at the Tuileries, complete with pistols and sword. His entrance produced a little murmur, and Placide was aware for the first time of his own appearance: his nightshirt loose at the throat with its tail half in and half out of his crookedly buttoned trousers. He felt his mother draw in her breath and shift her weight on the sofa beside him, and he reached to take her hand.

  Isaac stopped before Toussaint, and with a half-bow presented a small gold box in his two hands.