The Stone that the Builder Refused

by Madison Smartt Bell

  Paltre took a bloodstained hand away from his nose and plucked a splinter from his cheek, where the wood had raked it.

  “You all saw him strike me,” he said as he scrambled onto his feet. “You saw him strike me in the face.”

  Paltre dropped his hand to his pistol grip, but Cyprien caught him by the wrist.

  “I will have satisfaction,” Paltre spluttered, as he struggled to free his hand.

  “That you will,” the doctor said. He brandished the stove wood, and Paltre, still unable to loose his weapon, quailed away from it.

  “Pistols. I choose pistols,” the doctor said. “Tomorrow at dawn at La Fossette.”

  He let the wood fall clattering from his hand and walked away. Daspir watched him take Nanon’s arm and lead her past the half-restored façade of the Customs House toward the interior of the town.

  “Wait,” Cyprien called. He was still restraining Paltre, and Daspir moved to help him. “Who stands with him? Major, is it you?”

  “Yes,” said Maillart, at parade-ground volume. “I stand second to Doctor Hébert.” With a shock, Daspir perceived that Isabelle had crossed the street to stand beside him.

  “But you must agree that all this, this—an absurdity,” Cyprien blurted.

  “On the contrary,” Maillart boomed. “I find everything in good order. Your comrade will have the satisfaction he requires tomorrow.”

  “But allow us twenty-four hours more,” Cyprien said. “Let tempers cool.”

  “My friend is already cool as the dew,” said Maillart, then stopped to consider. “But I will speak to him. Later tonight, I’ll look for you.”

  “We are in the barracks of the Carénage,” Cyprien said.

  Maillart nodded. He slipped a hand under Isabelle’s elbow and guided her away. There was an old familiarity in the way she fit her step to his. And Daspir had begun to think of Maillart as his friend . . . he did not know what area of his confusion to attend to. Isabelle looked back once, but he could not read her glance, and then Tocquet and Elise had blocked his view, as they too moved off from the dockside. Maybe he had never read a glance of Isabelle’s aright.

  Guizot was crossing the street toward them, his features contorted with concern.

  “What lunacy,” Cyprien began, turning on Paltre. He cut himself off. No one had noticed Leclerc’s boat docking, but now the Captain-General himself had emerged on the quai. As often after private colloquies with his bride, he looked both irritated and sapped of all strength. He brushed down his coattail and frowned at the four captains.

  “What is this disorder?”

  “Captain Paltre.” Cyprien bowed, with a sick smile. “He has . . . a recurrence of his injury.” He waved a hand at Paltre, who had covered his nose with a white handkerchief into which he was vigorously bleeding.

  Leclerc stared at them balefully. “Get him settled, then, and come along to Government House. Don’t tarry.” He marched off, flanked by two of his other adjutants, passing the file of porters who were coming down to retrieve all Pauline’s baggage. From below the dock they could hear her tittering voice as Moustapha and the others pulled and heaved her up the ladder.

  “Come on,” said Cyprien. “Let’s get out of this.”

  They found a tavern a block from the waterfront. For form’s sake Daspir ordered brandy but was quick to accept four cups of clairin in its stead. He had not tasted a real brandy since . . . when? The last of his bottles had been drained in some bivouac on a march he no longer remembered.

  Paltre had stopped bleeding by the time Daspir set the cups down on the table; he sat with his head tilted back against the top rail of his chair, delicately massaging the crushed cartilage of his nose.

  “What the devil did you want to challenge him for?” Cyprien said and gulped at his clairin.

  “He struck me! You saw it, you all did.” Paltre righted his head to speak, and a little blood trickled over the black crust that ringed his left nostril. “He has broken my nose again, I think—God rot him.”

  “Anyone would have struck you, after that remark,” Daspir told him.

  “What I said was only the truth.” Paltre looked at Cyprien. “You remember the wench as well as I do, from Choufleur’s house in ninety-eight. He used to lead her around on a chain, and offer her favors to any who wanted them. She would drink from a bowl on the floor like a dog.”

  “I remember,” Cyprien said. “You’ve made sure her husband remembers it too.”

  “How should I know he had married the bitch?” Paltre snapped. “It’s not an idea that would come to most men.” He snorted, then quickly clapped the handkerchief over a fresh flow of blood from his nose.

  “It must be that I remember Choufleur’s house more clearly than you,” said Cyprien. “I recall most plainly when this doctor came for his woman there. Choufleur challenged him the same as you have done. The doctor threw up a playing card and shot the pips out of it with his pistol. I mean to say, it was the same hand as threw the card that fired the pistol.”

  Guizot exhaled a hollow whistle. Paltre looked palely at Cyprien.

  “I don’t remember that,” he said.

  “Then you must have been blind drunk,” said Cyprien. “I was drunk too, but I’ll never forget it. I never saw such shooting in my life.”

  Paltre folded the bloodstained handkerchief and ran the crease of it through his fingertips. “He is a traitor anyway, your doctor. He was fighting with the rebels at La Crête à Pierrot.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” said Guizot. “He was their prisoner.”

  “So he claimed afterward,” Paltre said. “When your bayonet was at his throat. But I remember him from earlier days, and he was always as thick as molasses with Toussaint—as much as Pascal, certainly, or any of the other collaborators who’ve been deported for it.”

  “You’d stand to be deported yourself,” Cyprien said, “if Leclerc should get wind of this affair of honor.”

  “I?” said Paltre. “Come, what can you mean? Any of that crew around the Cigny house might be sent off well ahead of me. Xavier Tocquet for one—he smuggled guns for Toussaint these last four years and everybody knows it.” He smiled unpleasantly at Daspir. “Just one word in the right ear and your beauty Isabelle would be shipped to France as the harlot she was—consorting with black officers. Oh yes, she entertained them without reserve—and everyone knows that too.”

  Daspir heard the crash like a distant gunshot. It was his own fist that had come down on the clay vessel that had held his rum, and smashed it to a sticky powder. Paltre seemed to be transfixed by Daspir’s gaze, and Daspir felt a hardness in his own eyes he’d never been aware of, something like what Isabelle claimed she had seen, the first night they’d slept together.

  “Look at us,” Guizot said, his voice slightly trembling. “We meant to be good comrades when we came. We were going out just the four of us to bring in Toussaint Louverture—do you not remember? And look at us now, at each other’s throats, and everyone’s.” He pushed up his sleeve to the shoulder, revealing a red-and-white spiraling scar. “I’d have lost my arm, if not for that doctor—and you want to kill him, or make him kill you. Where’s the sense in it?” Guizot shook all over, as if from an ague. “Where’s the good sense of any of this war?”

  “Be careful what you say.” Cyprien leaned forward on his elbows, lowering his tone, as he looked uneasily about himself. Conversation had halted among the other soldiers and sailors in the tavern when Daspir smashed the cup.

  “Guizot is right,” said Paltre. “We oughtn’t to quarrel among ourselves.” He forced a smile toward Daspir. “You’ve spilt your drink,” he said. “Let me buy you another.”

  “All right,” said Daspir. He lifted his fist, unrolled it, and began picking small ceramic shards out of the edge of his palm.

  “Another round,” Paltre called. The tavernkeeper, a griffe who sported three gold rings in his left ear, brought over the jug and a replacement cup. Paltre paid for the rum and also for the
cup Daspir had broken.

  “But I won’t be deported in any case,” Paltre said, when all had drunk. His voice resumed something of its sullenness. “Not with so many good officers dead.”

  “No,” said Cyprien. “You’ll only be buried. Tomorrow at sunrise in La Fossette. Or the day after, if they are willing to wait so long.”

  Paltre looked at him, rolling his cup in his hands.

  “You challenged him,” said Cyprien. “He has the first shot. And I tell you, I saw him put a bullet through the hole of the nine on a nine of clubs.”

  “What’s your solution, then?” said Paltre.

  Cyprien leaned a little forward, setting his fingertips on the tabletop. “Apologize.”

  Paltre let out a hoarse laugh and pushed his chair back. “ Apologize? You must be joking.”

  “Of course,” said Cyprien. “You’d rather die.”

  The doctor had not known that he would act until he came to himself standing over Paltre with the echo of the insult and his reply still ringing in his ears. He didn’t even know how the chunk of stove wood had come to be in his hand, but all of it seemed to be inevitably the outcome of that sense of fatality he’d brought down to the waterfront from Morne Calvaire. He walked homeward, Nanon’s hand clenched in his own, suffused in his feeling of déjà vu. Now she would not look at him. And after all, it would not rain. The wind was dying as the clouds went drifting back over Morne du Cap. He knew the night would be calm and clear.

  At the Cigny house, Nanon retired, complaining of a headache. The doctor poured three fingers of rum in a glass and carried it into the inner courtyard. Here the ash had been plowed under, and there were fresh plantings of hibiscus and the red brushes of Indian ginger—also some shoots of aloe, which Isabelle liked to use on her skin. In twenty minutes’ time he heard the noise of others coming into the house from the street, and presently Maillart’s voice broke the stillness of the evening air.

  “Such a rogue you are for dueling, Antoine.” Maillart carried a bottle of rum, with glasses for himself and Tocquet, who sat down on the stone sill where the doctor was sitting. Maillart poured them each a measure.

  “You have the first shot,” he said. “I do suggest that you spend it well— don’t fire in the air as you did the other time.”

  The doctor fixed him with his eyes. “I don’t intend to.”

  “That’s the spirit.” Maillart frowned into his glass. “In fact they have asked a day’s delay . . . what do you think?”

  “It’s all the same to me,” the doctor said. He set his rum down on the stone, took off his glasses, and polished them on his shirttail. “Well, I don’t know,” he said as he replaced the glasses on his nose. “Really I suppose I’d as soon have it over.”

  “I’d feel the same,” Maillart said. “I am to meet them somewhere tonight. I’ll let them know your preference.”

  Tocquet reached into his shirt and fanned out three crooked black cheroots like a hand of cards. The doctor accepted one of them, though he did not ordinarily smoke. Tocquet struck a light and the three of them put their heads together above the flame.

  “Cyprien and Paltre . . .” Maillart blew a smoke ring toward the darkening sky. “I remember those two cubs from the time of Hédouville. They used to come sniffing around this house, the pair of them. Cyprien looks to have seasoned a bit, but Paltre . . .” He sniffed. “I will not miss him.”

  “Nor I,” said the doctor, and swallowed a cough. The tobacco was making him slightly dizzy. Inside the house a hand bell jingled and Isabelle lightly raised her voice. Maillart lifted his head toward the sound.

  “I believe I’ll look in on the ladies,” he said. He replenished his glass and went indoors.

  The hush of the courtyard where they sat was dotted with calls of the brown doves from the eaves of the houses up and down the street. The sky had darkened to its deepest blue, and the doctor squinted up at the brightening stars as if from the bottom of a well. Tocquet’s large, warm hand settled over the back of his neck.

  “How goes it?”

  “N’ap kenbé.” The doctor used the Creole form that went for either we or you. We’re hanging on.

  “I saw that fellow Descourtilz in town, a week or so ago,” Tocquet said. “He made it sound as if things were a touch difficult at the end, there at La Crête à Pierrot.”

  “Descourtilz was not there at the end,” the doctor said. The sourness of his own tone surprised him. It was as if Descourtilz’s escape had amounted to desertion, though there could be no reason in that judgment.

  “I’m not especially fond of him either,” Tocquet said. “He has done you a service, though, in convincing everyone hereabout that you were both held in that fort by extreme duress. There was some suspicion you were giving aid and comfort to the enemy.”

  The doctor laughed and sipped his rum. Tocquet’s cheroot had made him very giddy.

  “And you?”

  “I take your point,” said Tocquet, releasing his long smile into the dark. “But lately I have been of some use to the Captain-General, in guiding a mission to subdue the rebellion at La Tortue. Besides, Leclerc’s situation is delicate. Between disease and the battlefield, the force he brought with him has been halved, no matter how he may try to conceal it. He must take his friends as he finds them, now.” Tocquet sharpened the coal of his cheroot by rolling it against the edge of the stone sill, and left the ash to powder on the ground. “Leclerc has learned of your value too—you may expect to hear from him, I think.”

  “Yes,” said the doctor. “That saved me at La Crête à Pierrot, and Descourtilz too. Even Dessalines in his worst passion would not kill a doctor there.” He drained his glass. “At the end, I think my worst risk was to finish skewered on a French bayonet.”

  In his mind’s eye appeared unbidden the grubby drawn face of Captain Guizot as he’d first seen it, bearing down on him above the blood-dark, guttered blade. Behind, a whirl of other pictures waited, the vortex into which he fell with every sleep. Tocquet’s hand was still warm between his shoulders, and Tocquet’s eyes were curiously upon him, though the doctor knew he would not speak the question.

  “What can I tell you?” he said. “You know that sort of thing as well as I. You’ve lived it, but you still can’t imagine it.”

  “Well put.” Tocquet’s hand massaged the muscles of the doctor’s neck, then lifted. By now the stars were brighter, and the doctor, looking upward, could piece together the geometry of Perseus and Andromeda.

  “You mean to kill that Captain Paltre, don’t you?”

  “Assuredly,” said the doctor.

  “I know you will defend yourself,” Tocquet said. “And yet I’d thought you would not kill by calculation. Choufleur, for example, was a much more dangerous enemy than Paltre.”

  From the doctor’s mental kaleidoscope emerged the image of Placide Louverture, framed in an embrasure of La Crête à Pierrot, tails of his red mouchwa têt streaming out behind his head as he stooped from the saddle to hack down one or another French infantryman. Evidently his attitude toward taking human life had evolved since the doctor last spoke to him at Ravine à Couleuvre.

  “Perhaps I’ve changed,” he said.

  Tocquet nodded. “You have that right.”

  “Do you disapprove?” The doctor’s cheroot had expired from inattention. He set it down on the sill beside his empty glass.

  “Hardly,” said Tocquet. “I’d have left Paltre dead on the waterfront, had I been in your place.” His cheroot glowed red, close to his face, then faded. “But your ways have never been my ways,” he said. “There are times I feel the slave of my own practices. Perhaps, of the two of us, you are more free.”

  “I didn’t know you thought so,” said the doctor.

  “It just now came to me.” Tocquet dropped the stub of his cheroot and crushed the spark out with the toe of his boot, then raised his nose to the scent of roast pork that wafted out of the house behind them. The brass jingle of the bell sounded once agai
n.

  “Come on,” Tocquet said, getting to his feet. “You’d better feed up— you’ve gone thin as a rail since we last met.”

  Zabeth opened the front door of the Cigny house and held her candle high to illuminate the faces of Daspir and Guizot, who squinted in the sudden flare. With a quick sly smile at Daspir, she stepped aside and beckoned them in.

  “A beauty, that one,” Guizot said, with a somewhat exaggerated connoisseur’s air. Daspir did no more than nod. There was, perhaps, an extra swing in Zabeth’s step as she led them up the stairway toward the second-floor salon, but he thought that Guizot had spoken a little too loudly, and he was aware that Michau had appeared to stand silently in a doorway on the passage below.

  Major Maillart was on his feet the moment Zabeth had opened the door for the two captains, moving quickly to halt them on the threshold. Over his shoulder, Daspir caught a glimpse of Elise and Isabelle sitting together on a striped divan. It might have been a trick of the quavering light, but both of them looked a little guilty, as if they had been caught in some conspiracy. Isabelle’s mouth pulled tight around her teeth and though she had certainly recognized Daspir, there was no particular warmth in her regard.

  “Come, gentlemen,” Maillart was saying. “You need not bring your business here. I would have come to find you, in another hour.” He backed them over the threshold, pulling the door shut behind them. Zabeth had vanished from the scene, but still there was not space enough for the three of them on the narrow landing. Daspir stumbled down to a lower step, and had to catch himself on the rail. He did not at all like the way Maillart’s long shadow loomed over him.

  “Let us go down to the street, shall we?” Maillart said. “The matter is better discussed in the open air.”