Master of the Crossroads

by Madison Smartt Bell

  “Kouté, monchè,” I said, and he looked up. “Listen, man, maybe I can help you find this woman.”

  The doctor’s face came quick and alert. He heard, and he was interested, but he did not yet know if he ought to believe.

  15

  The color of day was just beginning to fade from the sky as Governor-General Laveaux’s party of inspection rode out of the mountains from Marmelade onto the plain called Haut de Trou. As they reached level ground, the men urged their horses into a trot. Captain Maillart rode in the van, between Laveaux and his ordonnateur, Henri Perroud. They were all just sufficiently saddle weary that conversation had stopped among them some time before, but at the same time they were all reasonably content.

  Trotting briskly, they soon overtook a file of four black women coming from the Rivière Espagnole, each balancing a jug of water on her head. Maillart reined up to ask them the way to Habitation Cigny. The second woman in the line grinned up at him and said that they were already in the outlying carrés of that plantation. The ox cart up the road she pointed to would lead them to the main compound, the grand’case and the mill.

  Maillart spurred and caught up with his companions. The ox cart, which carried a half-dozen men with their hoes, slowed their pace to a walk, but there was no need for haste anymore, as they were assured of reaching shelter before night. Besides, the whole region covered by the Cordon de l’Ouest had been more or less at peace ever since Toussaint had joined forces with the Republican French.

  Rolling his head back to loosen his stiff neck, Maillart caught a glimpse of two crows winging across the paling sky to a fringe of trees at the field’s edge. One called out liquidly and the other carried something writhing in its beak. Below the crows’ path of flight the field was sparsely grown up in spindly cane stalks, or cleared in patches for fresh planting. Maillart noticed now that the men in the ox cart were seated on small bundles of fresh-cut cane.

  The cart rumbled over the bare ground of the main compound, passing the grand’case to go on toward the small stone cane mill beyond it. The big house hardly lived up to that name, being no more than a single-story plank building, raised a few feet off the ground, with a porch in front of thatched palm leaves. Beneath this shelter two white women and a man in French uniform sat around a table. As Laveaux’s party rode in, one of the women moved out from the roof of the porch and stopped, shading her eyes with one hand to watch their arrival. She was small, dark-haired, dressed in white. Maillart felt his heart rise up to greet her, but he wheeled his horse to the side and dismounted behind Perroud and Laveaux, so that the Governor-General might be the first to greet their hostess. Laveaux bent over her hand, murmuring.

  “Madame Cigny, I am absolutely enchanted . . .”

  “Mais Monsieur Général, the pleasure is mine . . .”

  Then Isabelle swung lightly around to kiss her fingers toward Maillart, her dark eyes gleaming. He smiled and bowed to her from where he stood. The uniformed man had come out from the shade of the thatched porch, and Maillart saw that he was a black officer, a fine specimen too, tall and lithe, with glossy skin as black as oil, and features proudly chiseled.

  “Joseph Flaville,” Isabelle pronounced, and beckoned him nearer to her side. Flaville acknowledged Laveaux with a salute, but he did not offer this courtesy to Maillart. The captain drew back, searching Flaville’s face for intentional insolence, but when he looked at the epaulettes he took in that the black man’s rank was higher than his own. He inclined his head in a movement which was not quite a bow, and to cover his confusion led his horse away toward the stables, following a couple of barefoot grooms who had just come out.

  The others were already at table when Maillart, after a contrived delay, returned to the grand’case. Isabelle motioned him toward an empty seat opposite Claudine Arnaud, then turned to continue what she had been saying to Laveaux. Maillart registered Claudine’s presence with a start.

  “. . . you find us very rustic here of course—this plantation was not meant for a real residence—but as our town house is for the moment unavailable . . .” Isabelle looked pointedly from Laveaux to Perroud and back. “One can do no better.” She threw up her little hands gaily and laughed.

  “But I find it perfectly charming here,” Laveaux said. “Of course, a lady of your grace would bring charm to the very worst desolation. But here it is absolutely . . .”

  Laveaux looked across the yard, where a trio of brown hens were flying up to roost in the branches of a lone mango tree. Maillart studied his manner, knowing the compliments were formulaic, empty of intention. No romantic adventurer he, though women liked him.

  “. . . flourishing,” Laveaux concluded, and turned his smile to meet Isabelle’s.

  “Well, you exaggerate in all particulars,” Isabelle said, tapping the back of Laveaux’s hand with her forefinger, “though you are kind.” She grew serious as she looked out over the darkening fields. The hens clucked in the lower branches of the mango tree.

  “And yet,” she said thoughtfully, “things do go better here than one would have expected . . . Well, my husband could tell you more of the matter, but regrettably he is absent, au Cap—that business of our town house, you know.”

  Again she looked significantly from Laveaux to Perroud. Maillart shifted restively in his chair, wishing she would not press the point so. Of a sudden an electric thrill ran up his leg, for a slippered foot had pressed against his calf. He looked across the table at Madame Arnaud, but no, it was impossible; she was in a reverie so deep and dismal she had no notion of the company surrounding her. Again he felt the subtle pressure. Isabelle was turned from him, concentrating on Laveaux, but that meant nothing. He could remember a dinner at the oft-mentioned Cigny town house when Isabelle had kicked off her little shoe and let her foot walk over his lap and trouser buttons, her toes working dextrously as fingers, and yet all the while she kept up her banter with her husband and his guests . . .

  “But truly,” she was saying now. “All credit is due to your General Toussaint and to his officers—such as our most excellent Major Flaville.”

  Isabelle looked toward the black officer, who inclined his head without speaking.

  “Since the good General Toussaint has covered us with his protection,” she said, “there have been no outrages. Under his authority some cultivators have returned to the fields, and even to the mill. Oh, I know little of these matters, but I can say that my husband was able to take two wagons of brown sugar to Le Cap when he went there.”

  Maillart tensed, but she did not mention the town house a third time.

  “For the moment we have not the skilled hands to refine the white,” she said. “But we have peace, at least for the moment— grâce à vos officiers. And with peace, prosperity may return.”

  “Madame, you gratify my hopes, even as you do me honor,” Laveaux said. He shifted his attention to Claudine. “But tell me, Madame Arnaud, how is it with your properties?”

  All this while Madame Arnaud had been looking through and beyond the other parties to the conversation, holding herself peculiarly erect. She turned to Laveaux when he addressed her, her head moving smoothly but with a strange fixity—like an owl’s head revolving, Maillart thought with some discomfiture. Her eyes too suggested some bird of prey.

  “God has said that this land must lie fallow,” she said. Her voice was husky, and surprisingly sweet. “This earth has given birth to monsters, yet they must be slain and sacrificed and the earth be watered with their blood, be nourished by the ashes of their bones. So for seven days and seven hours and for four hundred years. Four hundred years! Babylon tonbé . . . This has been written on the sky with fire.”

  Laveaux sat arrested, leaning slightly forward with his lips parted and one empty hand hanging in the air. Maillart glanced over at Flaville, who was listening to Claudine’s speech with evident interest but no sign of surprise or dismay. Claudine turned her gloved hands up on the table and looked down at them with her glittering eyes. Everyon
e else’s gaze was drawn to the left hand with its empty glove finger pinned to the palm.

  “One may be maimed in the body and pass on the right side of the throne,” she said intently, as if reciting, or reading from her palms. “They who are maimed in the spirit will be hurled into the pit with the goats—there they will be burned to cinders, but the fire does not consume.”

  Isabelle leaned sideways to cover Claudine’s hands with her own. She turned them palm down and stroked their backs lightly with her fingertips. Claudine’s stiff neck and back suddenly collapsed, and her head lolled. A handful of her lank and lusterless hair detached itself from her careless coiffure and hung partway across her face.

  “Ma pauvre,” Isabelle murmured, and glanced up at Laveaux. “My poor Claudine insists on carrying water to the fields at midday . . . to serve the men who work the cane.”

  “What, herself?” Laveaux relaxed against his chair back.

  “Yes, she says that God has ordained it. Or some priest, in her memory. Of course, the sun is quite too much for her at that hour and so at evening her thoughts become disordered for a time.”

  A black woman in a cotton smock had appeared behind Claudine’s chair, where she stood impassively waiting.

  “Her husband’s plantation is on the Plaine du Nord—” Isabelle said, still stroking Claudine’s hands. She had leaned across Maillart to do so, and he could smell the tang of her perspiration under a trace of perfume.

  “Not so very far from here,” Isabelle went on, “but still it was more completely devastated. Not a stick left standing, as I understand. But Monsieur Arnaud is there as we speak, and he may make a restoration—thanks to your protection.” This time she looked meaningfully from Laveaux to Flaville. Then, at Isabelle’s nod, the black woman pulled back Claudine’s chair, and Claudine rose and mutely allowed herself to be led into the house.

  “Her suffering has been very great,” Isabelle told Laveaux. “I shall not enter into the particulars—”

  “No, of course.” Laveaux waved a hand.

  “—but she finds it unbearable to return to her husband’s plantation, at least in its present state, so I have offered her my roof.”

  The black woman returned carrying a plate of roasted goat meat ringed with peppers. Another house servant followed with a platter of sweet potatoes.

  “Our nourishment may be coarse but at least it is plentiful,” Isabelle said. “Thanks be to God. And this particular goat has not been hurled into the fires of hell but only into the boucan,” she smiled thinly, “or so we may hope. Bon appetit.”

  For the remainder of the meal, Isabelle was comparatively subdued, while Laveaux quizzed Flaville on local military dispositions and the state of supply. The black officer’s replies were courteous, with no hint of servility. Maillart was aware of his intelligence, as well as a rather unmartial air of inner calm that had disconcerted him before among the black military colleagues recently thrust upon him. Flaville’s French was adequate, and his manner of speaking lost no dignity when sometimes he lapsed into Creole. Isabelle watched and listened to him with an uncharacteristically quiet attention. No more sallies of her toe beneath the table. . . . Maillart reflected that he had never understood her, and that he never would. He took this thought to bed with him, and found that he slept poorly.

  The sound of a door closing somewhere in the house woke him completely. Across the dark room, Perroud snored tranquilly enough. Maillart turned over and pounded the shucks in his mattress tick, but could not settle. Isabelle had not exaggerated the rusticity of the situation, he reflected, so far as these accommodations were concerned. He put on his trousers and shirt and went outside.

  Moonlight washed over the compound, and the air was fresh and surprisingly cool. A white-robed figure was moving away from the house and around the corner, toward the cane mill. Whoever it was walked in an oddly stiff way, arms fixed to the sides as if bound there. Curious, Maillart moved to follow. Behind him, another voice spoke.

  “So, you too are restless . . .”

  He turned to see Isabelle Cigny stepping out from the thatched roof of the porch. She wore a peignoir light enough to catch the moonlight, with a darker shawl about her shoulders, against the mountain chill. A kerchief was bound over her head.

  “Walk with me,” she said, and moved nearer to take Maillart’s arm. The captain moved with her automatically, letting himself be led. A tingle moved from his elbow to his spine, a sensation foreign to him, unlike the usual desire. In the jungled hills above the plantation began the hollow tap of a drum. Ahead, the person in the white robe disappeared behind a rise of ground. Maillart and Isabelle followed the same path.

  Beyond the cane mill, the rise crested and on the other side gave way to a long, gentle slope. Maillart halted and caught his breath.

  “Did you not say this place had never been meant for a residence?”

  Isabelle sighed. “But this side of the hill is not Habitation Cigny. Here was Habitation Reynaud, my father’s seat.”

  Maillart pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth. Near the top of the knoll where they stood was the scorched foundation of a magnificent house, overgrown now with vines and wild shrubbery. The white-clad figure of Claudine Arnaud had passed this point, and wandered on to the generous oval drive, in whose center was a dark, oily pool with a toppled fountain. The drive let into a long boulevard, arrow-straight between the stumps of palms. The trees must have been very tall, but they had all been hacked down, and partly consumed by fire.

  “My God,” Maillart said. “What losses.”

  “Oh,” said Isabelle, “I took it all for granted when I was a girl—while my father lived. And after . . . it was the life of the town I thought I wanted. And of course Cigny is more a man of affairs than a planter. I meant to bring my children here one day, but then . . . it is as you see.”

  He felt her shiver. Her hand tightened on the hollow of his elbow, then eased its hold. In the cleft of the hills above, that single wandering drum they had been hearing gathered itself in a more urgent rhythm and was joined by another. The fine hairs prickled on the back of the captain’s neck. He had come to associate night drumming with dawn attacks.

  “Major Flaville has them all well in hand,” Isabelle said, as if responding to his thoughts.

  “You seem on very close terms with that officer,” Maillart replied, and at once regretted the sullenness he heard in his own tone.

  “Some allies are chosen of necessity,” Isabelle said. “A military principle, is it not? For the nonce Flaville is the chief authority in these parts, and without him no one would come to the fields . . . they would only work in their own gardens—if they worked at all.” She shook her head above the ruins below. “We must recover some life for ourselves here, especially so long as the house in town is—”

  Maillart turned to face her, inadvertently breaking her light grasp on his elbow. “I meant to tell you, you mustn’t press Laveaux about the house,” he said. “The situation at Le Cap is very difficult just now.”

  “Oh,” said Isabelle, “I would not abuse your kindness. If not for you—”

  “Never mind that,” Maillart said, and placed his hand palm-out against the moist air between them. It was true that he had spent much of his credit with Laveaux on arranging the Cignys’ safe return to their properties in the northern province. This credit had been considerable, given Laveaux’s astonished gratitude at Toussaint’s shift of allegiance to the French Republicans. Of course, the prize was not a mean one either, for in the ordinary course of things, émigrés and other partisans of the ancien régime were liable to be executed.

  “Only listen,” he said now. The drums shifted rhythm and intensified, forcing an urgency into his words he did not fully intend. “It is this very question of the houses at Le Cap which is causing so much unrest among les gens de couleur there. Governor-General Laveaux was so long immured at Port-de-Paix that the mulattoes erected their own little kingdom in Le Cap, under Villatte (who I
admit to be a capable officer) and a few others.”

  “I have heard of Villatte.” Isabelle nodded. “Joseph is in correspondence with him from time to time.”

  Maillart noted this “Joseph” with a certain pique, and remembered that when they’d arrived that afternoon she’d presented Flaville by his first name rather than his rank. Perhaps it was only the Creole dame’s familiarity with her servant. He told himself it was unimportant, and went on.

  “Understand that the mulattoes have rebuilt most of those houses at their own cost, when the town was burned in ninety-four. And unfortunately they have since made themselves very much at home. More recently, since Laveaux has shifted the seat of government from Port-de-Paix, Perroud has been taxing them to pay rent on those houses.”

  “Indeed,” said Isabelle.

  “As for myself, I share your sentiments entirely,” Maillart said. “But from the governmental standpoint these are sequestered properties, and the financial situation is near desperation too. But in any case the mulattoes have been most unwilling to pay. I would not speak of revolt, exactly, but I tell you I was happy enough to leave the town for this tour of the Cordon de l’Ouest . . . so I must urge you, do not press Laveaux . . .”

  “Or I might find myself hanged for an émigrée.” Isabelle’s ironic smile flashed, then faded. “I suppose I must congratulate myself that the guillotine was not successful here—owing to the tender sensibilities of our blacks.” She laid her hand across the hollow of her throat.

  Maillart looked at the fragile gold chain that crossed her collarbone, and thought involuntarily of the stone member of the carved pendant which must now be concealed beneath her hand and the fabric of her gown.

  “Don’t think me ungrateful,” Isabelle said gravely. “I understand very well how much you’ve done for us.” Surprisingly, she reached for his free hand, and held his fingertips lightly in her own.

  “But tell me,” she said. “Do you know who occupies our house?”