Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [122]
She collected herself and went out to the gallery. Tocquet held Sophie on his hip, supporting her back with one hand and brushing back dark curls from her face with the other.
“But when will he come back?” the child insisted.
Tocquet looked at her seriously, straight into her eyes, which resembled his own.
“He will not be coming back,” Tocquet said. “He has gone away with his mother.”
Sophie wailed, and pressed her damp face into the open throat of Tocquet’s shirt. He patted her back, in rough rhythm with her sobs, and when she began to trail off into hiccups, he handed her over to Zabeth, who had been standing by. Frowning, he walked through the doorway into the house, passing Elise as if she were transparent and invisible.
Her heart contracted like a fist, went rigid and refused to relax. She knew instantly that he had heard all she’d said to Nanon, and that he judged her for it. A sick feeling swelled in the back of her throat. She followed him into the bedroom.
“But all I did I meant for the best . . .”
She could not keep that detestable whining tone from her own voice. Tocquet turned toward her, his belt knife naked in his hands. Elise knew well enough he had killed people with it. The knife never strayed more than a foot from his fingers, and sometimes its proximity had given her an illicit thrill. Now she felt only a miserable dullness when she looked at the grayed flat of the blade and the bright edge where it was honed.
Tocquet opened and tilted his hand and the knife poured from it, falling to lodge its point in a floorboard, its haft lightly trembling.
“Don’t curse me,” Elise said weakly.
“You’ll curse yourself.” He turned away from her, toward the mirror.
Elise’s legs failed her. She sat down on the edge of the bed. She could not speak, or form a sentence in her mind. Tocquet squinted into the mirror, concentrating as he tied up his hair at the back with a leather thong. Then he swung round, scooped up the knife from the floor, and sheathed it under his shirt tail as he straightened.
“I will be going to Dajabón,” he said, without looking at her, “to buy tobacco there.”
He went out. Elise sank sideways onto the unmade bed, drawing her knees up toward her chin. Outside she heard his voice calling for Gros-jean and Bazau. A chill pervaded her body and bones, though the day was swelteringly hot. She fingered the hem of the mussed top sheet, without the will to draw it over herself. From outside the house came the cries of birds, and presently the sound of hoofbeats as the three men rode away.
13
A rutted, muddy track ran toward Fort Dauphin and the Spanish border, across the coastal plain. Tocquet and his two retainers rode eastward. For the first several miles the road was screened by trees and shrubbery, wild bush or citrus hedges gone half wild, but then the undergrowth fell away, leaving a long unobscured view on either side. To the north, a flat, swampy, near-featureless plain stretched to the blue haze of ocean at the horizon line. Southward, the same flat land unrolled to the sudden steep eruption of the mountains of La Chaîne de Vallière.
With such wide, clear fields of view in all directions, they could have seen any sign of a threat long before it could reach them. At the same time, they could as easily be seen themselves, and there was nowhere for them to hide or flee. This point impressed itself on Tocquet without causing him any immediate discomfort, though he ordinarily preferred mountain country—terrain he well understood how to use to his advantage. But for the moment the plain was clear, deserted. All cultivation looked to have been abandoned, and although rumor had it, at Le Cap, that this whole area was roamed by large, fierce bands of insurgent blacks, there