Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [132]
“Doucement,” Tocquet said to Arnaud. “Don’t hurry, don’t show fear, and don’t look directly at anything you see.”
Slowly they moved behind the retreating Spanish column, down the alley beside the church. Arnaud walked beside his wife to steady her in the saddle. Bazau led the riderless horse ahead and Tocquet strolled beside him, his Spanish cattleman’s hat pulled low over his eyes.
The Spanish column turned sharply to the left, marching down toward the harbor and its forts. Arnaud’s every instinct summoned him to follow, but Tocquet shook his head. “They’ll leave us locked outside the gate,” he said. “Come on, this way.”
There was gunfire now, sporadically audible from the square behind them, along with war cries of the blacks and screams of the slaughtered. Arnaud could not make out if these sounds were coming nearer. Then a hideous, desperate shriek erupted immediately behind him, as if from the ground over which he’d just passed. He made to look over his shoulder but stopped himself before he’d seen anything. He fastened his gaze on a sweat stain at the back of Tocquet’s shirt. The ululating cry was suddenly cut off by a thunk and crunch, an exhalation. In its aftermath Arnaud thought he heard the sound of someone weeping. Claudine twisted her torso in the saddle and looked back at whatever was there to see, her eyes arid and crystalline, like two chips of salt. Arnaud’s intestines went into a gelid knot. What Tocquet had said now seemed to Arnaud an article of faith—to look in the wrong direction meant certain death. He dug his fingers into his wife’s thigh until she reacted and turned forward again.
They swung into the Rue Bourdon. It was calm here, no sign of any disturbance yet; there was even birdsong from the enclosed arbors around the houses. A man in the uniform of a Spanish lieutenant stood in the arched doorway of an eight-foot-high stone wall, looking in their direction. Tocquet approached him but in no great haste. The lieutenant made to shut the door, but Tocquet said something to him in Spanish. Arnaud made out only the phrase por favor, but spoken without urgency or pleading. Tocquet and the Spaniard conferred in the doorway, their voices low. Arnaud began helping Claudine down from her horse. At the far end of the street a mob of howling blood-stained blacks appeared. Arnaud’s guts twisted again. He would not look at them.
He stared at the back of Tocquet’s shirt, and over his shoulder saw the Spaniard shaking his head no (this word distinctly audible); he started to close the door again, but suddenly his whole manner changed. He laid a friendly hand over Tocquet’s shoulder, and his expression softened, slackened. The door swung inward and Tocquet crossed the threshold, seeming to support the Spaniard, who leaned into him as if overcome with dizziness or heatstroke . . . Arnaud led Claudine through the doorway. He was watching the Spaniard’s face over Tocquet’s shoulder, the mouth open in a round of surprise. A little blood ran out from the corners, then Tocquet disengaged himself and Arnaud saw that his right sleeve was blood-soaked to the elbow, and then he saw the foot-long dirk in his right hand. The Spaniard knelt, then stretched out face down on the flagstones of the paved enclosure.
Around the edges of the wall were planted hibiscus and other flowering shrubs; there was even a fountain whose stream tinkled through a couple of broken red-clay jugs. A cool shaded gallery ran lengthwise toward the corner of the house’s ell, where now a door popped open: another Spanish officer came out, calling hoarsely and moving half at a run. Tocquet had his back turned, closing the door, saying something to Bazau, who still stood outside