Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [145]
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. Everyone 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.