Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [149]
The drums went silent. Below, the white woman and the black man seemed hung in a balance, under the oblong of the waning moon, with the damp wind sighing all around them.
“What?” Maillart said. “Do you believe it? All this talk of possession or whatever it may be.”
“Possibly it is only a matter of the words one chooses. ‘Something came over her,’ one might say.” She shook her head slowly. “I did not know her before that time, but they say there was no love lost between her and her husband in those days. She saw no one—he kept her shut up in the country while he pursued his . . . profligacies. So perhaps her action was that of an animal which chews itself free of a snare.” Isabelle wadded the kerchief in her hand, fist clenching over it and relaxing.
“Certainly Arnaud’s reputation was of the very worst,” Maillart said. “On every account—except his horsemanship. He was once brought to law, or near it, for torturing his slaves. And it takes something out of the ordinary to become notorious for cruelty in this place.”
“Yes, there was something of that sort,” Isabelle said. “Whatever it may be, that plantation holds a horror for Claudine, so that she is loath to return there.”
“It is good of you to keep her here.”
“Oh,” said Isabelle, “I do not call it goodness. She fascinates me . . . I mean, her power.”
“I don’t understand you,” Maillart said.
“‘If thy right hand offend thee . . .?’ ” Isabelle flashed her coquette’s smile, her fingers pulsed against his palm. “Power to act on such a precept?”
“But surely that was only her derangement.”
“I don’t know.” Isabelle gazed down over the ruins. “At times she is more than lucid enough. Perhaps not in the company of her peers . . . but when she teaches the little children she is as well reasoned as any convent nun.”
“The children?”
“Yes, she has been catechising the little négrillons hereabouts. She lectures them about BonDyé, and she has the fancy of teaching them their letters, which she acquired, apparently, from that rebel priest who was executed at Le Cap.”
“A harmless fancy, I suppose.”
“Harmless?” Isabelle sniffed. She unfolded her kerchief and snapped it toward the ruins of the house and drive and fountain. “Look for yourself at the harm it has done. Blacks reading books—reading the newspapers. Taking on notions of Liberty. Equality.” Her lips twisted over each word. “Fraternity. Your Toussaint, for example—they say now that he has read Raynal, and Epictetus, and so come to picture himself a black Spartacus come to lead his people to their liberation. A black Moses, possibly.” She let go his hand and hugged herself. “There is madness, if you like.” She stared moodily down at Claudine. “Of course, her black brats pay her little mind. They listen so long as they are amused and then they run away . . .”
“Will she stay dreaming there the whole night through?”
“She is free to do so if she wishes. Let her exercise her freedom. But I am cold, and tired. And irritable, I confess it.” This time the smile she sent him seemed apologetic. “Let us go in.”
Maillart offered his arm once more. They returned to the grand’case with the night breeze blowing through the space between them. She bade him good night with a press of her fingers against his forearm, and he let her go with no more than an inward protest. A puzzle, friendship with a woman. He began to think he might master it. But when he lay down on the shuck mattress, his blood ran around in all directions without settling, so that he wanted to get drunk, or spend himself upon a woman, any woman, white or black or yellow, who might be willing or who even might be forced. He lay wakeful, smothered in the filth of his imaginings. There was a moment when he thought he heard the love cries of Isabelle elsewhere in the house, but when he woke to find Perroud pulling him onto the floor by his heels, he knew it must have been a dream.
Dawn swept tendrils of gray mist around the house like ghostly fingers. Maillart’s horse