Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [158]
“Now I must tell you how cunningly the father applied salt to the wounds of the son, once the moment was right. At the time of which I speak, Jean-Michel had lately entered his young manhood, while Nanon, whom you are seeking, was a girl of perhaps fifteen. Now, my son knew something of women already, as Maltrot had introduced him to brothels in the towns on the coast. But he knew nothing of love. Nonetheless, he had some capacity for love, as I saw when he and Nanon began to walk together.” Her voice caught slightly. “I may say that if they had been left to their own devices, you might be hearing a different story now, or more likely you would not be hearing it at all.”
“Permettez-moi,” the doctor said, and raised the calabash. Madame Fortier held out her glass to be refilled.
“Thank you,” she said. “Useless to ponder what might have been. The reality of what occurred is that the Sieur de Maltrot had also observed the awakening of interest and affection between my son and the girl Nanon. Perhaps he had already taken note of her beauty, which was then in its first flower. So when the moment seemed most propitious to his purposes, he exercised his seigneurial right—also of course his right of property—to ravish the girl away from my son and make her his own concubine. He used her after his ordinary custom for some weeks at Vallière, very much in our presence though not absolutely before our eyes. Afterward he took her to Le Cap, where he established her as a fille de joie, and where one imagines that you, sir, must have first made her acquaintance.”
“It is true that we first met one another at Le Cap, Madame,” the doctor said.
Madame Fortier had put her head to one side and was looking at him curiously.
“I would argue that we came to one another freely,” the doctor said. “And that her choice in the encounter was still more powerful than my own. Though perhaps you would not believe me, and it may be that I am mistaken, too. But please continue—your story is more than interesting to me.”
“Ah,” said Madame Fortier, and turned her face to the starlit valley. “Well, having carried out these actions, Maltrot perceived that perhaps he had gone too far for his own security, and that Choufleur might murder him outright without regard for the consequence, which consequence would of course have been very dreadful. Whereupon he freed both me and my son. This step surprised both of us very much. You may know that it was the habit of many libidinous blancs to free their slave mistresses and their bastard progeny, often from the moment of their birth, but Maltrot had never given the least sign of any such intention. However, he did free us both. I went away with Fortier, but Maltrot sent Choufleur to France, there to further his education for two years at the expense of his father.”
Madame Fortier took up the snuffbox from her lap and turned it so that it glittered in the light. “Of all I loathed about that man,” she said, “I most detested his manner of taking snuff. For he always used it as a seasoning for some abomination he had devised, before or after, if not both. But he has taken his last pinch.” She opened her knees in a gesture that seemed almost lewd, letting the box fall back into the hollow of her skirts. “His precautions, canny as they were, were not sufficient.” She closed her thighs to hide the box, and rolled her weight toward the doctor. “Tell me, have you looked inside?” Her eyes shone on him strangely. “Do you know what it contains?”
The doctor swallowed. “The amputated sexual member, evidently mummified, of a human male.”
“Why, you are absolutely correct!” Madame Fortier snapped her knees apart so sharply that the tightening skirt fabric catapulted the box