Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [17]
Dinner was soupe à giraumon, followed by barbecued goat with hot peppers, brown peas and rice and chunks of yam. No wine, but a carafe of cool spring water and a bottle of rum stood on the table, along with a pitcher of lemonade. Between serving the courses Elise and Nanon sat and ate with the men; Zabeth had withdrawn to the kitchen. The two children had eaten beforehand and were playing on the gallery. Sophie, nearly four years old, came frequently to pluck at Elise’s skirt and prattle. A plate of sliced mangoes was served for dessert and the little girl took bits of it, birdlike, from her mother’s fork. Paul, the younger child, had just learned to pull himself to his feet; he crab-walked from one baluster of the gallery rail to the next. Whenever he reached the stairs by this route Nanon must jump up to restrain him from tumbling away into the dark.
Conversation was often thus interrupted, and was desultory in any case. The doctor noticed that Pinchon’s garrulity was curbed by his appetite; he ate like one who’s been on short rations for some time. When dinner was done, Elise and Nanon went into the house with the children. Zabeth cleared the plates, and when she had finished, Captain Vaublanc produced a greasy pack of cards from his coat pocket.
“Join us,” he said to the table at large, as he began to shuffle.
Tocquet twisted his long hair back over his left shoulder, leaning into the candle to light his cigar. “Not at such stakes,” he said as he settled back, exhaling.
Vaublanc grunted, unsurprised. His glance passed over the doctor and stopped on Pinchon.
“Eh, I find myself a little out of pocket,” Pinchon said. “If the gentlemen would accept my note . . .”
“But of course,” said Vaublanc, nodding toward some smudged sheets of accounting which Captain Maillart had just then spread across the table. “Our own notes are . . . most detailed.”
Pinchon squinted at the papers, blanched, and retreated. “Bien, c’est trop cher pour moi,” he said. Too rich for my blood.
“As you wish,” said Maillart with glum resignation. “Though it’s tedious with only two.”
For a moment it was silent except for the cards snapping on the table. The three nonparticipants watched the play. Tocquet poured himself a half-measure of rum and sipped it slowly while he smoked. Vaublanc and Maillart were gambling for scraps of paper, each inscribed with the name of a slave. The game had been going on in this way for some weeks. Doctor Hébert had no idea how Captain Maillart had first staked himself to it, for he had few assets other than the army commission he had thrown over (as Vaublanc had his own) when news came from France of the King’s execution. But Maillart was either the more skillful or more fortunate player, and by this time he had to his credit almost half of the six hundred slaves which Vaublanc, nephew of a wealthy planter of Acul, could claim as his eventual inheritance. Of course the Acul plantation had been burned to the ground in the first insurrection of 1791 (like everything else on the northern plain), its buildings razed, and its slaves scattered who knew where? The officers might as well have been playing for beans or buttons; the doctor thought that Maillart understood this principle well enough, though he could not have said as much for Vaublanc, with whom he was less intimate. It was probable that at least some of the slaves of that Acul plantation were now serving as foot soldiers right here in Toussaint’s army.
Tocquet emptied the last swallow from his glass and rose. Without taking leave, he walked barefoot down from the gallery into the yard. Starlight silvered his loose white shirt, and his cigar head glowed and shrank in the darkness.
Pinchon pulled at the doctor’s elbow and steered him away from the table. “Un homme un peu farouche, celui-là,” he said, looking toward the diminishing glow of Tocquet’s cigar. A wild man, that one.
“If he gambles he prefers