Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [177]
“Ki problém yo?” he asked shortly as they strode toward the irritable crowd. What is their problem?
“Yo pa vlé travay.” Quamba shrugged. They don’t want to work.
Arnaud stood with his cane cocked in his right hand, as if he would strike the commandeur, who faced him, just a step or two out of reach. Arnaud’s concentration was so narrow that he seemed unaware of the others’ approach. Maillart could not make out what the black man was saying—there were too many voices grumbling at once—but he saw Arnaud toss the cane deftly from right hand to left and with the same motion draw a double-barreled pistol from beneath his shirttail. In the abrupt silence, his voice rang clear.
“Pull me down if you have the heart for it,” he declared. “You may tear me limb from limb, but first, I tell you, some of you will die.”
The silence held, and after a moment Maillart was moved to shout out, “Kité nou pasé!” Let us pass . . . Several of the blacks at the rear of the throng turned to take note of Quamba and Guiaou, who held their muskets at the present-arms position. A corridor opened in the crowd, and Maillart beckoned to Arnaud, who walked slowly to join them, his cane trailing and his pistol pointed to the sky.
“Doucement,” the captain advised. “We must not look like running.”
“Of course,” Arnaud answered. They were backing up, with maximal dignity, weapons still at the ready. The crowd of blacks was scattering into smaller knots, which moved as if to flank them. When the moment seemed right for them to turn, the captain was astounded to find himself facing Claudine Arnaud, upright and rigid and staring like an angry hawk, with Isabelle a pace behind her, holding onto her elbow.
“What the devil are you doing here?” the captain snapped.
“I could not restrain her,” Isabelle said, with an ill-tempered flush of her own. “I could not let her come alone.”
Maillart sniffed. But he had noticed that those little knots of angry blacks approached no nearer, and perhaps it was the figure of Claudine which held them back.
Unmolested, the little party reached the lower mouth of the trail to the house, and began climbing, with Maillart, Quamba and Guiaou bringing up the rear. Flaville’s men, the captain noticed, had vanished altogether.
“Give me a whip and the right to use it,” Arnaud puffed as they gained the porch. He laid down his pistol and propped his cane against the table edge—both hands gripped emptiness as he spoke. “I would peg out that insolent black bastard and flog him till the bones showed through—I’d put a stop to this rebellion—”
“Sir, you would be dismembered after,” said the captain, with a significant glance at Quamba and Guiaou. “As you yourself so recently described.”
“True enough,” said Arnaud, looking at his own palms with a certain bewilderment. His shoulders sagged. “The times have changed.”
He beckoned the captain into the house. Isabelle had persuaded Claudine to stretch out on the bed; she had taken off the other woman’s shoes and loosened her clothing and was alternately fanning her, or dabbing at her temples and throat with a damp cloth. Oblivious to this activity, Arnaud passed through to the second room, where he knelt, unlocked one of the chests, and began unpacking arms and ammunition.
Maillart felt his spirits lift a little. “You anticipated this,” he said.
“I would have been a fool if I had not,” Arnaud said. “Come.” He hoisted a stand of weapons and motioned for Maillart to the same.
Arnaud led the way behind the house and up another trail that climbed against the cliff face, to a cleft in the rocks, within convenient reach of the spring. There he set down the guns he carried. Obeying his gesture, Maillart looked out from the cover of a chin-high boulder and saw that he commanded not only the house with the clearing and trail head before it, but also, at a greater distance, the whole compound below. He let his breath out with the hint of a whistle.
“So that is why you moved the house site.”
“One reason among several,” Arnaud