Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [191]
“Deliver these . . . persons to me.”
Riau snapped to attention, clicking his heels smartly (Maillart had painstakingly taught him this gesture). He took the paper and left the room without a word. A woman carrying the tray of rum and water stepped out of his way, then entered through the open door and set the tray down on the table.
Toussaint gave Christophe a contemplative look and unfolded his long fingers toward the empty chair at his right.
“Well done, mon fils,” he murmured.
Christophe sat down. Toussaint poured some rum into the glass meant for Riau and passed it to Christophe. With a glance he indicated that Maillart might serve himself. The captain did so, but the flush of warmth in his gullet only increased his agitation. He watched Toussaint pour two fingers of rum into a glass and take a conservative sip. This was strange. It was almost unknown for Toussaint to take spirits.
Maillart could not stop his pacing, he could not, at last, stop his own tongue. Toussaint and Christophe sat motionless as figures in a painting. The captain thought his head would burst.
“My general,” he said. “Shall I call for the horses? Make ready the cavalry?”
Toussaint stirred from his reverie and looked up at him interrogatively.
“Will we not ride at once?”
Laboriously, Toussaint drew out his watch and opened the case, took note of the time and put the watch away again.
“It will soon be night,” Toussaint said.
“Yes, but—” Maillart spluttered. Save for his most insouciant enemies, the whole colony knew by now Toussaint’s capacity for moving his forces long distances at great speed by either day or night.
“Control yourself!” Toussaint said, the sharpness of his tone a rebuke. “I know of your affection for the Governor-General. He has not been harmed—he will not be.”
Maillart stood rigid with embarrassed anger. From the corner of his eye he saw, through the window, the reddened sun lowering over the sea. Toussaint pushed his left palm toward the floor.
“Doucement,” he said, nearly a whisper. “Doucement alé loin.”
Toussaint’s favorite proverb. The softest way goes farthest. Maillart had heard it many times. He watched Toussaint’s hovering hand. The fingers flexed, drifting like feathers over the humid air. The captain exhaled and felt part of the pressure drain from him.
“Before we strike with the sword,” Toussaint said, “let us see what the pen may accomplish.” He glanced from Maillart’s face to the writing implements. The captain sat down heavily and picked up a pen.
“We write,” Toussaint pronounced carefully, “to the municipality au Cap.” He tilted back, lacing his fingers behind his cloth-wrapped head, and drew in his breath to begin dictation. But of a sudden he rocked forward and looked at Maillart keenly.
“La patience,” he said. “If you have patience, my captain, you will deliver this letter yourself.”
Reclining on the litter of thatch palm that covered the floor of his cell, Laveaux listened to the rasp and whistle of his breathing. Each inhalation was a shaft of pain. When he had his wind back, he went to the slot in the door and demanded to see his doctor, but no one responded. He had had no contact with anyone except when a single, surly presentation of stale water, cold ham and dried-out cornbread was brought to him.
Through the grille which communicated with the next cell, there was only Perroud, transfixed with fear. Even in his fitful sleep he moaned and pled with phantom executioners. Laveaux, whose own mental clarity was disrupted by pain and the initial symptoms of a fever, began to consider that the other man’s terror might be rationally founded. False charges had been bruited about, that Laveaux, in his favor toward the newly freed blacks of the colony, had turned against all the gens de couleur and perhaps even planned their extermination. All this was untrue, a very tissue of lies, but if he should be brought before a mulatto court . . . To perfect his usurpation of power, Villatte must do away with Laveaux altogether, with anyone who might contradict