Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [212]
When he riveted the collar around her neck again, Nanon did not try to run or resist. She sat demurely on the edge of the bed with her head lowered and her hands folded in her lap. Choufleur did not assault her afterward. He seemed abashed, ashamed. He stood up without looking at her directly and said that he must take the coffee down to Fort Dauphin and that he did not know for certain when he could return.
When he had left the room, Nanon lowered herself down to lie curled on her side. Distantly she heard the sounds of the donkey train receding down the trail on the brink of Trou Vilain. Then nothing, only the chittering of insects, the short harsh cry of the malfini. The jalousies were shut and the lines of light climbed around the walls with the passing of the hours of the day. Her mouth was dry and her tongue swollen, but though she could see the pitcher of water he had left on the armoire, she did not have the will to get up and fetch it.
When the knocking began on the bedroom door, she ignored it. It stopped, began again, stopped again. A voice called, then left off calling. Silence. Then the door swung open.
Salomon. The sacatra was tall and gangly, with a long, bony jaw and great hollow eye sockets that stood out like spectacles. He carried his head at a strange stiff angle, as if his neck were frozen. Nanon had always thought him exquisitely ugly. She was dressed, but he could see that she was chained to the bed. Like any man, he would be drawn to molest and abuse the helpless thing. She did not think she would be much affected.
His whole face worked with some strange emotion. She saw his jaw muscles knot and slacken, as if he were chewing something he could not swallow. He came to the bed as she had expected, but he did not touch her, except to take her two hands in his own.
“Ma chère,” he began, then stopped, coughed, and shook his awkward head. “My dear, slavery is finished in this country.”
Nanon did not reply to this, though she recognized that his words came from her dream.
“Wait here,” Salomon said.
Where would I go? Nanon thought when he had gone out. The idea came near to amusing her.
Salomon came back with the hammer and spike. Cursing steadily in a low voice, he knocked the rivet out of its joints. Then he opened the collar and lifted it away.
Nanon stood up and walked toward the open doorway, arresting herself where the chain’s limit had taught her to stop. Her fingers trailed around the chafings of the collar on her throat.
“No,” she said. “It is not finished.”
Then she turned from the door and came back to the bed. She took up the collar and held it for a moment, then closed it around her neck and signaled Salomon with her eyes that he must fasten it back as it had been before.
22
There were three little black boys close to Paul’s own age at the house where Choufleur had left him, and two older colored girls of twelve or thirteen. All six of them slept in a little shed in the enclosure opposite the house, in the same room, in the same pile, like puppies. Paul whimpered a little, in the dark. His first night camping on the road with Choufleur, he had cried outright for his mother, for he’d never slept apart from her, but Choufleur pinched him till he stopped. Each night afterward he swallowed the tears when he felt them coming, as quietly as ever he could. But tonight he must have snuffled audibly, for Angelique, the twelve-year-old griffone, arched an arm across the heap of sleeping children and ran her fingers lightly up and down his back until he relaxed and slept with the rest.
In the daytime the two girls worked in the house, but the little boys were mostly left to themselves. Sometimes they might be assigned a chore, but no one seemed to monitor