Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [215]
“Gadé,” he cried in a breaking voice. “Gadé sa—sa sé libeté-ou!”
He handed the musket to the nearest man in the crowd and turned to walk within the gate. Paul caught a glimpse of the disarmed grenadier’s perplexed expression before the crowd closed over him. The last plumed helmet passed the gateway, and then the gate was swinging shut. That musket was still passing from hand to hand, exalted in the air above the crowd, with the commissioner’s words repeated: “Look! Look! This—this is your liberty!”
When Paul realized that he had no idea what had become of Angélique, he began to feel afraid. From the height of the cistern he looked all around but caught no sign of her. He jumped down and tried to make his way to the gate where Toussaint had entered with the commissioners, but the crowd carried him in the opposite direction as it dispersed.
Someone trampled on his toes, and as Paul flinched away, he remembered his shoes, and the change of clothes Mami had sent with him—these articles had been left behind at the house they’d left that morning. He had not thought of them, not even the shoes, when Angélique woke him in the night. Now he kept a more careful eye on whatever booted feet came near him as he trotted along with the scattering crowd. It also occurred to him that he could not have found the house he’d fled with Angélique even if he had wanted to.
The current of foot traffic carried him as far as the marché des nègres at the Place Clugny. He swirled around the square among the marketers, letting them jostle him along. It was very crowded. There were fruit and vegetables and coffee from the mountains, fish and butter and cheese and dressed meat and live animals all for sale. A good number of small black children were begging: Ba’m manjé. Give me food. Paul was more parched than hungry but all the comestibles on sale around him awakened his appetite. Standing near one of the begging black boys, he lifted his own hands for charity, but the other, jealous of his place, wheeled on him and shoved him away with both hands and knocked him down into the dirt.
As he scrambled to his feet, he heard a cry he recognized. Angélique appeared above the crowd, her face bruised and tear-stained. The Spaniard of the morning was dragging her up into a wagon bed. She opened her mouth to shriek another protest, but the Spaniard slapped it shut. A few people glanced up briefly at the scene, and as quickly turned their eyes away. The Spaniard pushed her down against the side rails, and as the wagon wheels began to turn, they disappeared from Paul’s view.
He ran. His throat was swollen, so that he breathed with difficulty. He was running downhill from the market square, full tilt and blind till a stitch in his side halted him and he doubled over, sucking wind. He staggered another block and a half and emerged onto the waterfront. A porter narrowly missed his head with a swinging hook and cursed him as he passed. Paul ducked under the belly of a passing oxcart, dodged the rear wheel, and came up on the breakwater. A broken hogshead was wedged among the stones and he crawled into it to hide himself. Although his throat was choking with tears, he was too tired to cry; instead he slept.
Red light was bleeding through the broken barrel staves when he awoke. He limped the length of the quay and came at last to the fountain beyond the Customs House. There he drank, and washed his face and wet his hair. For a little time he felt calm, and empty. Then a knot of hunger struck his stomach like a rope’s end. He walked into the town through the gathering dark, drawn forward by the smell of roasting corn. In the darkness beside a lighted doorway