Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [219]
Her brother ought to have been here somewhere, if he was still in the retinue of Toussaint. But she went first to the Cigny town house, for she had learned during Choufleur’s visit that he had established himself there. She gave the door knocker a few noisy, masculine slams, then put her hand on the sword hilt for courage. The person who opened the door was not Choufleur at all, nor any of his retainers either, but her old friend Isabelle Cigny.
Isabelle smiled, swayed and stooped in her half-mocking curtsey—her manner with any strange man. She did not know her, Elise saw, with satisfaction. But in the next instant she saw that Isabelle felt or suspected something. With a flourish she swept off the hat and shook her long blond hair down on her shoulders. Isabelle stood back, gaping, then seized her with both hands and drew her into the house and into a warm embrace.
“We are to thank that half-breed son of the Sieur Maltrot for all this restoration,” Isabelle said, sweeping her hand around her parlor. “The house was burned to its foundation in ninety-three, you know. I cannot complain of the construction, though as for his taste in décor—suffice it to say it is not my own.”
Elise brushed a quantity of dust from her breeches and sat gingerly down on a garishly striped sofa. It was true that the whole room was a gaudy blaze of clashing colors, though the materials were opulent. “Choufleur,” she said. “I had expected to find him installed here . . . though of course I am far happier to find you.”
“My dear,” said Isabelle. “It seems so long ago, that man tried to force his entrée here. He thought to carry on his amours beneath my roof!—and may have done so later on, when the wheel of Destiny raised him up to take possession of this house. But now that wheel has cast him down again.”
“Where has he gone?”
“Of that I know nothing, and care even less. He was supposed to have been here during the mulatto rebellion—up to his neck in it too, I dare say.”
“And with his woman and her child?”
“I could not say. They had all been routed before our return, you understand.”
Elise reached across the coffee table and took hold of Isabelle’s hands. “Listen,” she said, and she began to explain all that she had done and all that she finally hoped to undo. When she had finished, Isabelle disengaged her fingers and sat back.
“But you do not know if Nanon would return,” she said. “And would your brother have her, now?”
“I think he would,” Elise said. “Oh, I don’t know—I understand nothing anymore, except that I have paid too high a price for this propriety. Why did I prize it so? It has cost me my husband’s love, my brother’s good regard, my own child’s happiness. If I could only find that boy—I did not understand the depth of my brother’s attachment to him. I was wrong. To the devil with propriety, I say now—and up with libertinage, if it must be. I don’t know what Nanon would do, or what she ought to do. Only I would unsay the lies I told her, if I could.”
She stopped talking, and both women listened to the tramp of the squad of Toussaint’s soldiers on the street beyond the round-arched, floor-length windows. A voice called an order, and the footsteps passed by and receded.
“Nanon,” Isabelle said softly. “She is far from transparent, I must say.”
“But you speak as if you know her,” Elise said.
“She is not easy for a woman to know,” Isabelle said, “as you might testify yourself, my dear. She has made it her business to suit herself perfectly to the company of men. But she stayed here until the town was burned. Your brother brought her here for shelter. The child you seek was born here, even. Oh my dear, there is so very much you have not been told.”
“Is my brother in the town?”
“I believe so,” Isabelle said. “We have seen little of him. He is closeted with Toussaint and the commissioners. It is still quite uneasy here between the blacks and the mulattoes and, of course, ourselves. With Villatte