Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [272]
But all this country was full of mountains and ravines where many people could hide. I, Riau, knew that very well from the time I had lived in these same hills with the band of Achille. Now we had to make all this place secure before we went to join Toussaint at Mirebalais, so that no attack would spring up out of the ground behind us. It was easy for Captain Riau to volunteer to cover Trou Vilain, since no else wanted that duty very much, but I wanted to go there because I knew the property of Maltrot was near the edge of it.
The little malfini were flying over Trou Vilain, hunting for rats in the vines at the bottom, and the road went up the side of the ravine. At the top, near the sky itself, a wagon moved on the road ahead of us, with a man and woman seated together on the box. The man must be a very good driver to bring a wagon over that path, when even the horse Riau was riding had to be urged to go. I seemed to know already who those people were although it was too far away to see them. The wagon turned off and disappeared, and we still had some time of climbing before we reached the place where it had gone out of sight. The driver had come down from the house and stood between the brick gateposts with his hands in his pockets. He had a beard that went all round his mouth and pointed from his chin, but without climbing his jaws to where his ears were. His skin was the color of mahogany and his eyes were hard, and he was standing up very straight watching us come, with interest but no fear. Although he had kept away from us when the doctor and Riau were at their place near Dondon, I knew that this was Fortier.
I got down from my horse and gave the reins to one of the other men to hold and went up toward the gateway on foot. When I was near to Fortier, I stopped and saluted him, for respect even though he was not dressed as a soldier. He had not moved, but something happened in the house behind him. Madame Fortier came out onto the gallery with a sacatra house servant bowing away from here, trying to explain something. She was a tall woman and we could feel the force of her anger all the way from the house to where we stood at the very bottom of the garden.
“Where is my son?” Her words were burning, and I thought that if I had been the son she asked for, I would have wanted to put myself a long way off. The sacatra was trying to say that Choufleur had not appeared there for many weeks, but Madame Fortier turned and whipped back into the house before he could finish. Fortier and I looked at each other and when he began walking up to the house, I followed a step or two behind.
I did not know it yet but the sacatra servant’s name was Salomon. He went into the house after Madame Fortier, scuttling like a long-legged crab, as Fortier and I were walking up the steps. At the house door Fortier stopped and looked at me for a moment. Inside we could hear the voice of Madame Fortier cracking out like a whip-tongue and then curling back, but we could not make out what she was saying. Fortier nodded and entered the house, and I followed.
In a room at the back of the house was Nanon, and my heart jumped up, because now the doctor would be glad, maybe. Si Dyé vlé. For the first instant I did not know her; she was thinner, and lay on the bed with her hair flung over her face. Her hair was dirty and all stuck together and the whole room smelled as if she had not cleaned herself properly for a long time. A bowl of water was on the floor, and a plate with dried scraps and a broken chicken bone. Nanon rolled onto her back, drawing her knees up under the sheet which covered her to her chin. I knew her then, but her face was all hollow, as if from a fever. As she moved