Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [277]
The doctor trudged on, dark mud caking on the soles of his boots, weighting down his tread. It was late afternoon, still very hot. The others at the casernes had retired for a siesta, and now he rather wished he had done the same, instead of pursuing his curiosity about the water-works. But when they reached the alley of trees, the shade brought some relief.
“Why won’t you answer me?” Pinchon said petulantly, half-dancing in his muddy shoes.
“You haven’t put a question,” the doctor said wearily.
He took off his straw hat and untied the headcloth he’d taken to wearing underneath it. He crouched down on his heels and rocked forward to rinse the sweat-sodden cloth in the stream of water, then used it to wipe down his face and the bald dome of his head. The water was somewhat cooler than he expected, which was pleasant. He wet the cloth a second time, rolled it and draped it around his neck. The coolness at the base of his head brought a measure of clarity with it.
“Your fears are unfounded,” he said, looking at his own indistinct reflection, rippling in the water. “These are no savages as you fear, but as well-disciplined an army as I have ever seen. As you might know.”
“They would have killed me at Gonaives!”
“In war, men kill their enemies,” the doctor said. He squinted up. “Why ever did you come to this country, I wonder.”
Pinchon looked away, sucking his thin lips in. “My wife has a property in the plain of Cul de Sac.”
“Your wife is a Creole?” The doctor straightened up and shook out his cramped legs.
“No,” said Pinchon. “The daughter of a négociant of Nantes, who took the land in payment of a debt—the miser! Neither he nor she had ever laid eyes on the property, but I was sent out to make it profitable.”
“And?”
“Oh, it was all a field of ashes by the time I found it.”
“Have you children?”
“One, a daughter.” Pinchon continued to look thoughtful. “I have not seen her—she was born after I embarked.”
The doctor was moved to a certain sympathy. He said nothing, and turned slightly, facing into a very faint breeze which barely lifted the leaves of the trees around them. At the end of the boulevard was Government House, a fairly handsome pile of stone, and the most significant building in Port-au-Prince.
“Don’t give up hope,” the doctor said, as the breeze faded.
He was thinking that Pinchon might really have a better chance of restoring his plantation under Toussaint’s administration rather than that of the English. But before he could voice this idea, he was distracted by someone signaling him from the steps of Government House at the lower end of the boulevard.
The siesta had been interrupted—brusquely, though no one announced the reason why. With Maitland, Huin, and few others, the doctor was hurried to the port and into a longboat which rowed them out to a British warship in the harbor. Following Huin, he climbed the rope ladder to the deck of the warship. Maitland, however, remained in the boat and was conveyed to a smaller coastal vessel which was anchored nearby.
“What do you suppose?” the doctor began.
Huin turned up his empty palms. “They told me nothing.”
“Well,” said the doctor, “So long as we are not to have our throats slit, and be fed to the sharks . . .”
Huin let out a dry grating laugh. “Fortunately,” he said, “we are dealing with English gentlemen . . . rather than our own colonial countrymen.”
He reached under his coat and produced a small brass spyglass. After scanning the horizon for a few minutes, he offered it to the doctor. Resting his elbows on the rail, the doctor looked at the small adjacent island, with its half-moon battery protecting the harbor, or at the clouds gathering above the great mountain behind the town . . .
Huin plucked his elbow and reached for the glass, and when the doctor had given it over, trained it on the deck of the coaster where Maitland had gone. The doctor looked in the same direction—Maitland was recognizable