Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [297]
“That I should speak so, of the house where my own son is in residence,” she said. “Well, if there is a Hell as the blanc priests say, then the father of Jean-Michel is there, and roasted to a crackling. But by another belief one might also say that the father’s spirit works through the body of Jean-Michel, and so powerfully that I no longer recognize any quality in my son which belongs to me. Tell me, in all your medical art, is there found a cure for this situation?”
“None that I know,” the doctor said. “Madame, you speak of a very great sorrow.”
“It is so,” Madame Fortier said, still looking at the gate. The wind rose, bearing a few plump drops of rain over the roof tiles and into their faces. A wagon rattled to a halt between them and the house. Fortier sat on the box; he beckoned to his wife.
“As for the woman, I judge that she is not beyond help,” Madame Fortier said, “but I can help her no more.” She nodded to the doctor and stepped toward the wagon, then abruptly turned back.
“Slavery is corruption,” she said. “It rots the one who is owned and also the one who does the owning, like poison in the flesh. If this truth is not found already in your medical art, it remains a science you must master. Such corruption can only be washed out by blood.”
Fortier took her hand and helped her up onto the box. As he clucked to his draft horse, she turned her face to the doctor once more.
“If you enter that house, have a care for your life.”
The doctor saluted her with his hat, and remounted the gray mare. But he did not immediately ride away. As the deluge began he found his duster in a saddlebag and quickly put it on, then adjusted his hat brim to shed the rain. On the second floor of the house a shutter opened partially, and the doctor felt that someone was watching him from the darkness behind. He remained where he was. The mare stood stolidly for once, head lowered, as if the downpour had beaten the nervousness out of her. His pistols were primed and dry beneath the duster. Even if the steadiness of his hand was spoiled by rum, he never went anywhere, nowadays, without making sure of those weapons, though at this moment he had no idea what use they might be to him.
30
Toussaint invited General Rigaud to travel with him as far as Ennery and to break his journey to the south by dining and staying the night at Descahaux plantation. All during the day’s ride the two generals were most affable with one another, and the mood of friendliness continued into the evening. Rigaud was extravagant in his praise of Suzanne Louverture (though he found her more receptive to compliments to her table than to her person). The youngest son, Saint-Jean, who had not gone with his elder brothers to France, was presented for inspection and admiration.
Otherwise the conversation mostly concerned the campaign against Jérémie, where the English were still quite firmly entrenched, though under heavy pressure from Rigaud’s besieging force. Neither Toussaint nor Rigaud made any allusion at all to Agent Hédouville nor to any instructions that came from him. No doubt, the doctor privately thought, this subject remained a tender one. Captain Maillart was also present for this dinner, with a few other people from Toussaint’s staff, and most of the party that had originally ridden up with Rigaud from the southern peninsula. But some few of this latter group had remained at Le Cap, including Colonel Maltrot: Choufleur.
When it was all over, the doctor rode over to Habitation Thibodet, only a short distance, though the road was lengthened by the skittish mare, jumping at shadows in the moonlight. A sleepy sentry admitted him at the plantation gate, and as he rode up the avenue he could hear chickens and guinea fowl clucking in their perches on the trees at either side. The grand’case was dark, as was the mill (since Toussaint had displaced his local headquarters to Descahaux). The doctor unsaddled the mare and turned