Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [3]
“I have brought you fresh clothing,” Baille said, and indicated the sack he had dropped on the floor in his first surprise. Toussaint did not shift his gaze to acknowledge it. Presently Baille picked up the sack himself and stooped to lay out the contents on the low bed.
“This uniform is not correct,” Toussaint said.
Baille swallowed. “You must accept it.” Somehow he could not manage to phrase the sentence with greater force.
Toussaint looked briefly at the coals in the fire.
“Your uniform is soiled and worn, and too light for the weather,” Baille said. “It is already cold here, and soon it will be winter, sir—” This sir escaped him involuntarily. He stopped and looked at the woolen clothes he had unfolded on the bed. “Acceptez-les, je vous en prie.”
Toussaint at last inclined his head. Baille sighed.
“I must also ask that you surrender any money you may have, or any . . .” He let the sentence trail. He waited, but nothing else happened at all.
“Do you understand me?” This time Baille suppressed the sir.
“Yes, of course,” Toussaint said, and he turned his head and shoulder toward the door. Baille had already begun walking in that direction before he recognized that he had been dismissed, that he should not permit himself to be so dismissed, that it was his clear duty to remain and watch the prisoner disrobe and see with his own eyes that he held nothing back. However, he soon found himself against the outside of the door, unreeling in his mind long strings of curses, although he did not know for certain if it were the prisoner or the assigned procedures he meant to curse.
After a few minutes he called out. The same indistinct mutter returned through the door, and Baille opened it and went back in. Toussaint stood in the fresh clothes that had been given him; his feet, incongruously, were bare. Or rather Baille felt that he himself would have looked absurd and foolish standing barefoot in such a situation, but it detracted in no way from the dignity of the prisoner. Toussaint motioned toward the table with a slight movement of his left hand.
Baille approached. On the table lay some banknotes and coins, a couple of documents of some sort, a watch with a gold chain.
“I will keep my watch,” Toussaint said, and already his hand had gathered it up and put it into a pocket, chain and all. There seemed nothing to do but assent; Baille nodded and scooped up the money and papers without looking at them, feeling a stir of shame. Toussaint had stuffed the dirty uniform into the sack in which the other clothes had come. Baille picked up the sack and also collected Toussaint’s high-topped military boots—he had furnished a pair of ordinary shoes, but it was not his concern whether the prisoner chose to put them on.
“I have need of pen and ink and paper,” Toussaint said. “I must write letters—I must make my report to the First Consul.”
“I shall look into the matter,” Baille said, and thought of notes somehow forwarded through mesh, through keyholes, folded into minute pellets and passed to confederates outside the prison. No, he would not furnish the writing supplies on his own authority.
“As quickly as possible.” A hint of a smile on Toussaint’s face, but only a flicker, and his look was stern, commanding. “My duty is urgent.”
Baille undertook no direct reply. “Good evening,” he said, and swallowed the sir, as he made his retreat.
Toussaint stood near the door of the cell, listening to the lock springs snapping, hinges groaning in succession, each sound somewhat fainter than the one before, as Baille receded down the series of passageways. He could hear the commandant’s feet splashing in the middle corridor, or thought that he could. Then nothing. He moved from the doorway, his bare feet splaying over the flagstones of the floor. The bell of the castle clock rang with a grating of discontent. Toussaint pulled his watch from the pocket of the coat he had been furnished, and opened the case. It was a quarter past seven. Darkness had come early, or at any rate there was no light at the barred window, but the embrasure had