Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [302]
Pascal blanched and recovered himself. “Have you a larger point?”
“That Toussaint has worked for peace, in the main, and he has rendered justice wherever he was able. If he cannot heal the body politic, I do not know who can.”
“Oh,” said Pascal. “And so, he needs no one to direct him. Scarcely any liaison at all, really, with the government in France.”
“There is that difficulty.”
Pascal pursed his lips. “So Hédouville is left like an ant in a wine bottle. He can see everything, all around the circle, but he can touch nothing. No wonder that he grows a little agitated.”
For some weeks there was nothing out of the ordinary, and scarcely any apparent tension in the town. Toussaint kept away from Le Cap. Hédouville busied himself with a light restructuring of the officer corps within his reach. Now and then he was able discreetly to replace some black officer with one of the Frenchmen he had brought out with him. If there were ripples of discontent, they ran too deep to mar the tranquil appearance of the surface.
The doctor had little, officially, to do. Of Nanon he could discover nothing more. For a time he haunted the Place Clugny and the Negro market which she’d frequented during their earliest acquaintance, but she did not appear there. It did not seem that she went marketing at all, or that she called on anyone, outside the Maltrot house. Unless Choufleur had spirited her off, as Isabelle had suggested, to one of his rural properties. But Choufleur himself was still in Le Cap. The doctor saw him more than once, coming out of the agent’s suite of offices at Government House, haughtily erect in his gold-buttoned uniform, swinging his cane before him as if to make it known to anyone who might be in his path that he would certainly not give way. Rumor had it that Choufleur brokered messages between Hédouville and Rigaud, and that the agent meant to foment discord between Rigaud and Toussaint, a project perhaps more plausible now that Rigaud no longer had the British in the south to occupy him.
On more than one occasion, the doctor was obliged to step aside from the progress of Colonel Maltrot through the streets, and each time Choufleur strolled through the space he’d occupied as if he’d never seen him there at all. Once, the doctor was sufficiently piqued that he followed Choufleur, across the streets and squares of the town all the way to the gate of his house, where, waiting for the servant to open to him, Choufleur turned back with a supercilious smile. After he had gone in, the doctor remained standing on the far side of the street. The house was shuttered, as usual, though far from quiet. On the contrary it had the reputation of a bawdy place, the resort of gamblers and women of loose morals, some colored, and some in these latter days even white. He recognized a horse or two at the hitchrail. Some of the more debauched young men of Hédouville’s suite were known to come here occasionally.
A pair of shutters opened on the second-floor balcony, and Nanon stepped through the rounded arch, and stood facing the doctor below, though without any indication that she saw him there. Rather she seemed to be looking across the roof tiles. Drunken laughter and the rattle of dice boiled out of the dark space behind her. Then Choufleur emerged. He grinned, over her shoulder, spitefully down into the doctor’s face. With one hand he reached under her arm, cupped a breast and raised it so that the nipple pushed darkly at the fragile fabric of her dress. She gave way limply to his pressure, and Choufleur pulled her back inside.
Doctor Hébert was restrained from rushing the house only by the thought that Choufleur must mean to provoke him to do just that. He dragged himself