Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [327]
“On what pretext?”
“Health, perhaps. The fever season is coming on—it’s healthier in the mountains, away from the swamps. Also there’s trouble brewing around Le Cap, I think—Rigaud’s partisans, you know. One of the reasons I’d like to get Nanon and Paul away.” He stooped to pour himself another short measure of rum. “Isabelle could always visit her own plantation with no need for a pretext at all.”
“Yes, but Cigny is there himself as often as not, now that the cane mills are working again,” said the captain. He twisted up the end of his mustache. “Arnaud certainly owes her hospitality.”
“But imagine his reaction when she presents the world with a Negro baby,” the doctor said. “You know, that child is apt to be black as your hat.”
The captain said nothing. He felt that the predicament had impaled him with a barb which no effort could draw.
“Now then,” the doctor mused. “Nanon has some connection in the mountains above Dondon, and at Vallière. I wouldn’t so much mind it if she went in that direction—at least till all this dispute with Rigaud is settled. If it goes poorly, there will be fighting all up and down the coast, and Ennery isn’t as far away as I should like.”
“True enough,” said the captain. “And it’s not likely to go well.”
“My thought, exactly,” the doctor said. “Well, let us say that Nanon is to go as far as Dondon. With Paul, and perhaps with Paulette. Then leave it to Isabelle to devise her pretext to go with her. I expect that will be within the range of her imagination.”
“Undoubtedly,” the captain, feeling somewhat more at ease. The doctor drained his glass and set it on the floor beside the jug. As he did so, the thunder rolled again and the sky opened all over the town. Both men stretched out on their parallel cots and lay half dozing, listening to the roar of the rain.
On the morning of June fifteenth, the doctor, asleep in the narrow attic room of the Cigny house, was roused by a shudder of the bed beneath him. Nanon turned toward him, without waking, and held him for an anchor. His pistols, arranged beneath the bed where another man might have left his slippers, skittered and clacked together. In the parlor downstairs, Isabelle braced herself against a doorframe and watched as the china bibelots on the mantel danced and rattled against each other and the small rococo clock. The mirror frame slapped once against the wall. Then her reflection steadied and all was still.
Before nightfall a courier came up from Gonaives with the news that Rigaud had published Hédouville’s letter generally, the letter which released him from Toussaint’s authority and left him sole and supreme commander of the Department of the South. According to the whisper, which traveled with Pascal, Roume was drafting a proclamation which would declare Rigaud a rebel and outlaw . . . for the second time. Toussaint’s reaction was unknown, as were his whereabouts.
The miniature earthquake was the first topic of discussion round the Cigny dining table that night. There had been more severe tremblements de terre in the region before now, strong enough to level buildings and start fires which consumed whole neighborhoods. Was the morning’s convulsion truly finished or was it a harbinger of worse to come? Monsieur Cigny opined the former—it was nothing, he assured the company; there would be no sequel. But Isabelle laid down her spoon and folded her little hands together.
“You know,” she said. “Although an earthquake is nothing to fear, I rather think that with all the other eruptions that seem likely to come our way, one might be well advised to retire from the town for a period.”
“Other eruptions?” Cigny inquired.
“The, er, political instability,” the doctor said rapidly, picking up the cue. “I think she may be right, at that.” He shot a covert glance at Maillart.
“Unfortunately, yes,” the captain added. “Even the loyalty of some of Toussaint’s officers has been cast into doubt.” He was thinking uneasily