Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [328]
Major O’Farrel, who’d so recently adjusted his own allegiance, let the conversational bubble drift past him.
“I don’t call this occasion so favorable to the partisans of Villatte,” Cigny grunted, still plying his soup spoon. “They can assemble no plausible force against Toussaint’s black army.” He held out an empty hand for bread. Isabelle hurried to supply him.
“Not in the north, certainly,” Maillart agreed. “Nor in the Western Department. In the South, of course, Rigaud is master for the moment.”
Cigny stared. “One wearies of these conflicts,” he pronounced. “What profit is there in them—for anyone? It is a mere perversity of General Rigaud to refuse Toussaint’s authority.”
“It is the legacy of Agent Hédouville, and his cursed letter,” O’Farrel said unexpectedly. “He would divide, where he could not conquer.”
“But surely that must pass,” Cigny said. “Rigaud may be strong in his own region, but he has no force to reach us here.”
“Force of arms, no,” Maillart said, “but Hédouville has formally released him from Toussaint’s command. The letter gives him a position to promote dissension here, and have we not already heard the rumors he has loosed? Toussaint is in league with the proscribed émigrés—in thrall to them, I’ve heard it said. And Toussaint’s policy of forced labor, on which your enterprises depend, Monsieur, is no more than a ruse to restore slavery . . .”
Cigny laid down his chunk of bread untasted. “And Toussaint?”
He was looking at the doctor, who covered himself for a moment by gulping from his glass of water. Because of his secretarial privileges, people were apt to assume that he knew Toussaint’s mind, when nothing could be further from the truth. Toussaint’s mind was like a mirror in a lightless room, and no one knew whence came the light that gave it clarity . . . Of course, the doctor could not say this, and everyone was waiting.
“If trouble comes it will not find him unprepared,” he pronounced. “I believe in the end he will master this difficulty as he has mastered others.”
“‘In the end,’ you say. That is most comforting.” Isabelle tracked back toward her original intention. “For the moment, I wonder if it offers sufficient comfort.”
She glanced significantly at Captain Maillart, who narrowed his eyes and nodded his assent. With the corner of a napkin, Cigny meticulously cleaned a soup spill out of the curls of his beard. Isabelle rose from her place, circled the table, and laid her hands over Nanon’s bare shoulders.
“My friend is in a delicate condition,” Isabelle said. “I mean to care for her in her time of need. She ought to be taken away from the tremors and disruptions of the town, from whatever fresh disturbances may be in store, to some quiet place in the countryside.”
Cigny’s eyes widened slightly; he mashed the crumpled napkin under his pudgy hand. It was not so difficult for Maillart to read his thought: that his wife should make an issue of attending a mulatto trollop in her pregnancy? Perhaps she was laying it on a bit thick, at that.
Isabelle’s hands tightened slightly on Nanon’s shoulders, and Nanon raised her face, impassive, the heavy petals of her lips sealed together. My Christ, Maillart thought, has she told her? He was looking directly into the molasses swirl of Nanon’s eyes, but there was no divining what she knew or did not know.
“Hmmmph,” Cigny grunted, smoothing his beard down over his shirt front. “I mean to go tomorrow, in any event, to see about the mill at Haut de Trou. There is no reason why you should not accompany me if you so wish. Of course, you may invite anyone you choose.”
He lifted his spoon again and lowered his eyes to his soup bowl. Isabelle clicked her tongue, parted her lips as if she would say something more, but then apparently decided against it. She gave Nanon’s shoulders a parting squeeze, and went back to her own place at the table.
Bertrand Cigny went directly to his plantation on