Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [331]
Maillart could compose no reply to that. After a moment, Isabelle went on.
“Concerning Claudine, there was apparently a priest who assigned her the care of small children as a penance. As she has been faithful in the task, it seems that her sanity is restored.”
“Indeed she is greatly changed, and for the better.”
“And when one considers where she started—she was once a terrible figure.”
“I know it,” Maillart said. The tale in which Claudine hacked off her own ring finger to appease the bloodthirsty swarm of rebel slaves had been very widely told.
“Oh, I wonder if you do,” Isabelle said. “I learned what I know of it myself only during this visit. It seems that Arnaud, like many men of his type, was in the habit of amusing himself with the Negro women here. Claudine, like many wives so situated, grew weary of seeing the product of his indiscretions scattered through her household. Also apparently he mocked her own lack of fecundity, or she felt that he did so by his actions. A housemaid he had given her was carrying his child. One day when Arnaud was absent on his affairs, Claudine dragged the maid out to that shed.” Isabelle gestured toward the empty space, as if the structure she’d named were still standing. “She cut the infant out of the womb, and killed the maid with a razor. From this followed her insanity, and her carelessness of her own survival.”
“My God,” Maillart said. “She confessed this to you?”
“Hardly,” Isabelle said. “Cléo was housekeeper at that time too. She did not tell me, but she told Nanon.”
“So that’s how it goes,” Maillart said.
“They know everything, you see?” Isabelle said. “One has no secrets.” She smiled ruefully, looking away from him. “In the old days, I never kept a personal servant long.”
Maillart again had nothing to say.
“Cléo bore Arnaud’s children herself,” Isabelle told him, “and saw them sold away to other plantations, once they grew large enough to irk the master with the family resemblance.”
“And after all that she came back here?”
“It is a little surprising,” Isabelle said. “Of course, Cléo was something of a terror herself, in the camps of Grande Rivière. She took white women who had been so many times raped by the black chiefs that they had lost their attraction, and sent them into the river to do her washing. She had them beaten for small faults—like any Creole dame.”
“I see,” said Maillart. He had begun to feel a little chilly.
“An eye for an eye,” Isabelle said. “They understand each other here. They’ve shared things. Claudine once said that it must all be washed away in blood. That was in her madness, but I begin to think it quite a reasonable remark.”
“How did you come to know?” Maillart said. “About Cléo, in the camps, I mean.”
“Joseph told me.” As if unconsciously, Isabelle passed a hand over her abdomen. “Joseph knows that whole history of Claudine as well—I’m sure of it, although he never told me.”
Next morning they set out at an early hour for Habitation Cigny. Paul became restless by the time the sun was high; whether he shared the carriage with the women or Maillart’s saddle, he could not be still. When the opportunity presented itself, the captain bought a donkey from a drover who was bringing a string of them down to market, and set Paul astride, bareback, with an improvised rope bridle. The boy could manage his new mount well enough, and the work of it relieved his boredom. Since they still had the constant difficulty of negotiating the carriage across tricky places in the road, the donkey had no trouble keeping up with the rest of their caravan.
When they reached the Cigny plantation at Haut de Trou, Isabelle and her husband began to quarrel straightaway, though in muted voices and, as far as possible, out of earshot of their guests. Over dinner they continued to snipe obscurely at each other. The captain grasped that Isabelle