Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [332]
After everyone had retired for the night, the marital dispute continued, at a higher pitch. The partitions were thin, so Maillart could hear the querulous burr of their voices, though he was only able to distinguish a few words. Finally he heard Cigny raise his voice to a shrill and breaking pitch.
“You will not!”
“I will,” said Isabelle.
Then silence, and the captain slept.
At first light he had gone to see to the state of the carriage, whose left rear wheel had developed a worrisome wobble in the course of the previous day, when he heard her voice behind him.
“We’ll leave that thing for firewood. We shall ride.”
“You can’t mean it,” he began.
“Come,” said Isabelle. “Consider the road to Dondon. And beyond?”
The captain saw that a groom was already leading out a mare and a gelding, each improbably outfitted with a sidesaddle.
“But—” He was thinking of the danger, but Isabelle’s expression told him, with unspeakable clarity, And what if I did lose this child? He swallowed, and turned around in a circle. Cigny was nowhere in sight, but Paul’s donkey had also been brought out, along with his own saddle-horse. Isabelle mounted the gelding, brushing aside the assistance of the groom, and then Nanon got onto her mare with the ease of a countrywoman getting aboard a donkey.
They rode out, attended by the cries of the little cocks hidden beneath the hedges on either side. As they reached the road, Maillart bethought himself that Nanon was pregnant too, and wondered if she shared Isabelle’s attitude. But after all, they’d not get a worse jolting horseback than they would have done in the carriage.
He rode on the inside of the black cavalrymen, flanking Isabelle and a few paces behind, where he could admire her slim, straight back, sprouting from the saddle like a green tree. He imagined her a man, a soldier. Brave to the point of recklessness, but without quite crossing that line. Some reckless men would crumble if the danger they courted responded to them, but Isabelle was of the type that grew more firm and steely in such circumstances. Through the thundering cloud of his other emotions, he could see that her affair with Flaville must have been her own most extreme means of daring the devil. Might he have done the same, in her place? But here his imagination failed him.
Dondon was boiling when they reached it, with soldiers rushing in all directions, preparing to move out.
“What are you doing here, Captain?” Moyse called harshly, fixing Maillart with his stubby finger. “No matter—take your men and report to Vaublanc.”
Maillart told Isabelle and Nanon to wait where they were. He slipped to the ground and led his horse diagonally to the point where he saw Vaublanc assembling his troop.
“What the devil?” he inquired, though in truth he was not so very surprised.
“Rigaud has attacked Petit Goâve,” Vaublanc told him. “Surprised Laplume and drove him back to Léogane.”
“And now?”
Vaublanc swept his hand around the bustling square. “As you see. Toussaint has already crossed the Ester—we are to join him at Port-au-Prince. Dessalines is with him too, as best we know. How many men have you?”
“Six,” said Maillart. “They are well mounted.”
“Excellent,” Vaublanc said. “I hope the horses are fresh—we’ll be riding a long way in a short time.”
“Allow me a moment,” Maillart said. “I have these women . . .”
He turned and in a flash of panic realized he could no longer see Isabelle sitting her horse. But there was Nanon, Paul too. For some reason both of them had climbed