Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [355]
“No, no,” the doctor said. “Flaville will be here to manage it for you.”
“Oh, undoubtedly.” Arnaud jumped up, slapping the tight fabric of his breeches, and began to pace the narrow area. “I am certain that Flaville will manage very well—for himself, as so many of Toussaint’s officers have begun to do. While I am sent away to be shot in their wars.”
“Calm yourself,” the doctor said.
“It is easy for you to recommend it.”
“After all, you are not intended to be cannon fodder,” the doctor said. “You’ll be given a command, parallel to Captains Vaublanc and Maillart, for example. Toussaint wants to rally all the experienced officers.”
“That means he must be expecting heavy losses,” Arnaud snapped. “And I have had no part of the military in all my life.”
“He knows that you served in the militia, and in the maréchaussée.”
“And I know that he served as Bayon de Libertat’s coachman,” Arnaud said. “My Christ, but the world has turned upside down.”
“So it has,” the doctor said. “Which way do you like it better?”
“Which way do I—” Arnaud stopped in his tracks, and sat down on a boulder.
“You won’t go unrepresented here,” the doctor pointed out. “There is Claudine, and Fontelle.” He paused. “And Cléo.”
Arnaud thumbed his jawline, looking down over the compound. “I am to serve under Dessalines, then.”
“Yes, under Dessalines,” said the doctor. “Along with the others I mentioned.”
Shifting his seat and stretching out his legs, Arnaud studied the half-built chapel where it lay bathed in starlight. “When must we go?”
“As soon as possible,” the doctor said.
“Let it be Monday.” Arnaud sniffed. “Our bush priest means to consecrate his church the day before.”
“I had not known you to be so fervent in religion,” the doctor said.
“Oh, I shall be like a medieval baron, it seems, with my own prelate, and a chapel within the walls,” Arnaud said, with a dry laugh. “All this religiosity—it may be a little too much for me, but it appears to be healthful for Claudine.”
“Yes,” said the doctor, as he reached for the bottle. “She does seem to do much better now.” Better than when the world was right side up, he thought, but did not say it.
Claudine rose, in the first thin light that leaked in through the jalousies, and slipped on a shift and a calico dress. She turned, facing the bed, and as the light began to grow in the room she watched her husband sleeping. Under his lids, Arnaud’s eyes slipped and darted. His face assumed an aspect of ire, then shock. He flung up an arm as if to ward off an attack. Then his face drained into calm, and he rolled over onto his side and went on sleeping.
She left the bedchamber, closing the door delicately behind her. Arnaud had ordered a strong cabinet to be built of mahogany and fitted into a rear corner of the central room where they ate their meals. Claudine unlocked it with a small key from the ring at her waist. The cabinet was meant for the safekeeping of silver and fine china, but whatever such articles she’d once possessed had been stolen or smashed when the plantation was sacked in ninety-one. Now it held only some homefired crockery, some utensils and cheap glassware.
She stooped and lifted the folded stole from the bottom shelf, and also gathered the gourd cup beside it. She’d got the cup by arrangement with a woman with a special skill in binding calabashes. There were two round protuberances at either end of a long neck. The gourd could be balanced on the smaller of these, and the larger one was cut across the hemisphere so that the whole resembled a large brown wineglass. Carrying these two items, she left the house.
Outdoors, Cléo was lighting the kitchen fire. She stood up as Claudine passed, and raised a hand in greeting. Claudine smiled her reply, and walked on. The dust on the path was loose and cool beneath her bare feet. As the mist lifted, the breeze set the fronds of the young coconut trees to trembling. Farther along, the dense expanse of the cane fields absorbed the tremor. She hesitated, closed