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By Root 1231 0

his nose at the scented water which Isabelle had dashed on his collar before he could prevent it—“It may cover the smell of drink,” she’d said dulcetly as she made her retreat. Moustique held the Bible open in both his hands, discoursing on varieties of love: eros, caritas, agape. The doctor was struck by the evidence that he and Nanon had enough friends and wellwishers to fill a small hall. There was of course Maillart, with Vaublanc and the indestructible Major O’Farrel, also Riau with most of his cavalry troop. Toussaint was absent; he’d left the town on one of his lightning tours of inspection to some destination where he would be least expected, but Christophe was there, and Maurepas, who had come over from Port-de-Paix on a military errand. There were Elise and Arnaud and Claudette and Isabelle (though Monsieur Cigny was away, on his plantation at Haut de Trou), and there were Zabeth and Fontelle and her older daughters and Maman Maig’ and a great many people from the lakou behind the church, whose names the doctor did not know.

A drum and a fiddle and a wooden flute took up a rickety version of a minuet, and to this music Paulette came down the aisle, walking slowly, with a shy pride, her hair pinned high on top of her head and her hand buried in an extravagant burst of orchids. Behind her stepped Nanon, her head veiled and demurely lowered. Save for the sinuous flow of her hips, she seemed completely disembodied by the wedding dress Elise had designed for her, its fabric rendered just slightly off-white by a brief drenching in weak tea, in token of the fact that Nanon’s condition was other than perfectly virginal.

She reached his side. He could feel her warmth, and her scent was natural—again he regretted the splash of perfume. It all went very quickly: the vows, a bit of fumbling with the ring. Moustique raised a hand above them.

“Now we see through a glass darkly,” he pronounced, “but then face to face; now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known.”

It was finished. At any rate, people were leaving the church. Tocquet had gone to join Elise, and the doctor and Nanon were bringing up the rear. Her hand on his elbow steadied him, for after all he was a little drunk. They emerged into the open air and paused on the first step below the doorsill, above the wedding guests, who had fanned out over the apron of ground before the church. There was Paul, observing Paulette in her transformation, with a certain covert admiration. Farther on, François rode Elise’s hip, while Isabelle cradled Gabriel in her arms.

The breeze had freshened from the harbor, and the three crosses on the brow of the hill leaned into the wind. The doctor felt the hum in the hollow at the back of his neck, and with that the dead began to appear; intermingled with the living: nearest the crosses the Père Bonne-chance with his genial, slightly sheepish smile, and Moyse, the loose lid sagging over his missing eye, standing near Riau, and between Isabelle and Captain Maillart the figure of Joseph Flaville, and Choufleur was there too, looking more amiable than had been his custom, and the spirits of slaughtered children and those of the many men who had died under the doctor’s hands when his skill was not sufficient to save them and those of other men he had killed with his weapons at moments of necessity or rage or fear. So many of them had been unwilling to share the world with one another—they had rather die—but after all, they had not left the world; they were still here, unseen among the living, the Invisible Ones, les Morts et les Mystères, and now, if for this moment only, they seemed disposed to harmony.

It occurred to Doctor Hébert that he had not yet kissed his bride. If not for her solid weight balancing his own and the warm touch of her hand in the crook of his elbow, he might have drifted away among the shades surrounding him. But he was happy now, and grateful, glad to be alive. He turned to her, and loosened the veil from the pins in her hair, and began to raise it from her face. As she lifted her face toward