Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [100]
A finger to her lip, Isabelle counted scorched foundations from the corner of her street until she’d found her own. She slipped down from her mule, setting Héloïse onto her feet, and began to kick over the ashes with her slipper, wincing a little for the heat. Héloïse stood mute and still as a doll. Presently Isabelle found a scrap of ironwork, with a twisted remnant of the “C” monogram on their gate. She loosened one of the rods with a slight effort and began to use it as a tool to probe the ruin. Robert slipped down and got his own remnant of iron and began to pick over another area, while Cigny stared down at them, apparently stupefied.
Robert discovered one thing and another and brought them to show to his sister, a broken saucer, a pair of spectacles strangely unbroken, with the lenses just recently smoked, a bit of glassware melted down into a colorful swirl. Watching his excavation, the doctor began to wonder if it might somehow be possible that a whole bottle of rum had survived the holocaust . . . Isabelle stooped to the ashes abruptly and came up holding the lock for her front door. Moved by the same impulse as the doctor, she pulled out her keys from a slit in her skirt and found the right one and tried it till the mechanism turned.
At the Place Montarcher they found the masonry of the fountain shattered and the headless carcass of a goat jammed in the well shaft. The doctor and Michau dragged the bloated goat away, turning their faces aside from the stench. Water pooled out over the pavement once the obstruction was removed. Now the cracked coffee cup which Robert had salvaged from the ruins proved to be very useful indeed, for they could use it to share a drink. Then Isabelle tossed a few cupfuls over his face and hair, which she shook out and tied at the back with a strip of ribbon. She cleaned Héloïse’s face and hands with the dampened tail of her skirt, then ordered Robert to wash himself. In the unflatteringly brilliant sunlight her face showed a few lines under a fresh pink sunburn, and yet she looked as vital as the doctor had ever seen her.
“Well,” she said, looking around the square as she smoothed her damp hair back from her forehead. “It does not appear that Christophe is offering any great battle for these ashes now.”
Remounting, they rode downhill toward the quai. There were some dead goats and dogs and burros in the street, with the carrion birds beginning to settle on them. Whenever a human corpse hove into view, Isabelle covered the eyes of her daughter with both hands so that she would not see.
Presently they emerged onto the waterfront and turned in the direction of the Batterie Circulaire. Here it was sticky underfoot, for the sugar in the warehouses had melted down and run over the roadway. There was now a stiff breeze coming off the ocean, which fortunately discouraged the flies and bore away the smoke; most of the buildings were still smoldering. The wind was pleasantly cool on the doctor’s face. The movements of the mule made his belly slosh with all the water he’d gulped down in the Place Montarcher, and he was beginning to feel some trace of an appetite, alongside his craving for rum.
As they approached the shattered walls of the Customs House, they encountered a queer sort of palanquin, improvised from hammocks and pieces of sailcloth. It contained Pauline Leclerc, litter-borne on a tour of the town. Four stout sailors carried her craft, a couple of army officers walked alongside, and there was a gang of disconsolate-looking courtiers in her train.
Isabelle slipped down from her mare and made a graceful curtsey. “Madame Leclerc—it must certainly be you,” she said. “Your reputation precedes you, and that of your illustrious husband. Allow me to present myself, Isabelle Cigny—allow me to make you very welcome to our town of Cap Français.” She swept her hand toward the slopes of smoking ashes which surrounded them.
“Enchantée,” Pauline replied, and extended a languid arm from her litter. Isabelle took her hand and lowered her head over it for a moment. The doctor, meanwhile,