Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [107]
Sophie’s eyes widened, a flash of white in her olive face. In her complexion she favored Tocquet; moreover she took no care against the sun. Elise did not know if those round eyes were meant to mock her or if Sophie had been genuinely impressed. But all the children of their circle were a little afraid of Madame Arnaud, perhaps with reason, though it had been long since Claudine’s madness had bloomed in its full flower.
“Au revoir, Maman.” Sophie picked up her basket, docilely enough, and followed Nanon through the wooden gate in the citrus hedge. When she had gone a few paces up the trail on the other side, she swung her basket up to her head and walked on with it balanced there. Elise opened her mouth to reprove her—to carry a burden so, like an African!—but then said nothing. Nanon was managing her load in the same fashion, her empty hands flowing idly in the current of her swinging hips. This exercise trained a grace of movement which no other schooling could imitate. Elise knew that she lacked it herself, though she had other graces.
She watched Sophie away along the trail—the slim straight back, the posture sinuously erect, the buds of her new breasts pushing out her muslin delicately. Thirteen years old . . . Elise ought to have sent her to school in France long since. But she had never had the heart for that. And Tocquet had never shown the least support for such a program. There had been a rumor that Toussaint’s two eldest sons had come back with the fleet now standing outside Le Cap, and Elise wondered now if it might be true.
She walked down to a point where the stream widened over a gravel shoal and crossed in the shallows, skipping from stone to stone. A couple of women washing clothes on the shoal grinned up at her as she passed. A little goat bleated and trotted to one side as she came through a hole in the cactus fence. She followed the foot-worn rut on a meander around a field of sprouting corn, then up a slope through coffee trees. A gaggle of children, strangers to her, scattered at her approach and ran laughing over the top of the hill. No chance of arriving unobserved or unreported—not anywhere in this country.
Now it was beginning to grow hot. Elise, who had let herself hurry more than she ought, came to a full stop in the shade of a big coffee tree. She took off her straw hat and remained standing there until the light sweat she’d raised had dried completely on her forehead. Then she tucked up a stray lock of hair, pinned her hat back into place, and went on more deliberately, fingering the edges of the letter she carried through the fabric of her dress.
Crossing the hilltop brought her in sight of the long rectangular grand’case of Habitation Sancey. Her approach was from the rear. Some of the women and children stirring between the house and its outbuildings glanced up, startled at the sight of a blanche coming from this direction. Outside the doorway of the kitchen a black woman in an ordinary cotton dress was tending an iron pot set on a tripod above a charcoal fire. If she were struck by Elise’s arrival, she gave no sign of it. She stirred the pot with a long wooden spoon. A shift in the humid currents of the air brought Elise the scent of simmering goat and plantain.
She circled the grand’case to the left, emerging onto the oval drive in front. A long allée of royal palms ran down the slope to the main gate. Elise might have ordered out her coach and driven in from that direction, with all due formality. When she asked herself now why she had not done so, she could form no clear answer.
A pack of noisy little dogs swarmed out the door of the grand’case. At the foot of the gallery steps, Elise stood completely motionless. The dogs raced partway down the steps, yapped at her, and retreated. Saint-Jean, who was Toussaint’s youngest son, came out the front door and called them back, smiling down at her apologetically.
As Saint-Jean herded the dogs around to the side porch, Suzanne Louverture appeared in the doorway. In her passage through the house she had slipped on shoes and