Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [112]
12
Dermide, who was the Captain-General’s sole heir thus far, was three years old, but large for that age, and heavy to boot, if not overfed. He had the squatty figure of a little troll. What were his mother’s marks of beauty had in him gone wrong: the plump lips pursed but seldom smiling, the full cheeks so swollen that they pressed his eyes to slits.
Or maybe it was Isabelle’s jaundiced eye. She had brought her own children to play with the little paragon and had undertaken the task of minding them herself, mostly as a matter of policy. She was curious about Pauline, but it took small perspicacity to see that the Captain-General’s lady was not naturally fond of other women, especially those attractive enough to draw attention from her own suite of admirers. Therefore Isabelle had dressed for this visit much more severely than was her wont, which was easy enough since most of her town wardrobe had been destroyed in the fire, so that she had been constrained to make over a dress of one of her maids. She watched the children without interfering, though Dermide was a little brute.
In the wreckage of the Governor’s residence, Pauline had imagined a sort of Bedouin tent, roofed by sailcloth stretched over the fire-blackened masonry, and furnished quite opulently with the articles brought from her refitted cabins aboard the flagship L’Océan. By arrangement of the furniture the space under the canvas had been divided into three distinct areas. Pauline reigned over one, reclining on a divan with her head elegantly propped on an elbow, while the officers of her husband’s staff jockeyed to improve their nearness to her, and those who were less successful consoled themselves by slighting the local gentlemen who’d managed to be admitted to her presence. A second area, suggestively curtained in damask, served as the boudoir. Isabelle watched the children in the third.
This latter space was scattered over with all sorts of elaborate toys, none of which seemed to much interest Dermide. Many of them were probably beyond the grasp of a three-year-old’s intelligence, to be sure. Robert, nearly ten years older, had fallen upon Dermide’s several regiments of toy soldiers and had laid them out in battle array—French opposing the English. He picked them up man by man and studied them lovingly, for the markings of each uniform were painted in the most up to the minute detail.
Dermide, meanwhile, had no thought but to snatch away a little cloth doll Héloïse was cradling—an inconsequential thing but dear to her, since she had carried it on her voyage from the North American Republic. She was a year senior to Dermide, but smaller and more delicate, and so unused to being mistreated that she made no cry or movement when Dermide grabbed the doll, though her mouth popped open in a round of silent surprise. Isabelle watched but took no action. Dermide, smirking, took a few backward steps with his prize, then Robert’s foot snaked out to trip him and he fell over backward, a dead weight, slapping the back of his head on a flagstone. After a moment he set up a howl.
“Oh the poor darling!” Isabelle cooed, and rushed to pick him up. “Has he hurt his head?” She gave him a quick sharp pinch on the roll of his belly fat least visible to Pauline and the others. Dermide shrieked louder and struggled in her grasp. A couple of the officers had turned their heads at the racket, but Pauline seemed deaf to it—the maternal was not first among her instincts.
Isabelle let Dermide slip down to the floor.