Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [113]
“Oh, it is charming!” Isabelle trilled. “But whatever can it be?”
Pauline rose from her divan, assisted by several eager hands which she shook off once she was balanced on her feet. She crossed toward the children’s area in a wave of scent and fluttering scarves. A handful of her courtiers followed in her train, helpless as iron dust swirled by a magnet. Robert turned the crank again and the whistling tune progressed a few more notes.
“It is meant to teach our canary to sing,” Pauline said, turning upon Isabelle her bright artificial smile. Dermide attached himself to her leg, snuffling urgently into her flimsy skirt. She gestured then at an empty cage which swung above the crank-turned organ. “But the wretched creature fell down dead in the middle of our passage.”
“How dreadful for you,” Isabelle said. “We must find you another.”
“It is no matter,” Pauline said, her interest dimming. She peeled Dermide’s fingers from her skirt, sniffing distastefully at the dampness he’d left on the fabric, and ambled lazily back to her couch. Her officers followed, all but one, a young captain with a pleasantly full olive face, who remained at Isabelle’s elbow, looking at her with some interest.
“Is it true?” he said.
“What do you mean?” said Isabelle. This officer had been giving her sidelong glances since the previous day, she realized—the only one of them all to have eyes for anything other than Pauline. A presentable youth, some years her junior. Half-consciously she turned her face a little from the light, giving him her fine-cut profile and also perhaps concealing a few faint lines around her mouth and eyes.
“That you might find her another bird?”
“Why yes,” said Isabelle. “Of a sort, perhaps.” She gave him a brief direct look and as quickly turned away. “I would require some assistance, I think.”
“Allow me.” The young officer bowed low. “I am Captain Georges Daspir—entirely at your service.”
The ruins of Le Cap fumed all around them; in some spots they were still aflame. Latouche-Treville’s sailors continued to convey fire pumps among the points of active burning. The few human corpses had by then been collected and carted away to La Fossette, and squads of infantry were now engaged in hauling off dead animals. Isabelle, her skirts hitched up above the ash and her face masked with a handkerchief, led her small group from the Governor’s house toward the remnants of her own home. With her free hand she held tight to Héloïse, who was similarly masked against the smoke and dust. Robert walked a pace behind, answering the questions Captain Daspir put him about life in Le Cap before the holocaust. Of course Robert’s replies were generously invented, since he had scarcely returned here himself before it was all destroyed one more time.
Well, Isabelle allowed herself to think, perhaps after all they should have gone down to Ennery with Elise and Xavier Tocquet. Certainly they had preserved little enough by remaining here. They turned a corner and hove in view of the ash pit that had been her house. The rafters had burned out from under the roof, sending a cascade of rose-colored tiles down through smoldering holes in the second floor. Some parts of that planking were still intact. Doctor Hébert, Arnaud, Bertrand Cigny, and Michau were all at work shoring up those remnants for a temporary shelter. Sailcloth or canvas of any kind was at such a premium they had not been able to get any, but Michau had negotiated for some bundles