Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [122]
She had been hard ridden that day, she thought. For a night and a day and another night, she’d lain abed, entranced at first, and later sleeping from exhaustion. This morning before dawn she’d risen, herself again, and slipped from the house to climb the cliff wall, still attired as she had been two days before and wearing the beads to complement that clothing.
Through the smoke, the rising sun appeared like an egg yolk scorching in a neglected skillet. Since yesterday the fires had died, but the smoke still roiled. Yet Habitation Arnaud remained green to the gateway where she had stood, and the gate itself, though built of wood, was still intact. The soldiers’ fight had rolled away down the road toward Le Cap, never entering here, and the revolting field hands who were burning all the cane had stopped at the hedges that marked Arnaud’s borders.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessèd art thou among women . . .
Claudine stood up and moved toward the path, the longest loop of the bead chain swinging low to knock against her shins. As she began her descent, the boys Etienne and Dieufait appeared, fore and aft of her. Etienne led a little brown kid on a string behind him, and Dieufait skipped backward ahead of her, smiling, beckoning, gesturing toward various rocks and roots that might have tripped her as she went down.
As she emerged on the level ground behind the grand’case, she caught sight of Cléo, who had just finished sweeping out the back gallery and was throwing out some grain to the hens that had gathered expectantly on the packed dirt. Cléo noticed her too and called out that coffee was served on the front gallery and that Claudine must come and take some nourishment, but Claudine simply shook her head and walked around the house. She glanced back once and saw Fontelle’s face above the gallery rail and felt just slightly disconcerted; when had Fontelle come?
In the dooryard of the little case beside the chapel, Marie-Noelle was stirring up small sweet potatoes in a chaudière above a small charcoal fire, the baby gurgling, propped on a board by the doorsill. The curtain was tied back from the door, so that Claudine could see that Moustique was not inside. Briefly she returned Marie-Noelle’s smile and went on, around toward the rear of the chapel. Etienne and Dieufait were capering more widely around her now that they had more room. Etienne’s kid got away from him, but he pursued and arrested it by stamping his bare foot on the trailing string.
In former times the central compound here had been clear and bare to the hedges, but since it had first been laid to waste in ninety-one, a growth of bamboo had encroached along the path of a shallow ditch toward the back side of the chapel, and Claudine had prevailed upon Arnaud to let it stand. Now the tall stalks of bamboo had been bowed and bound to form a tonnelle, a greenly arbored passageway of such a height that Claudine scarcely had to lower her head to enter it. The little boys stopped outside; they were shy of this place, on ordinary days, when the drums did not invite all comers inside it. Distantly Claudine heard the voice of Marie-Noelle calling Dieufait to come back to the cookfire. She went on, deeper into the green shade.
After a dozen yards, the arboreal space widened, like a bulb, and in its center opened to the sky. A little cairn of stones stood by the entrance. Round the edges were hung gourds and bottles and bundles of herbs, and several thatched shelters covered small shrines containing vases and bowls or small plaster figures of saints or, in one, a playing card pinned to a tree.
Moustique was here, moving with quiet delicacy in