Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [137]
He was a little drunk already, and I smelled the rum on him when he came around to my side of the horse, but he was still in his senses.
“What are you playing at, Riau?” he said to me more quietly. “I didn’t know what had happened to you. What is this masquerade?”
Maillart put his hand on my bare shoulder in a friendly way, but I did not know how to answer him.
“You see everything is all right,” he said and turned his eyes for a moment to the proclamation nailed to the tree. “Now get yourself dressed properly and come and have a drink with us.” Then he took the oranges he had asked for, and went back to the table with the others.
It was not so much trouble to get back into my coat and my boots. Those other French officers had never looked my way. Before I went to their table, I looked back once more at the paper on the tree.
IF ANYONE TELLS YOU, “THESE FORCES HAVE COME TO TEAR AWAY OUR LIBERTY,” REPLY, “THE REPUBLIC WILL NOT SUFFER THAT IT SHOULD BE TAKEN FROM US.”
It seemed to me that Maillart believed these words, and I began to ask myself if Toussaint really disbelieved them.
15
“Uncle! Uncle! Tonton Antoine!” Sophie’s was the first voice the doctor heard, as she came rushing toward them from the steps of the Thibodet grand’case with her heavy dark hair flying out behind her. She slammed into him as he swung down from the saddle, with nearly enough force to knock him from his feet. How she had grown! And she got her height from her father, so she was already almost as tall as he. The Thibodet enclosure was all confusion with the arrival of so many riders. Paul stood at a little distance, with his black friend Caco, and when Sophie had released the doctor he came up more shyly to greet his father. The doctor kissed him on both cheeks. Then Elise had appeared at the gallery railing, calling out, “Antoine! Isabelle! oh, thank God you are safe . . .”
Isabelle dismounted, sagging for a moment against the flank of her mare, then tottered toward the steps on her numb legs, as Elise came tripping down to embrace her. The wind was skirling around the ground, and a rogue gust peeled away the doctor’s straw hat. Sophie ran after it and brought it back to him, laughing.
“All very touching, I am sure,” said Cyprien, who remained in his saddle. “But where is Toussaint Louverture?”
The doctor squinted up at him through his dust-coated glasses. He ran the brim of his hat through his fingers. “I can’t say for certain where he is himself,” he said. “His house is a little way further on.”
“Then we can’t stop here,” Cyprien said, glancing at Isaac and Placide, who sat their horses quietly.
“Oh, but you will,” said the doctor, “if you don’t want to drown.”
Indeed the wind was bringing heavy clouds in quickly from the east, and the first fat drops were slamming down, raising little puffs of dust. One splashed into the bald center of the doctor’s head. He remembered Cyprien vaguely from the Hédouville mission, and there’d been something about the captain then that he hadn’t liked. Certainly he didn’t much like the way Cyprien was looking at Sophie now. Nevertheless he stretched out his hand to him.
“Don’t be hasty,” he said. “Once the deluge starts, you won’t be able to see as far as the end of your nose. If you wait out the rain here, we may still bring you to Sancey before dark.”
Cyprien hesitated a moment more, then slid down from his horse, though without accepting the doctor’s proffered hand. Isaac and Placide exchanged a quick glance, and then they too dismounted. Grooms were already coming out from the stables to take their horses from them.
“Then there will be peace after all,” Elise was saying from her place at the foot of the gallery table. “In spite of everything.”
The tale of Le Cap’s burning seemed to have shaken her only slightly. Indeed her composure was such that the doctor wondered if she’d properly understood the