Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [138]
“Our mission is to achieve a peace, Madame,” Placide said courteously. “And our resolve.”
“Oh, I do not see how you can fail,” Elise said, with a meaning look at her husband. Tocquet sat with his back to the railing, his eyes remote, rolling an unlit cheroot between his fingers. Behind him, a wall of rain came down.
“How well you have grown,” Elise said, returning to Isaac and Placide. “I would hardly have known you—you are such young men now.”
Placide smiled easily and replied with some nicely turned compliment. The doctor studied them, not much attending to what they said. Nanon sat by him, leaning just slightly against his shoulder, her hand warm in his beneath the table.
The sheen of the boys’ dress uniforms had been a little blunted by the dust of the road. Isaac was the darker, shorter, and thicker; Placide a head taller, distinctly more slender, his tone a rich coppery red. One might not have taken them for brothers at all, and it had long been rumored that Placide, born before his mother’s legal marriage to Toussaint, had been fathered by another, possibly even by a white man. But the doctor thought he saw resemblances now, in the long oval of Placide’s face, the shape of his long-fingered hands, even the habit of floating a palm across his mouth between his phrases, as if to hide a smile. And Toussaint had always given him a first-born’s preference.
All around them the rain came rushing down, pouring over the gallery steps like a waterfall. The doctor stretched his neck to look over the railing; below, the lily pool he’d designed and dug was overflowing its border of stones, drenching the turf around it. Captain Daspir, munching contently on a concoction of desalted cod Elise had cunningly expanded for the unexpected number, asked him some question about the flowers. The doctor scarcely paid attention to his own reply.
Five years since he had seen these boys, and they’d been as long apart from their mother and father. The invitation to send them to school in France was one which could not be refused. In effect, the boys had been given up as hostages. The doctor was one of the party that conveyed them from Ennery to Le Cap, where then-Commissioner Sonthonax had embarked them for the fatherland and the Collège de la Marche. Toussaint had seemed willing, even pleased to send them, then. Such an education was a privilege, after all, and one that opened the way to many advancements once the graduate returned to the colony. And in those days Toussaint had freely professed that the more French his sons should become, the better. Though later on, the doctor knew, he’d launched a couple of unsuccessful plots to get them back.
Now here they were. What would Toussaint think of them? Bedizened in their military ornaments, as yet unearned. Certainly he could retain them permanently now, if he chose—if in fact he was here at Ennery. If he was not, his order would suffice. Ennery was Toussaint’s personal redoubt—though they’d seen no military movement as they came through the narrow passes to this place, no one could come or go from here against his wish.
The doctor wondered if the young French captains knew as much, or if Leclerc had realized it—in their brief encounters, the Captain-General had struck him as a little ill-informed. A crash from inside the house, followed by Zabeth’s voice sharply raised, cut off his train of thought. The older children, shut up by the rain, had been chasing each other around the inside of the house for the last hour. Isabelle jumped up hurriedly and went to see what was the matter. Nanon made to rise as well, but the doctor gave her fingers a surreptitious squeeze to keep her by him. Soon enough the giggling indoors was stifled. Weary from the long ride and groggy from the meal that followed, the doctor sank deeper in his chair and dozed.
The night was clear after the rain, clean and sweet-smelling as fresh laundry. Saddlesore as they were, the party that had come down from Le Cap continued toward Sancey on foot. All but a couple of their cavalry escort were left behind, snoring