Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [139]
In the light of the oblong moon, Isaac and Placide watched their play. The doctor thought that Isaac, especially, might have liked to join in the game. But he was on his dignity now and kept to the path, which was a little slippery from the rain, hitching up his belt to keep the tip of his ceremonial sword from dragging in the mud.
They came to the crossroads beneath the mango trees and, with some splashing and tittering from the children, picked their way across the stream. As they passed through the hedge onto Sancey lands, the doctor noticed a couple of shadows slipping away from them, over the hill. Their incursion would not go unreported. But no one waited for them behind the Sancey grand’case except an old woman dozing on a woven stool, her feet stretched toward the dying coals of a cook fire. She jumped up, stared at Isaac and Placide in the moonlight, then clapped a hand over her mouth and ran for the grand’case as fast as her legs would take her.
The front approach to the Sancey grand’case was considerably more impressive than the jumble of outbuildings and shanties to the rear. The house loomed over them in the moonlight. Even Cyprien seemed a little abashed as he stood below the portico, clearing his throat to announce their visit. But before he had pronounced a word, the front door popped open and Suzanne Louverture appeared, flanked by two servants holding tall candlesticks. The boys met her halfway up the stairs; the three of them clumped together in a tight embrace.
Coisnon, who carried a small valise, put his foot on the first step and turned an inquiring look on the two French captains.
“Go up,” said Cyprien. “We’ll wait where we are.”
Suzanne was already leading the boys toward her lighted doorway, her arms around their waists, and theirs across her shoulders. Like soldiers supporting a wounded comrade, Daspir thought, except it seemed more that she was supporting them. Then they had passed through the door, and Coisnon with them. The candle flames glowed inside the jalousies of a room just off the entryway.
“But Toussaint,” Cyprien said. “Is he here? Or why does he not show himself?”
The doctor only shrugged in the darkness, and no one else had any answer. Then a girl’s wailing erupted in the shrubbery at the side of the house, and Sophie flung out of the bushes to bury her face in her mother’s bodice.
“Now then, what can this be?” Elise cupped her head with one hand.
“Oh, see how late it is,” said Isabelle. “We ought to get these children home to bed.”
With that, the women began to collect their flock for the return to Thibodet. Only Cigny and Daspir lingered behind, below the portico of the grand’case. The two cavalrymen of their escort stood at a polite distance from them.
“Ah,” said Cyprien at length. “We may as well go back with the others. Find ourselves some place to sleep.”
“Ought we to let them slip from our charge so easily?” Daspir asked.
“This is an effort of diplomacy,” Cyprien said in the tone of one reciting orders. “The sons of Toussaint are to be treated with all consideration— not as prisoners, nor as hostages. It is hoped that through their persuasive influence and the power of their sentiments, their father’s loyalty may be bound to France.” Cyprien smiled as he turned to go. “Coisnon is with them, in any case, and he has been schooled to the task.”
“Wait,” Daspir hissed.
A lamp came alight in another room, throwing a shadow on the blinded window. Daspir touched Cyprien’s hand and pointed. It looked as though a shadow hand removed the shadow of a bicorne hat, leaving a bare-headed profile to waver on the slats of the jalousies: heavy underslung jaw and high sloping