Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [140]
“Do you see that?” Daspir hissed.
“Are you so sure?” But Cyprien was whispering too. They went on watching. With the light breeze that rose behind them, the shadow image rippled in the window frame.
“If you are certain,” Cyprien said, forcing his more supercilious tone, “then now is your chance to collect on our bet.”
“No,” said Daspir. As he spoke the shadow image dissolved into a blur. Then nothing, as the lamp was snuffed. Had he really seen anything at all? But the wet and heavy darkness all around him seemed suffused with invisible presences. Daspir recalled what the doctor had said, in the garden of Habitation Héricourt. What you don’t see means more than what you do. The doctor was well away down the path already, with the others, and Daspir felt an urgency to overtake them.
When Sophie’s most violent crying had subsided, Elise drew her a little way from the others on the path, to ask her privately what was the matter. But the girl only stiffened and pulled away from her; she would not give up the source of her distress.
“I think you’re only tired,” Elise said.
“I’m not at all tired!” Sophie shook her hair forward to hide her face and went stalking ahead of them all on the path.
Elise kept her distance from her daughter, resisting the sourness that spread over her own mood. These tempests of unreasoning emotion had come more frequently, the last few months. Let it go—it was too lovely a night to spoil. She wished Tocquet were with her, but he’d chosen to remain at home, aloof.
By the time Elise had reached the hallway of the Thibodet grand’case, Sophie had already slammed into her bedroom, forgetting that she shared it, for tonight, with Héloïse. Isabelle stood hesitating, just outside the door.
“Best leave her to it,” said Elise. “She’s in some pet.”
“I wonder if Robert has been teasing her too much,” Isabelle said, looking toward the room where Paul and Robert were meant to sleep.
“I’ll just look in.” Elise cracked open Sophie’s door, just wide enough to slip inside, then pulled it to behind her. Sophie was rigid on her bed, feigning sleep, though not convincingly. But at least she had not wakened Héloïse, who slept peacefully with her round face turned to the stripes of moonlight spilling through the jalousies.
She looked for Isabelle in Paul’s room, but only the two boys were there, scuffling and muttering in muffled voices as they jokingly disputed the space in the bed they were to share. Elise ordered them to quiet down, then withdrew. Isabelle had gone to the room of Nanon’s twins, and was kneeling at Gabriel’s bedside, her finger clasped in his sleeping fist. Elise moved toward her in the striped moonlight. She wanted to let Isabelle know she understood—though she did not understand, entirely. But as she floated across the floor, she saw Nanon waiting quietly in a corner, out of the light, and was repelled by a flash of jealousy. These two now kept a secret deeper than any Elise had ever shared with Isabelle, and they had been keeping it close for quite some time.
“I’m sorry,” Elise said, too loudly and rather coldly, and turned to leave the room. But Isabelle overtook her in the hall and caught hold of her hand. Elise relaxed, then returned the pressure. She thought she’d try some other subject.
“Is it really all destroyed?” she said. “Your house and mine?”
“With all Le Cap, from one end to the other.”
“Ah,” said Elise. “We had it such a little time.”
Isabelle pulled her toward the front doorway. “It’s only buildings,” she said, swinging her hands toward the moonlight beyond the gallery. “And those can be rebuilt as well as burned.”
Tonight Coisnon did not share quarters with Placide and Isaac, though Placide could still hear his stentorian snoring from the room next door. Their tutor was exhausted, from the arduousness of their travel and the unfamiliarity of everything they’d encountered on their way. Isaac was in the same state, though his sleeping breath was quiet, just barely audible through Coisnon’s wall-muffled snoring and the ticking of the clock on the mantel.
Placide