Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [15]
“Sa bay tristesse,” Toussaint said. That gives sadness.
“So it does,” Isabelle said, and the expression she’d artfully put on dissolved into a look that seemed sincere.
During this parley, glasses had been handed round, and now a servant appeared with two bottles of wine. Toussaint studied them with some care, giving more attention to the seals than to the labels, then nodded that the corks should be drawn.
“You put out from Charleston, Captain,” he said to Howarth. “So I am told.”
“It is so, Governor,” Howarth replied. The doctor studied his profile. Howarth had a square, bony face, and wore the sort of sailor’s beard which sketched a line from one ear to the other along the outer edge of his jaw.
Toussaint made inquiry into certain particulars of his voyage and the trading he had done along the way, especially at Martinique, where the ancien régime, including slavery, persisted, and nearby Guadeloupe, where the slaves had freed themselves through revolution, as at Saint Domingue. Howarth made his answers with an air of unconscious frankness, but the doctor, as he nursed the wine which had been served him, thought he must be aware that a net was being subtly arranged around him.
“Governor,” he said at last. “I would not venture to make a comparison of those two places. That is a political question with which I do not engage. I am only grateful for my right of entry to those ports—at Martinique and Guadeloupe, and here.”
Toussaint nodded. “You know very well the port of Charleston, I imagine. There is a great importation of slaves there still, is there not? Tell me, how many?”
“What?” said Howarth. “By month, by year? How do you mean?”
“Let us say by year.”
Howarth thought for a moment, frowning, then produced a number.
“And the cost of a slave?”
“On the block at Charleston? But that depends on many things.”
“Let us say a young and healthy, able-bodied male.”
Howarth frowned. “Still it depends, on the sagacity of the buyer and the cunning of the seller. Such sales are made at auction as you may know. But . . .” After a moment he produced another figure.
“And in Africa?” Toussaint said.
“In Africa?” Howarth was now genuinely perplexed. “Truly I don’t know—five sticks of tobacco and an iron axe head? If you mean to suggest that the profit margin is very great, it certainly is so, but—”
“You yourself have never undertaken such a voyage?”
Captain Howarth put aside his half-drunk glass of wine and drew himself ramrod straight on the edge of his chair. “I have not, sir, and I would not.”
Toussaint leaned forward. “Tell me your reasons.”
Howarth seemed to relax, just slightly, just visibly, though he remained at the edge of his seat. “I have seen those ships discharge their loads.” He stroked a hand backward over his head. “I have even visited their holds. Well, once—it was sufficient. The conditions there are much worse than for animals. There is much loss of life on that passage. And it is human life.”
He paused. It was now so quiet in the room that the doctor could hear his neighbors breathing. Through the closed door came dampened strains of the country dance tunes.
“I abhor it,” Captain Howarth said finally. “Oh, I don’t judge the other captains who pursue it. They are my friends, some of them, even my partners on occasion, but in other enterprises. I will carry any cargo but not that one. I abhor the slave trade for myself.”
Toussaint folded his arms across his narrow, wiry chest and looked very piercingly at Captain Howarth. A ring of white appeared around his eyes. For perhaps a whole minute the two men’s gazes were locked. Then Toussaint breathed out, nodded, and turned to ask Borghella some unrelated question.
At that, the mood in the room relaxed, and the conversation became somewhat more general, though subdued. The session continued about an hour more. Then Toussaint rose