Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [155]
“Captain Riau,” he said and paused as he pushed himself away from the table. “And Captain Paltre, you will leave us, please. Close the door on your way out.”
Riau saluted, expressionless still, and moved out of the doorframe. Paltre seemed to hesitate a moment, his lips pinched tight. Maillart saw how deeply he disliked to be grouped with the black man, officer or no. Of a sudden he realized why Paltre had seemed familiar; he’d been one of those upstart, insolent young officers who came out with the Hédouville mission, and had paid court to Isabelle Cigny while stationed in Le Cap. Maillart could enjoy his humiliation, then—if Paltre chose to find the order humiliating. In the end he obeyed it, docilely too, taking care not to let the door slam when he shut it.
Boudet blinked into the bottom of the box. A tittering laugh escaped him. “My Christ, I would not have believed it,” he said. “And they say the man is ugly as a monkey! into the bargain with being black.”
“But look at his conquests,” Lacroix said. “If I don’t mistake myself, they are skimmed from the cream of this society.”
“A cream polluted with his tar,” Boudet said.
“No doubt you’ve heard the axiom,” said Lacroix with a twisted smile. “We would deify the plague, if the plague gave out preferments.”
Maillart was not entirely listening. He had taken up a thumb-sized pendant, strung to a fine gold chain. The little disk of china was painted in astonishingly fine detail: the face of a blushing nymph, whose ringlets of dark hair fell loose on her bare white shoulders. A forefinger was coyly placed to her red lips. Isabelle had once owned this ornament—surely there could not be two alike—but more lately Maillart had seen it adorning the bosom of the doctor’s sister, Elise.
Lacroix had unfolded one of the notes and was scanning the lines of fine script, his mouth set in a silent whistle.
“Don’t read the names,” Boudet said sharply.
Lacroix let the paper flutter down into the box. Maillart caught up the loose chain in his palm and closed his hand over the pendant.
“There is an order which you have not seen,” Boudet said. “Though likely you will hear of it, before we have done. All white women who have prostituted themselves to the Negroes, regardless of their rank and station, are to be deported to France.”
Lacroix snorted. “As if such prostitutions could have witnesses.”
“What we have here would denounce more than a few,” Boudet said.
Subtly Maillart turned his hip, to conceal the movement of his hand as it dropped the pendant and chain into his pocket. Boudet drew himself up and looked the others in the eye.
“Gentlemen, we’ll look no further,” he said. “Take these things away and burn them. The box too.”
“Even the box?” Maillart said.
“The trinkets won’t burn,” Lacroix muttered.
“Then you may throw them into the sea,” said Boudet. “Somewhere, anywhere they will not be found.”
“As you command, mon général,” Maillart said. He stretched out both hands toward the box, but Boudet stayed him with a gesture.
“Your Captain Riau,” he said. “You mean to say he can read and write?”
“Oh, very adequately,” Maillart said.
“And has served Toussaint as a secretary.”
“From time to time. Toussaint uses many secretaries, often several for each letter that he writes.”
“I have heard that the man cannot even speak real French,” Boudet said, “only that bastard patois which everyone chatters here.”
“That rumor is false,” Maillart told him. “Toussaint’s French is correct. But his spelling is poor, and his handwriting not very legible.” As much could be said for the major’s own, though Maillart did not mention it.
“I see,” said Boudet. He sat down and rested an elbow on the table. “As for your Captain