Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [166]
Placide looked at the map, which was beginning to curl back into its roll—but he could still find the dots of Saint Raphael and Saint Michel. When he looked at his father’s silent profile again, he thought he knew what Toussaint might be thinking. At the time of the first risings ten years before, Toussaint had sent Placide, with his mother and brothers, to Saint Michel, where they would be safely out of the way of the troubles. There would be no such safety in those parts now, and none anywhere on the Spanish side of the island. Placide himself was ready to meet the enemy under arms, or at least he had told himself that he was, but the question of his family remained vivid.
He was surprised to see Toussaint smiling openly when his father turned to face him again.
“Fé konfyans, fils-moin,” Toussaint said. Have faith, my son. He touched the back of Placide’s hand. “We will win in the end. Even if everyone else should abandon us, there is Konpè Général Lafièvre.”
“Pardon?” said Placide.
“Our ally, General Yellow Fever!” Toussaint’s smile flashed so wide his eyes were slitted, then as quickly disappeared. He passed a hand across his mouth and leaned back in his chair. “One does not like to depend on him for everything. But he will come, when it is his time—and whether he is called or not.”
Elise lay soggy in her bed, alone, but she could hear Tocquet on the gallery beyond the front windows, talking softly to someone; she could hear the clink of a coffee cup, though it was not yet light. The wind combed through the palms around the house, and hushed the murmuring voices. She sat up, reached to the bedpost for her peignoir, and went out, fumbling with its fastenings.
Bazau and Gros-Jean were seated at the table with Tocquet. They both got up when she appeared, looking a little uncomfortable. She held her robe together at her throat.
“A l’aise,” she said, Relax, but the two black men only lowered their heads before her, turned and went in cat-foot silence down the steps.
“Well,” said Elise. “They seem a little shy of me, this morning.”
Tocquet glanced over his shoulder, where a little gray light in the sky began to outline the long fronds of the palms. “They are going to bring the horses,” he said.
“Perhaps they only take the model of their master,” Elise said. She caught her lower lip in her teeth. This was not the tone she’d hoped to strike. She loosened her hand, letting go the robe, and spread her fingers over her bare collarbones. When she glanced down, she saw Tocquet’s worn leather saddlebags, plump where they lay by his feet.
“So you mean to travel,” she said.
“Yes,” said Tocquet. “I will go up to the plateau, if I can, and investigate the trails and passes there. I have some goods from Gonaives, and tobacco could be sold here, if the way is clear to get some.”
“It seems a strange time to leave your family,” Elise said.
“My family declines to accompany me,” Tocquet said shortly. “Unless you will reconsider. As I wish very much that you would.”
“Madame Louverture was here only yesterday. As she means to remain here, with her family, I do not see the danger to ours.”
“Then you have blinded yourself to it,” Tocquet said. “Toussaint has been outlawed. It will certainly come to fighting now. There are at least three columns bearing down on Ennery at this moment. In two days’ time, the ground beneath your chair may be a battlefield. I would not underestimate Toussaint, but I don’t dare predict the outcome. Nor can I predict what outcome would be favorable to our position here—perhaps neither.”
Elise wilted into a chair opposite him. In fact she’d had a similar thought to the last one he had spoken. In the face of her silence, Tocquet took out one of his cheroots, ran it under his nose, then put it back into his pocket. Bazau and Gros-Jean appeared in the growing light in the yard, leading two pack mules and three saddle