Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [185]
“Mon général,” he said aloud. “If Rochambeau should arrive before us?”
“Fé konfyans BonDyé.” Toussaint stood up. “Put your trust in God— He will not permit that to happen.”
Sancey was all astir when the refugees from Thibodet arrived. Suzanne Louverture moved quietly, quickly, efficiently through that turmoil. Her glance acknowledged the white women and their children with no sign of surprise. A couple of servants were carrying small bundles out of the house, while Saint-Jean scurried back and forth through the open doorway, generally getting himself underfoot. Toussaint’s sister, Madame Chancy, stood beside her two daughters; small portmanteaus waited at their feet. Beside these ladies was Isaac, no longer wearing his dress uniform, but more simply attired in canvas trousers and a loose white shirt. It was plain enough to Elise that none of them would be staying here.
Mireille squirmed on her bosom, reaching for Zabeth, who was, however, sufficiently burdened by her own infant. Sophie tugged free from Elise’s other hand, and with Robert she scampered up the steps to peer in the tall windows of the Sancey grand’case. Elise opened her mouth to reprove her. But just then Suzanne came out of the house and turned to lock the front door with a large iron key. The children, abashed, crept down the steps to rejoin their mothers.
Silently, Elise regathered herself. She’d hoped for a respite in this place, a pause, even if they did not stay. If she’d yielded to Xavier’s importunings, she might even now be . . . where? It came to her, with a palpitation, that Xavier might have waited too long for his own purposes, might well have been caught in the fighting in the hills or on the plateau.
But now Isabelle had drawn her own iron key from her bodice and was brandishing it at Suzanne Louverture. Her voice was distinctly too loud when she spoke, and her hand trembled, holding out the key.
“Scarcely a month, Madame Louverture, since I locked the door of my house at Le Cap with this. And from that house, the lock survives, but all the rest is ashes. And on whose order was—”
“Isabelle!” Elise shifted the baby to her opposite arm and moved to quell her friend. “Be silent!”
Nanon had appeared, more calmly, from the other side, and at her touch Isabelle subsided.
“Pardon,” Elise said to Suzanne. “I’m sure she means to wish you no misfortune—she is unsettled by her losses.”
Isabelle’s breath came in quick, harsh pants. The hollow of her throat was pulsing. In all their friendship Elise had never seen her break this way. One never knew what straw would be too heavy. Nanon, a head taller than Isabelle, stood behind her, stroking the nape of her neck and her temples. She drew Isabelle’s head back to rest on her bosom.
“Well,” said Suzanne. “I think we have all known the changing fortunes of our wars.” She touched Isabelle with a fingertip on her forehead, then raised her slack hand and folded the fingers over the key it held. “Take courage, Madame,” she said. “When these troubles are ended, you may yet build another house to hold the lock your key will open.”
Ten dragoons of Toussaint’s honor guard were there to escort them, under command of Morisset. Horseback or riding donkeys, they all set out on the southbound trails. Morisset led them on byways Elise did not know, crooked paths that avoided the main road from Ennery down to Gonaives. Once their way was blocked for a few minutes by a long file of field hands who’d laid down their hoes for muskets and were heading at a dogtrot in the direction of the Savane Désolée.
“The legacy of Sonthonax,” Isabelle said dully. Elise hushed her, with a glance at Suzanne; she knew that Toussaint had been as assiduous as the French commissioner Sonthonax in distributing muskets to the field hands, with the exhortation that these weapons were the fundamental instruments of freedom and must