Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [186]
Suzanne, if she had heard this ironizing, did not react, and Isabelle consented to be silenced. Her episode of hysteria seemed to have passed and she was calm and upright in her saddle, though she looked pale and drawn. Isaac rode beside her, offering tidbits of conversation in the clear, correct French he had learned at the Collège de la Marche. Gradually, Isabelle began to soften under his polite attentions and her own awareness that, without even trying, she’d beguiled the boy.
“Where is Saint-Jean?”
The voice was Suzanne’s, from the head of their line. Isaac swiveled his head around—Elise looked too, but the youngest Louverture son was nowhere to be seen. The older children had been making a game of their progress for the last half-hour, giggling as they raced their donkeys in circles through the brush, but now the path had turned very near to the main road, and below them Elise thought she could hear the distant rattle of a military drum and the shuffle of marching feet. Sophie and Robert burst out of the bushes. Isaac repeated the question to them— “Where is Saint-Jean?”—and Robert pointed in the direction of the road.
At once Isaac was off at a canter. Four of Morisset’s dragoons went after him. Suzanne had turned her donkey across the trail; her peeled stick pointed to the sky. “Isaac,” she called. “Isaac!”
“Madame,” Morisset said. “My men will bring him back to you, but we must go on, and quickly. Those are French soldiers there on the road.”
Suzanne fell into her place in the line. Morisset turned them inland, leaving the trail to go cross-country, inland, with one more dragoon remaining behind at the point of their departure. They rode through dense brush, raked by the dry thorns, till they gained another, higher pathway. The sound of the drum was no longer audible from the main road. Robert and Sophie had fallen silent; they did not try to leave the group. After forty minutes Isaac and the five cavalrymen overtook the others. There was no sign of Suzanne’s youngest son.
“No one will harm him,” Isaac said. “He is the son of the Governor-General.” But the young man’s dark face looked drained of blood. Suzanne did not respond to what he’d said. Isabelle, who’d come very much to herself again, pressed her mare forward and reached out a hand to Madame Louverture, but Suzanne did not seem to see her. She faced forward, her eyes hard under the line of her blue headcloth, her face a mask.
In the afternoon they reached Habitation Cocherelle, where the balance of Morisset’s squadron awaited them. Toussaint had passed that way an hour before, at the head of a battalion of grenadiers and more dragoons of his guard. He’d left word for the family to remain there till his next message might come.
Suzanne slipped down from her donkey, walked into the shade of a flamboyant tree, knelt in the dust, and folded her hands to pray. Isabelle took a few steps toward her, then stopped short. Elise and Nanon joined her. Behind them, Morisset was giving orders, deploying his men on all the approaches to the Cocherelle grand’case. Madame Chancy walked past the white women, but she too stopped before she reached Suzanne beneath the flamboyant. When Suzanne had finished her prayer, she rose and brushed the dirt from her skirt. She clasped Madame Chancy’s hand for a moment and then, expressionless, went into the grand’case to begin making it ready to receive the refugees.
Elise sat on the Cocherelle gallery, with Mireille sleeping, finally, in her arms. She was exhausted beyond all reckoning, had not the will to rise and lay the baby down. Where would she lay her? Isabelle and Nanon and Zabeth were all scurrying through the house, following Suzanne Louverture’s directions, beating out mattresses, making beds, or organizing pallets. Isabelle had snapped completely out of her despondency, or buried it in this new bustle. Someone had lit a cookfire behind the house; the odor of simmering soupe joumoun mingled with the wood smoke. In these acts of dailiness Suzanne must find some shelter.