Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [208]
“Money. Jewelry,” Baille recited. “Perhaps some documents? I do not know what you may have retained, but you must understand, Ge—” he cut himself off. “You understand that orders must be followed.”
“Of course.”
“Get up then, please. No, leave the blanket.” Baille paused. “I must also ask you to disrobe.”
Toussaint stared at him strangely, his eyes glittering. He did not protest, but turned to the wall; then, as if he’d changed his mind, faced Baille, staring rigidly at the commandant as he began to unfasten his garments.
“Search the bedding,” Baille said to Franz and the other guardsmen. “No, not like that. Shake out everything and turn the pallet. Yes, that’s better.” Meanwhile he watched Toussaint as he slipped out of the loose coat and brown peasant’s trousers supplied at Decrès’s suggestion. Under the soft round hat he wore even to bed, his head was bound in a yellow kerchief, which Baille had purchased for him after many requests.
“To the skin, if you please.”
Toussaint stared at Baille, disbelieving, then peeled off his culotte and stood nude.
“Examine that,” Baille said to Franz, who stirred the undergarment on the flagstones with the point of his bayonet. “And you, Ge—” He stopped again. “Toussaint” is his name; it is the sole appellation which should be given him . . . Franz would hear the strangled honorific, might report it.
“If you please, step nearer to the fire.”
Toussaint complied, his eyes remaining fixed on Baille’s. The commandant scanned him throat to toe. He was still fit for a man of his age, wiry, though he’d recently lost weight. Lumps of stone-gray cicatrice stood out on the velvet black of his skin—scars from the many battles which he claimed. His sex was shriveled in the cold. There was no place of concealment. But the cold affected him. Baille watched a shiver pass over the small, taut body. Well, let the victim tremble! But Toussaint breathed into the space behind his navel. Baille watched the small taut belly expand. The shiver stopped. His own breath steamed in the frosty air.
“Now turn around.”
Toussaint revolved. His shoulders were just slightly stooped. The legs a little bowed, the buttocks taut. There were no scars on his back. Well, he must have always faced his enemies.
“Trouvaille!” called out the other guardsman. A find! He flourished up something from a slit in the pallet. It sparkled warmly in the torchlight.
“You see?” said Baille, though more to Franz than to the guardsman who’d made this discovery. “Bring it to me.”
The guardsman stumped across the flagstones. What he presented was a single spur, chased and gilded, though the gilt had worn away from the place where the rowel turned and on the inside where it was shaped to curve around a boot heel. Baille fingered the chill metal, then glanced at Toussaint, who had turned, unbidden, to face him once more.
“With such a weapon I might overthrow my prison,” Toussaint said. “Would you deprive me of a souvenir?”
“Such are my orders.”
The spur clicked when Baille set it down on the table. He picked up the coat and turned out the pockets. The famous watch, but nothing more. He stroked the lining with his fingertips. Here was something—a rectangle of folded paper and the round shapes of a few coins. By what sleight of hand had he concealed these things when he was made to change his clothes? Baille felt his suspicion abruptly sharpen. He looked at Franz.
“Search the room, the cracks between the stones. Make certain there is nothing buried and no hiding place.”
Franz looked at him rather coolly, but turned away before Baille could be certain of any superciliousness in the look. He drew a short knife from his belt and began to probe the masonry joints on the wall behind the pallet. The other guardsman, at a grunt from Franz, crouched down and felt the edges of the paving stones, groping his way from the bed frame toward the hearth.
Baille returned to the coat, working the paper packet toward the slit in the lining at the back. He had