Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [209]
“Those documents are my property,” Toussaint said. “Moreover, they are evidence to be presented at my trial—proof of the duplicity which General Leclerc practiced against me.”
“Nonetheless, I am ordered to confiscate them,” Baille said. Without looking at the third letter, he folded the papers together again and slipped the packet into his pocket. Then he shook the few coins from their hiding place in the lining and stacked them on the table beside the watch and the spur. Toussaint watched him, but said nothing more. The firelight behind him blackened his silhouette. Baille turned away and walked to the wall opposite the hearth—the raw bedrock of the mountain itself. Might Toussaint have quarried some cache into this? It seemed unlikely. The stone was furrowed and wormholed with the damp that constantly seeped through it. Tonight the cold had hardened the moisture into crystals that fractured the light of the fire and the torches.
“Rien de plus,” Franz announced. There’s nothing more.
“No,” said Baille, as if he’d known this result ahead of time. He touched the rock wall with his forefinger, snapping a delicate stem of ice. Toussaint’s eyes felt hard in the center of his back. Baille turned to face him.
“Your kerchief also, if you please.”
Toussaint only stared at him. He seemed strangely composed, even in his nakedness. The castle bell struck three. Beyond the grille at the end of the cell, the voices of sentries exchanged their all’s well from post to post.
“Your kerchief must also be inspected,” said Baille. Toussaint looked frozen to the hearthstone. Baille took several steps toward him. So did Franz, from an opposing angle. But before they’d reached him, Toussaint ripped the yellow cloth from his head and shook it out in a circular flourish, as if to show it empty.
Yet Baille was distracted by looking at his head, which, it seemed to him, he’d never before seen bare. The forehead was extremely high where the removed cloth revealed it, rising sharply to a bald and glossy bump protruding through tight knots of grizzled hair. When Baille looked again at Toussaint’s hands, they were busy with the kerchief, folding it diagonally over and over to compress it to a smaller, tighter triangle. Again he thought of some sleight of concealment. The packet of yellow finally disappeared in the pressure of Toussaint’s two hands, while Toussaint raved in a language Baille could not understand— “Madichon pou le general Leclerc! Madichon pou li! Tout sak pasé pou mal sé sou kont li! Men, l’ap mouri. L’ap mouri, mwen di, mwen wé, l’ap mouri nan pay nou. Li pa jamn soti nan Saint Domingue.”
“General,” Baille stuttered. Well, now he’d pronounced the title—too late to recall it, though he felt that Franz took note.
“General! Control yourself. These demonstrations do not become you.”
And Baille was struck by the extent of his own discomfort, embarrassment, even distress. After all, such a breakdown in the morale of the prisoner was surely what the new orders were intended to achieve. But Baille was positively unnerved to see it. He opened his mouth to say something more, then stopped. It was plain that Toussaint would not hear him. His jaws were clenched, the tendons stood out vibrating around his throat, and every fiber of his body exerted pressure on the wedge of cloth between his hands.
A curse upon the General Leclerc—curse him! Every evil thing that has happened is his doing. But he is dying—I say it, I see it. He is dying in our