Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [221]
“You hit your head on the church step,” Cyprien said.
“I did,” Daspir admitted, “but not so badly.”
“Well,” said Cyprien, looking doubtfully away. “I suppose it might have been . . .”
Daspir averted his own eyes, which fell as by a miracle on the little rum keg, standing upright within the well’s curb, the bunghole at the top. He plucked at Cyprien’s coat sleeve.
“Look there,” he said. “If that is our cask of rum unspilled, then you may trust me for the rest of it.”
On the road beyond the cemetery, Morisset halted to reckon up his men. There were no losses from the last encounter; the surprise had been too sudden, too complete. In the midst of a compliment on the captured flag, Morisset did recognize Placide, headcloth or no. At first his face went hard.
“Eh, boy,” he said. “Did you defy my order?”
“Gadé, papa’l ta yé kontan anpil ak sa’k li fé.” The voice came from among the horsemen, before Placide could collect himself to reply. Look, his father will be very happy with what he has done.
Morisset’s face broke toward a smile he masked with his hand before it was complete—this too his father’s gesture, Placide noted.
“N’alé,” he said, and turned his horse. Placide, still carrying the flag, moved his own horse into the column. A couple of the other troopers reached out to brush his shoulders as they passed. The warmth of the contact ran down Placide’s spine.
Once south of Granmorne, they slowed their horses from a trot to a walk. Morisset strung two men back to guard their rear, but there was not much threat; the land was still theirs at least as far south as Saint Marc. Placide dozed in the saddle, and sometimes sank completely into slumber, lulled by fatigue and the swing of his horse’s smooth gait, waking with a jolt whenever his head rolled to the far limit of his neck.
They came to the camp at Pont d’Ester, bathed in the light of the midnight moon. It had rained here earlier; the river was high and the ground swampy underfoot. Placide found his father, sleeping at last for the first time in at least three days, wrapped in a cloak and lying on a piece of plank embedded in the mud. Guiaou and Guerrier watched over him with a worshipful air. Curled under the cloak, Toussaint’s body looked no bigger than a cat’s. Sometimes he coughed or murmured or shivered in his sleep; these motions made Placide uneasy. He took off the red headcloth and offered it back to Guiaou.
“Kenbe’l,” Guiaou said. “Keep it. I will find another. It has been strong for you this day.” He grinned at the flag Placide had taken.
“Thank you,” Placide said. He kept looking into Guiaou’s deeply scarred face as he folded the cloth to put into his pocket.
“It is Mêt Agwé who dances in my head sometimes,” Guiaou said, as if replying to an unspoken question. “And you?” His eyes grew searching. For a moment it seemed that he might reach to cradle Placide’s head between his hands, but he did not. “I cannot say. You should go to the hûngan, maybe Quamba, if we go back to Ennery.”
Placide nodded, though he scarcely understood. Yet a tingle of the charge still sustained him—that feeling he was moved by another force into the actions he had taken. He was tired now and could simply accept it, whatever it was, along with his poor understanding of it.
Isaac had just appeared at his elbow. “Brother,” he said. “They say you have distinguished yourself in the last raid.”
“By the power of God,” Placide replied.
Isaac let his eye linger on the French flag. “Come,” he said. “We have found a place to sleep which is not too wet.”
Placide followed him, stumbling a little in his weariness, to a spot high on the river bank where the shelter of a mango tree had been augmented by a strip of canvas stretched tight. Suzanne and her sister and the Chancy girls slept beneath it, atop the lumpy bundles of their clothes. Isaac passed Placide a blanket, only slightly damp. Placide arranged himself on the gravel.
The earth seemed to rock beneath him where he lay, repeating the motion