Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [222]
“Isaac,” he said.
“Hanh?” Isaac mumbled and rolled up on his shoulder.
“I saw our Captain Daspir today. Him who guarded us on La Sirène.” Placide paused, recalling that smooth, rather soft olive face, with the eyes surprisingly cool and appraising.
“It was he who fought me for the flag at Gonaives,” Placide said.
“Was it so,” Isaac muttered sleepily.
“Yes,” said Placide. He wrapped his arms around his knees and shrugged the blanket higher on his shoulders. Across the river, a night bird called. “I might have killed him with my sword, but something held me from it.”
Isaac turned onto his back and spoke more plainly. “It is well you did not kill him.”
“Yes,” said Placide, “I am glad too.”
Bazau and Gros-Jean lost their usual lazy manner in the descent of Granmorne—in fact both of them seemed wound as tight as watch springs. Tocquet felt the same tension hardening across his back. To be quit of the Louverture family was a relief in one way, in another way not. He still had a party of four women and eight children, if he’d counted them right, and some of them needed to be carried. Not the company he’d have chosen to slip invisibly through a war zone. Yet to the older children it was all a frolic. When Morisset’s squadron descended the adjacent trail in the dusk, Tocquet had pulled his party off into the trees. What could it mean, their going back toward Gonaives? He’d had to cuff Sophie, though but lightly, to keep her quiet, and might have died of the wounded look the girl fired at him. Only her feelings were really hurt; he’d scarcely ever struck her. Of course she was familiar with Toussaint’s honor guard, knew many of the men by name. They were often on the roads around Ennery and would touch their helmets to her when they passed, so she would not be thinking how some of them might love white children a little less today, especially when no one like Madame Louverture was in sight.
When Morisset’s squadron was out of earshot, they walked on into the quickly thickening dark. Tocquet sent Bazau to bring up the rear, while he and Gros-Jean explored forward. Most of the time—there was nothing for it—Tocquet carried a drowsy, irritable child, his own Mireille, or one of Nanon’s twins. Sophie, sullen since the slap, trudged grimly along behind Robert and Paul. The lark seemed to go out of the excursion even for the older children when they were walking in the dark. They lacked for light, though the moon was near full, because Tocquet kept them well under cover of the trees. The sound of fresh fighting reached them from Gonaives, then faded as they turned further from the town.
Elise and Isabelle had begun to bicker over something, most unusual for them. Nanon and Zabeth, meanwhile, walked in a graceful silence, as if in a dream. But after a couple of sour exchanges with Isabelle, Elise rushed forward to overtake Tocquet.
“Can we not stop?” she hissed. “The children are exhausted, my feet are burning, I am so tired I could sleep on the ground right here, and Isabelle insists she cannot take another step—”
“Isabelle could march us all into our graves, and well she knows it,” Tocquet turned his face away to cover his grim smile. “It’s no time to lie down on the trail,” he said. “We don’t know who is passing—the woods are full of fugitives from the town and probably deserters from both armies. There’s those who kissed your fingers yesterday who’d think your head would look well on a stake today.”
“But—” Elise clipped off her phrase. “What is that—smoke?”
At the same moment came to Tocquet’s nostrils the familiar sick-sweet smell of burning cane. There was a fire glow on the horizon, just to their north, where a tall stand of bamboo bounded the trail. Tocquet pulled himself into an almond tree and climbed a few branches till he could see out. On the far side of a shallow ravine, a great house was aflame in the midst of burning fields. French soldiers in ranks on the oval drive watched the