Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [224]
Nanon and Zabeth emerged from the house and led the women and girls for rudimentary ablutions in the stream. When they came back, the women of the lakou had made ready for them a deep gamelle of maïs moulin and another full of small white sweet potatoes. The white people ate silently, reverently, as the truly famished do. Today no one reproved the children for eating with their fingers. Tocquet found a coin to offer the women of the lakou before they started on their way.
As if electrified by their first real meal in twenty-four hours, Paul and Caco raced ahead of the others down the zigzag trail. Robert ran after them, somewhat less recklessly, while Sophie hung back with the adults today. A girl’s conservatism, Tocquet thought, or maybe she remembered better than the boys how Saint-Jean had been overtaken by the French advance.
When they reached the bottom of the valley, Paul and Caco came tumbling back over them, Paul crying, “Soldiers! Soldiers!” and Caco adding, “Soldat blanc!” Elise halted, turning to Isabelle with a worried air, but Tocquet encouraged them to go on. “They are French soldiers, after all,” he said, with barely detectable irony, “our countrymen.”
In a hundred more paces they’d come out of the trees and stood in view of the smoking hole that had been the Sancey grand’case two days earlier. French infantry milled on the slope beyond the ruin, and presently a young lieutenant came to inquire their business.
“We are the proprietors of Habitation Thibodet, which lies just beyond this place,” Tocquet said. “We seek to regain our home today, supposing that it still exists.”
Without comment, the lieutenant looked over all their crew.
“Does one know who burned this property?” Elise said abruptly.
“Ah, Madame.” The lieutenant’s eyes settled on her; he inclined his head politely. “This place is said to belong to the outlaw Toussaint, by whose order the towns of the coast have been razed. We thought to give him a taste of his own tactics.”
To that, no one immediately replied. Gabriel and François were coughing from the smoke; Isabelle stared gloomily at the house key she’d plucked from her bodice.
“And Thibodet?” Elise said finally.
“I have no knowledge of the place,” the lieutenant said, as he stepped aside and beckoned. “But by all means go and see for yourselves—we do not mean to hinder you.”
In another half-hour, Tocquet stopped below the mango trees and wrinkled his nose.
“What is it?” Elise said.
“I don’t smell smoke.”
“You don’t smell smoke,” she repeated.
“A good sign, I think,” Tocquet said. “Let us go on.”
Paul and Caco had run on ahead; a few minutes later they came dashing back. Yoyo, Caco’s little sister, was capering among them now.
“Saint-Jean is there!” Paul cried in high excitement.
“What do you mean?” Elise said. “Saint-Jean is where?”
“In your own house, ma tante—come see!” And the three of them scampered away again.
“It is mysterious,” Elise muttered, pressing a hand to her abdomen.
Tocquet took off his broad-brimmed hat and scratched at the back of his head. “It suggests the house is still standing at least. As for Saint-Jean—we’ll see soon enough.”
When they entered the back of the Thibodet compound, they found Merbillay working around the kitchen much as usual—with Paul, Caco, Yoyo, and now Sophie all clamoring around her for a snack of the pork griot she was turning in her iron chaudière. The house was there, walls and roof intact, and all the outbuildings. Everything was quite as usual, except that now French soldiers were bivouacked around the area where the black army had formerly camped.
Their gallery was crowded with French officers, they saw when they circled to the front of the house. And with them, one black lad who jumped up to greet them—Saint-Jean, as Paul had claimed. He ran