Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [26]
“M’ap bay w dlo,” a child’s voice called from behind and above her. “Kite’m fé sa!”
Claudine settled back on her heels. In fact the runnel of the spring was just barely within her longest reach. Etienne, a black child probably five years old, bare-legged and clothed only in the ragged remnant of a cotton shirt, scampered down toward her, his whole face alight. I’ll give you water—let me do it. There was no trail where he descended, and the slope was just a few degrees off the vertical, but a few spotted goats were grazing the scrub there among the rocks and Etienne moved as easily as they. He bounced down onto the level ground beside her, and immediately turned to fish out a gourd cup that lay atop a barrel of meal in a crevice of the cliff—Arnaud having furnished this spot as an emergency retreat. Grinning, Etienne scrambled to the top of the boulder and stretched the gourd out toward the spring, careless of the sixty-foot drop on which he teetered.
Claudine gasped. “Attention, chéri.” She took hold of his shirttail. But Etienne’s balance was flawless; he put no weight against her grip. In a moment he had slipped down to the boulder and was raising the brimming gourd to her.
“W’ap bwe sa, wi,” he said. You’ll drink this.
“Yes,” Claudine said, accepting the gourd with a certain ceremony. The water was very cool and sweet. She swallowed and returned the gourd to him half full and when he’d drunk his share, she curtsied with a smile. Etienne giggled. Claudine smoothed her skirts and sat down on a stone, looking out.
Below, the cabins of the field hands fanned out randomly from the little whitewashed chapel. They’d overbuilt the site of the old grand’case which had been burned in the risings of 1791—the house that had been the theater of her misery when Arnaud first brought her out to Saint Domingue from France. More distant, two dark threads of smoke were rising from the cane mill and distillery, and further still, two teams of men with ox-drawn wagons were cutting and loading cane from the wide carrés marked out by citrus hedges.
The higher ground where Arnaud had built the new grand’case was a better spot, less plagued by insects, more secure. On any height, however modest, one had a better chance to catch a breeze. Claudine realized she had hoped for a breath of wind when she climbed here, but there was none, only the heavy air and the lowering sky, the dull weight of anticipation. Something was coming—she didn’t know what. She might, perhaps, ask Cléo what she had shouted in her sleep . . .
A cold touch startled her. She turned her head; the smiling Etienne was dabbing water around the neck line of her dress. After the first jolt the sensation was pleasant. She felt a drop purl down the joints of her spine.
“Ou pa apprann nou jodi-a,” he said. You are not teaching us today. A statement, not a question.
“Non,” said Claudine. And as she thought, “It is Saturday.”
Etienne leaned against her back, draping an arm across her shoulder. His slack hand lay at the top of her breast, his cheek against her hair. In the heat his warm weight might have been disagreeable, but she felt herself wonderfully comforted.
Idly her gaze drifted toward the west. Along the allée which ran to the main road, about two-thirds of the royal palms still stood. The rest had been destroyed in the insurrection, so that the whole looked like a row of broken teeth. It seemed that the high palms shivered slightly, though where she sat Claudine could feel no breeze. Beyond, the green plain