Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [269]
Isidor and Cléo sat on the gallery, much at their ease, as if they were the masters there. Claudine was nowhere in view. Arnaud looked up, above the roof tree, and saw her step up to the cleft in the rock where he’d cached his weapons of last resort, that watch post. It was where she often went at noontime now—against all persuasion she must make that climb in the fiercest blaze of the day’s heat. Rail-thin she stood, arms hanging slack, her garment fluttering from her bones in the breeze that combed the height. She was looking toward the mountains of Limbé.
Arnaud lowered his head and walked on. In some way he would have liked to join her. But even the lesser climb to the grand’case seemed to wind him. He limped up the steps, his stick’s tip booming on the boards, and dropped into a low wooden chair such as market women used to squat above their wares. He closed his eyes, and presently felt a cool pressure against his temples—Cléo’s fingertips, dampened in the glass of water she had brought to him unbidden. He was too hot, she murmured. The cool fingertips pressed dispassionately on the insides of his wrists and then released, and he heard her long skirt swishing away across the floor. He sipped at the water, set down the glass. He had slept poorly. For so long he had been indifferent to any danger. Hazard might move him to anger but not fear. Now that indifference had all worn away, leaving him exposed and raw. If the wind stirred the palm leaves, he was startled. But the breeze had died, and for the moment it was utterly calm. He settled his weight in the chair and dozed.
Tocquet had rushed them out of Thibodet before dawn; at daybreak they were passing through the drowsy bourg of Ennery. By the time the sun had fully risen, they were mounting the south slopes of Pilboreau. Tocquet would not let them dismount at the market on the height, though both Sophie and Isabelle complained with some sharpness. He only bought them all warm cassavas they could munch in the saddle as they rode on.
Never had Nanon seen Tocquet show such an obvious tension. She was accustomed to his lazy, cat-like confidence. Now he more resembled a cat that knows itself pursued by some more dangerous hunter. He rode in silence at the head of their line, watching, watching, ceaselessly scanning the trees and rocks either side of the trail, down the long descent and the deeper distances of the Plaisance river valley. Gros-Jean and Bazau, bringing up the rear, had none of their usual joviality, but were as grim and silent and watchful.
In this atmosphere, the conversation Isabelle and Elise attempted soon expired. The children were also uncharacteristically subdued. Paul especially, Nanon thought. He had been moody for nearly two weeks, ever since the battle which parted him from his father. Was she wrong, Nanon wondered, to urge him to write letters which could not be sent? Her conviction was that this exercise would not only keep the doctor alive in Paul’s mind, but also somehow protect his life in reality. This much she believed, though she could not have said why. But whether it helped Paul, in the short run, was more doubtful.
She watched the boy, riding his donkey—he was pale and drawn, his ivory skin bloodless, his mouth a thin line. Robert too was silent and watchful. Of course he had witnessed the destruction of Le Cap, to which they were now supposed to return. Gabriel and François were too small to understand what was happening, and Isabelle’s Héloïse probably was too, but of the three older children only Sophie retained her usual belligerent energy. There was no foolishness of straying from the road this time, as there had been on their flight south from Thibodet— not that Tocquet would have allowed