Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [270]
Nanon watched Tocquet as she rode, following the movements of his head, letting her eyes linger where it seemed to her that his did. In this way she was able to pick out a band of armed men, all black and ragged as maroons, slipping through the trees a half a mile below the road. From the direction that they moved in came a muted sound of gunfire, so faint in the distance it could barely be distinguished. Tocquet made no remark on what he’d seen, though Bazau muttered something to Gros-Jean. Nanon kept silent. If Elise or Isabelle or the children noticed anything they did not say so.
Gabriel and François rode in straw panniers slung to either side of Nanon’s donkey, which she sat sidesaddle in the country manner. François traveled quietly, looking all around with large eyes, while Gabriel kept trying to climb out, for the first hour or more of the journey. Yet after all François was the first to grow pettish, whimpering loudly enough to draw Tocquet’s reproving glance. Nanon gave him lumps of raw sugar to quiet him, and rather envied Zabeth—the infants in her charge were small enough to nurse to sleep, awkward as it might be to nurse them while balancing on a donkey.
In the early afternoon they reached the bourg of Plaisance, which seemed almost deserted, though a handful of French grenadiers watched the crossroads. From the soldiers they heard that General Desfourneaux had marched most of the troops out of town that morning, to confront a black army led in person, it was said, by Toussaint Louverture. Tocquet would not let them stop longer than the time it took to water their horses—and for Zabeth to change the babies by the well side; the glance Zabeth gave him set him a pace back. Elise approached him then, and argued in a low tone that they might very well stay here for a time, to let the children stretch their legs from the saddle, and when Tocquet pointed irritably at the sun, Elise suggested they might even stay the night, since the French soldiers would certainly have returned to Plaisance by then.
“They are not guaranteed to return victorious,” Tocquet said shortly, and Elise fell silent. They rode on.
At a fork in the road above Limbé they found four black women with bunches of bananas on offer, and a little way from them two colored women sat on the ground, eating bananas in the shade of a flamboyante. The younger woman quickly got to her feet as they approached, and Paul brightened when she called his name. It was Paulette, with her mother, Fontelle.
Nanon found herself looking all around for the doctor, for surely he must be here with them somewhere—she knew Tocquet had left them together when he brought Paul home from Ravine à Couleuvre. But the doctor was nowhere to be found. He’d been safe at Petite Rivière when they last saw him, Fontelle said, and had charged her to give Nanon that word. She and Paulette had meant to bring their news to Thibodet, but Toussaint was threatening Gonaives when they came there, so when he withdrew they had decided to press on their way north—they hoped to reach Habitation Arnaud before night.
“But Antoine,” Nanon blurted. “Why did you leave him?”
“He preferred to stay,” Fontelle said, though not quite meeting Nanon’s eyes. “He would not abandon all those wounded soldiers. But Bienvenu was always with him—and Toussaint would never let him come to harm.”
Nanon’s heart constricted. Fontelle knew something that she did not want to say. And Toussaint was not protecting anyone at Petite Rivière today, if he was engaged in battle with Desfourneaux on the way to Marmelade . . . But Nanon swallowed the rest of her questions. Paulette was walking the rim of the ravine beside the road, one arm draped over Paul’s shoulder, and whispering in his ear. Whatever she might know, Nanon could tell from his expression that she was not saying anything to upset him, and it would be