Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [302]
“What an ass I was to propose it!” Guizot burst out. His eyes glittered oddly. “I had no idea—none of us did. It is all folly.” He winced with another effort to lift his left arm. “I’m sorry,” he said, faltering. “At this hour, I . . . forgive me. I am no company.” He moved to where he’d spread a blanket and lay down.
Maillart and Aloyse exchanged a glance, then both of them moved toward Guizot together. Not drunkenness, Maillart thought as he touched his forehead; it is fever. Sergeant Aloyse was loosening the captain’s sleeve.
“Well,” said Maillart, after a moment. “This gentleman is in need of a sawbones.” He coughed. “In my opinion.”
Daspir turned his face away. Paltre and Cyprien both looked a little nauseated, but they kept staring at the suppurating wound.
“A fine young man, and brave,” said Sergeant Aloyse. “I would not like to see him lose this arm.”
“To save his life?” Maillart said. But the sergeant was doggedly changing the soiled dressing—with a certain skill, Maillart took in. As the wound was handled, Guizot moaned a little in his feverish sleep.
“Sea bathing,” Maillart said. “That cleans a wound.” Of course the sea was too far off. Where the devil was Antoine Hébert? He’d liked to have had the doctor handy for more than one reason. Yet if he were dead, somehow Maillart thought he would know it.
“I had a packet of herbs against proud flesh,” he said. “But I used it all on General Lacroix.”
The sergeant glanced up at him.
“I don’t know their names to look for more,” Maillart muttered.
The sergeant shrugged. He’d finished the bandage.
“Come on,” Maillart said. “Let’s take a turn.”
The killing ground on the slope below the fort was pale with rags and bones under the starlight. The bodies there had mostly been picked clean, though the odor of corruption lingered. Maillart saluted the pickets and passed outside the line, walking a little way up the grade. Daspir and Aloyse trailed him. When Maillart stopped, the sergeant passed him.
“Better not go farther,” Maillart said. “There’s a marksman up there who can see in the dark, I swear.”
Aloyse stopped. “But what do I hear?”
Maillart turned his ear to the fort. On the night there came to him a frail melody of a violin and a chorus of ghostly voices singing.
Allons enfants de la patrie
Le jour de gloire est arrivé
Contre nous de la tyrannie
L’étendard sanglant est levé . . .
“My God,” said Aloyse. “They are singing the ‘Marseillaise.’ ”
He turned abruptly to Maillart. “I sang that song across Italy and Austria and in the streets of Paris—with my brothers in arms, who today are all dead. Wherever we sang it we came to set the people free.” His voice cracked as he turned toward the music. “No enemy of ours could sing that song.” Again he faced Maillart. “Can you tell me, Major, what have we come here for?”
Maillart looked at Daspir, who lowered his eyes. Aloyse was gazing toward the fort and singing himself now in a half-whisper.
Aux armes, citoyens . . .
Formez vos bataillons . . .
Marchons! Marchons!
Qu’un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons . . .
He broke off.
“We’re following orders,” Maillart finally said, but it didn’t really seem an adequate reply.
Guizot and Aloyse both slept through dawn reveille, though Paltre wanted to roust the sergeant.
“He wakes to grief,” Maillart said. “Let him alone.”
With Daspir he rode to scout the environs of the fort. Already men were dragging caissons of powder and shot and shell up the hill to Pétion’s guns. Maillart and Daspir dismounted to enter the reconfigured earthwork on foot. Mist silently lifted from the walls of the fort. Maillart wanted to cling to the quiet, before it was torn by the day’s bombardment. The sun, as it cleared the mountains, picked out a blood-red flag on every corner of the walls.
“What’s that?” said Daspir, a little nervously. “What does it mean?”
“No quarter,” Maillart said. “No surrender.” He