Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [31]
“It is good to see our Catholic religion so well observed here,” he said, “when so often it is neglected elsewhere, among the plantations.”
Claudine inclined her head without speaking.
“I have catechised some of the children walking the grounds this afternoon,” he told her. “I find them to be well instructed. The boy Dieufait, for example, recites the entire Apostolic Creed with perfect confidence.”
“As well might be expected of the son of a priest.” Claudine attempted an ambiguous smile, in case Toussaint were moved to find irony in what she had said.
“They say that you give them other instruction too,” Toussaint said. “That you teach them their letters as well as their catechism. This afternoon I passed by your school—of which one hears talk as far away as Le Cap, if not farther.”
“Is it so?”
“Why, yes,” Toussaint said. “You are notorious.”
Claudine felt a bump of her heart. Behind her the strings of the curtain shivered; outside a wind was rising. She was notorious for a great deal more than her little school, and Toussaint must know something of that, though she wasn’t sure how much.
“You rather alarm me,” she said.
“There is no need, Madame,” Toussaint said. “Of course not every comment is favorable, as there are always some who believe that the children of Guinée must be held in the ignorance of oxen and mules.”
Claudine lowered her head above her lap. One of her feet had risen to the ball, and the whole leg was shaking; she couldn’t seem to make it stop.
“Yes,” Toussaint said. “My parrain, Jean-Baptiste, taught me my letters when I was a child on the lands of the Comte de Noé.”
Claudine raised her head to look at him. He was telling her the true version of the story, she thought, which was unusual. Of late he had been circulating a tale that he had learned to read and write just before the first rebellion, when he was already past his fiftieth year.
“If not for that,” Toussaint said, “I should have remained in slavery.”
“And many others also,” Claudine said.
“It is so.” Toussaint squeezed the bench with his thighs, as if it really were a horse he meant to urge on. “But your husband, Madame. What view does he take of your teaching?”
“He indulges it.” Claudine lowered her head.
“Does he not find himself well placed today, Monsieur Arnaud?” Toussaint seemed to be asking the question of a larger audience than was actually present; his voice had become a little louder. “With the restoration of his goods, the men back working in the fields. Why, a field hand may learn to read a book and be no less faithful to his hoe. Does he not find it to be true?”
“I hope so,” Claudine said. “I believe so . . . yes, I mostly do.”
“You may not be aware that your husband conspired long ago in a royalist plot against the Revolutionary government here,” Toussaint said. “Or then again, perhaps you know it. Those men engaged to start a false rising of the slaves in ninety-one—thinking to frighten the Jacobins with a spectacle of the likely outcome of their own beliefs. They thought they could control a slave rising, those conspirators, but as you see they were quite wrong. He was one of them, Michel Arnaud, with the Sieur de Maltrot, and Bayon de Libertat my former master, and Governor Blanchelande himself, who later lost his head for it, to the guillotine in France.”
“As did so many others,” Claudine murmured. As she spoke, her eye fell on the rosary, which Toussaint held in one hand against the yellow headcloth, and she saw for the first time that each of the small wooden beads