Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [320]
Franz was supporting Toussaint’s elbow, and clasping his left hand with what Amiot took to be excessive gentleness. Let Franz be sent away to some other post!—and why not Saint Domingue? It seemed the war was going poorly there. Captain-General Leclerc had been dead since November and Rochambeau, his successor, was hemmed up in a few coastal towns by renewed rebellions. The demand for reinforcements was unceasing, and rumor told that men had died there by the thousands. Why should not Franz become one more of those, if Amiot found a pretext for his transfer? Up to this moment, though, Franz had followed his orders faithfully, to the letter if not in the spirit.
Annoyed, Amiot reached to snatch the yellow kerchief from Toussaint’s head, and was struck by a pulse of fear. How was this? He lifted his hand again and again felt the stab of anxiety.
All except fools knew fear on the brink of battle. Amiot knew it well enough, and had learned to plunge through it, like a dive into cold water. But here there was nowhere to plunge.
It was only his poor night’s sleep that weakened him. A passing thing. And there was no importance to the kerchief. Such a grubby cloth could hide nothing but head lice. Let it be. Amiot tendered the sling to Franz, allowed him to help Toussaint rearrange it. Together they walked the old man back to his cell, where, to be sure, the other searchers had found nothing to report.
Toussaint’s fire had been rekindled and built up, and the trencher of gruel laid on the hearthstone to recover something of its warmth. Amiot had ordered neither of these things. That had been Franz, exceeding his duty. Amiot shot a cutting glance at the guardsman, then ordered them all to leave the cell.
“Good day, Toussaint,” he said with another large smile and locked the door behind him.
The snow had stopped when they emerged, and the wind picked up. Amiot refreshed himself with a gaze over the brilliantly gleaming Juras, into the ice-blue sky. But the wind bit him with its bitter edge. Furling his cloak around him, he went indoors. He ate three-quarters of a tasteless omelette and drank three cups of heavily sugared coffee, then turned to the clerical work of the day, a review of the reports he had been making these last weeks:
28 January: Toussaint suffers pains in different parts of the body, which accompany little surges of fever. He has a very dry cough.
9 February: Louverture, whose health had got better the last several days, complains of his stomach and does not eat as usual.
19 February: The prisoner has vomited several times, which relieved him. However, he has a swollen face.
4 March: The detainee is always in the same state of indisposition. He has a swollen face, complains endlessly of stomach pain, and has a very strong cough.
Amiot rolled the papers through which he’d been leafing and thrust them into a pigeonhole. He sat back, with his ankles crossed, and looked at the cobwebbed ceiling until a belch from his breakfast escaped him. Then he bent over the desktop again, found a clean sheet of paper, and dipped his pen.
19 March: The situation of Toussaint is always the same, he complainsconstantly of stomach pains and has a constant cough. For some days he has carried his left arm in a sling by reason of his pains. For three days I have noticed that his voice has very much changed. He has never asked me for a doctor.
Amiot laid his pen aside. Under Baille’s command, Toussaint had had half a dozen rotten teeth drawn by a dentist, at his own request, and had been examined by a doctor more than once—in Baille’s presence, of course, and apparently on account of Baille’s excessive solicitude. Amiot watched his ink dry on the page. If Toussaint did not request a doctor, Amiot would furnish none. And if he did—
A tap on the door broke his chain of thought—the morning mail. Amiot emptied the bag