• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2259 0

his twin, and did not resemble François at all, or anyone else in Paul’s family. Though he was only two years old, his movements were more smoothly organized even than those of the older children. He strolled toward Dermide, who was twice his size, and shoved him so pointedly in his blue velvet belly that Dermide toppled over onto his back, landing hard enough to knock the wind out of him. By the time he found the breath to shriek, Gabriel had distanced himself from the scene. He’d taken Héloïse by her pale hand and led her over to investigate the turtles, though they’d all tucked up inside their shells at the commotion.

Paul looked quickly toward the adults, who sat around several little iron tables on a tiled terrace shaded by an arbor. His mother, who was sitting a little apart from the white women, raised her head enough to see that François was not seriously damaged and that Paul was near him. The pretty woman with the green parakeet on her shoulder must be Madame Leclerc, but she was too involved in her conversation with Madame Isabelle to give Dermide’s predicament more than a passing glance. It was Sophie who, miming a grown-up sigh, got up from the table where she sat with Robert and came to help Dermide to his feet and stop his crying.

Arm over Dermide’s plump shoulders, Sophie led him through the passage into the outer garden. Paul helped François out of the tank and dried and cleaned him the best he could, then took him in the same direction. There was a faint sooty smell in the passage but since much of the Governor’s house was built of stone it had survived the burning better than most buildings, and Madame Leclerc had devoted much energy to restoring it, so that the only differences Paul really noticed were in the decoration. The smaller trees of the outer garden had been destroyed, but Madame Leclerc had sent soldiers to dig up a lot of young palms in the countryside and planted them here as replacements. The great trunks of the older trees were scorched, but they lived still and had begun to put out new leaves. François and Dermide and Gabriel and Héloïse scattered and hid from each other among the new palms, whose long fronds were whispering now, in the cooling evening breeze.

“I’ll watch them,” Sophie said, officiously enough to irritate Paul. Then he noticed that Robert had also come into the garden, so he left them alone and went back inside, slipping quietly along the covered arcade at the perimeter of the inner courtyard. The adults were all busy in different conversations and did not notice him.

Monsieur Xavier Tocquet, whom Paul did not address as Tonton no matter how married he was to Tante Elise, sat with General Boyer at one of the iron tables; he had just offered the general one of his black cheroots, and Boyer had accepted it, but held it unlit, staring at it moodily as he rolled it in his fingers.

“It was well worth the trouble to bring him here,” Boyer said, “to send him away again with such an insult.”

“And the cause?” Tocquet lit his own cheroot and blew out a flower of fragrant smoke. Paul recognized, from what Madame Fortier had told him, that they must be talking of General Rigaud, aboard La Cornélie. He turned toward the wall behind him, where there was an interesting old map of the town to look at, but kept an ear bent on the conversation.

“Why,” said Boyer, “it is Laplume at the bottom of it all. It was he who claimed that Rigaud would raise rebellion on the Grande Anse, beginning in the region of Les Cayes.”

“But Rigaud never got farther south than Saint Marc since he returned this time,” Tocquet said.

“No,” said Boyer. “Leclerc—the Captain-General did not trust him enough to send him back to his own country. But Rigaud was not going to raise any rebellion against the French. He has proved his faith to France plainly long ago—and he would join any effort against Toussaint.”

“That much is certain,” Tocquet said.

“Yes,” said Boyer. “Well, you know that Laplume had taken over Rigaud’s house at Les Cayes, with all its furnishings.”

“I didn’t know it, but go on.”

“It is true.