Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [359]
“It is the hospitality of Madame Cigny you have abused,” Leclerc gritted, without looking at him. “Never mind the mulattress.”
“But—”
“Be silent!” Leclerc said, and Paltre obeyed. Biting his lips, he walked a pace behind the Captain-General. They were afoot, as they’d left Pauline’s conveyance stationed at the Cigny house. It was no distance, in any case, either to the Governor’s house or the barracks of the Carénage. But Leclerc did not seem to be going there. With Paltre still trailing him, he strode up the grade, crossing the Rue Espagnole and marching on toward the Champ de Mars.
At the hospital gate, Paltre dared to pluck his sleeve. “Mon général,” he whispered urgently. “It is unwise to visit here. You must have a better care for your health, for here there is contagion—and you just lately recovered from a fever.”
An aged black had already begun to unwrap the chain from the bars of the gate. Leclerc looked at Paltre coldly.
“If you are afraid,” he said, “I will dismiss you.”
It seemed to him that Paltre blanched in the light of the stars that turned above them. Then the captain saluted and so took his leave.
Leclerc watched him descending the street, surprised that he’d chosen to swallow that last remark, with no attempt at redeeming its implications. Could the risk of infection be so great? Paltre had more experience of the colony than did Leclerc, having been here previously with the mission of Hédouville . . . but that was a useless thought. Leclerc’s pride stiffened him—he pulled his collar straight and marched through the gate the old black had dragged open for him.
No physician was to be found within the hospital walls. Whatever rogue was in charge of the place must have slunk away to his own dwelling. Leclerc was so short of medical officers that he’d been forced to fall back on the local barber-surgeons, who were by and large a sorry lot. He’d not brought out sufficient doctors with him, and the mortality of those who had come had been shockingly high. In every letter to the First Consul or the Minister of Marine he petitioned for more medical men, but then he asked for many other things he also did not get.
Stooping over a cane, the old man shuffled after him into the hospital yard. Among the sick and wounded men there drifted half a dozen black or colored women, dressed and coiffed in white. Their movements flowed on the night breeze, in a manner both peaceful and a little eerie. Whenever Leclerc came near to one, she turned a brief and brilliant smile on him, then ducked her head away into her modesty. His response to these smiles was a slight catch in his chest.
The masonry walls enclosing the compound were still blackened and cracked from the fires, and the destroyed roofs were not yet reconstructed. Rags of sailcloth, or more often merely palm leaves, haphazardly covered the charred beams. Of course it was a scandal. But even without the fire and destruction the ailing men would not have had roofs enough. In their hundreds, they lay in the open courtyard, under the chilly stars and the shivering leaves of the tall palms, exposed to the dangerous night miasma.
He walked among them, following the floating courses of the white skirts and white headcloths of the nurses. The old man limped behind him with his cane. There was hardly enough room between the pallets for Leclerc to set his feet. He had five thousand men in all his various hospitals, by the latest count. Here and elsewhere they were laid low by dysentery or, still more fatally, the fevers. Some survivors of amputation were recuperating here, but in this murderous climate no one wounded in the body cavity was likely to live long enough to reach a hospital. He had almost five thousand dead on top of those out of action in the hospitals, and more of these were battlefield casualties than he would ever disclose to the First Consul—it was simply not credible that so many veteran soldiers could be killed outright in the mere suppression of a slave revolt.
Wherever