Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [370]
“I believe I’ll look in on the ladies,” he said. He replenished his glass and went indoors.
The hush of the courtyard where they sat was dotted with calls of the brown doves from the eaves of the houses up and down the street. The sky had darkened to its deepest blue, and the doctor squinted up at the brightening stars as if from the bottom of a well. Tocquet’s large, warm hand settled over the back of his neck.
“How goes it?”
“N’ap kenbé.” The doctor used the Creole form that went for either we or you. We’re hanging on.
“I saw that fellow Descourtilz in town, a week or so ago,” Tocquet said. “He made it sound as if things were a touch difficult at the end, there at La Crête à Pierrot.”
“Descourtilz was not there at the end,” the doctor said. The sourness of his own tone surprised him. It was as if Descourtilz’s escape had amounted to desertion, though there could be no reason in that judgment.
“I’m not especially fond of him either,” Tocquet said. “He has done you a service, though, in convincing everyone hereabout that you were both held in that fort by extreme duress. There was some suspicion you were giving aid and comfort to the enemy.”
The doctor laughed and sipped his rum. Tocquet’s cheroot had made him very giddy.
“And you?”
“I take your point,” said Tocquet, releasing his long smile into the dark. “But lately I have been of some use to the Captain-General, in guiding a mission to subdue the rebellion at La Tortue. Besides, Leclerc’s situation is delicate. Between disease and the battlefield, the force he brought with him has been halved, no matter how he may try to conceal it. He must take his friends as he finds them, now.” Tocquet sharpened the coal of his cheroot by rolling it against the edge of the stone sill, and left the ash to powder on the ground. “Leclerc has learned of your value too—you may expect to hear from him, I think.”
“Yes,” said the doctor. “That saved me at La Crête à Pierrot, and Descourtilz too. Even Dessalines in his worst passion would not kill a doctor there.” He drained his glass. “At the end, I think my worst risk was to finish skewered on a French bayonet.”
In his mind’s eye appeared unbidden the grubby drawn face of Captain Guizot as he’d first seen it, bearing down on him above the blood-dark, guttered blade. Behind, a whirl of other pictures waited, the vortex into which he fell with every sleep. Tocquet’s hand was still warm between his shoulders, and Tocquet’s eyes were curiously upon him, though the doctor knew he would not speak the question.
“What can I tell you?” he said. “You know that sort of thing as well as I. You’ve lived it, but you still can’t imagine it.”
“Well put.” Tocquet’s hand massaged the muscles of the doctor’s neck, then lifted. By now the stars were brighter, and the doctor, looking upward, could piece together the geometry of Perseus and Andromeda.
“You mean to kill that Captain Paltre, don’t you?”
“Assuredly,” said the doctor.
“I know you will defend yourself,” Tocquet said. “And yet I’d thought you would not kill by calculation. Choufleur, for example, was a much more dangerous enemy than Paltre.”
From the doctor’s mental kaleidoscope emerged the image of Placide Louverture, framed in an embrasure of La Crête à Pierrot, tails of his red mouchwa têt streaming out behind his head as he stooped from the saddle to hack down one or another French infantryman. Evidently his attitude toward taking human life had evolved since the doctor last spoke to him at Ravine à Couleuvre.
“Perhaps I’ve changed,” he said.
Tocquet nodded. “You have that right.”
“Do you disapprove?” The doctor’s cheroot had expired from inattention. He set it down on the sill beside his empty glass.
“Hardly,” said Tocquet. “I’d have left Paltre dead on the waterfront, had I been in your place.” His cheroot glowed red, close to his face, then faded. “But your ways have never been my ways,” he said. “There are times I feel the slave of my own practices. Perhaps, of the two of us, you are more free.”
“I didn