Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [394]
“Or I might walk with you,” Maillart offered.
“No, no.” Isabelle renewed her smile. “I have only a little way to go. But you must bring me your news later.”
She spun the parasol gaily as she turned away. The two men watched her to the corner. If she’d seemed to falter when she first encountered them, now her steps were quick and sure. On her left shoulder, concealing her whole head, the parasol continued to revolve.
Beneath the shaded portico of the Governor’s house, Daspir waited, a little impatiently, for Cyprien and Paltre to return. Dermide raced up and down the stone-floored gallery, awkwardly rolling a hoop with a stick, his hot face patchy red and white. The space was too confined for this exercise, and crowded with basketwork furniture Pauline Leclerc had recently acquired, and Dermide seemed to take special pains to collide, again and again, with the legs of Saint-Jean Louverture, who leaned against a piling of stone, looking with a certain stoical indifference across the flagged courtyard toward the gate.
The company of Dermide was the worst cruelty of Saint-Jean’s situation, Daspir thought. Otherwise the young hostage had been quite kindly treated ever since Hardy captured him on the road from Gonaives—if adoption into the Captain-General’s family were to be considered a kindness. Dermide was now smacking his stick against the older boy’s calves, but Saint-Jean, his eyes distant, paid him no mind.
Guizot appeared in an inner archway; Daspir acknowledged him with a nod.
“Where are the others?” Guizot said. “We ought to have started an hour ago.” He stepped past Saint-Jean, out into the open, and squinted fretfully up at the sun.
“There,” Daspir gestured. Cyprien and Paltre were just being admitted by the sentry at the gate.
Before they could be on their way, Pauline rushed down, to tighten the string of Dermide’s straw hat, and drape him with a strip of cloth against the sun. Cooing, she pressed two gigantic hampers of food on the captains, then caught Daspir by the arm.
“Do be careful of the sun,” she said.
“Of course, Madame,” said Daspir, unbending. Before Isabelle, this contact would have thrilled him. Now he had to subdue his impulse to pull away.
“Ought you not to take a carriage?” Pauline’s face was a mask of concern. “Perhaps my litter? Or no, I shall want it myself, I think . . .”
“Not at all, Madame—it is no distance, and the boys are so restless, the walk will do them good.” Carefully Daspir disengaged his arm, for he now saw that Leclerc had ridden in at the gate.
The four captains saluted the Captain-General as they passed, and Dermide imitated them, eliciting a smile from his father. Saint-Jean went by obliviously, eyes already fixed on the sea. Pauline called from the shade of the portico: “Be careful of sharks! and the urchins, especially.” On the street, the captains made a formation around the two boys, which was constantly broken by Dermide rolling his hoop out of it. Paltre had the task of chasing the hoop, muttering as he dodged between the heavy hand-drawn barrows and mule carts hauling up goods from the port.
Once they had passed the Quai d’Argout, traffic on the street diminished. The road became a wide expanse of dirt, rippling over the indentations of the coast. Dermide lost interest in his hoop, and persuaded Saint-Jean to carry it for him. Daspir shifted his heavy fruit basket from one hand to the other.
“We’ve got wares enough to open a market stall,” he grunted.
“And we’ll be carrying half of it back again,” Guizot said.
There were others on the beach before them—a gang of children of all ages, splashing in the shallow water. A gangly mulatto youth stood watch on the shore, holding an ancient musket whose barrel was bound to the cracked stock with wire. The woman standing with him looked very much like Nanon. Daspir sucked in his stomach, hoping Paltre would not notice her. He set down his basket in the shadow of a sea grape, well short of the other group, and shaded his eyes to look at the swimmers. Certainly