Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [400]
“Marriage,” he croaked. All at once he lost track of the phrases he had composed during his rush across the town, but then as suddenly they began to return. “I would offer you the protection of my name, and of my sword. And of course, as well, my undying love and affection—”
When he twisted his head to look up at her face, he saw that she was truly startled and, still worse, a little amused. If she laughs, he suddenly thought, I will strike her. All in a whirl he realized that he might not be able to stop himself, that he might go on to beat her senseless, and that this capacity was one of the qualities unknown to himself which she’d perceived with her first long look into his eyes.
Isabelle did not laugh. The twinkle of amusement left her face and she held his gaze quite seriously.
“It is better to marry than to burn,” she finally said. “That is the dictum of Saint Paul.” She smiled, but faintly; this smile was not particularly for him. “Yet marriage never hindered my burning—this you know.” She disengaged her hands from his and used them to cradle the back of his head.
“You are a good man,” she told him soberly. “One day you will marry a faithful wife. Not me.”
Daspir relaxed. He seemed to have no argument against what she had said. He felt that she was wiser than he, and though he couldn’t quite grasp it at the moment, he was sure that she’d seen something in the future it would be better to avoid.
Resistance drained out of him. He was very tired, so much so that he closed his eyes and dropped his head onto her thigh. Isabelle’s hands lightened on the back of his neck. She sighed. Under his cheek, the muscle of her leg warmed and loosened. A thread of song came in from the street.
Palé O, Palé O
La fanmi Asefi a palé O
Asefi ki jeté youn pitit sèt mwa . . .
Isabelle jumped up and darted onto the balcony. Whatever she saw from that vantage moved her to dash as quickly down the stairs, leaving Daspir sitting on his heels, touching the edge of his jaw where her knee had popped when she sprang up. There was a clatter and bustle in the foyer below. Daspir collected his hat from the floor and went down.
Elise Tocquet had just come in. On her right was Claudine Arnaud, moving in that rickety, marionette-like way that Daspir always found alarming. She lent Elise some symbolic support, but Elise seemed mostly to be depending on Zabeth on her right side. The song leaked in through the door behind them.
Asefi ki jeté youn pitit sèt mwa
Asefi ki jeté youn pitit sèt mwa
Pitit se byen O, palé O...
Isabelle’s face contorted terribly. “Stop that singing,” she shrieked, and lunged through the door, raising a small tight fist at the urchin in a ragged skirt who ducked away but went on grinning, mocking, chanting.
“Stop her!” Isabelle cried—more shrill than Daspir had ever heard her voice. The carter who must have delivered the women raised his whip, and the other maid, the ugly one, came hurrying through a side door, brandishing a broom.
Palé O, Palé O
La fanmi Asefi a palé O
Asefi ki jeté youn pitit sèt mwa . . .
The maid charged with the broom raised high, and the girl dodged and danced around the corner, her flashing bare heels white with dust.
Though Daspir had picked up a little Creole since he’d come, he could understand nothing in this song. But the women all seemed perfectly deranged by it. They’d left Elise to her own devices, standing with one fluttering hand on the lower stair post, trying feebly to raise her foot to the first step, so that only Daspir was watching when her eyes rolled white into her head and she collapsed backward onto the floor. He moved quickly down the stairs to assist her, but when he stooped, the battlefield smell repulsed him. A dark fluid pooled and spread around her hips. Blood. The blood smell pushed him back; then Isabelle had come between them, blocking his view, lifting Elise’s ankles, while Claudine stood against the wall like a scarecrow. The ugly maid crouched to catch Elise around the waist, and as they began to raise her,