Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [405]
The doctor could find no reply. Nanon had come up on his right side, and placed her hand on the small of his back. The warmth of her palm encouraged him. He stepped forward, knelt, and lifted Elise’s limp wrist. Her pulse beat faintly, under the skin. She stirred and murmured but did not wake. He laid her arm down on the springy boughs. As he rose he saw that Fontelle and Paulette were watching him from beyond the candles.
“Do you have the knowledge to save her?” Maman Maig’ said.
“No,” said the doctor. “No, I don’t.”
“Fok w priyé,” Maman Maig’ said. Then you must pray. After a pause she added, “We are all praying.”
The doctor felt somehow calmed by this statement. He bowed to Maman Maig’, brushed Nanon’s cheek with his lips, and moved in the direction of the central post. Now it seemed to him that the cross on the other side of it must be the gateway of death itself, but yet it was not certain that Elise would pass through it.
Still in the dust beneath the candles was a shard of mirror he had left there long ago. He stopped to examine it, then started back. In the place where he’d expected his own features hung a star.
Placide left the mass at Marmelade, well before it had concluded— before the Act of Contrition and the Peace. Toussaint would be angry were he aware of his departure, but he was unlikely to notice from where he sat on the front bench, unfolding all the torment into his heart to the all-seeing eye of BonDyé. So many times in this campaign, Placide had seen Toussaint bring his remorse to the altar, like some animal he led to sacrifice, or his uncertainty, if ever he were uncertain. Toussaint emerged from these observances both salved and resolved. But lately, Placide found no balm in them. And today the decision had already been made. In an hour’s time they would ride for Mornet, to make an official submission to the French.
He walked along the road that climbed from the upper edge of Marmelade in the direction of Dondon. On a high, tight turn he stopped and looked back over the town square, where still the sound of singing rose from the church, with the high chime of the priest’s brass bell. It unsettled him, to the point of nausea, to be so far out of accord with his father. Though he knew his father must know better—certainly, he must—Placide would have followed Dessalines, to hold out in the mountains.
He took the red cloth from his pocket, shook it out in the cool dawn breeze, and bound it to his head. The band of pressure around his temples and the pressure of the knot at the base of his skull seemed to steady his focus. The irritable buzzing of his thoughts was not completely silenced, but grew quieter. It was a lesser version of the silent calm the cloth gave him for battle, a calm so deep sometimes that he would emerge on the other side of it with no memory of what had taken place or what he himself had done.
Above and below the road where he stood, many soldiers were camped in pockets on the slopes, and now Guiaou and Guerrier appeared from the mouth of a little ravine and came toward Placide— almost as if his assumption of the head cloth had called them. He smiled at the thought. He knew very well that Guiaou and Guerrier were apt to appear at his heels whenever he wandered alone from camp—it might have been at his father’s order, but he thought it more likely to be their own initiative.
When they were near enough, he touched their hands and returned their smiles. Guerrier yawned and shivered slightly. It was early, the morning mist still lifting from the trees, and still a little chilly at this height. Somewhere in the jungle above the road a drum began to tap, then throb, and Placide turned his ear toward it; at the moment it had more of his sympathy than the doleful chanting still audible from the church. With the movement of his head he caught sight of Riau and Bienvenu coming up the road from town. The two of them must have also absconded from the mass.
“One day we will bring you to the drums,” Guiaou said.
Placide did not answer, though his attention