Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [418]
It was a little longer before the features of Xavier Tocquet came clear in the indoor shade, and as she recognized him, he let go her hand and traced a line from the corner of her eye down to her jaw below her ear. When his finger first indented her skin, she had to control an impulse to flinch, but his touch was gentle all along its track.
“You’ve had a bad time,” he said. “But you’ve lived through it.”
He shifted his head, and a blade of light struck through the doorway into her face. Her eyes were aching in her sockets. But before she could speak, he laid his forefinger across her lips.
“Don’t say it.” He paused. “I haven’t told you everything. We can be better quit of this without a word.”
He took away his finger, but Elise said nothing. She could see his eyes more plainly now; they looked distant to her, considering.
“Sometimes one has to live alone with what one knows,” he said.
She nodded. It seemed to her that the cool sensation of his finger sealed her voice still. He lifted a bowl from the ground and gave her water. As she swallowed, the two children smiled and ducked their heads and skipped out of the doorway.
“Sophie is waiting,” Tocquet said. “And Mireille. Will you come back?”
“I’m ready,” Elise said.
The pain in her lower abdomen was duller than before when she struggled to sit up. Tocquet got an arm under her shoulders and helped her to her feet. As they stepped out together, he put his own straw hat on her head to shield her from the sun. The irregular circle of the hûnfor rocked around her for a second or two, then stabilized. Everyone who watched her emerge—Paulette, Fontelle, Marie-Noelle, and her husband’s familiars Gros-Jean and Bazau—had shrunk to the palm panels of the perimeter to seek whatever shreds of shade could be found in the midday sun.
Tocquet released her and walked to where Maman Maig’ stood motionless beside the striped poteau mitan. When he let go, Elise felt a reel, but it was only inward; she was standing solidly enough on her own two feet. The lank, dark rope of Tocquet’s hair lay as always between his shoulder blades, secured with its thong, but when he lowered his head, she saw for the first time that the skin of his scalp showed indistinctly through the hair on top. He had taken both Maman Maig’ ’s hands in his and dropped his forehead to her breastbone, and in this gesture Elise saw that he really did value her own life and wanted for her to remain with him.
“Eh, Madame . . .” Bazau and Gros-Jean were both hurrying toward her, solicitous, for now she really had begun to swoon, the straw hat slipping sideways on her head as her knees began to dissolve. But Tocquet reached her first. He put one arm around her waist and the other hand under her elbow, and so, with Gros-Jean leading and Bazau following, supported her down the narrow twisting trail from the lakou to the corner of the street below, where a carriage waited.
General Pamphile de Lacroix, clothed in the finest dress uniform that campaigning in such a climate had left him, walked from the dockside up the slope toward the Government House, in the company of Major Maillart. The afternoon heat was beginning to abate, and people of every color and station were emerging from the afternoon siesta onto the streets, yet no one took any particular notice of the French general’s passage—no more than to step just barely out of his way as he advanced. So far as Maillart could see, Lacroix did not take exception to this failure of respect. He was an amiable, practical man, far less attached to the protocols of his rank than most of the French general officers.
Then as they reached the Rue Espagnole, they crossed a rumor of the coming of General Dessalines, who was arriving to present his compliments to Captain-General Leclerc for the first time since