Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [435]
Monpoint was looking at Placide when he uttered this last sentence, rather than at Isaac, who had taken a pace or two away from the grove and stood with his back to them. The long scabbard of his sword had cut a furrow in the dirt behind him. Placide reflected that neither he nor Isaac had ever used their swords. Placide had shot more than one French soldier with the fancy pistols Bonaparte had presented him, but he had adopted a shorter saber for the battles, handier to wield in the saddle, though not so short as Guiaou’s coutelas.
Placide nodded to Monpoint and walked up toward the house. Suzanne and Saint-Jean had disappeared from the gallery and the breakfast dishes had been cleared away. Placide felt the weight of all Monpoint had told him, but it did not really oppress him yet. The aura of the lavé têt was around him still, so that everything seemed foreordained, even his own actions, even his words. He had soaked his mouchwa in the water of the gamelle before leaving the hûnfor, and it remained slightly fragrant where it lay folded and dry in his shirt pocket. He touched it with his thumb as he stopped on the threshold of Toussaint’s small scriptorium.
“Honneur,” he said, the country greeting.
“Respect,” said Toussaint, completing the formula. He looked up with an unmasked smile from the three letters he’d been examining on his desk, and offered Placide his hand.
“They say you are going to visit General Brunet.”
Toussaint released Placide’s hand and covered his mouth. He glanced at the three letters fanned on the table before him, from Pesquidoux, Leclerc, and Brunet.
“Brunet has invited me.” Toussaint passed one of the letters to Placide. “I may go if I choose.”
Placide skimmed the page: We have, my dear general, some arrangementsto make together which cannot be dealt with by letter, but which a conference of one hour would complete. Were I not overcome by work and troublesome details, I’d be today the bearer of my own response, but as I am unable to leave these days, come to me yourself, and if you are recovered from your indisposition, let it be tomorrow. One must never delay when it is a question of doing good. You will not find, here at my country plantation, all the amenities I would wish to organize for your reception, but you will find there the frankness of a gallant man who has no other wish but for the prosperity of the colony and your own personal happiness . . .
“They say it is a trap, this invitation.” Placide swallowed, with some difficulty. His throat had gone dry, and his sense of certainty was beginning to fracture. He let the paper flutter to the tabletop.
“Do they say so?” Toussaint looked up, his eye bright and canny as a bird’s under the line of the yellow madras cloth that bound his head. Placide returned him Brunet’s letter and Toussaint secured it under the moss-colored vase with the white frieze depicting his victories over the English. Isaac had rescued the vase, miraculously unbroken, from the ashes of the Sancey grand’case, and also the small orary that sat on the opposite side of Toussaint’s desk; he had diligently cleaned and polished both before returning them to his father.
“Where is it that you find the snare? As you may see from the letter which the Captain-General has sent, I have only to meet with General Brunet to settle the problem of the blanc soldiers at Plaisance who are marauding all over the plantations of this canton,” Toussaint said. “And that is a problem which must be addressed.” He proffered another folded sheet. Placide opened and scanned it.
Since you persist in thinking that the large number of troops now found at Plaisance are frightening the cultivators there, I have charged General Brunet to arrange the placement of a part of those troops with you . . . It did not strike Placide that the tone of these phrases was quite so cordial as what Isaac had described.
“Do we want more blanc soldiers here?” he said. “And even as he sends this letter, the Captain-General has sent two ships