Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [436]
“Do they say so?” Toussaint repeated. “Well. Maybe it is a trap after all.” He looked past Placide, who made a half-turn to see that Isaac had also come quietly into the room, and stood in the shadow left of the doorframe, the long scabbard of his sword propped out from him like a third leg or a tail.
“To take risks for my country is a sacred duty.” He shrugged and smiled and looked at them both frankly. “To avoid risks to save my own life would be shameful.”
“But who’ll protect the country if not you?” Placide burst out.
“Another. There will be others always now. Charles Belair, or Dommage, Sylla, or Sans-Souci.” He masked a smile as he stood up, and gathered the letters from the desktop. “Perhaps even Dessalines or Christophe.” He folded the letters together and slipped them into an inner pocket, then smoothed down the front of his coat and took a step forward, toward Placide. “It might even be you. Or Riau, or Guiaou, or any of the others whose names we don’t yet know.” As Placide’s knees weakened slightly, Toussaint kissed him and passed on. Isaac stepped forward and received his kiss. Toussaint turned back in the doorway.
“Where one is cut down, another will spring up,” he said. “A dozen others. Always. You must remember that.”
Placide followed him out onto the gallery. “Let me go with you.”
Toussaint shook his head. “No,” he said. “I want you to go down to Gonaives and have a look at those ships you mentioned. It is an order,” he said, when Placide hesitated.
“Oui, mon général.” Placide pulled himself upright in a salute which Toussaint crisply returned. Behind him in the yard Riau and Guiaou and a dozen other riders waited, one holding a saddled horse for Toussaint, who softened slightly as he lowered his hand.
“N’a wé,” he said, looking closely at Placide. “Si Dyé vlé.”
Elise sat on the gallery at Thibodet, sipping coffee and watching the sunrise gild the grass around the pool in front of the house. The purple blooms of bwa dlo were just beginning to open to the morning’s warmth. She took a spoonful of soupe giraumon, and rubbed her thumb along a vine of bougainvillea that was climbing the gallery rail. Ought it perhaps to be cut back? But the blacks all thought it had the virtue to keep bad spirits away from the house, and maybe they were right.
Sophie, her gown rumpled and her eyes blurry with sleep, was holding both Mireille’s hands and helping her to walk, so carefully, down the steps toward the shining pool, while Zabeth’s Bibiane managed on her own, backing down on all-fours, her head twisted over her shoulder to follow the progress of Mireille. Zabeth stood watching at the top of the steps, hands propped on her hips, until Michau, as he passed through the yard with a sack of charcoal, called some teasing remark to her. Zabeth whipped away, flaring out her skirt, but even as she spun her face turned back toward him, eyes and smile flashing. In this twist Elise saw the fabric of Zabeth’s dress stretch over a belly rounder and harder than it had been the month before.
So. Elise allowed herself a smile, as if at the sunshine and the antics of the children; she could even share this smile with Zabeth, as she went into the house to fetch more bread. Not quite a year since Toussaint had commanded Zabeth’s last man to blow his own brains out, but she had found a place in herself for new love and new life. Elise’s eyes went swimming, so that her family and servants moved like bright reflections on wind-ruffled water. That was something like what Maman Maig’ had said.
She grasped the vine and raised her head to let the tears run back, looking up at the notch between the mornes where the road toward Dondon lay, and beyond it Grande Rivière, where Sans-Souci would still be fighting, if he had not been captured or killed. She felt the dead place under her navel, the spot where Zabeth was now fertile and ripe. There would be no more children for Elise, and probably no more such adventures.
Tocquet’s hands settled on her shoulders, lightly rolling