Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [51]
Once the other patients had been seen to, Doctor Hébert spent some careful time unpeeling the dressing from this wound, soaking in well-boiled water steeped with antiseptic herbs. Thus far there was no sign of gangrene, and with sufficient attention the foot might be saved. Héricourt had recently become Toussaint’s headquarters on the Northern Plain, as well as an important source of his personal income, and the doctor was sure that Toussaint had numbered each hair on the head of every worker there . . .
By the time he’d put a fresh bandage on the de-toed foot, one of his women nurses was spooning out the noontime meal: boiled rice, with a serving of spicy black beans for those whose stomachs could digest it. Plain rice, the doctor had learned, was most salubrious in cases of dysentery. He took a spoonful of beans with his own helping, and ate it slowly, seated on a stack of bricks that had been delivered for repairs to a crumbling interior wall. A parrot chattered in the crown of the tall palm tree against his back. There was some commotion on the heights above the hospital, northward in the direction of Fort Picolet—a musket fired from a signal post, and voices shouting down into the town. The doctor paid it little mind. He’d slept so poorly the night before that food in his belly made him groggy. When he had finished the meal, he returned his coui to the cook and climbed into a sailor’s hammock strung between the palm trunk and one of the gateposts, meaning to doze through the heaviest heat of the day.
As soon as his eyes closed, he seemed to tumble into the confusion of last night’s dream, or was it the reality? Again the unsettling rattle of the drums, dizzying spin of the dancers, the black soldiers watching from the far edge of the circle, their fixed eyes glittering in the thrusting red flames of the torches . . . The figure of Kalfou with its arms stretched out as if by an invisible rack—what could that apparition portend? Riau or Guiaou might have given him some hint, if he’d known how to put the question with sufficient tact, but neither one of them had been seen in the town since they last rode away with Toussaint. Kalfou revolved in the direction of the doctor, tilting the stiffened wingspread of his arms, his long jaw loosening below the veil of leaves. As the mouth opened there was a rattling of iron and the voice was the voice of a woman, rimmed with hysteria—
Doktè! Doktè!
He sat up so suddenly the hammock dumped him in the dirt below the palm tree. Zabeth, disheveled and all in a lather from running across half the town, kept calling out his title, her head tossing as she shook the bars of the gate. The doctor got up and dusted the seat of his trousers and unbolted the gate for her.
“Madanm mandé w tounen lakay tout suite!” Zabeth babbled as she stumbled into the enclosure. Madame wants you to come back to the house right away. A full circle of white went round her brown irises. The doctor gave her a shake, then pressed down on her shoulders to anchor her in place while he dipped a gourd of cool water from the pail beside the ashes of the cook fire. He splashed a handful into his own face, then pressed his dampened fingers to Zabeth’s temples and the insides of her wrists.
“Calm yourself,” he said. “What is it?”
“Ships.” Zabeth flailed an arm in the direction of the sea. “Gegnen bato anpil anpil anba—gwo batiment yo! Big French warships in the harbor. Many, many . . .”
The doctor stepped out through the gateway and shaded his eyes to look, but the section of the harbor he could see from this angle was empty except for the usual sprinkling of small fishing craft. All the same there might well be a French fleet of any size beyond the harbor mouth to the north.