Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [52]
“It was Madame Elise who asked for me?” he said, glancing at Zabeth for confirmation. “And Monsieur Xavier?”
“Pa konnen, pa we’l,” Zabeth said. I haven’t seen him, I don’t know.
“Dousman,” the doctor said, unconsciously quoting one of Toussaint’s favorite admonitions. Easy. “We’ll go back.”
He swung the heavy gate shut behind them and they set off across the Rue St. Avnie, but almost at once their way was blocked by a column of infantry streaming from the gates of the casernes down toward the harbor. The doctor and Zabeth went zigzagging down the slope, but the troops reached every corner ahead of them, and finally they stood waiting in the Rue Royale. When all the troops had finally gone by, the doctor took Zabeth by the wrist so as not to lose her as he weaseled his way through the crowd of excited onlookers across the intersection. Two blocks further on, they saw General Christophe’s coach bearing down on them at a great rate. The doctor climbed a curbstone to let it pass, but the coach halted just where he had stopped, and the door slapped open.
“Climb in, sir, I want you.” It was Christophe who spoke, and the doctor saw there was no refusing. He let go Zabeth’s arm and got in.
Zabeth stood on the curbstone, the fingers of one hand spread over her throat, pulsing with the rhythm of the hoofbeats as General Christophe’s coach went jolting and creaking down the Rue Royale. When the coach had turned the corner, she smoothed her hand down over her bodice and turned to go, more slowly now, toward the house of Madame Elise. Her unsuccess in retrieving the doctor weighed down on the top of her head, in the same spot where the midday sun was beating. With her two thumbs she wiped back buds of sweat from her temples, along the trim line of her tight white headcloth. The new carriage of Madame Isabelle, she saw, was standing by the door of Madame Elise.
“W pa join’l?” the porter said as he opened the arch-topped wooden door for her. You didn’t find him?
“M pa kenbe’l,” she said. I couldn’t hold on to him, smiling ambiguously as she passed into cooler, dim interior, her hips seeming to swing themselves, as if they were independently aware of the porter’s attention. He was a new man in the house and Zabeth knew he admired her, but she had not yet even learned his name. Madame was with her friend, she thought, so she need not go to her at once; she walked to the small bedroom in the back of the house, where the two children were sleeping— Mireille in her white lacy bassinet, and her own Bibiane, the child of Bouquart, on a pile of clean rags beside it. Mireille murmured and snuffled, her soft mouth opening against the pillowslip, and Zabeth felt her milk start, seeping against the pads of folded cloth arranged over the nipples, under her chemise—she waited, but neither child awoke, and after a moment she slipped out, softly shutting the door behind her.
The door to the second-floor parlor was just ajar, and Zabeth had raised her hand to knock, but the voice of Madame Isabelle came faintly leaking through the crack, and Zabeth let her hand float to her waist. Madame Elise was with her friend, there was no need to interrupt her . . . she might have forgotten that she had sent for her brother, or she might be angry, or distressed, that he did not appear. The mood of Madame Elise was very changeable these last weeks. She had given Mireille to Zabeth to nurse, and for that Zabeth was calmer than her mistress, or at least she felt so now. The agitated spirit of Elise had driven Zabeth frantically through the streets to the hospital in quest of the doctor and on the return she had felt just as perturbed by the uneasy excitement of all the people milling in the streets around her as the soldiers passed, but now, in the quiet of the house, she was still and heavy again, a little sleepy too.
On the landing two steps below the parlor door was a basket of sewing on a short-legged, rough-carved chair. Zabeth sat down and lifted a piece of work from the basket