Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [61]
“Christophe has denied them a landing until orders arrive from Toussaint,” the doctor said.
“Toussaint is not here?” Tocquet said. “He was seen on the road yesterday, as nearby as Héricourt, and supposed to be riding in this direction.”
“There is a man wont to be seen in a great many places where in fact he has not been,” Isabelle remarked.
To this the doctor did no more than nod. “In any event,” he said finally, “Christophe has taken the markers from the channels. And the fleet has put out to sea again, owing to the storm this afternoon.”
“Ah,” said Tocquet. “That may gain us at least one day.” He stepped out onto the balcony to knock his ashes over the rail.
“Us?” Monsieur Cigny said.
“Then again,” Tocquet said as he returned to the room. “It is as likely they may try a landing at the Baie d’Acul, to come upon the town from the landward side, perhaps having joined with Rochambeau—”
“Then there will be trouble at Acul.” Arnaud was headed for the door again.
“Stay, Michel, it was only a thought!” Tocquet said. “If we go anywhere, let us go tomorrow by the light of day.”
“Go where?” Elise said sharply.
“Ma chère,” said Tocquet, a little too loudly. “I wish to God that you at least would take Mireille down to Ennery. It will be safer there than anywhere else, for many excellent reasons that you know.”
“And leave this house?”
“This house,” said Tocquet. “Which you have so recently purchased and repaired and furnished and decorated. My dear, I don’t mind speaking honestly before our friends. If all should go well, the house will be intact when you return to it. If all should go ill, the house is not worth your life, nor yet Mireille’s.”
“As bad as that?” Elise said, her chin held high.
“I mean to take you down to Ennery myself,” said Tocquet quietly. “If you do not refuse to go.”
“Where you go, there I will follow.” Elise bowed her head.
Silence followed, inspired by Elise’s unexpectedly submissive attitude, or the darkness of the assumptions which underlay what Tocquet had said, or something of both; the doctor didn’t know. Then Zabeth cleared her throat discreetly in the doorway.
“Messieurs, mesdames,” she said. “Le dîner est servi.”
Elise had been to trouble with this dinner—porc au pruneaux, with the prunes expensively imported from France. It might have been so much soggy oatmeal for all the attention paid to it, though all the guests ran heavily on the wine. They fed themselves mechanically as they drank and debated what might possibly be done. In the midst of the conversation a servant came in with a note which had been urgently forwarded from the Cigny house. A deep quiet filled the room as Bertrand Cigny read the missive to himself, the point of his beard twitching as he muttered through the lines.
“Some hope in this, perhaps,” he said at last.
“O, let me see it!” Isabelle snatched the paper from his hand.
“Télémaque, at least, has been persuaded by the First Consul’s proclamation, it would seem,” said Cigny. “So too have most of the civil administration here, be they white or black or colored. Télémaque is getting up a deputation to persuade Christophe that he ought to receive the French fleet peacefully. And he invites us to join them . . .”
“Of course we will go!” Isabelle said, flapping the letter from one hand. “We must go—what choice have we?”
Her dark eyes flashed around the table. The doctor looked into the shredded remnants of his pork. He was not certain how much influence Télémaque, the black mayor of the town, would have with Christophe in such circumstances.
“Will you not join us?” Isabelle was addressing Tocquet, who returned her a thin smile.
“No such invitation has been addressed to me,” he said. “Perhaps I would not lend credit to the enterprise.”
“But what else is there?” Isabelle said. “Are we only to wait for a word from Toussaint?