Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [64]
“Messieurs, mesdames,” he said, when Télémaque had finally ended. “I am aware of all you say. I am awaiting orders from the Governor-General. Without his order, I cannot admit the French fleet to the harbor.”
With that, he turned smartly and started for the door, on the wave of a hubbub that broke out among the crowd of people who had spent the whole length of Télémaque’s speech shifting their weight quietly from one foot to the other on the polished ballroom floor. Isabelle’s voice stood above the rest, high and clear and unignorable.
“General, wait.”
Christophe’s step locked. Slowly he turned to face her as she advanced a step or two.
“General, it is not quite ten years since all our town was burned to cinders. And now—” Holding the baby with one arm, she made an expansive, swirling gesture with the other. “Do you not see how all of us have labored, shoulder to shoulder and hand in hand, to rebuild it to still a more splendid state than before? With that, we now have peace, prosperity, freedom, and dignity for all. And is all that to be destroyed?”
“Chère madame.” Christophe’s voice was almost inaudibly soft. “It is not I who come to destroy it.” Again he turned as if to depart, but Isabelle’s voice held him.
“Think only of your own house, General. The effort that it took to raise it to its present glory. Then multiply that effort by all the houses, and the finest public buildings of our town . . .”
In a flash the doctor pictured the tar barrels he’d seen rolled through the gateway to Christophe’s mansion, and wondered if Isabelle might have seen them too. Héloïse was clinging to her mother’s skirts with both hands now and hiding her small face in the cloth.
“Can you not think of our children?” Isabelle said, and thrust out Mireille toward Christophe at the length of her two arms. Startled by the brusque movement, the baby began to wail. “My little girl,” Isabelle went on. “In three weeks’ time she will be carrying her candle to the cathedral—if it has not been wasted by a greater flame.”
Héloïse, as if on cue, began to sob into her mother’s skirt. Isabelle raised her voice just enough to be heard above their cries. The doctor felt one of his occasional twitches of dislike for her, and yet she was only giving the effort her all. Such an energy was pent in her small body—the concentration a hummingbird must use to hold itself midair, suspended before the blossom which it meant to penetrate.
“Look at her, the innocent, and think of all the others.” Mireille’s face was glowing angry red as Isabelle talked across her body, which wriggled like a caterpillar. “Will you see them all unhoused, sent begging from the ruin of their homes?”
“Madame! Madame!” Christophe thundered. Then at once he reined his voice back from fire to ice. “I can only await the order of the Governor-General Toussaint Louverture. Without his order, I cannot and will not admit the fleet.” He paused, then shifted into Creole. “Ou mêt alé,” he said, You may go, and with that clipped instruction he revolved on his heel and stalked from the room.
It seemed that Isabelle might hurl herself to the floor, to enjoy an hysterical fit of rage and frustration and tears. But as such a demonstration would serve no purpose, she restrained herself from it. The doctor thought that in just half a second, this entire calculation was legible in her face. Isabelle handed Mireille back to Elise, who had stood by her through it all, dazed and expressionless as if in a dream. She took her own children by their hands and led them in the direction of the outer doors.
A few more voices were raised in protest, but they were feeble now, and Christophe was no longer there to hear them. The aides and adjutants were moving forward, encouraging the petitioners out of the ballroom, toward the front steps and the courtyard. The doctor slipped through their ranks and followed