Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [86]
“And what act of barbarity might that be?” the doctor said.
Pascal lowered his hand from his mouth and hid it in his pocket. “The general has ordered the town to be evacuated.” He swallowed. “And burned.”
“When?”
Pascal shrugged. “At any moment. Or if the fleet attempts a landing . . .”
“And Télémaque?”
“He believes the municipal guard will hold loyal to France,” Pascal said. “But of course they cannot hope for much if they have to resist the army.”
With one more glance at the closed door to the inner cabinet, the doctor left the room and went back into the street. Slowly he walked in the direction of the hospital. The sun blazed down, and the grade of the ascent was enough to make him sweat. Inside the hospital enclosure he stopped for a moment to rest in the shade, with one hand braced against a palm tree. Further from the gate, the toeless cane-cutter was hobbling slowly across the enclosure with the aid of a peeled stick.
When he had cooled sufficiently to think, the doctor sent out for a cart to convey the cane-cutter back to Habitation Héricourt. Two of his dysentery cases had been let go already, and the third was well enough to travel, along with the two malaria patients. In an hour’s time he had got them loaded on the cart with the cane-cutter—they would be dropped off at Haut du Cap, on the way to Héricourt. When the cart had creaked off down the hill, he sent the two sages-femmes who served him as nurses home as well. The hospital was closed until further notice.
Most of his medical supplies had been sent down to Ennery with Elise and Tocquet. He was not sure why he had not gone himself. His interest in Isabelle was no more than friendly, and while he would like to see her safe, that was not the only thing that kept him hanging on in the town. It puzzled him, as it had his sister, for he was anxious for Nanon and his own children, to whom he might have gone this morning instead of staying here.
He went into the chamber that served him as office and examining room, and collected a bundle of his most essential herbs and a small surgical kit in a leather case. Since the fleet had appeared at the harbor’s mouth, he had been wearing a brace of pistols hidden under his coat, and now he took them both out, checked the priming, and holstered them again. His long gun was at his sister’s house in the town.
He had just finished looping a chain through the iron gate that closed the hospital compound when he heard a voice calling to him in the street:
“Doktè Doktè, madanm mandé w tounen lakay . . .”
He turned toward the voice with a sense of déjà vu—it was that new porter from Elise’s house. Michau was what they called him, he remembered.
Doctor, Doctor, Madame wants you to come back to the house.
“Ki madanm sa yé?” he said, thinking that Elise was gone. What Madame is it? He snapped the padlock on the chain, checked his key, and turned from the gate.
“Madanm Isabelle,” Michau panted.
“Dousman,” the doctor said. He laid a hand on the black man’s shoulder to calm him a little and slow his pace. Michau caught his breath, then reached for the doctor’s bundle of herbs. The doctor let him take it as they walked together down past the casernes. There was indeed a movement of municipal guard through the streets, as Pascal had predicted. With the help of many ordinary citizens, they were organizing buckets and barrels of water. At the same time the small parties of soldiers grouped around tar pots, their lances à feu at the ready,