Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [89]
The doctor’s mule had not much reacted to the cannon, only swiveling its long ears in the direction of the noise. He turned the animal’s head toward the town and kicked into a risky trot: the white shale of the path was barely visible underfoot. Behind he could hear the firing continue. More ships had sailed in to join the battle, and there was sound of splintering stone and men’s voices crying in rage or pain.
On precipitous descent of the hill the mule had to slow and pick its way. Christophe would certainly be making faster progress on the lower road, once he had got off the rocky beach. The doctor had a fine panoramic view of the town, where the lances à feu had now been lit; it looked like hundreds of them. He watched the points of light spiraling out of the Place d’Armes and the Place Clugny, spreading out of the casernes and along the waterfront. No buildings had yet been set on fire.
When he reached street level, he kicked his mule to the fastest pace it would deliver. The soldiers with their lances à feu moved in tight order or stood with a fixed regard. None of them paid him any mind. They did not seem to see him whirling past.
Christophe was just dismounting in front of his own house when the doctor turned into the Rue Royale. The general passed his reins to a soldier in exchange for a burning lance à feu. The doctor halted the mule on the opposite side of the street. He opened his mouth but no words came out. A couple of other white men had come over from the water station on the corner, and they seemed to be in a similar state of speechlessness.
Through the arch of the gateway, they watched Christophe stride into his own front door and climb the curving stairway in the foyer. At the top, he turned to face the street, and after a moment’s pause on the crux, he tilted his lance à feu to touch a wall. Every surface of the interior must have been painted with tar already, for the whole house was instantly ablaze. Framed against the thrusting flames, Christophe descended the stairs at the same slow and stately pace as he had climbed them. When he had emerged across the threshold, he turned and flung his fire spear back into the burning house.
“Alé!” he said in a loud harsh voice, as he came out through the archway onto the street. “Alé, meté feu partout.” His eyes cut across the cluster of white men. Go, set fire to everything!
As the soldiers with torches began to disperse, the doctor rode for his sister’s house. He was thinking of Michau and the horses. But the stable was already afire when he arrived. He pulled up the mule and watched a pair of soldiers use a tar keg to smash in the front door of the house. The rolling keg spread its black ichor in a curve across the floor; then one of the soldiers picked it up and tossed the rest of the contents on the walls. Another man was already thrusting his lance à feu into the eaves. The house went up in one great whoosh.
The soldiers were already on to the next building, but the doctor remained, watching with a queer fascination as the fire ate through a tar-coated door. In two minutes the weathered wood was rendered frail and transparent as a strip of muslin, and the fire outlined the hinges and hasp and the padlock the doctor had fastened there that afternoon. As the door collapsed and fell out of the frame, he turned his mule toward the Cigny house.
No sign of Michau or the horses there, but Isabelle stood halfway down her stairs, holding Héloïse in her arms and arguing with a private soldier of the Second.
“I will not have it—not a second time,” she cried. She stamped her foot on the wooden riser. “I will not see my home destroyed. I will not!”
“Madanm, tannpri,” the soldier said, while another man drizzled tar across the ground-floor carpets. Arnaud stared up at Isabelle, eyes bulging and mouth agape. Cigny, standing with one hand on Robert’s shoulder, had simply covered