Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [90]
“Madanm, tannpri,” the soldier repeated. Madame, please. A strange courtesy, the doctor thought. The burning of this town in ninety-three had been a wholesale orgy of murder and rape. To this Isabelle had been witness, had barely escaped being a victim herself. Of course that had been ten thousand savages, by comparison to this quite well-disciplined army.
“Ma chère,” he said to her from the doorway. Isabelle’s eyes locked onto his. Héloïse turned her sobbing face against her mother’s bosom.
“My dear,” the doctor said. “It’s time to go.”
With a swallow, Isabelle came unglued from her post on the stairs. The soldier who’d been cajoling her sighed as she swept past him. In the foyer she paused to hurl at the man with the tar barrel—“You will be held to account for the cost of those carpets you have spoiled!” But then she let her husband guide her out into the street.
The bucket brigade was not functioning as planned; the doctor had scarcely given it a thought during his hurried ride into town. But now Isabelle thrust Héloïse into her husband’s arms—the child howled louder at the unwelcome transfer—and dashed to the water station on the corner. Arnaud and the doctor followed. An old horse trough had been moved to this spot, meant to be replenished by a chain of buckets stretching as far as the fountain on the Place d’Armes, but all the street in that direction was nothing but a tunnel of fire, and half the water in the trough had evaporated in the withering heat. Isabelle seemed unconscious of these aspects of the situation. Mechanically she filled a bucket, passed it to Arnaud, scooped another for the doctor, and led the men back the way they’d come, lugging her own pail.
By then flames were shooting out the windows and roof of the Cigny house. Isabelle tossed her bucket against a burning wall; it disappeared in a hiss of steam. She turned to march back for more water, but now their way was barred by a squad of soldiers, holding their muskets crossways. When Isabelle advanced, unheeding, one of the soldiers hooked her bucket away from her with a bayonet point and flipped it into the nearest fire. The doctor ran up and caught her arm. His own weapons were handy enough, but it would have been folly to produce them. The soldiers marched against him and Isabelle, shoving with their sideways muskets. Isabelle reached out her small hand and pushed one of them in the chest.
“Stop it!” the doctor said. “It is no use.” Beyond, he could see that other soldiers had dumped the horse trough over and were staving in the bottom with their gun butts. Isabelle did stop, but not because of what he’d said. A cinder had landed on her cheek, and carelessly she brushed at it, leaving a smear of soot. Her gaze was fixed down the next block, where a great white warhorse emerged through a wreath of fire. Scrambling up onto its back was a small man with a jockey’s build, dressed in a charcoal burner’s rags, a dull red cloth bound over his head. He gripped the horse’s mane with one hand and swept the other forward.
“Alé! Meté feu partout! Boulé tout kay-yo!”
Isabelle did not exactly slump, but the doctor felt the force go out of her. She did not resist now when he turned her away. As they returned toward the others, she staggered and the doctor caught her around the shoulders. Cigny was reaching his free hand toward hers.
The soldiers moved up, pressing on them and their neighbors who’d been driven from their own burning houses. Impelled by thrusts of the crossways muskets, they went up the sloping street, the doctor leading his mule by the reins. Soon they had joined a much larger crowd of refugees being chivvied along the Rue Espagnole by the soldiers. Télémaque was among them, with the municipal guard and the rest of the civil officials of the town. In reasonably good order, never firing a shot or using the point of a bayonet, the soldiers of the Second shepherded them past the casernes. They turned onto the road that climbed toward the summit of La Vigie.
Isabelle had begun to stumble. “Let us get her up