Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [97]
At dawn the doctor pushed himself upright, creaking and stiff after the scraps of sleep he had snatched, lying on the open ground. All around him he heard people coughing, for the whole hilltop was smothered in smoke, and there was a woman crying somewhere off to the left. Isabelle slept sitting up, her lips slightly parted, propped on the bear-like mound of her husband, who lay snoring on his side. Héloïse lay in her lap and Robert was quietly curled nearby. Arnaud was nowhere to be seen.
The doctor got up and walked through the trees where the horses were tethered till he had found a sufficiently sheltered place to open his flies and relieve himself. As he was refastening his trousers, a lady came bursting out of the bushes and gave him an exasperated look as she shook her skirts down over her legs. She had a fashionable, lofty coiffure, rucked a little to one side, and her face was striped in rice powder and soot. The doctor had seen her at the theater and other such places but could not recall her name, and she had already flounced off toward the clearing before he could formulate a greeting or apology.
He returned to the horses. Michau was sleeping tranquilly on the ground beside them. The doctor gave some of the raw sugar he habitually carried in his jacket pocket to the two mares in turn and then to the mule. The mule’s rubbery lips warmed and moistened his palm, searching to capture the last crumbs. The doctor himself did not feel hungry, though his belly was hollow and his head somewhat light.
The wind turned, carrying the smoke and clouds of ash out over the harbor. The doctor stood on the crown of the hill, looking out over the fuming ruin of the town. The devastation seemed to have been quite perfect. Every house and building was a well of coals and ash and not a single roof was left intact, though many walls were still standing, smoke-stained and cracked from the heat. The doctor had missed seeing this aftermath when the town was burned in ninety-three, for he and Nanon had fled the environs while the fires were still raging through the streets.
All those streets were lifeless now, except for smoldering embers. The clouds of smoke obscured the harbor. At the end of the town, near the gateway of the road to Haut du Cap, the Second Demibrigade was massed and waiting.
Something plucked at his trouser leg; he looked down and discovered Héloïse.
“J’ai faim,” she said, in a neutral tone. I’m hungry. Reflexively the doctor put a hand into his pocket, but he had already given all the sugar to the horses. He peered at the little girl’s smudged face. Her First Communion would be long delayed, he realized, as the cathedral lay in ashes at the bottom of the hill.
“Well, well,” he said. “Let us go and find your mother.” He led Héloïse back to the spot where the others were still sleeping. To the best of his recollection they’d come away empty-handed the night before, but when he cast about now he came upon a sizable basket, covered with a grease-stained cloth, which proved to contain the cold chicken and fruit from the supper they’d not had leisure to consume the night before. He picked out a whole banana and broke the peel for Héloïse, then hunkered down to watch her eat it. She was rather a striking child, with her mother’s coloring and dark hair, and eyes such a very dark blue they were almost purple.
“Save a little something for your brother,” he told her, as she tossed away the banana peel and went to forage in the basket.
“J’ai soif,” Héloïse replied, pausing to look up at him. I’m thirsty.
The doctor stood up and leaned backward, feeling his vertebrae crack. There was no water. No spring or well nearby. And now, with the sun just rising over the bay, it was already hot. He dug in the basket till he found an orange for Héloïse. As he cut into the peel with his thumbnail, Arnaud came hurrying up, in a sweat from some exertion.
“Ah, my friend,” he said. “Your skills are wanted.” He pointed toward the two low houses where the more