Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [99]
At a nudge to his side he glanced down and saw Isabelle. Though her dress was grimy and limp and her hair bedraggled, her eyes were clear and bright and she did not seem so much the worse for the night spent in the rough.
“Look there,” she said. “I believe they are landing.”
A shift of the wind was now carrying the smoke over the headland and Fort Picolet, so their view of the harbor was clear. Indeed, several of the ships had sailed up to moorings along the quai, and something was being unloaded on the docks before the Batterie Circulaire. The doctor unfolded his pocket spyglass and set it to one eye.
“Fire pumps,” he said. “They are unloading fire pumps there—though they have come a little late for the occasion.”
“Give it to me,” Isabelle said, and plucked the instrument from his hand. The doctor looked in the direction of her focus. With his naked eye he could see some sparkling commotion on the after deck of the flagship L’Océan.
“Why, certainly, that is Pauline Bonaparte!” Isabelle said. “I mean of course Madame Leclerc—and she is preparing to land.”
The doctor reclaimed the glass and peered through it. Yes, it did seem that a lady of high station was the center of all the bustle on the deck of L’Océan.
“But we must go down to receive her!” Isabelle cried.
“Are you mad, ma chère?” It was the same lady with the lopsided hair, who’d pulled away from the discussion around Télémaque, possibly attracted by the spyglass. “How can we appear before such a one, as we are now, my dear?” She spread her stained and tattered skirts to demonstrate her point.
“We’ll appear as we must,” Isabelle said, turning on the lady with a somewhat cutting smile. “I certainly mean to greet her. You, ma chère, may do as you like.”
“But no matter what, we can’t stay here,” the doctor said. He took a step between the two ladies and squinted up at the pale sky. Vultures had been circling La Vigie all through the morning, and were turning closer now and seemed more bold to land. It was plain enough as well that they could not stay where they were, without water, through the broiling heat of the afternoon.
In the end the party of refugees separated. Arnaud led a group which included most of the women and children out in the direction of Haut du Cap, where he hoped among other things to get some intelligence of what might have happened on his plantation at Acul. Télémaque and his retainers, meanwhile, would descend to make contact with the French landing party. Isabelle and her husband elected to go down with Télémaque. She insisted on keeping her children with her, and the doctor decided to stay with them. Arnaud had taken charge of conveying the stretcher with the amputee as far as Haut du Cap.
When they had got down to street level from the trail of La Vigie, the ground underfoot was so very hot it was difficult to walk. Again the doctor felt grateful to Michau for his calm and his loyalty in saving the horses. He got Isabelle up on one of the mares. She took Héloïse on the saddle before her, while Robert scrambled up on the other mare behind Cigny, and the doctor and Michau went double on the mule.
“Let us go home, then,” Isabelle said. Télémaque’s group had already moved further downhill toward the waterfront.
“My dear—” Cigny started to say, but Isabelle stopped him with a movement of her hand. They rode across the Rue Royale, their mounts uneasy with the smoke and the hot street surface, but manageable all the same. They passed the wreck of Christophe’s mansion. Elise’s house was utterly destroyed, the small rear garden a waste of cinders, that slim green palm shoot obliterated. The doctor took out the bundle of keys with which he’d locked up the place so carefully the day before and tossed them idly in his