Master of the Crossroads (30 page)

Outside, there was a crash of thunder, and the rain came down in sheets. A party of damp Frenchmen entered; the last of these turned back to shut the door behind him. Tocquet clicked glasses with the sergeant, they drank, leaned back, and sighed.

“Who’re all these French who’ve filled the town?” Tocquet said. “They tell me here there are no rooms to let at all.”

“Royalists,” the sergeant said. “Landowners of the northern plain, so I’ve been told. Come to seize back their property from the godless Jacobins—with the aid of the Spanish crown.”

“How very interesting.” Tocquet laughed shortly. “Who commands here?”

“Why, in principle it is Don García himself,” said Altamira, “but just now, during his absence on campaign, the commander is Don Cassasola.”

Tocquet camouflaged a smile by wiping the back of his hand over his mustache. Don Cassasola was that decrepit specimen who’d been drilling the troops with the umbrella. The door opened and he glanced over. Bazau came in from the rain and Tocquet hailed him. The news was the same, no room to be had anywhere.

“And the horses?”

Bazau cut his hand toward the floor and smiled; from this Tocquet understood that Gros-jean had managed to shelter the horses and saddles somewhere, somehow, for the duration of the rain. He nodded. Bazau strolled to the counter and began talking to one of the serving girls there.

“I myself am quartered at the citadel,” the sergeant said, “where if you wish we might find you something . . .”

Tocquet shook his head, reaching automatically to pinch a mosquito that had just settled on his throat. He was not inclined to pass the night in a Spanish barracks.

“Or some of our officers, those who came here with their ladies, have taken houses in the Rue Bourdon,” the sergeant said. “Perhaps if you find an acquaintance, you might ask for hospitality.”

“Possibly,” Tocquet said. “It’s useful to know. In any case, I’ll manage something.”

The sergeant leaned closer to him. “Don’t stay here long,” he said, his tone carefully low. “Despite your manner of dress, you may be taken for French, and then—”

Tocquet glanced at him sharply, but Altamira had leaned back and was pouring himself a short measure of rum.

“I can have the tobacco loaded for you—tomorrow by the church, before morning mass. The load and the mule to carry as we said, and in time for you to make an early departure.” He drained his glass. His olive face went blank as he stood up.

Tocquet passed him a gold piece: earnest money. “Till tomorrow then, and thanks,” he said. The sergeant winked as he took the coin, but the rest of his face was grave, unsmiling.

As Altamira went out, Gros-jean came in. Through the door’s gap Tocquet saw the rain was heavy as ever. He beckoned Gros-jean to sit at his table, offered him rum, then looked for Bazau, but he was still gossiping with the girl at the counter. Just to the left of them was a door that apparently led to the rented rooms, for sometimes a French lodger came in or out by that passage. In confidence that tomorrow he could restock his supply, Tocquet produced one of his cheroots and lit it straightaway. A mosquito bit the back of his hand as he did so. He crushed it, exhaling smoke and raising his eyebrows at Gros-jean.

From that rear doorway a figure emerged, a gaunt Frenchwoman who moved with a weird stateliness, as if she were crossing the hall of a church instead of a crowded, noisy tavern. Her head was uncovered, her hair tied tightly back, and her deep-set eyes were fixed on something no one else could see. Tocquet felt a twinge of familiarity which he could not quite place. The room grew quieter as she passed, and men scraped and shifted their chairs and attention, not for her beauty, for she was a harsh-looking woman, but for her strange intensity.

She stopped at a table in the center of the room and inclined her head toward a man seated there. A Frenchman, graying at the temples, wearing a
redingote
which had been at the height of colonial fashion perhaps three years previously. They conferred for a moment, then the woman withdrew, making a ghostly passage back toward the same corridor from which she’d appeared.

Tocquet returned his glance to the man she’d spoken to and felt again on the edge of recognition. A
grand blanc
of fallen fortunes, evidently. The striped coat was patched at the elbows, the left boot sole pulling loose from its upper . . . A curiously twisted cane leaned against his thigh, and his manner of toying with the pommel also said something to Tocquet. The other must have felt his regard, for he looked directly at Toquet with his dark eyes, a purse of his small, rather feminine mouth.

“Arnaud!” Tocquet got up and met the other man halfway. They clasped each other warmly by the arms, surprisingly, for they had never been close friends. The surprise of unexpected meetings could make for uninttended intimacies. Tocquet joined the other at his table. It was indeed Michel Arnaud, though thinner, and gone a little gray.

“I took you for a Spaniard, Xavier,” Arnaud said. “But then, I took you for a Spaniard when we last met. But—have you dined?”

Tocquet glanced toward the door, which was closed, but he could hear the roar of the rain well enough on the roof; it would certainly rain for at least another hour. “Not yet,” he said, “and I may as well, if you invite me.”

“Of course,” Arnaud said, and called to the servants to bring another plate.

Tocquet experienced a moment of awkwardness. To invite Gros-jean and Bazau to sit at table with such a man would cause more trouble than it was worth. He called across the room to them.

“Mezami!—alé manjé.”
The table where he’d sat with Altamira was now empty—he indicated this to the two blacks.

“Those are the same two men you had in the mountains then, no?” Arnaud asked.

“Yes,” said Tocquet, mildly surprised. To a man like Arnaud one nigger would scarcely be distinguishable from another, he’d thought.

“They’re faithful to you, then,” Arnaud remarked. “While all of ours betray us utterly . . .” He waved a hand around the room, then let it fall back limply to the pommel of his cane.

Tocquet drew on his cheroot and unconsciously crushed another mosquito on his cheek, reviewing the many qualities he had disliked in Arnaud. His weakness for luxurious self-indulgence of all kinds, which was spread over him like a coating of butter . . . lubricating an inner frame of cruelty. His arrogance, his brutal cruelty with his slaves, his wanton wastefulness of life whether human or animal. His mistreatment of his wife . . . On the credit side, Arnaud was a fine horseman, he spoke his mind plainly and held to his decisions, and unlike many cruel men, he did not seem to be a coward. Though one might say his taste for danger was like his taste for wine.

“Was that Claudine who spoke to you just now?” Tocquet said.

“Yes.” Arnaud’s face shaded. “She is very much changed, as you see.”

Tocquet said nothing. He had last seen Claudine Arnaud perhaps five years previously, but in that time she appeared to have aged twenty.

The serving girl arrived with a platter of pork slices, rice and beans, sliced peppers and onions. Arnaud served a plate and passed it to Tocquet, then gave himself a somewhat smaller serving.

“You’ve come a long road since we last met,” Tocquet said.

Arnaud seemed to look through him. Truly, his face had changed. Where formerly it had been almost piggishly smooth, it was now carved into hollows in his cheeks, around his eyes. Some callow layer had been burned away; Tocquet wondered what might reveal itself beneath. He had last seen Arnaud in 1791, on the eve of the first slave rebellion in the north—it was quite likely that Arnaud would have blundered into that upheaval, returning across the Spanish border with a pack train of guns Tocquet had delivered to him. That had been Tocquet’s first entry into the business of weapons supply.

“Yes.” Arnaud cut a small bite of pork and tasted it, appearing to swallow with some difficulty. He took some wine and laid down his fork. “When I left you I fell into the hands of Candy, that mulatto general of whom you will have heard; he would certainly have killed me, after tortures such as I saw him visit upon other planters of that province, but I escaped with the help of a
prêtre savane
.”

Arnaud crossed himself and closed his eyes for a moment. Flabbergasted at this gesture, Tocquet turned his attention to his plate.

“Afterward . . .” Arnaud resumed. “The plain was afire from one end to the other. My
habitation
was completely destroyed. Everything. And brigands roaming everywhere. I took to hiding in the hills for I don’t know how long, until at last I met with a patrol which brought me to Le Cap.”

“And Madame Arnaud, during your absence?”

“By whatever fortune she was visiting friends at Habitation Flaville, when the slaves attacked—it was one of the first. The men were killed but the women made their way to Le Cap in the end. Claudine was not so very much hurt in body, but in mind . . . for more than a year she seemed to have gone quite mad.” He looked up. “Since we’ve left the colony, she has seemed to do better.”

“How came you here, then?” Tocquet asked.

“Why, the Spanish have been circulating a broadside in Baltimore and Philadelphia and New York. They invited all the fugitive landowners of Saint Domingue to return to fight for the reclamation of their properties, under the Spanish flag.” Arnaud shook his head. “If it means fighting Frenchmen, well, they are bloody regicide Jacobins—nor am I in any position to refuse. You understand, we sailed with the fleet when Le Cap was burned. I waded to a boat with my wife in my arms and nothing else but the clothes I was wearing.” He plucked the frayed fabric of his
redingote.
“As you see. I came to Baltimore a pauper. Afterward we tried New York, but I found nothing for myself there either. Claudine was taken up by some holy sisters who instructed her as a nurse. She did so by the recommendation of that same
prêtre savane,
who had become her confessor in Le Cap and tried to help her in her madness . . .”

“He sounds an interesting fellow, this priest. Where is he now?”

“He was executed at Le Cap, for the crimes of another. I myself was present there, but could do nothing, though I knew him innocent. I pray for him now, Xavier, though I have small skill at prayer. The name he gave was Père Bonne-chance.”

“Why, I knew that priest!—he had a little church near Ouanaminthe, by the Rivière Massacre. And I saw him later in the camps of the blacks . . . yes, it must be the same. He had a woman too, I think.”

Arnaud nodded. “A
quarterrone
woman and a string of children,
sang-mêlés.
I would do something for those children now if I could find them—if I had anything to give.”

Tocquet stroked his mustache. Arnaud was known to have sold his own half-breed children off his plantation simply to be rid of the sight of them. But that had been some time ago. Tocquet took a last bite of pork and pushed his plate back. “A decent fellow for a priest, I always thought,” he said. “He had a sense of humor—seemed to. I didn’t know him well.”

“If God has any justice, he has no need of my prayers,” Arnaud said. He crossed himself again, then cleared his throat. “Well, to finish my own story, I have been living in the North American Republic on charity and the labor of my wife—you may imagine. I have no better hope than to try to recover my resources here. And for yourself?”

“Oh, I could not rival such adventures,” Tocquet said. “I’ve scrambled along as best I might—mostly over the border.” In fact he had made handsome sums of money running guns into the camps of the insurgent slaves in the mountains, but Arnaud was unlikely to be pleased to hear this tale, and in any case Tocquet was close-mouthed about his business, as a matter of principle. “But tell me, how does it go since you’ve come here?”

Arnaud shrugged. “We’re rusticating . . . and I’ll confess to some impatience.” He leaned across his mostly untouched plate, lowering his tone. “I would not like to say distrust. But I do not see any sign of an active campaign on the part of these Spaniards. They took care to disarm us when we arrived here—even to our knives!—on the pretext we would be issued regulation muskets later, but nothing of that kind has come about. We sit idly here while our stores dwindle. Don García gives us nothing but evasions. Meanwhile, a mob of
our renegade slaves
is encamped not a full day’s march from here, I’m told, and all in Spanish uniform.”

“True,” Tocquet said thoughtfully, and crushed another mosquito on his forearm.

“So we wait,” Arnaud said. “We wait, and we wonder.”

Tocquet nodded. The warning he’d had from Altamira seemed too indefinite to pass on. In former days he would not have much troubled himself about what might happen to Arnaud for good or ill, though he’d always felt some sympathy for his wife—a pretty, brittle girl who’d come out from France completely unprepared for what she might find in the colony. Certainly she was no longer that. When she’d crossed the room a few moments before, she’d had the air of moving among a company invisible to all but her. Tocquet shook his hair back briskly, to rid himself of the thought.

They finished the meal in a thoughtful silence. Arnaud ate little, though he finished the clay pitcher of wine. Tocquet ate slowly, chewed thoroughly, and left nothing. When they were done he paid for both of them, over Arnaud’s mild protest.

“Do you stop here for the night?”

“No rooms to be had,” Tocquet said.

Arnaud nodded. “It’s crowded here—there must be a thousand who’ve lately returned from North America, if you count the families with the men. We might find room for you with us, but for your men . . .”

“No matter,” Tocquet said. He slapped another mosquito and grimaced at the splash of blood it left on the loose weave of his shirtsleeve. “Those gentlemen know how to manage—they’ll find something for us all.”

It proved that Bazau had already learned where to go from talking to the servants at the inn. When the rain had stopped, they found the horses and rode out from the eastern limits of the town, more or less in the direction of the Spanish frontier. In half an hour’s time they were mounting a trail that wound up into the foothills. After the rain, the air was fresh, and cooler as they climbed, and the sky was perfectly clear, with a trail of stars hanging from the hook of the moon. A light breeze combing over the hills swept all the mosquitoes away. They passed through an old planting of coffee trees, neglected now and overgrown with vines, and soon a couple of dogs began to bark. They stopped; Gros-jean got down from his horse and waited. Presently someone challenged them from the shadows of the trees, and Gros-jean answered in a soft voice. Tocquet, who had also dismounted and stood mostly concealed by the shoulder of his horse, passed forward a coin from his purse. After a few minutes of negotiation, the dogs were quieted and taken away, and someone led them to a clay-walled
case
by the side of a still spring-fed pool.