Master of the Crossroads (77 page)

“‘In the end,’ you say. That is most comforting.” Isabelle tracked back toward her original intention. “For the moment, I wonder if it offers sufficient comfort.”

She glanced significantly at Captain Maillart, who narrowed his eyes and nodded his assent. With the corner of a napkin, Cigny meticulously cleaned a soup spill out of the curls of his beard. Isabelle rose from her place, circled the table, and laid her hands over Nanon’s bare shoulders.

“My friend is in a delicate condition,” Isabelle said. “I mean to care for her in her time of need. She ought to be taken away from the tremors and disruptions of the town, from whatever fresh disturbances may be in store, to some quiet place in the countryside.”

Cigny’s eyes widened slightly; he mashed the crumpled napkin under his pudgy hand. It was not so difficult for Maillart to read his thought: that his wife should make an issue of attending a mulatto trollop in her pregnancy? Perhaps she was laying it on a bit thick, at that.

Isabelle’s hands tightened slightly on Nanon’s shoulders, and Nanon raised her face, impassive, the heavy petals of her lips sealed together. My Christ, Maillart thought, has she told
her?
He was looking directly into the molasses swirl of Nanon’s eyes, but there was no divining what she knew or did not know.

“Hmmmph,” Cigny grunted, smoothing his beard down over his shirt front. “I mean to go tomorrow, in any event, to see about the mill at Haut de Trou. There is no reason why you should not accompany me if you so wish. Of course, you may invite anyone you choose.”

He lifted his spoon again and lowered his eyes to his soup bowl. Isabelle clicked her tongue, parted her lips as if she would say something more, but then apparently decided against it. She gave Nanon’s shoulders a parting squeeze, and went back to her own place at the table.

Bertrand Cigny went directly to his plantation on the following day—the place was reachable in a single long day’s ride. But as the ladies were to travel in a carriage, it was decided that they would break the journey with an overnight visit to Habitation Arnaud. There was the boy Paul too, riding with them in the carriage, or sometimes, to humor him, taken before Maillart on the saddle. Paulette had been detached from the expedition, since Isabelle, for reasons only the captain knew in full, did not want anyone else’s retainers to be part of her own entourage.

From the start their progress was painfully slow, since the roads were boggy from the rains. Every half-hour, it seemed, Maillart was obliged to dismount the black dragoons he’d brought along as an escort and help them cut brush to lay across some muddy slough so that the narrow wheels of the carriage might pass over without miring. Each delay fretted him; he was delighted to have been of use, but as eager for his own part in the affair to be finished. With Toussaint still unfindable, he’d left Le Cap on his own authority, and was uneasy about the situation in the town. The rumors of trouble had not been invented for the sake of Bertrand Cigny.

When they creaked into the Arnaud compound, late that afternoon, Maillart was somehow unsurprised to find Joseph Flaville already there, standing by his horse in a cluster of other riders, as if they too had just arrived or were departing. A tour of inspection, doubtless, to ensure that Arnaud’s field hands were faithful in their service. The captain saluted and turned smartly to hand Isabelle down from the carriage. Flaville swept off his hat and bowed to the ladies. Maillart felt Isabelle’s fingers flutter expressively over his palm. Flaville was offering his arm to help Nanon down the carriage step.

Claudine Arnaud had appeared on the low porch of the Arnaud
grand’case,
and Isabelle, with a contrived little cry of pleasure, went tripping across the yard toward her. Nanon followed; a footman lugging their portmanteaux brought up the rear.

Maillart turned to Flaville. He felt nothing of what he’d expected to feel. No trace of the nausea which had assailed him when he’d first learned the situation, no anger, no real resentment, but only curiosity. He knew that Flaville had attended that savage ceremony at Bois Cayman where the first revolt of the slaves was planned. He’d been a co-conspirator with Boukman, had presided over the sack and burning of plantations and massacre of their inhabitants, had no doubt painted his naked flanks with the blood of slaughtered whites. In the eight years since, he’d evolved into a capable, even an honorable officer, and if his dependability were ever in doubt, Maillart believed, that was only because his ferocity for the freedom of his people superseded every other loyalty. How all these qualities could coexist in the same individual was truly a subject for wonder.

“Have you got word?” Maillart said. “Rigaud’s in rebellion.”

Flaville folded his arms over his uniform tunic. “When?”

“We learned of it yesterday,” said Maillart. “He’s refused obedience to the General-in-Chief—no fighting yet, that I know of.”

“And Toussaint?”

“Invisible.” Maillart shrugged. “
Introuvable.
Or he was when I left Le Cap. Are you stopping here for the night?”

“I think not,” said Flaville. “We were bound for Limbé, and by what you tell me, I think we ought to get there that much faster.”

He swung his leg over the saddle and saluted. “Thank you for the news,” he said, and led the other riders out.

Maillart was wearier than he’d recognized, his legs rubbery from the day’s ride. He walked up the steps to the gallery and dropped onto a chair. The wind that came before the rain was shivering all the trees, and the guinea fowl pecking and scratching in the yard began to scatter. It made the captain feel hungry to look at them.

Isabelle came out of the house and handed him a glass of limeade laced with rum. He tasted gratefully, cleared his throat. She remained standing, near his side, looking out over the darkening compound. The captain was moved, by her grace and her fortitude. Isabelle was at her best in tight situations, he thought. Possibly that was why she’d been so fond of entertaining her lovers under her husband’s nose. He wondered what she would have been like as a man.

“You said that an earthquake is nothing to fear,” he reminded her. When she turned to him, he saw the thread of chain slip on her throat, and thought of Flaville with her, and dismissed the thought.

“Are
you
afraid of earthquakes?” she said.

Maillart reached for his drink. He had never admitted fear of anything to anyone, and certainly not to a woman. “There is no defense against an earthquake,” he said finally.

“And for that, no reason to fear them,” Isabelle said, with a click of her tongue, as if impatient at his lack of insight. But she stayed, her fingertips grazing the table, very near to his own hand which was curled around the glass. The air kept thickening, denser and denser, till the whole sky opened and the rain came down.

They stayed at Habitation Arnaud all through the next day and night, at the insistence of their hosts, who wished to make a token repayment of all the nights they’d spent under Isabelle’s roof in town, and also wanted to display their projects. Maillart chafed as he was shown around the mill. He sensed that the whole country was drawing itself in for another violent explosion, while he was stuck in these doldrums. It would take two more days to get the women and Paul even as far as Dondon, with the planned stopover at Habitation Cigny.

At the lowest terrace of the mill, Arnaud dipped his hand into a large wooden basin, and lifted it, spilling white granules over the pale mound inside.

“Do you see?”

“It is sugar,” the captain said, indifferently.

“White sugar.”
Arnaud seethed with enthusiasm. “Do you know there are not five planters left on the plain who can refine it? All the skilled men have been killed, or disappeared into the hills.”

Maillart examined the sugar again with slightly quickened interest. True enough, it was pretty stuff. And it would please Toussaint to know that it existed. Arnaud whistled up his refiners to be introduced. Both were smiling, and seemed pleased and proud of their positions. One, he noticed, lacked an arm, which had been severed near the shoulder.

As Arnaud must go on with the work in the mill, Maillart excused himself and went to find the ladies at the school which Claudine was managing for the smaller Negro children, in the lean-to next to the new infirmary. He reached them at the moment of dismissal, for she let them go before it grew too hot—the heat muddied their attention, she had said. They were pressing around her now before they parted, and she gave them bits of hardened brown sugar to suck, and some of them kissed her fingers before they ran away. Maillart noticed that she carried her maimed hand without self-consciousness, and that it was less noticeable to him now than when she’d worn the glove.

“At eight years they must go to the fields,” Claudine was explaining to Isabelle and Nanon. “That took some argument with Arnaud, who would send them at six. Still, it is something.” She smiled, dimpling, and led them into the infirmary. In her renascent bloom, she even looked somewhat younger than before.

In the evening, Maillart was alone for a time with Isabelle on the gallery. Arnaud was detained at the mill, and Nanon and Claudine were with Cléo, the mulattress housekeeper, in the kitchen. Much as the delay annoyed him, the captain was looking forward to his supper; the night before Cléo had proved herself to be quite a remarkable cook.

“I must admit,” he said to Isabelle, “I don’t quite understand the situation here. One would take them for a pair of missionaries now. But in the old days there was no one in the colony with a worse reputation for cruelty to his slaves than Michel Arnaud. And the wife thought to be a gibbering lunatic . . .”

Isabelle nodded. “Some men improve under the pressure of necessity,” she said. “Arnaud has a strong will, and formerly there was nothing to oppose it. Now he seems to take a certain pleasure in his work, but then there was nothing for him to do—all was done for him. It is the same case with many Creoles . . .” She laughed, with little mirth, and shook her head. “For that reason, I chose to marry a Frenchman.”

Maillart could compose no reply to that. After a moment, Isabelle went on.

“Concerning Claudine, there was apparently a priest who assigned her the care of small children as a penance. As she has been faithful in the task, it seems that her sanity is restored.”

“Indeed she is greatly changed, and for the better.”

“And when one considers where she started—she was once a terrible figure.”

“I know it,” Maillart said. The tale in which Claudine hacked off her own ring finger to appease the bloodthirsty swarm of rebel slaves had been very widely told.

“Oh, I wonder if you do,” Isabelle said. “I learned what I know of it myself only during this visit. It seems that Arnaud, like many men of his type, was in the habit of amusing himself with the Negro women here. Claudine, like many wives so situated, grew weary of seeing the product of his indiscretions scattered through her household. Also apparently he mocked her own lack of fecundity, or she felt that he did so by his actions. A housemaid he had given her was carrying his child. One day when Arnaud was absent on his affairs, Claudine dragged the maid out to that shed.” Isabelle gestured toward the empty space, as if the structure she’d named were still standing. “She cut the infant out of the womb, and killed the maid with a razor. From this followed her insanity, and her carelessness of her own survival.”

“My God,” Maillart said. “She confessed this to you?”

“Hardly,” Isabelle said. “Cléo was housekeeper at that time too. She did not tell me, but she told Nanon.”

“So that’s how it goes,” Maillart said.

“They know everything, you see?” Isabelle said. “One has no secrets.” She smiled ruefully, looking away from him. “In the old days, I never kept a personal servant long.”

Maillart again had nothing to say.

“Cléo bore Arnaud’s children herself,” Isabelle told him, “and saw them sold away to other plantations, once they grew large enough to irk the master with the family resemblance.”

“And after all that she came back here?”

“It is a little surprising,” Isabelle said. “Of course, Cléo was something of a terror herself, in the camps of Grande Rivière. She took white women who had been so many times raped by the black chiefs that they had lost their attraction, and sent them into the river to do her washing. She had them beaten for small faults—like any Creole dame.”

“I see,” said Maillart. He had begun to feel a little chilly.

“An eye for an eye,” Isabelle said. “They understand each other here. They’ve shared things. Claudine once said that it must all be washed away in blood. That was in her madness, but I begin to think it quite a reasonable remark.”

“How did you come to know?” Maillart said. “About Cléo, in the camps, I mean.”

“Joseph told me.” As if unconsciously, Isabelle passed a hand over her abdomen. “Joseph knows that whole history of Claudine as well—I’m sure of it, although he never told me.”

Next morning they set out at an early hour for Habitation Cigny. Paul became restless by the time the sun was high; whether he shared the carriage with the women or Maillart’s saddle, he could not be still. When the opportunity presented itself, the captain bought a donkey from a drover who was bringing a string of them down to market, and set Paul astride, bareback, with an improvised rope bridle. The boy could manage his new mount well enough, and the work of it relieved his boredom. Since they still had the constant difficulty of negotiating the carriage across tricky places in the road, the donkey had no trouble keeping up with the rest of their caravan.

When they reached the Cigny plantation at Haut de Trou, Isabelle and her husband began to quarrel straightaway, though in muted voices and, as far as possible, out of earshot of their guests. Over dinner they continued to snipe obscurely at each other. The captain grasped that Isabelle had found undone a great deal of restoration she expected to have been accomplished at her father’s house and gardens. Cigny’s position seemed to be that every available hand was needed to produce cash crops. He had graver matters on his mind besides: the rumors Maillart had described had already reached his
atelier.
Cigny’s field hands had been roused to rebellion during the disturbances leading to Hédouville’s flight, and now they showed considerable discontent with Toussaint’s still more stringent labor policy, though so far they’d remained at their hoes.