Master of the Crossroads (68 page)

He walked across to Government House to find Pascal and ask him what possiby could have happened between Toussaint and Hédouville. “I’ve never seen him show such a humor as today,” the doctor said. “Not in all the time I’ve spent in his company . . . and I’ve seen many things.”

“I don’t doubt that you have.” Pascal tugged at the corner of his thumbnail with his teeth. “Well, I know this much of what has happened in the last few days. The Peacemaker of the Vendée has been most frosty to Commissioner Raimond, and has shown rather more formal courtesy to General Rigaud than to Toussaint.”

“But why—why would he want to offend Toussaint?”

Pascal gnawed at his thumbnail. “It’s more that Rigaud wants placating—he has long resented that Toussaint was promoted to a place above his own.”

“But General Hédouville came out with an order for Rigaud’s arrest.”

“Which Toussaint declined to execute.” Pascal bit into his thumb, then looked absently at the ragged flesh. “You know yourself the commissioners were much at fault in the whole debacle down south. The envoys were ill chosen and they bungled the whole affair—else Rigaud might never have been alienated.”

“All right. But now?”

“
Now,
Toussaint is the highest military authority in all the colony, in name. Also in fact—except in the Southern Department. Rigaud’s command. Well, let us suppose that our Peacemaker has received Rigaud more warmly than Toussaint, and has also given Rigaud to understand that his policy will be to
withdraw
the supremacy of power that Toussaint now enjoys . . .”

The doctor experienced an inner recoil. “If Toussaint were to learn of that, it would surely explain his distemper.”

“Indeed, it was let slip to him intentionally.” Pascal’s teeth drew blood from the corner of his tattered thumbnail. “It may be that he was even placed so as to overhear the actual conversation with Rigaud.”

“But why should General Hédouville—”

“Because he has no substantial force of his own,” Pascal said, looking somewhat unhappily at his wounded digit. “He must set the leaders against one another, and hope to insinuate his own officers among the cracks that open.”

“I call that a very dangerous game.”

“Agreed. But he played it to a victory in the Vendée, or so we are constantly told.” Pascal said. “No doubt he hopes to do the same thing here.”

“Give me your hand,” the doctor said, taking it in his own as he spoke. He squinted at the swollen area around the base of Pascal’s thumbnail.

“As for Toussaint,” Pascal told him, “I think we may reassure ourselves that this idea of retirement is a similar ploy. Only observe your own reaction—everyone else will feel the same. Even his enemies, or those who feel that he has simply become too powerful. For the moment, there is no one else who can hold things together here.”

“Let us take what comfort we can from that.” The doctor shook his head, wagging Pascal’s hand in his. “But this nail biting is truly a vicious habit, in a hot country. Look, you have already a bad spot here. You must let me poultice this.”

When he had tended to Pascal’s hand, the doctor parted from him and went on foot to the Cigny house, half dizzied by the heat and glare of the noonday sun. Arriving, he bypassed the front door without quite knowing his reason for doing so, and instead went round to the small crooked courtyard at the back, where a couple of servants whom he knew were resting in the shade. They smiled when they saw him, and at his indirect inquiry let him know that Madame Cigny was absent, having gone to call on a friend elsewhere in the town. When the conversation ended, they made no objection to the doctor’s entering the house by the back door.

He went up the stairs, unpleasantly conscious of the noise of his boots and the creaking of the planks beneath them. But no one was about to notice. From the bedroom on the second floor, the snores of Monsieur Cigny resounded, as the master of the house slept away the worst of the day’s heat. The doctor kept on climbing to the attic.

The door of the little room was slightly ajar; a nudge of his fingertips sufficed to send it floating inward. Nanon sat up on her cot with a gasp, and quickly pulled the sheet up to her collarbone. She’d been napping in the nude, as was her habit.

“Why have you come here?” she said.

“To let you know that our son is well.”

Nanon flinched, turning her face to the wall, as if he’d slapped her. The doctor’s pulse slammed at his temples. He had not considered before he spoke, but why was it the wrong thing to have said? Nanon drew the sheet higher over her shoulders, gripping the fabric from the end, tight as the hands of a corpse upon a shroud. She was thinner than before and there was a line of discoloration across her throat like an ugly necklace. Rust. The loss of weight brought a fragile edge to the beauty he remembered. So long since he had seen her at all, but she agreed very well with his memory. The heat bore down terribly here on the top floor, and the sheet clung humidly to the contours of her body. The doctor was aware of the grime caked on him, of an unpleasant taste in his mouth.

“I mean no harm,” he said, squatting at her bedside, extending his hand. “Quite the opposite.”

“Don’t,” Nanon said. “Don’t, I beg you.
Je t’en prie.
”

The doctor’s hand had stopped in the air. She would not turn her face to look at him. The atmosphere was so hot and close that he could scarcely breathe.

“But what is it?” he said. “Do you think I have come to bring some punishment, or even a reproach?” The plaintive grating of his voice was unpleasant even to himself. Why was he unable to strike a better note?

“Only come back with me to Ennery,” he said. “Everything will be as it was before you went away. Whatever has passed in your absence will be forgotten, as if it never were.”

Nanon did turn toward him then, chin trembling, her eyes large and gleaming under wells of tears. Her lips were parted, but instead of speaking she drew the sheet completely over her head and hunched down on the cot. As if what he’d last said were the very most wounding thing of all. Under the white shroud he saw her shuddering. Though he wanted to touch, to comfort, he withdrew his hovering hand, with a deliberate effort. He was resolved to do no harm.

“Perhaps I was wrong to have surprised you in this way.” The whine was purged from his voice now; he spoke as gently as he might to a sick or wounded person in his care. “But I will come again tomorrow. Properly. I will call on Madame Cigny in the late afternoon. Do you understand?”

Under the sheet, Nanon made no reply. The doctor looked across the shape of her body, through the porthole window and down into the street below, where a man came laboring under the heavy shafts of a two-wheeled cart piled high with sacks of rice or grain. He strained forward at such a desperate angle that, without the cart to balance him, he would surely have fallen on his face. All the muscles of his bare back and arms stood out like harp strings under the black skin. Then he passed from view and the round glass was empty.

Still Nanon said nothing, but rolled away from him, on her side. The doctor suffered a spasm of dizziness as he stood up, and had to lean on the door jamb for a moment to recover himself before he went out.

At street level a hint of a breeze had begun from the port, just enough to cool the sweat that poured from every inch of his skin. On the Rue Espagnole he crossed paths with an open coach bound in the direction of the city gate. General Hédouville himself was the principal passenger. His graying hair stuck straight up like a brush, and a smile flickered across his smooth round cheeks as he spoke to his companions. On his right sat General Rigaud, listening attentively, and to his left, Choufleur.

The doctor stopped in his tracks, watching. He did not know what Choufleur had done, but felt that he radiated some evil intention. That gold-headed cane he affected lay across his knees—the doctor would have liked to snatch it and snap it over his head. Choufleur looked through him without appearing to see him at all, but as the coach passed his head came around like an owl’s, as if an invisible filament connected his eyes to the doctor’s face. This liaison sustained itself till the coach turned a corner out of sight.

“All women are whores,” Captain Maillart announced in the later watches of that night. “Except of course your mother, and my mother.” He hiccupped, then took another slug of rum and passed the calabash to the doctor. They were sitting just beyond the portico, on stools beneath the stars that shone all above the central courtyard of the
casernes.

“Excepting nuns also,” the captain belched, “who must be married to Our Lord Jesus Christ, to restrain them from the whoredom of their nature.” He paused, considering. “I’d best except your sister too. My dear friend, your sister is not a whore.”

“Oh, let her be one if you like.” He was quite as drunk as the captain himself, and felt it every time he looked up at the stars wheeling over his head. “And what of your Isabelle Cigny?”

“A whore who has become a nun!” Maillart said triumphantly. “A Magdalen, I tell you. One may be fri-(urk)
-friends
with her. No more. Perhaps one might also be friends with a nun.” Tilting dangerously on his stool, he gripped the doctor’s shoulder. Their rum breaths mingled.

“Whores and nuns, my dear friend,” he said. “There you have it. Make your choice between the two—you will have small joy from either in the end. What, then, are we to do? Can you tell me that?”

“No,” said the doctor. He wondered where Riau had got to, and what he might be doing wherever he was. Riau had not appeared at the barracks all evening. For some reason he was thinking of the accommodation Riau had reached with Guiaou, and remembering that moment when Riau had offered him the salt with the prediction that Nanon would not come back to him. What had he meant by that offer of salt?

“We must GO WHORING!” Maillart shouted. From the opposite wing of the
casernes,
an invisible voice besought him to be quiet. Maillart pushed away from the doctor’s shoulder. The legs of his stool clopped down on the stones.

“Your logic eludes me,” the doctor said thickly.

“Yes, well,” Maillart said. “It’s true.” His voice was glum. “The prettiest whores are all taken by those brats of Hédouville. We should have to fight for them.” He brightened. “I don’t mind that. Only afterward we’d be cashiered for it. Or shot. Or hung.”

“It’s hardly worth it,” the doctor said. “Not for whores.”

“Exactly.” Maillart stood ponderously up and swayed in place. “And so, my very dear friend, to bed. Without any whores.”

“Or nuns,” the doctor said.

Maillart had gone into the room and crashed into something; the doctor heard him curse, scuffle, then gradually subside into silence. A few minutes later he followed the captain inside, but found he was too drunk to climb into his hammock. Drunk enough that the stone floor was not at all uncomfortable, except that if he lay at full length, the whole room went into a sickening whirl, so that he was obliged to sleep sitting up, his back wedged into a corner.

Overindulgence in strong spirits was a poor program for a tropical climate, the doctor had occasion to remind himself many times during the next morning. A long swim in cold water would have been the best prescription, but he had no time for it; Toussaint had let him know that they would be traveling back to Gonaives the day after, so there were preparations to make.

When he had done what was necessary, he went back to the
casernes
and managed with some difficulty to get into his hammock, where he lay swinging queasily, his tongue thick and swollen, his head a clot, his bowels uneasily astir. But in the end he must have slept, for when he returned to complete consciousness the light had changed in the stone-paved yard outside the room, and the heat had somewhat abated.

He rolled out of the hammock, found his feet, then stopped to pick up the calabash from the corner of the room where it had been abandoned. A little liquid gurgled when he lifted it. He removed the leaf plug and turned it up, grimacing at the bite of the rum in his throat. His stomach heaved, then stabilized, and the pain in his head faded. At the cistern he washed his face and rinsed his mouth with stale water, and with his fingers combed back his few strands of hair over his scaling skull. He found the gray mare in the stable and rode down to the Cigny house.

Isabelle intercepted him at the door. “Your room is free,” she said.

“You are ever hospitable,” said the doctor, “but I cannot accept until my next visit, for I am called to Gonaives tomorrow.”

Isabelle gave him a meaningful look and laid her hand on his forearm. From the direction of the parlor he heard the clink of china and a rattle of male laughter.

“She’s gone?” the doctor said. “Ah—what has happened?”

“She’s gone with him—Choufleur,” Isabelle hissed, her pale face breaking out in angry colors. “She went away with him this morning. My husband was about his affairs and I had gone out also—I daresay he watched for me to leave, the scoundrel! But she went freely, so the servants claim. He did not force her, or not with his hands. I mislike such a freedom.”

“Oh,” said the doctor. “Oh . . .”

“You are welcome to come in, of course,” Isabelle said, smiling almost tremulously. “I did not like to keep you in suspense.”

“No,” said the doctor. “Perhaps I won’t.”

“As you know, he still keeps the house of the late Sieur de Maltrot,” Isabelle told him. “That is, if he has not already taken her from the town altogether. Ah well, you must do what you can. I do not know how to advise you, but no good will come to her, with him.”

He rode the gray mare down through bustling streets, reining her in and stroking her neck to soothe her as necessary; the mare was better used to country life and shied at every passing cart or swatch of fluttering fabric. At the waterfront, he turned and rode in the direction of Fort Picolet. Beyond the fountain and the battery was a little gravelly beach, and here he dismounted and hitched the mare and walked down to the water’s lapping edge. He took a couple of steps into the light surf with his shod feet and crouched to thrust his arms into the ripples. The water was very cold on the pulse of his wrists, and he could feel the cold of it on his ankles through the leather of his boots.