All Souls' Rising (54 page)

When he opened his eyes, Zabeth was standing in the doorway. She smiled and at once hid her face against her shoulder, while with both hands she raised the hem of her white shift to her neck, so that she showed herself to him entire. Her nipples and the soft brush of her nether hair were like dark chocolate layered onto light.

Presently the doctor said, “No, no, my dear—you must go to the dancing.”

When he opened his eyes again, Zabeth had gone. He smiled weakly, touching his lips with his tongue. She offered herself so to him because she was a well-meaning person, and she wanted to show him a kindness. So far he had always declined the gift. Sometimes he thought that it would be wrong to hold Delsart to a higher standard than he himself could attain. Sometimes he gave himself another reason.

When the candle drowned in its molten pool of wax, the fig was firmly in his hand. He required neither knife nor nail, only stroked the glossy darkness of the skin with the balls of his thumbs; gladly it opened itself to him. The black skin parted to disclose the creamy whiteness of the flesh within, but still he would go deeper, deeper still, to reach in the teardrop heart of the fruit the wet red viscera it held. How strange it was that a fig tree should also bear red flowers with those thrusting tongues! His dissection needed no instruments; he would pursue it further. When he had passed entirely through the body of the fruit, his being would be washed in the colorless light of another soul.

Chapter Thirty-Three

E
AST OF THE TOWN OF
S
AN
R
APHAEL
were the traces of a large encampment recently departed: tent-peg holes,
ajoupas
abandoned, the grasses beaten down and the earth churned by horses’ hooves and the feet of many men. Tocquet rode through, his head inclined, eyes bent hawklike on the ground, reading sign. Maillart and Vaublanc followed him in single file, the two blacks, Gros-jean and Bazau, bringing up their rear. The captain aimed his own glance wherever Tocquet seemed to look. Here and there was the impression of a booted foot but it seemed that most of the legible tracks had been left by barefoot men.

“
De la merde, encore
,” Tocquet clicked his tongue. “I believe we have missed him.”

“Where have they gone?” said Vaublanc.

“I suppose they must be invading you,” Tocquet said, without looking back at his interlocutor. “Invading
us
rather…would it be?” He chuckled, perhaps—a growling sound low in his throat. “We shall see who is left in the town, if anyone.
Ouais, on verra, on verra
…”

The principal street of San Raphael looked no great matter. It was unpaved, so that the hoofbeats of their horses were still muted as they rode. A flock of speckled hens scattered in advance of them, cackling, and a little black boy dressed in only a shirt ran into a doorway and turned to peer back out. They halted before one of the more considerable dwellings, built in the Spanish fashion around a central court. Tocquet dismounted and knocked on the door. When some minutes had passed without response, he took a pistol from his belt and hammered much more loudly with the butt of it.

Presently, a young man in the uniform of a Spanish lieutenant opened the door; he raised his eyebrows superciliously but said no word. Tocquet winked at him.

“Is the general here?”

The lieutenant remained mute.

“Yes, he will receive us,” Tocquet said decisively.

He put some pressure on the door, and the lieutenant gave way and let it swing completely open. Tocquet entered, the two French officers following. As the white men walked into the house, Bazau and Gros-jean led the horses around the outer corner of the building. Maillart blinked his way through the dim, stale-smelling interior. They emerged into the center court, which was unevenly paved with flagstones. In one corner a huge iron kettle rested crookedly on the dead embers of an extinguished fire. Some few straight chairs were grouped around the wicker table where they all took seats.

“He will be with you shortly,” the lieutenant said, and went back into the house.

Captain Maillart slumped in his chair. He was stiff and sore from their hard and rapid ride from Dajabón, and would best have liked to recline, to sleep. Neither of his companions spoke. Maillart rolled his head back on the top rail of the chair and looked dreamily up at the fat cottony clouds suspended in the blue well of the sky. Beyond the house wall, a hummingbird shot up vertically from the bowl-shaped orange blooms of a tree.

A woman’s voice roused him, and he pulled himself erect. She was a white woman, but oddly dressed in a short jacket and a man’s white shirt. Also her thick straight hair was cut very short, just below the lobes of her small ears. Maillart thought that Tocquet had not embraced her; he only dallied his fingertips on the edge of her small hand.

“
Je vous présente Madame Tocquet
.”

Cutting off his yawn, Captain Maillart jumped to his feet and bowed; Vaublanc was a little in advance of him with this courtesy. The woman nodded, smiling. Her chin was a little weak, but it was an agreeable smile, and her large brown eyes looked merry.

“Please sit down,” she said. “You must be weary…”

Maillart resumed his seat. The woman took a step back from the table, hands on her hips, and as she moved her black skirt separated and he saw that it was not a skirt at all, but rather a pair of loose-cut trousers that stopped just short of her ankles.

Madame Tocquet had caught him staring at the division of her legs. She smiled more brightly still. “My husband has lately presented me with a mule,” she announced. She spun around, presenting herself to Tocquet; her trouser legs flowed together and joined again as one. “Will this win your approval as a riding habit?”

“Yes, I believe so.” Tocquet grinned, half concealing his mouth behind one hand as he turned to the French officers. “One cannot ride sidesaddle, where we are going.”

Vaublanc started. “You cannot mean to take your wife into those mountains.”

“Oh yes,” the woman said. “I am going to Ennery.”

Tocquet nodded. “She has an inheritance to claim.”

She faced them, still smiling confidently, while the captain stared and reappraised her. It was the same, the eyes, the lips, the ears quite small but curiously shaped like cup handles. Even the weak chin, which the doctor’s short beard sought to conceal, was much the same. Of course he had seen her in Lyons a time or two but that was long ago when she was a child.

“But you must be Elise Thibodet,” the captain blurted. “I mean to say, Elise Hébert.”

“Elise Tocquet—as I now find myself.” She glanced at the man. “It’s as he told you.” Now she seemed more careful to choose her words. “We were married after the death of my first husband.”

“
Pardonnez-moi
,” the captain said. “I am the friend of your brother Antoine—I have been in your house in Lyons, even. I think you would not remember. But your brother will be overjoyed to recover you—he is at Ennery now, if you are going there, I left him at Habitation Thibodet.”

“I did not know he was in the colony.” Elise had colored, placing her fingers to her throat.

“Why, he has been here for several months, and searching for you everywhere.”

A door hinge whined and boots came clattering over the irregular paving stones: General Cabrera was approaching, flanked by the lieutenant and another orderly. Elise dropped them a curtsy, fanning the loose cloth of her trousers as though it were a skirt after all, and went hurriedly toward a door at the opposite side of the court.

“You are behind the time,” the general said to Tocquet, and looked askance at the two officers in their French uniforms.

“These gentlemen are seeking to enter the Spanish service,” Tocquet said. “Out of loyalty to their murdered king—and the other usual motives.”

“Interesting.” Cabrera continued to eye them coldly. Maillart felt the stiffening of the muscle along his spine.

“Perhaps you will find them suitable uniforms, at least,” Tocquet said. “I will bring them to Toussaint myself—if you have cargo for me.”

“Yes, I think so.” The general turned and directed one of the orderlies to go in quest of uniforms, then looked again at Tocquet. “Certainly they will have need of powder and more lead. We may also find some victuals for you to carry…Though Biassou may be in greater need—his is the larger force.”

“Toussaint is the wiser quartermaster,” Tocquet said. “When one furnishes him powder, one may at least believe it will not be set afire to please the
vodûn
.”

“You overestimate the man,” Cabrera said. “He is too old, he was too long a slave. He has the slave’s servility, which has shaped his mind.”

“Do you think so?” Tocquet said.

The general sniffed. “Reading Epictetus—what sort of military man would be guided by the philosophizing of a slave?”

Tocquet laughed aloud and slapped the palm of his hand upon his thigh. “Meanwhile I doubt that Biassou can read as much as his own name.”

“Well, we do not employ these fellows for their scholarship,” the general said, glaring at the Frenchmen. “If your companions have determined to join Toussaint, I shall not quarrel with them—let him make of them what he can.”

“Well enough,” Tocquet said.

Captain Maillart felt a discomfiting desire to wriggle, though he held himself perfectly still. He’d been brought closer than he’d ever thought to be to the sentiments of a slave displayed on the market block.

“What news have you,” Tocquet asked.

“What is there?” The general seemed to muse. “Oh yes, it appears that Galbaud has managed to pass the English blockade and is safely arrived at Le Cap.”

Tocquet snorted. “Exchanging the devil for the witch.”

“Galbaud?” Vaublanc inquired.

“Sent out from France as the new governor-general,” Cabrera said.

“A curious choice,” said Tocquet. “I think there will be trouble there. Galbaud is married to a Creole lady and I have heard he has considerable property here.”

“I have heard the same,” said the general. “It has long been the French policy to set the governor-general at odds with the intendant.”

“But there is no longer any intendant to reckon with,” Vaublanc said.

“There’s Sonthonax,” Maillart said.

“My thought precisely,” Tocquet said. “It’s much the same thing.”

“If the military and civil authorities owe fealty to different factions,” Cabrera said, “they are less likely to conspire together.”

“Small chance of conspiration, these days,” Tocquet said, stroking the stubble along his jaws. “Paris is far distant for the management of marionette strings as long as that. I wonder if this policy has perhaps outlived its usefulness.”

“I suppose,” said Maillart said, with more bitterness than he’d thought, “that if Galbaud ventures to dispute the Jacobinism of Sonthonax, he will only go the way of Desparbés.”

“I take your point,” Tocquet said, “but Galbaud is not so elderly a man as Desparbés, nor yet so frail.
Attendez, on verra
…”

As he spoke, the orderly came back into the court, carrying two uniform coats across his arm; he had brought no trousers at all. Expressionless, he displayed the goods. Both were faded and riddled with moth holes; one was missing all but one button and the other had most of the frogging ripped away. Captain Maillart felt the blood draining from his head, though he couldn’t know for certain that the insult was deliberate.

“Control yourself.” Tocquet watched him intently; his voice was sharp. “I tell you, Toussaint is the better quartermaster. Leave it to him to fit you out. Till then, I’ll find you clothes of my own to wear.”

N
EXT MORNING THEY RODE OUT AT THE HEAD
of an eight-mule train and by midday were well into the mountains, despite delays caused by the uneasiness of Vaublanc’s and Maillart’s horses on the abrupt and tangled slopes. Tocquet’s horse, meanwhile, seemed preternaturally adapted to the difficult ascent, quite as nimble as a mule. And for the first hours of the journey he carried the little girl before him in his saddle, while Elise bestrode her white mule all alone, and ably as any old campaigner.

The child, whom they called Sophie, was Elise’s, and it appeared that Tocquet claimed paternity; the girl let herself go to him with a familiar ease. Vaublanc had been shocked all over again by her appearance among their party, for the little girl looked altogether too delicate for such a trek, with her pale stick-thin limbs, her large dark eyes, and general air of frailty. She could have been no more than two. Captain Maillart, however, had grown numb to new astonishments. At first the little girl was sufficiently cheerful in her place, prattling and pointing and staring round-eyed at everything they passed. Tocquet kept one arm close around her waist, managing the reins with his other hand, and she seemed secure and comfortable. But later on Sophie grew restive and began to cry.

“This won’t do,” Tocquet said, after trying a few minutes to calm her, without success. “They can hear her howling for twenty miles at least.” There was no asperity in his tone; he was simply stating the neutral fact. He dismounted, then lifted the child down and carried her to Elise, who took her up into the mule saddle. But Sophie was not reassured; she cried even louder.

“I don’t want to ride anymore,” she said. “I want Anna, where is Anna?”

“Anna could not come with us,” Elise said softly.

“Why
couldn’t
she?”

“Because she cannot ride a mule.”

“
Mais pourquoi pas!?
”

There was a thunderhead on the mountain; in its shadow, Elise’s face looked worn and fatigued. She caressed the little girl’s shoulders, gathering the loose folds of her brown-figured calico dress. When this failed to soothe her, Elise opened her shirt and gave suck to the child, who instantly closed her eyes and quieted. To manage this, the woman dropped her reins on the mule’s neck, and the mule found its own way forward without guidance, following Tocquet, who had not once looked back. Captain Maillart would have liked to render her some assistance, but he was in difficulties of his own; he must needs get down and lead his reluctant horse across an especially problematic passage of their climb.

He could tell from the other man’s sharp inhalations that Vaublanc had been dismayed once more at these fresh improprieties, but Captain Maillart, for his own part, was simply interested. The only thing he dreaded was the rain, but it did not begin; instead the cloud dragged its cold tendrils over them and shifted to a farther slope. In the fresh sunny radiance, Maillart regarded Elise and the nursing child as frankly as he might have gazed upon a painting, and indeed, she seemed as tranquil as any madonna, all unaware of her surroundings. Sophie was sleeping now, black lashes long upon her cheek, her face tucked against a milk-wet spot on her mother’s thin chemise. Both seemed entranced, and Maillart also moved as in a dream, thinking of Isabelle Cigny again but without even wistfulness, only curiosity. It would have seemed impossible to imagine her in such a situation, but now he was not, after all, so sure…

So they went on, the two French officers afoot more often than not, leading their eye-rolling, head-tossing horses unwillingly along behind. It grew chill as they climbed higher, but still Maillart sweat-soaked the clothes Tocquet had lent him. The trousers were enough too long that their cuffs kept slipping under his bootheels; slickered with mud, they sometimes made him fall. Both he and Vaublanc were tired and irritable, but in the presence of the woman and the child they did their best to refrain from cursing. Presently Sophie awakened, but now she made no complaint; she contented herself in her mother’s lap and looked around her owlishly.