Master of the Crossroads Page 26
“Maman, kite’m alé,” Sophie whispered urgently, hauling on Elise’s arm with all her strength.
“Dis, ‘laissez-moi aller,’ ” Elise said absently, correcting the child’s Creole into French, but Tocquet had already left the table to finish his cheroot while wandering in the darkness, as his habit was, and Choufleur had risen from his seat, was bowing to her, offering flowery thanks for the repast.
She released Sophie, sending Zabeth after her to make sure the child did not drench herself in the pool. Having completed his sequence of compliments, Choufleur also went down into the yard, but Elise lingered by the gallery rail.
The moon was waning from the full, the pale disk flattened on one side as if a thumb had pressed against it. Sophie and Paul crouched frog-like, splashing and giggling at the pool’s edge. Sophie would certainly need to be dried and changed before bed. Elise felt a flash of irritation, for after all Zabeth had done nothing to restrain her charge, and Nanon meanwhile stood several paces back from the children, her arms folded as if to wrap her beauty closer to herself, her high cheekbones tilted toward the moon. Choufleur faced her across the pool and, despite the considerable amount of moonlight, Elise could not make out his features now, but he looked well in his uniform—he would have been, as she thought idly, a fine figure of a man.
Near the dark wall of the cane mill, the coal of Tocquet’s cheroot flared and faded, flared again, rising and falling with the motion of his invisible hand. Choufleur strolled in that direction. That limberness, the fluidity of his movement, Elise thought, set him apart from a white man even in the dark. Nanon too had that same liquid grace, though now she was still as a caryatid in the moonlight. By the cane mill, a flash of light illuminated Tocquet’s and Choufleur’s faces leaning together, and then there were two cheroot coals, glowing and fading in the shadows.
Even through the fumes of strong tobacco, Choufleur caught a whiff of fresh-pressed syrup where he stood by the mill wall. He sniffed audibly, meaning Tocquet to hear.
“The mill has been working,” he said. “Is there sugar here?”
“Some small quantity of the brown,” Tocquet said carelessly. “But mostly it is crude molasses, sent away for the making of rum.” In the moonlight he seemed to register Choufleur’s expression of interest. “Well, you may look it over if you like.”
Tocquet unlocked the mill door and groped through the dark opening for a stub of candle. Lighting it, he stepped inside. In the candle flame, the screws and cogwork of the mill threw long, imposing shadows. Choufleur followed the sap gutter to the series of kettles and troughs—all empty. The fires were cold and the ladles hung in horizontal racks on the wall. Choufleur ran a fingertip over a sticky edge and tasted it.
“You do not work the mill by night.”
“Why, there are scarcely hands enough to run it by day.” Tocquet shrugged. “With the war . . .”
“And yet, you are the proprietor, are you not?”
In the shadows, Tocquet raised an eyebrow.
“I mean,” Choufleur said, “the question hardly seems to interest you.”
“I am proprietor here by grace of my marriage,” Tocquet said. “Come, I am no planter. No more than yourself. I don’t believe we are pretending it’s the first time we have met. My wife occupies herself with such affairs.”
“A woman.”
“Not to be underestimated.” Tocquet produced his keyring from his loose trousers and unlocked another door. “Besides, she has capable advisers, including, sometimes, no less than Toussaint.” He smiled absently as he entered the smaller room. “Toussaint’s interests do extend to the production of sugar.”
“Toussaint stops here?” Choufleur had followed Tocquet into the mill office.
“From time to time,” Tocquet said, lighting a second candle in a bracket on the wall. “He is not the only guest.”
Choufleur scanned the spartan furnishing—four straight chairs, a cot, a simple desk. Bundles of herbs hung on strings from the ceiling and on the wall were pinned some botanical sketches and a map of the colony with some obscure penciled markings.
“Why, it has quite the air of a military headquarters.”
Tocquet sniffed. “Toussaint’s headquarters is wherever he happens to dismount from his horse.” He stooped and collected a bottle that had been unobtrusively placed between the writing desk and the wall.
“And is the rum Toussaint’s?”
“You are inquisitive,” Tocquet said. He uncorked the bottle, drank and extended it. “Santé,” he said, as Choufleur took the bottle. He sat down on one of the rough-cobbled chairs and Choufleur followed suit.
“I have a question of my own,” said Tocquet, stretching out his legs and pulling on his cheroot. “If you doubt Toussaint’s capacities in the field, where will you find a better officer?”
“Among the Republicans? In the south it would certainly be Rigaud,” Choufleur said promptly. “Beauvais also. There is quite a capable officer corps both at Jacmel and at Les Cayes. At Le Cap there is Villatte, with whom I serve.”
“All very excellent gentlemen of color,” Tocquet said. He looked about for a place to tip his cheroot, and finally resorted to the cup of his palm. “Do you suppose they can rival Toussaint in the confidence of the new-freed slaves?”
Choufleur tilted the rum bottle to the light. “We have all of us our experience in the management of such people.”
“As slaves, you mean. It is nothing to me—and I don’t make predictions. But slavery is done with in this country, of that much I am sure.”
“And Toussaint poses as the great liberator!” Choufleur burst out. “Can no one see it is all a fraud? He rides the wave, but he did not make it. And there are men more capable than he—as soldiers and as leaders.”
“Do I hear the voice of your colleague Villatte?” Tocquet smiled, but his eyes had narrowed. “One hears that his ambitions are frustrated, in Le Cap. Or perhaps it is Rigaud who speaks with your tongue—he who has realized his ambition somewhat more completely, so far from Laveaux’s command as he finds himself, on the Grande Anse—far from any French authority.”
Choufleur felt a flush rising on his cheekbones. Aware that he had overspoken, he endeavored to grow colder. There was always an iciness inside him he could call on when he must.
“You and I have crossed paths in many places,” Tocquet said, relaxing and crossing his legs. “From here to the north coast and to the Spanish border, in spots where many different flags were hoisted and different men or factions claimed command. I went unmolested everywhere, and by my observation, so did you. I am a friend of the world, you see!—that’s what these times require.” Toquet tapped his boot on the floor. “If French authority reaches the place where we sit, it does so by way of Toussaint Louverture . . . no other. If you would travel from Gonaives to Dondon all along the Cordon de l’Ouest, you must do so by his leave. Say what you will of his abilities, it is no mean achievement to have mastered that line. And if Toussaint should wish to close it, Rigaud would have to send his messengers to Villatte by sea.”
Choufleur retained his composure despite this barb. “I am surprised to find you such a partisan,” he said.
“You misunderstand me,” Tocquet said. He stirred the ashes in his palm, and held his smudged forefinger to the candlelight. “My home is where I hitch my horse. Thus far I am in the same spirit with Toussaint.”
“And no further?”
“For the moment, Toussaint guarantees our security here,” Tocquet said. “For my own part, I have never been ambitious to possess anything which could be burned or murdered, but—”
“—there are domestic arrangements to consider,” Choufleur said, with a deliberately unctuous smile. “The woman with her child—your brother-in-law and his woman—”
A shadow fell on him as Tocquet stood up, but Tocquet only turned to snuff the candle in the bracket above the desk. Automatically Choufleur got to his own feet. Holding the other candle nub, Tocquet approached, stoppi
ng just out of arm’s reach. Choufleur felt his scrutiny exploring his face like the fingers of a blind man. He let his right hand drift toward the pocket pistol he kept tucked into the back of his waistband, under the flap of his coat. Many white men had examined him in such an assaying manner, studying the swirls of freckles and the degree of pigment in the skin beneath them, and there was always, along with the other elements, a tinge of contempt in their eyes. He felt none of that in Tocquet’s regard, but instead a strange sort of sympathy, though it did not relax his wariness.
Tocquet blew out the candle and stepped past him. In the sudden dark, Choufleur touched his pistol grip, but Tocquet was moving through the doorway, muttering something about the lateness of the hour. In the main area of the mill a shaft of moonlight marked the patch to the outer door. Choufleur followed Tocquet outside. He dropped the stub of his cheroot on the floor and trod on it.
Tocquet raised his palm to his lips and blew the heap of accumulated ash away on the night breeze.
“You did not come here for no reason,” he said, glancing quickly at Choufleur and then away. “I wish you an uneventful night.”
Tocquet prepared for bed in five rapid motions: he shifted his knife from his waistband to underneath his pillow, then stripped off shirt and breeches and hung them on the two pegs above the bed which no effort of Elise’s could persuade him to relinquish. He was asleep in thirty seconds if he wished, breathing with a light rasp just short of a snore, but tonight he did not wish it, though Elise dallied for a long time, washing her face and patting it dry and brushing out her hair before her mirror. A vague excitement covered her all over, like perspiration not quite breaking on her skin, but she did not want to be distracted by the man.
At last she snuffed her candle, raised the edge of the moustiquaire and slipped between the sheets. She was scarcely settled when Tocquet’s hand spread over the soft skin around her navel, a light, inquisitive pressure. She murmured discouragingly and the hand lifted away from her, sliding beneath his pillow to curl, she knew, around the knife hilt.
In less than a minute, Tocquet breathed in sleep. Elise lay on her back, quite still, eyes open. The moonlight leaking into the room was striped by the jalousies, checked by the mosquito netting. At times the moonlight squares were set atremble by the movement of the breeze outside, and the palm leaves shivered above the rooftop. Wakeful, Elise focused her attention, beyond the leaf sound and the breathing of the man beside her. After her brother had diverted the water that threatened to rot out the whole floor of the house, many boards had been replaced, and since then the new planks grated against the old ones under shifts of weight, each with its own particular note.
It was a long time before she heard what she was listening for, and when it came it was very faint; he must be walking barefoot, and with the poised stealth of a cat. But the progress of the creaks was there, yes, quite unmistakable. From the west room to Nanon’s he must pass her own, and when she thought by the sound that he must have arrived, she rose softly and opened her door the barest crack, to look out onto the corridor.
A spearhead of moonlight lay across the floorboards, and at its point, the opposite end of the hallway, was the door to Nanon’s room. But he had not yet entered. Elise saw him against the door, part of him, rather: the back of his cocked head and one small ear, the swell of his milk-colored muscles from wrist to shoulder. He was shirtless as well as barefoot, and if his whole skin was freckled like his face and hands, these markings did not show under the moon.
He moved, the door yielding inward before him, and the jalousies of Nanon’s window laid tiger stripes across his torso. Then darkness, as the door was shut. She heard a rustle, gasp, a muted hiss of complaint: tu me fais mal. Then silence. Elise cracked her door a little wider, listened harder. The gasps returned, more regular, rising to a different tone. With a secret smile she withdrew into her room and shut the door. She returned to her bed and covered the man with her hands and warm breath until he woke and rose to feed the appetite she felt so suddenly awakened.
Nanon had not been taken by surprise, not exactly; from the moment she had seen Choufleur standing between the mill and the newly engineered pool, she had grasped the nature of his errand well enough. Though they hardly spoke, the force of his intention bore down on her all through the evening, and increased when she retired to the room she normally shared with the doctor and Paul. There was no latch or interior fastener. She might have wedged a chair against the door, or balanced a cabinet that would topple when the door swung inward and perhaps make noise enough to wake the house. More than once in the recent past she had found herself barricaded in a room or a house with the doctor, who would use his pistols and rifle to defend the walls surrounding them. But the doctor was absent, and his weapons gone with him. Blocking the door would alarm Paul, who was tugging on her finger now, and pleading for a story. Nanon yielded to his desire, let him lie in her bed with her, and in the moonlight-spangled darkness she began the story of Tim Zwezo, crooning the songs in a low voice.
Tim Zwezo . . .
Zwezo nan nich-o . . . Zwezo nan bwa . . .
Tann-moin la . . .
Paul was asleep well before the story finished, and she carried him to his small cot in the corner. Returning to her bed, she glanced at the unlockable door once more, but she would not block it, for the same reason she would not scream or struggle. If he came. She could not have named her reason, but she felt its power. Kon Dyé vlé, she said to herself. As God wills. With the matter disconnected from her own wishes, she slept soundly enough, though as soon as the door ticked open, she came instantly and completely awake.
His belly was barred by moonlight and shadow, his face completely in the dark, and one hand spread against the door, behind him, pressing it shut. Nanon stood up, bare feet on the floor, and moved sideways, thinking suddenly that after all the room was not a cage; if she lured him from the door, she might slip out and evade him—go to Zabeth’s room in the rear? But Paul, she must not leave Paul alone with him . . . while she was distracted by that thought, Choufleur darted across the space between to catch her wrist, startling a gasp from her. She saw the rapacity of his expression when his face crossed the moonlight; the bones which pushed his features through the flesh were those of his father, and that frightened her more than the pain of her wrenched arm. His hand at the nape of her neck was hard and tight, fingertips digging bluntly into the tendons. She hissed a complaint, you’re hurting me, and then went limp, went numb all over, unresisting. She had been forced before, and with some regularity, though not for a long time now, not since the doctor or since she’d borne her child. But she remembered that yielding was the better way; she’d be hurt less, perhaps not hurt at all. Also, it was most important not to wake the child.
Nanon became absent from herself, feeling no more than a muffled discomfort at his weight and his intrusion. She returned to the sticky folds of the bed, her nightgown rucked up above her breasts, Choufleur sprawling half across her. “Enfin,” he murmured in a breaking voice. “At last, at last . . .”
Salt water gathered in the hollows of her collarbones. She realized that Choufleur was weeping. This surprised her very much.
“I knew this time would come at last,” Choufleur was saying. “I knew that we must come together. You have belonged to me, Nanon, from the beginning. Do you remember Vallière, the waterfall?”
Again, Nanon felt pricked with strangeness. She disengaged herself, but gently, sat up and pulled the sweaty wrinkles of the nightgown over her head. The breeze that ruffled the jalousies dried the sweat and tear stains on her bare skin. At Vallière, where they were children, there had been a falls, a small one, with a little grotto hollowed in the rock behind where the children played, and perhaps she did remember what Choufleur was now describing, how she stepped through the falling water from the cave into the light, revealing herself to him in her soaked chemise, her upturned face and waist-length hair sparkling with the water and the sunshine. It was not t
hat I first loved you then, Choufleur was urgently whispering, but then I first knew how I had always loved you . . .
In spite of herself, Nanon was interested. She could indeed remember that green glade, the wet stone smell of the shallow cave behind the falls, the froth of the water falling through bright air. She had been, perhaps, thirteen; it was before the Sieur Maltrot had come to take her, to take her away, though probably not very long before. That younger self seemed to stand across a chasm from her now. Across the room, she saw that Paul slept calmly, undisturbed by anything that had happened so far. Choufleur’s moistened fingertip circled her breast, and she felt the nipple swell and stiffen. The tingle of sensation expanded till its ripples rocked the weird emotion she was feeling too. She relaxed against her pillow and turned toward him and found his root, molding it with her thumb and fingers, or lightly teasing it with the nails, until it became its larger self. Best not to use the full extent of her professional expertise, she thought, for that would offend him . . . but this time there would be pleasure, and she would be present for the act.
“Do you still have it?” Choufleur said as she swung astride. “Give it me.”
Nanon reached the silver snuffbox down from a bibelot shelf above the bed. Choufleur took it into his loose fingers, rocked and arched into her deeply.
“Ah . . .” he groaned. “I knew you’d know . . . I knew you’d keep it near . . .” He tightened his fist around the box, then dug his knuckles into the very small of her back. This was a seasoning of horror, Nanon knew, as a thread of nausea swirled into the vortex of sensation that sucked her deeper down, but it was very piquant, all the same.
Later, drifting in the afterglow, she revisited that other life across the chasm, and saw once more the girl she’d been at Vallière, before she’d been made a fille de joie at Cap Français. There was a trove of memories to match anything Choufleur had stored from those days, though it was a long time since she had opened the coffer where they were kept. She experienced them now almost as dreams: wistful, wishful, and finally distressing enough to keep her from real sleep. As she twisted and tossed for a resting place, her elbow knocked against the snuffbox, which reminded her that Choufleur, along with herself, had turned into something very much other than what they once might have been. He slept grimly beside her now, face down and unmoving, as if he were dead. But the moon had set, and the rising wind brought a damp breath of dawn. Nanon shook him by the shoulder, once, twice, until he grumbled.