All souls rising, p.10
All Souls' Rising, page 10
Ti-Paul jerked his head up. “They were casques,” he said. “Five or six of them, one with three legs. One red dog with a torn ear too. Didn’t you see their tracks everywhere?” He swept his free hand over the tracks.
“It’s as you say,” Toussaint said. “I saw them on the plain. The maroons also keep dogs, you know. When the weather’s hard like this, even a maroon’s dog might go wild.”
Ti-Paul’s head dropped again, in confusion now, Toussaint thought, rather than guilt.
“You mustn’t feed them if they come,” Toussaint said. “Keep them away from the cattle. Send them away, all of them. If the dogs come back, use your spear. And keep your fire up. The casques won’t rush a burning stick.”
“Yes,” Ti-Paul told the dust.
Toussaint reached into the square side pocket of his coat and took out the bag of food. The boys’ heads tracked in unison as he lowered it to Ti-Paul, and Isaac sighed, just audibly.
“Hunger is a bad master,” Toussaint said, “often it is. Tomorrow or the next day more men will come to drive the cows back down to Bréda. And all the calves will be here, will they not?”
“Yes,” Ti-Paul said, closing his hand around the neck of the bag. “Yes, all of them.”
They rode back to the main plantation more slowly than they had come out, for the heat was climbing to its peak. In the jungle Toussaint stopped once to cut some leaves from a bitter-bush and stow them in the bag he carried for gathering such herbs as he might chance upon. Even when they reached the road he didn’t gallop, for fear of overheating the stallion. Placide hadn’t asked again if he could ride him unassisted. Toussaint could hear both boys’ stomachs growling but neither of them complained. The field hands had already come in for their midday break, had eaten already and were resting.
Toussaint let the children off at the cabin, so that they could get a meal, and rode back toward the stables. A few slaves were sitting out of doors, their backs against the mud walls of the cabins, motionless as ironwood carvings; in this heat even the small children were still. The young cock had mounted a speckled hen in the middle of the way, and he rocked atop her with a feathery motion. At the water trough Toussaint dismounted and while the stallion drank he soaked his headcloth in the tepid water and retied it over his brows. He led Bellisarius into a stall and unsaddled him. Just as he finished a junior groom came to tell him he was wanted at the grand’case.
A fresh sweat broke out through his headcloth as he climbed the little rise toward the house. The heat shimmer sent ripples over the brick facade at the head of the knoll, so that the whole house seemed almost a mirage. He walked up through the garden of tea roses, faded and withering under the sun, climbed the gallery steps and went around to the front of the house. Between the pillars of the gallery he could look down across the wide expanse of cane fields, quiet and empty for the moment, since at Bréda the Code Noir was observed and the slaves were given their full two hours respite from the midday heat.
Bayon de Libertat turned his head as Toussaint creaked across the whitewashed boards. Beside him sat the Sieur Maltrot, and on the rail, one boot cocked up, was perched the freckled mulatto everyone called Choufleur, believed to be Maltrot’s son, or else his brother’s, out of a griffonne in Le Cap. Toussaint glanced at the others under a lowered eyelid and presented himself to Bayon de Libertat, heels together, hands at his sides.
“And what of the cattle?” Bayon de Libertat smiled and stroked his arthritic hand.
“Casques have come down from the mountains,” Toussaint said.
“Casques?” Bayon de Libertat passed his good hand over his forehead, then returned it to his lap to cover the other. “I thought they had all been destroyed years ago. We must send someone with a gun.”
“Yes,” Toussaint said. “It would be better to bring the cattle in as well.”
“There’s no grain to spare,” said Bayon de Libertat. “There’s no grazing here.”
“The pasture’s worn out where they are,” Toussaint said. “They’ll kill themselves eating nopal up there.”
“What would you do, then? How would you have it done?”
“I would kill a good few and dry the meat at once,” Toussaint said. “Corral the breeding stock and feed them as we can and wait until the drought has ended.”
Bayon de Libertat nodded.
“Good husbandry,” said the Sieur Maltrot. He took out his snuffbox and thumbed open the lid. “I’m told by your master that you have been equally provident in the other arrangements you have made.”
“Master,” Toussaint pivoted on his heels and faced him with a little bow. “Everything is in good order.”
“Ma foi,” said the Sieur Maltrot. “I believe you are the most remarkable nigger I have ever met.” He sneezed mightily into his handkerchief and snapped his snuffbox shut. “And the conditions, they are satisfactory?”
“Three days congé each week for all and freedom for the leaders,” Toussaint said. Behind him, Choufleur plucked a sprig of jasmine from the vine that twined around the nearest post to him, and twirled it in his fingers. Toussaint, distracted by the movement, shifted his feet slightly so he could see Choufleur from the corner of his eye.
“Three days a week is not a negligible price,” Maltrot said, musingly. He spun his sword stick in his hands, fidgeting with the catch that released the blade. “For all of the slaves on the northern plain.”
“They work more efficiently when they are well fed and well rested,” said Bayon de Libertat. “Well treated generally. As you yourself have remarked.”
“Of course,” said the Sieur Maltrot. “Still, even here you don’t allow three days…”
“Much of this time would be spent tending the provision grounds,” said Bayon de Libertat. “There would be a saving there…”
“And much of this time would be spent dancing the calenda,” Maltrot said. “No doubt.” He eyed Toussaint. “What of these leaders who will be made free?”
“Jean-François Papillon. Boukman Dutty,” Toussaint said. The Sieur Maltrot nodded at both names. On the porch rail, Choufleur stripped leaves from his jasmine sprig. He squeezed a drop of juice onto the inside of his wrist from the torn stem. The fresh sweet smell of it spiraled toward the others.
“Georges Biassou. Jeannot Bullet.” Toussaint stopped.
“Not quite a handful, even,” said Maltrot. “C’est bien, ça. They are sufficient?”
“They’re all strong men in their own ateliers,” Toussaint said, “and well known among many of the others.”
“Bon,” said the Sieur Maltrot, “but who’s this Dutty? I dislike the sound of an English name.”
“He was sold here from Jamaica,” Toussaint said, passing over the point that Boukman had also fought with French regiments in the American Revolutionary War.
“Ah,” said Maltrot. “I hope he is not a sorcerer, or some mauvais sujet. You know that little scheme of the English.”
“No, master,” said Toussaint, who also knew that the French tried to fob off whatever hûngans they could identify on the English. “He is not.”
Maltrot raised his eyebrows and looked up at him sharply. “I trust you don’t dabble in witchcraft yourself,” he said.
“I follow Jesus,” said Toussaint.
“Yes,” Maltrot said. “Commendable. Your master,” he nodded at Bayon de Libertat, “has told me that you know how to read.”
“I read my Bible and my Psalter,” Toussaint said.
“Naturally,” said the Sieur Maltrot. “You were coming from church, were you not, when one of our good gentlemen of Haut du Cap gave you a beating upon seeing you with a book?”
Toussaint’s hand involuntarily lifted to the bloodstains on the shoulder of his coat. He had not expected the Sieur Maltrot to have heard of this episode.
“Many times I have offered to give him another coat,” said Bayon de Libertat. “He will not have it, but insists on wearing this one year after year.”
“Oh, an eccentricity,” said Maltrot. “What do you mean by it, Toussaint?”
“A token,” Toussaint said smoothly. “A reminder of a lesson in humility I have learned.”
“Mais comme il est raisonné!” the Sieur Maltrot said delightedly. How well-reasoned he is! “Choufleur, you must give him the money at once.”
Choufleur reached into his elaborately embroidered waistcoat and drew out a leather purse closed with a drawstring. Toussaint accepted it into his palm, his nod dropping his eyes out of the other’s line of sight, though he was still looking sidelong. Choufleur wore his piebald skin like a mask, and his expression was hard to read beneath it, as if he really had two faces. All around the four men on the gallery the air was extraordinarily motionless; it felt like being submerged in warm, still water. The coins shifted in the sack with a muted ring of gold.
“A discretionary fund,” said Maltrot, smiling. “Something in case of any sudden necessity, and to keep your leaders happy, and by all means something for yourself. There will be more as needed.”
Toussaint flexed his fingers around the purse and made another hint of a bow.
“So many are convinced our slaves must be kept in ignorance,” said the Sieur Maltrot. “I myself have not fully formed an opinion. Tell me something you have read.”
Toussaint hooded his eyes, turning back verse upon verse of the psalms in his mind. Indeed there must be something in the Bible to suit any occasion or answer any inquiry. There was a line from that same psalm they would study at the cabin in three days’ time.
“My lips will be glad when they sing unto thee,” he said. “And so will my soul, whom thou hast delivered.”
“Et comme il est sournois,” the Sieur Maltrot said. And how sly he is, also. “I’m sure you’ll manage the whole affair most wonderfully.”
Chapter Six
ARNAUD HAD BROUGHT HER the girl as a gift, he said, a lady’s maid, a touch of luxury to color her days on the plantation more pleasantly, to heal her longing for France. She had smiled at the present, however brittly, and given the girl some name which suited this imaginary character and which she could not even remember now—Arnaud had taken to calling her Mouche, and this was the name that had stuck. Now Claudine sat before her mirror, biting her lips as she examined her bloodshot eyes, and struggled to stop herself from trembling visibly, for she had awoken shaky and nauseous. She watched Mouche, deeper in the looking-glass reflection, fumbling uselessly with the dress that she, Claudine Arnaud, meant to wear that day.
Interesting excuse for a lady’s maid, certainly, a bossale fresh off the boat and fresh from Africa; Claudine was to be assisted in putting on her clothes by a girl who came dressed in nothing but a gloss of palm oil and perhaps a string of cowries around her hips. To this objection her husband had replied that since the girl was unschooled, Claudine would have the opportunity to train her altogether to her own liking. That had been six or seven months ago, and in the intervening time Claudine had been able to teach Mouche to cover her own nakedness, at least some of the time, but not much more. On several occasions she had suggested that the girl was not biddable and might be better sent to the cane fields since she was young and strong. But still she hung about the house. By this time she had learned enough Creole to fetch things on demand and carry simple messages; she helped a little in the kitchen, or pulled the ropes that turned the fans.
Claudine studied her in the mirror, as the black girl fidgeted with the ribbons on the dress laid out across the just-made bed. Mouche’s underlip shoved out like a cushion, her mask of uncomprehension, and in the misty recesses of the mirror Claudine could see the whites of the girl’s eyes. Her stomach heaved, and she put her fingers across her lips and held her breath. The heat swelled into the room like fog; the white cotton shift she’d tried to sleep in was creeping with sweat where her thighs touched the chair. When the spasm passed she twisted around and snapped at the girl.
“Leave it,” she said. Mouche started, flinched at the sound of Claudine’s voice. She jerked her hand away from the ribbons as if she had touched a live coal.
“Leave it,” Claudine said. As she stood up, another wave of nausea hit her and she had to bend over, holding the back of the chair. She saw herself in this posture in the mirror, her hair hanging down in strings; she looked old, sick—she looked how she felt.
“Leave it,” she said. “I don’t feel well, just go.” She straightened up and made her way as far as the bedpost while Mouche scuttled toward the door. A bolt of pain shot through her head from one temple to the other, like a nail. “Only bring some water,” she said, as Mouche backed away. “Et ma petite chose.”
As Mouche scraped out, the jerks of her legs pulled her calico tight over her pregnancy. She had come in the same lot as that infanticide of whom Arnaud had lately made an example, but hers was no child of shipboard rape. She was more newly swollen…Claudine sat on the bed’s edge, swung her legs up. She lay. The pain kept a distance from her so long as she did not move her head; her stomach boiled, then subsided. She sighted down the length of her legs at her toes. It was quiet in the house except for the whisper of the slaves’ bare feet on the wooden floors and the sound of insects working, working. They would gnaw until they had carried the whole grand’case back to the jungle in their jaws.
Mouche carried in a tray, a carafe and two glasses; she set it down on the stool beside the bed. Claudine waved her imperiously away, and blushed with relief as soon as the girl was out of the room. Ma petite chose—if Arnaud had seen them bringing it to her he might well have prevented it. She raised herself on an elbow, pain ringing through her head like a shot, and drank the glass of rum in rapid birdlike sips, then poured water into the glass, thinking that perhaps her husband wouldn’t know…Her intestines clenched, snaked against themselves, abruptly as a bullwhip cracking back on its own length. She dropped back onto the bed in the spasm, her knees drawn up. After a time her belly relaxed and faintly she began to feel the glow.
The headache was not gone but she felt now that it had been wrapped in a cloud of unmilled cotton. She heard the sound of Arnaud’s boot heels mutedly crossing the gallery. She lay half in a trance, watching a long-legged spider stitching a web to close the gap between the partition wall and the ceiling above the bed’s head. Arnaud was turning about in the main room; she heard him stop at the bedroom door.
She shut her eyes as the door squealed open; in the dense humidity the wood had swelled into the floor. Without sight she could yet sense Arnaud’s eyes dispassionately stroking her from toe to head, then shifting to the carafe and the pair of glasses. Perhaps he would lift the glass she had used and smell the dregs. Instead, he left the room, dragging the door shut behind him.
A giggle—it was Mouche’s voice. Some muttering from her husband, then a higher squeal from Mouche, as if she had been pinched. Mouche was protesting, in her rudimentary Creole, and Arnaud reassuring her—Don’t worry, she’s asleep like a dead thing. Another titter and a sound like fabric ripping. Claudine could hear them as plainly as if they were in the room with her, though in fact they must have been two rooms away, in the cubicle used for the doctor or for whatever other infrequent guest might happen by.
Mouche giggled and tittered through the whole affair, bouncing, as Claudine could too well picture it, like a black rubber ball. Arnaud was silent, grim at the work. Of course, she was unsurprised. Often a Creole husband would defile the marriage bed itself, although of late Claudine had seldom strayed far enough from their bed for this particular insult to be probable. But certainly she had always known why the girl remained in the grand’case despite her near-perfect uselessness, why she had been purchased to begin with probably, and who had put the child in her belly. But to do it here and now—such carelessness could only be born of an unutterable contempt. She, Claudine, had conceived no child. Arnaud, however, had been sure to prove that this was in no way his fault; her husband’s face grinned back at her from every yellow brat in the yard.
A giggle and a grunt—perhaps they had only been resting, perhaps they were beginning again. Claudine bared her parched eyeballs, stared at the ceiling. Ouais, mon homme, she thought, t’as ta petite chose toi aussi. As she framed the words she almost laughed, but bile backed up in her throat instead. From the other room came a snicker, then a deep sigh, close to a moan. The sighing went on, at an even rhythm, like a saw grinding back and forth on the crying emptiness of a barrel. When finally it ceased, the noise of the insects rushed up to fill the gap like a string section in an orchestra.
Claudine dozed a little, along with the fatigued lovers, possibly. The sound of the insects still hummed at her ears, but at the same time she thought that she was dreaming, a dream of lying beside Arnaud in the next room, or in that other bed in Nantes, the great carved wooden monstrosity where he had murdered her virginity, left her stabbed and bleeding in her tenderest recess while he amused himself with the better-experienced whores of the town. But when she woke she found him standing in the doorway, looking down on her with the whetted expression he wore when some slave had particularly offended him.
It was considerably later. She knew because the color of the light had changed, a bar of sunshine had advanced in its position on the wall. Arnaud crossed his feet, propped a shoulder on the door frame.
“Will you be dressing yourself today?” he inquired. “Will you be rising at all?”
“J’ai mal à la tête,” Claudine murmured. She stretched out a hand and felt the dress that was crumpled partly under her.
“Indeed,” said Arnaud. “Encore une fois…ou gueule de bois, je dirais.”
Claudine passed over the allusion to hangover. “I can’t seem to find my maid,” she said, more acidly. She hiccuped, tasted vomit on the back of her teeth and swallowed it back. “Perhaps she’s otherwise engaged?”
Arnaud’s fruity lips pulled back against his teeth, his thinnest smile. “I’ll call her for you,” he said. “On my way out.”
