All Souls' Rising Read Online Free PDF Page A

severing them both crisply at the wrists. The doctor was impressed by the force of the stroke.
    “It was a child of the pariade ,” Arnaud said. “Some sailor’s bastard, a half-breed like your Ogé.” He swung the ax again, and again. It took him four or five blows to cut through the ankles and he was breathing hard when he had done it.
    “There,” he said. “Let them raise that.”
    Doctor Hébert glanced at the two slaves, who stood as woodenly as they had behind the dinner table. “Do you really believe that they can raise the dead?”
    “It is not a matter of what I believe.” Head down, the ax angled out from Arnaud’s hand, describing a pendulous arc over the dead woman’s head. “I paid twelve hundred pounds for that, and not eight months ago. Breeding stock, if you like. It is ruinous. If not abortion, it is suicide. They are animals.”
    “One does not ordinarily torture animals,” the doctor said. “I have never known an animal to be a suicide.”
    “You are a sentimentalist, perhaps,” Arnaud said. “You believe they are like little children.”
    “I believe they are like men and women,” Doctor Hébert said.
    “Indeed,” said Arnaud. “Then you must be a Jacobin.”
    “I consider myself to be a scientist,” the doctor said.
    Arnaud stared at him, then sighed. “You have lost your way,” he said. “If you were going to Le Cap you have strayed considerably. There is a passable road from here to Marmelade and there you may rejoin the grand chemin .”
    “Thank you,” the doctor said, looking back toward the grand’case and the small yellow squares of its candlelit windows. Behind the house the dog had recommenced to bark. “Well, I see that it is late. I had better retire.”
    “I am in a position to offer you a glass of brandy,” Arnaud said.
    “I think I had best decline,” the doctor said. “I have had a long ride today and look forward to another tomorrow.” He bowed and walked out of the circle of torchlight.
    There was a glow from the crack beneath his bedroom door when he approached it, but he thought nothing of this; a slave had probably brought a candle while he had been in the yard. Head lowered, he sat down on a chair and dragged off his left boot, not looking up until something suddenly blocked the light. A woman stood between him and the candle, which glittered through the loose weave of her clothing and outlined every detail of her body in black. The doctor had not yet got used to the degree of undress Creole women affected. He stood up abruptly and stumbled forward on his unshod foot. The woman hooked her hands into the waistband of his breeches and sat down backward on the paillasse , drawing him down after her.
    The doctor was obliged to brace his hands on her shoulders to keep his balance. The bare skin was a bluish white and hot to his touch. He had suspected some misguided extension of Arnaud’s hospitality, sending a mulattress to his bed, but it was the same woman he had seen on the gallery when he arrived, Madame Arnaud, presumably. She had let her hair down; it hung in thin pale crinkles into the loosened throat of her negligee. Her face still had a prettiness about it, but was puffed out of shape, and the spots of high color at her cheekbones looked unnatural, though they were not paint. Her eyes were gray-green and the left pupil had shrunk smaller than the right because it was nearer to the candle. The eyes were aimed at Doctor Hébert but he would not have ventured to suppose what they saw in his place.
    Removing her hands from his waistband felt like plucking the claws of a dead bird from a branch. He took a step backward, unsteady between his bare foot and his booted one.
    “I am sorry to see that you are unwell,” he said. “I do not think it very serious, however. An agitation of the nerves. You must rest for three hours in the heat of the day and of course take care to avoid the sun. Have your cook prepare a strong consommé each evening.