All Souls' Rising Read Online Free PDF

Lemons and oranges are plentiful here; I would suggest that you partake of them often. It would be best to abstain from spiritous liquors for a time. Some wine, perhaps, to strengthen your blood. But for the moment, sleep will be your great restorer.”
    Madame Arnaud had gathered her hair and was holding it with one hand at the nape of her neck. A thin blue vein wriggled beneath the clear skin of her temple. Doctor Hébert recalled what her husband had said, For a shot of rum, she would do anything . However, it was common usage to keep the storeroom locked wherever there were so many house slaves. Also common usage for the mistress of the house to keep a key.
    Madame Arnaud put her head to one side and smiled at him with a queer jerk, the style of coquetry one might expect from a marionette on strings. The smile erased itself as quickly as it had appeared, and she rose and moved past him in short tripping steps and left the room. As she opened the door to depart, the doctor thought he might have seen Arnaud standing on the gallery, fidgeting with his cane. He shut the door after her and leaned on it with his palm. His head felt light and his stomach was uneasy, and when he pulled his hands away, he saw they had acquired a tremor. He undressed rapidly, hanging his garments one over another on the last peg on the wall. Kneeling beside the paillasse he crossed himself and said Our Father once hurriedly. At the rear of his mind the phrase repeated, O let it not be fever .
    After the brief prayer he swung his legs up onto the bed and covered himself and lay there, concentrating on composure. The fevers here could cut a man down almost as quickly as the guillotine. The doctor breathed with care, deeply and deliberately, in and out. In a high corner of the room, shadows wavered over a spiderweb. When he reached to pinch out the candle, his hand had grown perfectly steady once more. But a little light still reached the room, over the partition walls, which stopped a few inches short of the ceiling. In the next room he could hear the sound of someone breathing. He lay in the half dark, rubbing the burned tallow from the candle between his thumb and forefinger, thinking uselessly of one thing and another. Thibodet had seemed in perfect health the day he had arrived. Afterward, his affairs appeared a wretched tangle, despite the evidence of great wealth somewhere, or perhaps it was only because the doctor understood so little of plantation management. He did not much trust the gérant , who appeared to have partnered his brother-in-law in most of his debaucheries. Perhaps he too would die before long. In a week Thibodet had lost half his body weight and his skin had shrunk and yellowed on his skull and a black effluvia poured from his every orifice, soiling the bed faster than the slave could clean it. He lashed his head from side to side and cried that he had no notion where Elise might have gone, though he hoped she was at the devil. She had had as many lovers as he, he declared, and had probably eloped with one or another, to Jamaica or Martinique. She might have sailed in an American naval vessel, she might have run away to join the maroons. Thibodet bolted up and turned to vomit into a pan. The movement tumbled him out of the bed and the doctor felt himself spinning too, delirious, as he saw her coming painfully toward him on the stumps of her ankles, arms outstretched. Madame Arnaud, or no, it was Elise herself, younger than she ought to have been, her face at sixteen, seventeen. Her gown was hanging off one shoulder. Blood spurted mightily from her severed wrists, and as she reached out to embrace her brother she opened her mouth and howled like a wolf. The doctor was on the floor beside the paillasse , bunched on his knees and knuckles, gasping and trembling. He shook himself and sat back on his heels. Now it was completely dark in the room, and a cool sweat bathed him. In the shed outside, the howling declined and broke off