The Stone that the Builder Refused

by Madison Smartt Bell

  “I’m not sure what there is to know.” The doctor sank into a chair. Fortifying himself with another warm swallow of rum, he began to recount the events of his day.

  “I can’t make out why he wanted me there,” he said as he concluded. “There was nothing at all for me to do, neither at the fort nor at Government House.”

  “Except to witness his loyalty to Toussaint—” Isabelle blurted.

  “I thought of that,” the doctor said, “but . . .” He had not mentioned the curious business of Christophe’s long retreat to the inner cabinet. He hesitated now, looking at Elise, who sat with one hand covering her mouth, her face turned to the shadows that edged the room beyond the candlelight. If there was fighting at Grande Rivière, the doctor realized, Sans-Souci would probably be in the thick of it. The strange scene before the drums in the Place Clugny returned to his mind’s eye, though it seemed the intervening time had been a year.

  “And where is Toussaint?” Isabelle was saying.

  “In Santo Domingo,” the doctor muttered. “According to report.”

  “But such reports mean nothing,” Isabelle snapped, with an impatient flourish of her hand when Monsieur Cigny murmured to quiet her. “Can Toussaint mean to resist a French landing? He is loyal to France to the marrow of his bones—or so he has always claimed.”

  “Doucement,” the doctor said, though for the moment he was losing faith in the magical efficacy of this word.

  “Doucement?” Isabelle snorted. “If fifteen thousand men should fight their way to shore tomorrow, how sweet and gentle will that be?”

  “Oh, I don’t think—” the doctor began, but a commotion below made him stop. Certainly that was the creak of the house door opening, and he could hear the voices of Gros-Jean and Bazau, two black men who went almost everywhere with Xavier Tocquet, like his twinned shadow.

  “I don’t think it will come to that . . .” The doctor let the sentence trail away; the stairs were creaking and all eyes were on the door. He picked up his glass of rum and drained it. Then the door opened and Tocquet walked in, Zabeth’s unreadable face just visible in the shadows behind him. He had been caught in the rain somewhere, for the film of dust on his clothing was dampened to a film of clay. Above a line of crusted grime, the pallor of his forehead showed where his hat had covered it.

  “What news, Xavier?” Isabelle was on her feet and staring.

  Tocquet appraised the anxious faces in the room, then raised one finger, signaling for patience. He picked up the doctor’s glass and poured himself a mighty dose.

  “Your health,” he said to all in general, and raised the glass and drank. “Rochambeau has landed at Fort Liberté. There has been a full day’s fighting, but Rochambeau is master of all the forts and the town itself, and he has put the defenders to the sword.”

  The ripple that ran around the room set Isabelle swaying from her ankles. But she was not the fainting kind, and before Arnaud could reach her side she was already motioning him away.

  Tocquet unfastened the leather thong that bound his long queue in the back. He pulled the rope of his hair forward and began combing water out of it with his fingers onto the floor. Elise stifled a sigh as she watched him. Finished, Tocquet shook his hair loose over his back, refilled the glass he’d appropriated, and strolled toward the doors which opened on the balcony.

  “Zabeth,” the doctor said, for the girl still stood by the door she’d opened for Tocquet. “If you please, bring us more glasses.”

  “Aye,” Tocquet grunted, settling into a chair near the balcony. “I had more trouble coming this way from Ouanaminthe than I have seen for a good many years. All the field hands have thrown down their hoes and are shouting Aba blan! Aba lesklavaj!—though they’ve burnt only a few fields yet . . .”

  “Claudine.” Arnaud was on his feet and making for the door.

  “Don’t be a—” Tocquet cut himself off, as he pushed up to his feet also. “Pardon, but it would be folly to leave the town tonight. If your wife is at Habitation Arnaud—she has such credit with the blacks, she will be safer there than you. Think of it. In any case there is no word as yet of trouble in Acul.” He put one hand on Arnaud’s shoulder, and with the other produced two lumpy black cheroots from the inside of his canvas shirt. Arnaud accepted one of these and moved away from the door.

  “But can they really mean to restore slavery here?” said Isabelle.

  Tocquet had returned to the balcony doors to light his smoke. “You know it hardly matters what their intentions are,” he said, exhaling a thin blue wreath, “but what they are believed to be.”

  Zabeth came in with a smooth gliding movement, her steadiness betrayed only by the slight clinking of the glasses on the tray she bore. As the doctor reached to take one from her, the paper he’d forgotten rustled in his shirt. He plucked it out.

  “Here,” he said. “I have one of the papers I saw Lebrun let fall.”

  There was a general movement to snatch it from his hands. The doctor yielded it to Monsieur Cigny, who, having settled a pince-nez on his nostrils, brought the document near to a candle and began to read in a slow, sermonizing tone.

  From the First Consul to the inhabitants of Saint Domingue

  Whatever may be your origin or your color, you are all French, you are all free and equal before God and before men.

  France has been, like Saint Domingue, preyed upon by factions and shredded by civil war and by foreign wars; but everything has changed: all peoples have embraced the French and have sworn peace and friendship to them; all the French have embraced one another as well, and have sworn always to be brothers and friends; come also yourselves to embrace the French, and rejoice to see once more your friends and brothers from Europe.

  The government sends you the Captain-General Leclerc; he brings with him great forces to protect you against your enemies and the enemies of the Republic. If anyone should say to you: These forces are destined to tear your liberty away from you; reply: The Republic will not suffer it to be taken from us.

  Rally around the Captain-General; he brings you peace and abundance;rally around him. Whoever may dare to separate himself from the Captain-General will become a traitor to the fatherland, and the wrath of the Republic will devour him like fire devours your dried cane stalks.

  Dictated in France, at the palace of the government, 17th Brumaire in Year Ten of the French Republic.

  The First Consul

  Signed Bonaparte

  “So,” said Isabelle, as her husband passed the paper to Arnaud. “There is nothing in those to cause any disturbance or alarm.”

  Tocquet snorted. “Would that those words accorded better with the actions. I must point out that Rochambeau, at least, has less the aspect of a friendly force than that of an invading army, as he cuts his way through Grande Rivière.”

  “Grande Rivière?” Elise said sharply.

  Tocquet gave her a narrow look. “I do not know what resistance he may be encountering,” he said. “We took care to avoid his line of march. But more than likely he is moving on this town. And what of the fleet here? There was all manner of talk on the street as we came in, but you have told me nothing.”

  “Christophe has denied them a landing until orders arrive from Toussaint,” the doctor said.

  “Toussaint is not here?” Tocquet said. “He was seen on the road yesterday, as nearby as Héricourt, and supposed to be riding in this direction.”

  “There is a man wont to be seen in a great many places where in fact he has not been,” Isabelle remarked.

  To this the doctor did no more than nod. “In any event,” he said finally, “Christophe has taken the markers from the channels. And the fleet has put out to sea again, owing to the storm this afternoon.”

  “Ah,” said Tocquet. “That may gain us at least one day.” He stepped out onto the balcony to knock his ashes over the rail.

  “Us?” Monsieur Cigny said.

  “Then again,” Tocquet said as he returned to the room. “It
is as likely they may try a landing at the Baie d’Acul, to come upon the town from the landward side, perhaps having joined with Rochambeau—”

  “Then there will be trouble at Acul.” Arnaud was headed for the door again.

  “Stay, Michel, it was only a thought!” Tocquet said. “If we go anywhere, let us go tomorrow by the light of day.”

  “Go where?” Elise said sharply.

  “Ma chère,” said Tocquet, a little too loudly. “I wish to God that you at least would take Mireille down to Ennery. It will be safer there than anywhere else, for many excellent reasons that you know.”

  “And leave this house?”

  “This house,” said Tocquet. “Which you have so recently purchased and repaired and furnished and decorated. My dear, I don’t mind speaking honestly before our friends. If all should go well, the house will be intact when you return to it. If all should go ill, the house is not worth your life, nor yet Mireille’s.”

  “As bad as that?” Elise said, her chin held high.

  “I mean to take you down to Ennery myself,” said Tocquet quietly. “If you do not refuse to go.”

  “Where you go, there I will follow.” Elise bowed her head.

  Silence followed, inspired by Elise’s unexpectedly submissive attitude, or the darkness of the assumptions which underlay what Tocquet had said, or something of both; the doctor didn’t know. Then Zabeth cleared her throat discreetly in the doorway.

  “Messieurs, mesdames,” she said. “Le dîner est servi.”

  Elise had been to trouble with this dinner—porc au pruneaux, with the prunes expensively imported from France. It might have been so much soggy oatmeal for all the attention paid to it, though all the guests ran heavily on the wine. They fed themselves mechanically as they drank and debated what might possibly be done. In the midst of the conversation a servant came in with a note which had been urgently forwarded from the Cigny house. A deep quiet filled the room as Bertrand Cigny read the missive to himself, the point of his beard twitching as he muttered through the lines.

  “Some hope in this, perhaps,” he said at last.

  “O, let me see it!” Isabelle snatched the paper from his hand.

  “Télémaque, at least, has been persuaded by the First Consul’s proclamation, it would seem,” said Cigny. “So too have most of the civil administration here, be they white or black or colored. Télémaque is getting up a deputation to persuade Christophe that he ought to receive the French fleet peacefully. And he invites us to join them . . .”

  “Of course we will go!” Isabelle said, flapping the letter from one hand. “We must go—what choice have we?”

  Her dark eyes flashed around the table. The doctor looked into the shredded remnants of his pork. He was not certain how much influence Télémaque, the black mayor of the town, would have with Christophe in such circumstances.

  “Will you not join us?” Isabelle was addressing Tocquet, who returned her a thin smile.

  “No such invitation has been addressed to me,” he said. “Perhaps I would not lend credit to the enterprise.”

  “But what else is there?” Isabelle said. “Are we only to wait for a word from Toussaint? And why does he not come?”

  Tocquet took out another cheroot and rolled it in his fingers. “Since Rochambeau has slaughtered the garrison at Fort Liberté, the peaceful reception of his comrades here strikes me as unlikely,” he said. “However much it may be wished for, by our honorable mayor or anyone else. As for Toussaint, I have known him longer than the rest of you, I think—I knew him when he broke horses at Bréda, and drove the coach of the Comte de Noé. If he does not show himself in this affair, I think it is no accident.”

  “Think of our children,” Isabelle said.

  “Indeed, I do.” Tocquet, ignoring Elise’s extremely audible sigh, leaned forward to light his cheroot at a candle flame.

  “I will certainly go with this delegation,” Arnaud said, giving Tocquet his haughtiest look.

  “And I also,” Elise said.

  Tocquet leaned back, breathing smoke at the ceiling. Elise turned her face to him.

  “But first I will order the servants to pack,” she said. “In the worst case, we shall be ready to go to Ennery in the morning. In the meantime, we ought to do whatever we can, that the worst case might be avoided.”

  “And you?” Isabelle said to Doctor Hébert.

  “Moi?” the doctor grunted. At the sound of his own voice he realized he knew what he would say. “I shall return to Government House,” he told Isabelle. “I am sure General Christophe will receive me, and I may get some news from Pascal, or the others. In case Télémaque’s effort proves unpersuasive, we will then have some footing, at least, in the other camp.” He felt Tocquet’s approving glance as he pushed back his plate and rose from the table.

  Arnaud and the Cignys stayed to wait for Elise, while she searched out her trunks and valises and gave Zabeth her many directions, so the doctor was the first one down to the street. The night was clear, with a half-moon risen, the air cool and fresh after the evening storm. He was grateful to be alone on the street and to occupy himself with walking. There was some commotion in front of Christophe’s mansion in the Rue Royale—a wagon and a gang of porters working under torchlight. When the doctor came nearer, he saw that a dozen large barrels of tar were being rolled into Christophe’s courtyard. He gulped back the sour bubble of wine that swelled unpleasantly into his throat, and hurried up the slope to the Rue Espagnole.

  The effort broke out a light sweat on him; the night air was humid as well as cool. In the Place Montarcher, half a dozen men were clustered, braiding rags to the ends of long poles and twirling them in an iron cauldron that reeked of tar. Fire spears, the doctor realized with another jolt— lances à feu. A bunch of children loitered at a little distance from the tar pot, giggling and chattering and shoving each other, for all the world as if it were some festival in preparation. Their eyes on the doctor seemed not altogether friendly. He went by quickly; the enclosure of Government House was just across the street.

  Those drums in the Place Clugny the night before seemed to beat in his head again; again he saw the stiff masked figure, revolving with its rigid outstretched arms. Instinct told him that Télémaque’s mission was not at all likely to succeed, and if it failed—the doctor had been present for the fire that razed Le Cap in ninety-three. He and Nanon and the child they’d made together had just escaped that conflagration with the clothes scorched on their backs. All he had to do tonight was blink his eyes to see it all in flames again.

  Within the Government House compound, the silence was complete, funereal. The doctor recognized several faces among the men of the guard, but no one greeted him, nor did they talk among themselves. There was no sound at all except the shivering of the leaves of the tall palms.

  Inside the building the formal dining room had been shut up, and the doctor wondered what had become of the envoy, Lebrun. He put this question to Pascal, whom he found waiting in the anteroom, outside the closed door of the inner cabinet.

  Pascal shrugged. “He has been sent off to bed, I suppose. And tomorrow he will be returned to his general—weather permitting, of course. With what message, we do not know.”

  “The weather looks clear,” the doctor said aimlessly. “The storm has passed over completely.”

  “What excellent news,” Pascal said, raising his eyebrows. “Then the warships can sail in upon the town with no impediment!—unless there should be firing from the forts. Have you heard the story of Fort Liberté?”

  “In general terms,” the doctor said, glancing automatically at the cabinet door. As if on a signal, the door popped open and the port captain Sangros whipped through the antechamber and disappeared into the corridor without a backward glance. Christophe stood smoldering on the threshold of the inner room, but his expression softened slightly when the doctor stood to greet him.

  “Doctor Hébert, I am glad to see you,” he said. “Please stay near me
, if you will.”

  The doctor bowed and straightened. Christophe left the cabinet door wide open as he returned to his desk. From where he stood the doctor could see every corner of the little room; it was plain that Christophe was the only occupant.

  There would be no serious conversation in the anteroom while that door stood open. With a sigh, Pascal groped in his coat pocket and pulled out a box of small dominoes carved from bone. He and the doctor played, inattentively, for the better part of two hours. The bells of the church in the Place d’Armes were tolling midnight when an orderly came in to announce that Mayor Télémaque had arrived with a great many people who desired to see General Christophe.

  The orderly went into the cabinet and at Christophe’s order shut the door behind him. An instant later he burst out again, as if pursued by hornets. Pascal took a deep breath and went in to Christophe. The doctor could just hear his voice murmuring, behind the door, which had been pushed to. Then Christophe shouting, “But I can do nothing for these people now!” Pascal’s murmur resumed, persistently.

  The cabinet door was jerked inward and Christophe appeared in its frame, his chest swelling, lifting the decorations pinned to his coat, and then collapsing in a sigh. He pulled down his coattails, lowered his head, and marched in the direction of the ballroom. With the briefest of glances exchanged between them, Pascal and the doctor followed.

  The petitioners were numerous enough to fill two-thirds of the ballroom. Most of the civil administration was there behind Télémaque, with the bankers, the merchants, and the factors of the port, along with a good many householders. Télémaque had prepared an address in writing, which among much other matter quoted Bonaparte’s proclamation of eternal liberty in full, and then presented an argument in favor of its probable sincerity . . .

  Christophe heard him out, standing to face the assembly in a posture of parade rest. There were moments when it seemed he would make some movement to stop the flow of Télémaque’s discourse, but always he swallowed back whatever interruption he had meant to make, and let the mayor continue. The doctor stood behind him, near Pascal, among Christophe’s various aides and adjutants; he had the mildly uncomfortable feeling that he was on the wrong side of the room.