Guiaou stood up, his head gone red inside from frustration and rage. He might have shot the blind girl or stabbed the grieving woman in the back. Instead he caught up a brand from the cookfire and set three corners of the house thatch alight. The fire was burning hungrily by the time he got onto his horse, and several of the militiamen had to stop to try to put it out. As for the rest, Guerrier and Guiaou still had the better horses. They rode in a wide curve around their pursuers and lost themselves in the pine forest once more.
All through that afternoon they picked a way through the pine woods, headed generally south, still toward Santo Domingo City, though under the trees one could not reckon by the sun, and they could not be certain that the edge of the forest was parallel to the road they’d been traveling earlier that day. It was Couachy who had known this country. Couachy had fought beside Guiaou more times for more years than could be counted now. They had both been so concentrated on the work of killing white men and mulattoes that their heads were one red blaze together in each fight. Now Couachy was dead, because he had wanted to eat a fresh egg, or because Ghede had been ready to take him this day, down below the mirror of the ocean to the Island Below Sea.
They stopped that night by a pooling stream, still within the shelter of the woods. As Guiaou dipped water to wash himself, he thought of Couachy on the other side, and the cold clasp of the water on his wrist seemed like the handgrip of Baron Cimetière, that same shadow that had drifted through his dream the night before. With a snatch of both arms he swirled away the ghost of his reflection from the surface of the pool and threw water in his face to drown the thought.
Guerrier, who’d submerged himself completely in the pool, watched Guiaou rinse his shoulders and torso with the water he dipped from his kneeling position on the grassy bank. Guiaou knew that Guerrier was looking at his scars and wondering why he did not come all the way into the water himself.
“What happened to you there?” Guerrier said, pointing at the ragged tears that showed stone-white on Guiaou’s rib cage and underneath his arm.
“Reken,” Guiaou said shortly. Shark. He raised his forearm to a warding position over his head to show how the cut on the inner arm flowed into the deep furrow across his cheek and down his shoulder. “That one was a sword cut from a blanc.”
Guerrier nodded and asked no more, turning in the water to face the declining sunlight in the west.
“I thought you were not a soldier before yesterday,” Guiaou said, to show he was not offended by the question. “You fought well today. And how well you ride!”
Guerrier smiled up at him from the sunset-reddened water. “I spent much time training horses at the hatte of Papa Toussaint.” He climbed out of the pool and shook himself briskly, hurling water in all directions, then drew on his trousers and dried his hands on his shirt. Sitting down crosslegged, he drew the musket captured from the Spanish militia onto his knees and began to unfasten its bayonet.
“Why do you not use that musket instead?” Guiaou asked him. “It is newer than the other.”
“Is it?” asked Guerrier. He had now undone the broken bayonet from the musket he had started with. “But this one was given me by Papa Toussaint.”
Guiaou was silent, considering this. The lock of the first musket given him by Toussaint had broken irreparably long ago, so that weapon had been discarded. But that musket had only been issued to him at Toussaint’s order, it had not come direct from Toussaint’s hand like Guerrier’s. He sat crosslegged opposite Guerrier, fondling his helmet in his lap. There was a deep dent in the front of it, and though Guiaou had something of a headache now, he thought that without the helmet his head would have been split in two.
Now the new bayonet was fixed. Guerrier raised the musket and sighted it across the darkening surface of the pool. With a satisfied grunt he laid the weapon down beside him and felt a pocket of his trousers.
“I have a tinderbox,” he said, looking at Guiaou.
“We have no food to cook, after all.” Guiaou felt his stomach draw up as he said it. “Better not to show a light.”
The horses were tethered away in the pines, and Guiaou walked down and felt in the straw macoute strung to his saddle. He took out a brace of pistols and gave them to Guerrier. He’d harvested four pistols in all from the dead men around the cabin that day, and a purse of coins he had not yet examined.
“That is good,” Guerrier said. Holding the pistols near him, he lay down on a drift of pine needles where they would both sleep. “What will we do now?” he said.
“We must go to Paul Louverture if we can, and tell him the truth of the true letter face to face,” Guiaou said. “Because the French officer will be bringing him the lying letter, that is sure.”
In the next days they kept traveling toward the south coast, but indirectly, since they did not know the way, and it seemed safer to go by night, especially after the second day when they found a handbill nailed to a tree by a crossroads they’d come upon. The first glimpse of it made Guiaou cold in the belly because it looked so much like the warnings of runaways that had been posted during slavery time. The pictures at the top might have been any two men, and Guiaou could not read much of the text. Riau had taught him his letters in different camps where they were together, but he could only make out a few words of this, and it hurt his head to do that much. Still, after staring at the paper for a long time he seemed to understand that he and Guerrier were denounced as brigands and murderers, though not by their names, and that his scars were described well enough that he was likely to be recognized.
From then on he went somewhere to hide whenever Guerrier needed to go to ask directions. When he must lie hidden he would close his eyes and listen to the nearby breathing of his horse and picture the blind Spanish girl closing her hands on the empty air, with all her guide strings severed, limp, invisible at her feet. What if Guerrier did not return? But Guerrier did come back each time, though his directions were not usually clear or accurate.
In this way they finally reached the south coast, losing count of the days it had taken them to get there. In the darkness, while Guiaou hid himself, Guerrier approached the gate of one of the forts protecting Santo Domingo City and Ozama Bay. When he called up the name of Toussaint Louverture he was answered by a volley, one musket ball whining past his ear like an angry bee, and he came running back to tell Guiaou that the Spanish blancs and sang-mêlés had seized the fort and meant to hand it over to a large French army commanded by General Kerverseau.
At that, Guiaou was chilled all over. It plagued him to have abandoned the body of Couachy, though there had been no choice. And why had not Couachy done as Toussaint must have meant for him to do? He might have shown the false letter to the militia when they came and so won a safe passage with the true one. Or maybe it was Guiaou himself, his action, that had put them in the place where they could only run or fight. And maybe the ruse would have failed anyway. But Santo Domingo City would not be burned now. He had no more hope of reaching Paul Louverture if the French were already landing there, and he and Guerrier could not burn it all alone. But they could go back to Saint Raphael, as the true letter ordered Paul Louverture to do.
This journey too was difficult, indirect and slow. They had to steal their food from the fields by night. There were gold coins in the looted purse, but it was too dangerous to spend them. All the country this side of the border seemed to have turned in favor of the French army, and once when Guerrier risked a turn through a village market, he learned that Clervaux, who commanded for Toussaint at Santiago, had been persuaded by the Bishop Malveille to accept the French as friends, and so most of the garrisons from Santiago down to Santo Domingo City had done the same, and Paul Louverture also, it was said.
For that, they turned away from Santiago, and rode across the wide, grassy central plateau toward the French part of the island, but when they came near to Saint Raphael they met streams of people running out of the town with a story that the General Rochambeau was coming with
a French army that would make them slaves. Those people were running toward Dondon, or to Grande Rivière where Sans-Souci was fighting. No one knew where Toussaint had gone, or where his other armies were to be found. It was plain enough to Guiaou and Guerrier that they did not want to be caught up in the current of these fugitives, and Guiaou knew another route, through the mountains to Gonaives on the western coast, by way of the steep and narrow Ravine à Couleuvre.
8
Ogûn-O... Roi des Anges . . . this was the song that sang in my head as we rode west from Point Samana, but I, Riau, did not let the words come aloud out of my mouth. Riau held his mouth closed tight, and rode with his body springing straight up from the saddle like a palm trunk rooted in the spine of the horse, eyes fixed straight between the shoulders of Major Maillart, who was leading our way down to Port-au-Prince. Everything was silence all around us except for birdsong and the insects in the grass, but the song rang inside my head from one wall to the other.
Ogûn-O... Djab-la di l’ap manjé moin, si sa vré . . .
And I, Riau, I knew what the letter riding in Maillart’s pocket said, because Riau’s hand had written down the words that Toussaint spoke. Those words were shaped with a twisted tongue, so that there was nothing in the letter which would make Maillart, a blanc and a Frenchman, unhappy to be carrying it. But Toussaint had put another word directly into the head of Riau, without any paper to hold it still. Between this word and the words sealed into the paper Maillart carried in his coat, there was a crack where the devil came in.
Ogûn-O... the devil says he is going to eat me, is it true?
We rode, then, down the Valle de Consilanza, where the road ran south of the Cibao Mountains. It was Maillart who led our way, though Riau knew this country just as well. I had come over in the army of Toussaint to set free slaves of the Spanish blancs, and before that, long before, Riau had wandered in these mountains in the time of marronage.
Others of Toussaint’s guard rode with us, but before the end of the first day’s riding they turned from our road to bring Toussaint’s message to Clervaux at Santiago. When darkness came it was Maillart who knocked at the door of a Spanish cattle herdsman to ask for food and shelter for us two. Maillart was a tall man with a big mustache and the blanc skin of his face all burnt brick color by the sun. He had a voice that was usually loud and sounded happy. People liked him, both blanc and nèg, and Riau liked him very well too. In the night when we lay near each other on pallets put side by side on the floor, Maillart spoke in a lower voice, which would not wake the Spanish people sleeping in the loft. You are quiet tonight, Riau, and all day long you have been so quiet, my friend. I did not give any answer to this, but instead I made my breathing sound like sleep. Maillart had come over to Toussaint a very long time ago, and in the days and years that followed he had taught many black men all he knew about the blanc way of soldiering. Riau had learned very much from him. In those first days he was my captain. Yet I thought how easy it would be to shoot him in the spot between the shoulder blades where my eyes stopped when we were riding. It was for that I rode behind, for each mile of that journey.
. . . Djab-la di l’ap manjé moin . . .
Next day we rode still further south, around the Lake of Enriquillo. This road took us very near the mountains of Bahoruco, with the signs and the spirits of the old caciques all through their hollow caverns. Riau had stayed a long while at Bahoruco in the time of marronage, and my spirit turned in that direction when we passed, but I would not go there now, not yet. We passed that lake, and the Etang Saumatre. It was all peaceful in those places, as if there were no blanc soldiers coming out of the ships from France, and it was peaceful also in the town of Croix des Bouquets.
The people in Croix des Bouquets said that Dessalines was in the casernes of Port-au-Prince, so we rode there, though not so quickly with Maillart leading. I was not sure how quickly Major Maillart wanted to get to Dessalines, who was no friend of any white people whether they served Toussaint or not. It was night when we came to Port-au-Prince, and at the casernes they told us that Dessalines was not there. He had gone to Saint Marc, people thought, where he had built a fine house for himself, but no one knew for certain where he was.
In the place of Dessalines a blanc called Agé commanded the town, with Lamartinière, a mulatto, as his second. It might be that Dessalines hated colored men even more than he hated the blancs, and he had seemed to enjoy killing them very much during the war against Rigaud, but Lamartinière was one of the few he liked and respected for his courage. I, Riau, had not known Lamartinière well before this night, but we had seen each other’s faces and knew each other’s names, and I went to sit near him when we came into the council room, while Maillart went to the white general Agé.
The ships of the French soldiers had come into the bay of Port-au-Prince already but no one had landed, except for a messenger, Captain Sabès. Another blanc named Gimont was with him, but it was Sabès who carried the words. The council room was scattered over with papers this Sabès had brought, each paper saying the same thing, that the French soldiers were not coming to take away our freedom but that they were sworn to protect us and our liberty. I thought that these papers gave nothing but lies, and it seemed to me that Lamartinière did not trust them either. Agé would have sent Sabès back to the ships with a message for friendship, but Lamartinière wanted to hold him there, though without hurting or killing him. There was that difference between Agé and Lamartinière, and though Agé commanded, the men were with Lamartinière.
I learned these things while talking quietly with Lamartinière at one end of the room, while Maillart and Agé had put their heads together in the other. I told Lamartinière that Toussaint had made a lying letter for someone like Agé, telling him to receive the French though not too quickly, but the true word from Toussaint’s mouth to Riau’s ear was that if French soldiers began to land, Dessalines must burn the town and kill the blancs and go into the mountains. Then Lamartinière told me that Dessalines had gone not to Saint Marc but to Léogane. He wanted to know where Toussaint was, but I did not know anything to tell him.
That night a letter was written by Agé which said to the French in the ships that Dessalines had gone away from Port-au-Prince and that they must not land till Dessalines came back, or sent his order. Maillart was given this letter to carry to the ships, and Agé whispered to him to tell the French generals that he, Agé, did not really have any power now to control what happened in the town.
We did not know about this whispering until afterward, but still Lamartinière found a way to send another message to the ships, with someone different than Maillart. His message said that if the French soldiers made any sign that they would come ashore, three cannon shots would be fired from the mountain and at this signal the blancs would all be killed and the town set afire. And that was near enough to what Toussaint had wanted.
Maillart went to the French ships then, and Agé stayed with Sabès in the casernes, but I, Riau, went into the streets with Lamartinière. Lamartinière wanted to raise the people to defend the town, besides the soldiers of our army who were already there, but not many people came to join him at first. The town was full of blancs that Toussaint had protected, and colored people and some blacks too, who had built great houses for themselves and had barns full of sugar and coffee to be sent away on ships for money, and these people did not want any fighting, and they did not want to see the town burned down. So Lamartinière began to say that we would defend the town without burning it. All the time he was getting angrier—Lamartinière was a proud man.
At last we came to the Armory, and there at the door was a blanc named Lacombe, who had the keys to the Armory, and he would not give up the keys when Lamartinière asked for them. Lacombe had got a copy of the same paper which Sabès had managed to scatter in the streets on his way to the casernes, and he said that because the paper said that the French were coming in friendship, there was not any reason to get weapons out to fight them. Som
e of the people who had been following us through the streets called out that they agreed with him. Lamartinière did not spend any time arguing with Lacombe, though, but only called him a miserable colon and with the same word shot him, so that his brains came out of the back of his head and splashed on the door of the Armory. There was nobody in the crowd who agreed with Lacombe any more after that, and Lamartinière took the keys from his body and opened the door to get out the guns.
No one noticed Riau going away while these things were happening. I had seen how many ships there were at Samana Bay, and I had seen how Toussaint was made weak for a moment when the sight of those ships first struck his eyes. It did not seem to me to be sure at all that Lamartinière could protect the town without burning it, and the people in the town were divided, too. I walked back to the casernes and got my horse without saying anything to anyone and rode out the south gate toward Léogane.
It was just dawn when I started from Port-au-Prince, and by the time I came to Léogane it was full day and the heat was rising. Dessalines was not at Léogane. I lost much time looking for him in one place and another, because I was suddenly afraid of what would happen, and I could not believe that Dessalines could not be found when he was needed. Everyone at Léogane told me now that Dessalines was at Saint Marc, but I did not know if I believed that I would find him there either. While I was looking for him, there came word to Léogane that blanc soldiers had landed at Lamentin and they were coming up the road.
I went then to the fort of the Piémont, which covered the road from Léogane to Port-au-Prince. Soldiers of the Sixty-eighth were in this fort, though Dessalines was not, but Lamartinière came there soon after I did. Then the French soldiers came in sight around a bend of the road below the fort, which was a half-circle earthwork with six big cannons. One of the blanc officers came out in front of all the rest. He came near enough that a musket shot could have reached him easily, but no one fired at him. Everyone waited, and the officer called in a loud voice— We have not come to fight you—you are French! you are our brothers!
The Stone that the Builder Refused Page 17
