The Stone that the Builder Refused

by Madison Smartt Bell

  “What news?” the doctor said, glancing at the withdrawing guardsman as he stepped into the shade. Michau remained outdoors, arms folded, his black face slightly glossy with sweat, impassive under the full sun.

  “There is to be a bucket brigade,” Arnaud said. “In case Christophe does fire the town. Cigny is already gone down to the Fontaine d’Estaing, and I was only waiting for you.”

  “Yes,” said the doctor, raising one finger. “I’ll just have a word with Isabelle first.” Arnaud nodded and the doctor moved to the stairs.

  “Maman,” Robert was saying, as the doctor tapped on the frame of the parlor door. Isabelle, distracted, didn’t notice his knock.

  “Oui, chéri?” she said.

  “Will the black soldiers be coming to burn down our house again?”

  The doctor was struck by the polite neutrality of the boy’s question. But a wave ran over Isabelle’s features, before she composed herself to reply.

  “Nonsense!” she said. “No such thing—did you not hear the man who has just left? The mayor himself, Monsieur Télémaque, assures us that nothing of the kind will happen—”

  With that she saw the doctor and ran tripping across the room to catch his hands and draw him out onto the landing.

  “Have you been to Government House?” she said.

  “Yes, but I learned nothing there,” the doctor said. “I have been shutting up the hospital. I suppose I ought to go with Arnaud, to join your husband. But it may be that you should not be left alone in the house, with all the uncertainty of the day.”

  “No, no,” Isabelle said hurriedly. “You must certainly go and make yourself useful. I have my coachman here, and a footman too—” She glanced back into the parlor, giving his hands a little squeeze. “I do wish you would take Robert with you. If he stays here with nothing to occupy him, he will upset his sister with his fancies.”

  Fancies? the doctor thought. “You ought to make ready to leave,” he told Isabelle. “Just—”

  “I won’t hear of it,” Isabelle snapped, and lowered her voice at once. “Télémaque has assured everyone that nothing will happen.”

  “As you wish,” the doctor said, and beckoned to the boy.

  Robert was yet too small to do any heavy lifting, but he made no trouble as the grown men set about the work. He was quiet and seemed abstracted, scanning the harbor’s mouth. His company made the doctor wish for Paul. Often enough he followed the direction of Robert’s gaze, looking for the sail of a French warship, but for the moment the skyline was vacant, the water calm.

  Through the rest of the afternoon they were busy, collecting buckets and barrels and troughs, setting depots of water at the principal corners, and organizing for the passage of water from the Fontaine d’Estaing at the port and from two other fountains higher up in the town. Télémaque appeared briefly at every station, and the men of the municipal guard were industrious, along with all of the white citizens who had not thought it better to depart. All the while small squads of soldiers were also moving through the streets. The soldiers did not interfere with the water haulers, but they were in charge of a parallel movement of tar barrels and lances à feu.

  By the time the sun had begun to redden and drop toward the heights of Morne du Cap behind the town, a water station had been set up on the corner of the Cignys’ block. Accompanied by Michau and Arnaud, the doctor brought Robert back to his mother. Isabelle was preparing a supper of cold chicken and fruit, but the doctor excused himself, saying he would go to secure his sister’s house.

  With Michau, he set out in that direction. At the opposite end of the Cignys’ block, a squad from the Second had installed itself, with a tar barrel and lances à feu. A couple of the men were holding lit torches. Without a word, with their eyes averted, they drew back to let the doctor pass.

  Elise’s house was vacant now, except for one old woman who cooked. The doctor told her she was free to go; he would be dining chez Cigny that night. He went to his bedroom and got his American-made rifle and a small bundle of clothes he’d already made up, and carried these things down to the stable. Two saddle horses remained from the morning’s exodus, and one blue mule. The doctor considered for a moment, and reached for the mule saddle.

  “You can ride?” he said to Michau as he strapped the rifle scabbard and saddlebags into place. “Excellent. I think I had better shut up the house, but get anything you want from the kitchen. If there is trouble you must bring the horses to Madame Cigny, or if you cannot, take them to the top of La Vigie.” He pointed to one of the peaks behind the town.

  Michau nodded, and the doctor clapped him on the back. He gave the porter a couple of minutes to clean out the larder, then began closing the double doors and fastening them with the iron padlocks Elise had left with him. The last lock fell against the door with a drum-like thump. The doctor dropped the bunch of keys into his saddlebag and mounted the mule. Touching his hat to Michau, he rode into the street.

  More soldiers than usual were stationed outside Christophe’s mansion, but no sign of the general himself. The doctor did not see Pascal, or anyone else it seemed wise to hail, as he rode through the area of Government House, perched on the high, narrow ridge of the mule’s back. He did not take the road that led to the beach this time. There was a trail that went higher on the hill around the point, a difficult one which was not much used except by charcoal burners. It was for that he had chosen the mule, and the animal went up it nimbly enough.

  At the crown of the hill he pulled up and looked back. The sun had dropped behind the mountain, its red glow staining a few feathers of cloud. A couple of denser darker clouds were drifting across the plain from the east, but they were small and widely separated—there wouldn’t be much rain tonight. There still was light enough for him to see threads of smoke rising from the fires that warmed the tarpots at the Place d’Armes and the Place Clugny and many intersections in between. Hardly anyone had come out for the evening promenade. The red-tiled roofs and empty streets looked weirdly tranquil.

  He clucked to the mule and rode on, turning his face into a freshening wind off the sea. A mild chop and a few whitecaps below. He was overlooking the open ocean now, and the masts of the fleet were plainly visible against the horizon. He started counting, gave it up. His heart sank as he looked at them. Here the trail was level and he could move the mule to a trot. In a couple of minutes he was looking down an abrupt descent onto the battlements of Fort Picolet.

  No one thought to glance up in his direction. The men were all concentrating on heating up shot. General Christophe stood at the outer wall among the gunners, erect and uncharacteristically rigid, looking out to sea. The doctor saw a frigate detach itself from the fleet and begin to sail down upon the fort. He took a small brass spyglass from his pocket and pulled it to its full extension. With the help of the lens he could make out the name of the approaching ship, L’Aiguille. But his arm was unsteady and the circle of magnification bounced around, beyond his control. He collapsed the spyglass and put it back in his pocket. L’Aiguille, the Needle, was quite near now. Everything was becoming indistinct in the rapidly lowering dusk. The doctor saw iron shot glowing red on the grills above the coals. He saw Christophe thrust his right arm toward L’Aiguille as if he were hurling a javelin.

  “Feu!”

  A single cannon spoke. The hot iron of the ball drew a red line across the water, then fell sizzling, short of the frigate’s bow. L’Aiguille cut nimbly to the south and returned a broadside on the fort. This time a dozen cannon replied from Picolet. But Christophe had already left the battlement, as if the outcome of this engagement were of no more concern to him. In the thickening darkness the doctor could just make out the general’s silhouette hastening down from the fort to the pebbled beach, where an orderly waited, holding his horse.

  The doctor’s mule had not much reacted to the cannon, only swiveling its long ears in the direction of the noise. He turned the animal’s head toward the town and kicked into a risky trot: th
e white shale of the path was barely visible underfoot. Behind he could hear the firing continue. More ships had sailed in to join the battle, and there was sound of splintering stone and men’s voices crying in rage or pain.

  On precipitous descent of the hill the mule had to slow and pick its way. Christophe would certainly be making faster progress on the lower road, once he had got off the rocky beach. The doctor had a fine panoramic view of the town, where the lances à feu had now been lit; it looked like hundreds of them. He watched the points of light spiraling out of the Place d’Armes and the Place Clugny, spreading out of the casernes and along the waterfront. No buildings had yet been set on fire.

  When he reached street level, he kicked his mule to the fastest pace it would deliver. The soldiers with their lances à feu moved in tight order or stood with a fixed regard. None of them paid him any mind. They did not seem to see him whirling past.

  Christophe was just dismounting in front of his own house when the doctor turned into the Rue Royale. The general passed his reins to a soldier in exchange for a burning lance à feu. The doctor halted the mule on the opposite side of the street. He opened his mouth but no words came out. A couple of other white men had come over from the water station on the corner, and they seemed to be in a similar state of speechlessness.

  Through the arch of the gateway, they watched Christophe stride into his own front door and climb the curving stairway in the foyer. At the top, he turned to face the street, and after a moment’s pause on the crux, he tilted his lance à feu to touch a wall. Every surface of the interior must have been painted with tar already, for the whole house was instantly ablaze. Framed against the thrusting flames, Christophe descended the stairs at the same slow and stately pace as he had climbed them. When he had emerged across the threshold, he turned and flung his fire spear back into the burning house.

  “Alé!” he said in a loud harsh voice, as he came out through the archway onto the street. “Alé, meté feu partout.” His eyes cut across the cluster of white men. Go, set fire to everything!

  As the soldiers with torches began to disperse, the doctor rode for his sister’s house. He was thinking of Michau and the horses. But the stable was already afire when he arrived. He pulled up the mule and watched a pair of soldiers use a tar keg to smash in the front door of the house. The rolling keg spread its black ichor in a curve across the floor; then one of the soldiers picked it up and tossed the rest of the contents on the walls. Another man was already thrusting his lance à feu into the eaves. The house went up in one great whoosh.

  The soldiers were already on to the next building, but the doctor remained, watching with a queer fascination as the fire ate through a tar-coated door. In two minutes the weathered wood was rendered frail and transparent as a strip of muslin, and the fire outlined the hinges and hasp and the padlock the doctor had fastened there that afternoon. As the door collapsed and fell out of the frame, he turned his mule toward the Cigny house.

  No sign of Michau or the horses there, but Isabelle stood halfway down her stairs, holding Héloïse in her arms and arguing with a private soldier of the Second.

  “I will not have it—not a second time,” she cried. She stamped her foot on the wooden riser. “I will not see my home destroyed. I will not!”

  “Madanm, tannpri,” the soldier said, while another man drizzled tar across the ground-floor carpets. Arnaud stared up at Isabelle, eyes bulging and mouth agape. Cigny, standing with one hand on Robert’s shoulder, had simply covered his eyes with the other . . .

  “Madanm, tannpri,” the soldier repeated. Madame, please. A strange courtesy, the doctor thought. The burning of this town in ninety-three had been a wholesale orgy of murder and rape. To this Isabelle had been witness, had barely escaped being a victim herself. Of course that had been ten thousand savages, by comparison to this quite well-disciplined army.

  “Ma chère,” he said to her from the doorway. Isabelle’s eyes locked onto his. Héloïse turned her sobbing face against her mother’s bosom.

  “My dear,” the doctor said. “It’s time to go.”

  With a swallow, Isabelle came unglued from her post on the stairs. The soldier who’d been cajoling her sighed as she swept past him. In the foyer she paused to hurl at the man with the tar barrel—“You will be held to account for the cost of those carpets you have spoiled!” But then she let her husband guide her out into the street.

  The bucket brigade was not functioning as planned; the doctor had scarcely given it a thought during his hurried ride into town. But now Isabelle thrust Héloïse into her husband’s arms—the child howled louder at the unwelcome transfer—and dashed to the water station on the corner. Arnaud and the doctor followed. An old horse trough had been moved to this spot, meant to be replenished by a chain of buckets stretching as far as the fountain on the Place d’Armes, but all the street in that direction was nothing but a tunnel of fire, and half the water in the trough had evaporated in the withering heat. Isabelle seemed unconscious of these aspects of the situation. Mechanically she filled a bucket, passed it to Arnaud, scooped another for the doctor, and led the men back the way they’d come, lugging her own pail.

  By then flames were shooting out the windows and roof of the Cigny house. Isabelle tossed her bucket against a burning wall; it disappeared in a hiss of steam. She turned to march back for more water, but now their way was barred by a squad of soldiers, holding their muskets crossways. When Isabelle advanced, unheeding, one of the soldiers hooked her bucket away from her with a bayonet point and flipped it into the nearest fire. The doctor ran up and caught her arm. His own weapons were handy enough, but it would have been folly to produce them. The soldiers marched against him and Isabelle, shoving with their sideways muskets. Isabelle reached out her small hand and pushed one of them in the chest.

  “Stop it!” the doctor said. “It is no use.” Beyond, he could see that other soldiers had dumped the horse trough over and were staving in the bottom with their gun butts. Isabelle did stop, but not because of what he’d said. A cinder had landed on her cheek, and carelessly she brushed at it, leaving a smear of soot. Her gaze was fixed down the next block, where a great white warhorse emerged through a wreath of fire. Scrambling up onto its back was a small man with a jockey’s build, dressed in a charcoal burner’s rags, a dull red cloth bound over his head. He gripped the horse’s mane with one hand and swept the other forward.

  “Alé! Meté feu partout! Boulé tout kay-yo!”

  Isabelle did not exactly slump, but the doctor felt the force go out of her. She did not resist now when he turned her away. As they returned toward the others, she staggered and the doctor caught her around the shoulders. Cigny was reaching his free hand toward hers.

  The soldiers moved up, pressing on them and their neighbors who’d been driven from their own burning houses. Impelled by thrusts of the crossways muskets, they went up the sloping street, the doctor leading his mule by the reins. Soon they had joined a much larger crowd of refugees being chivvied along the Rue Espagnole by the soldiers. Télémaque was among them, with the municipal guard and the rest of the civil officials of the town. In reasonably good order, never firing a shot or using the point of a bayonet, the soldiers of the Second shepherded them past the casernes. They turned onto the road that climbed toward the summit of La Vigie.

  Isabelle had begun to stumble. “Let us get her up on the mule,” Cigny said. Isabelle objected at first, but it was explained to her that she could then hold Héloïse and try to calm her. The girl, not unreasonably, was howling even louder than before. At that Isabelle consented to mount, and in her mother’s arms Héloïse did lower the volume of her wailing. They went on, the doctor still leading the mule, up the steep and twisting ascent. Cigny and Arnaud followed the mule, each holding one of Robert’s hands.

  On the summit of La Vigie, some hundreds of refugees were clustered. The couple of houses that stood there were already full to bursting with infirm or injured people. The doctor’s party settled
on the ground. They’d got out with little more than the clothes they were wearing, but Isabelle produced a scrap of sheet for them to sit on.

  The doctor went off to tether the mule by a clump of trees where he’d noticed several horses. There he found Michau tending the two saddle horses from Elise’s stable. A bit of good fortune he had not expected. He gave Michau a squeeze on the arm and left the mule in his care as well.

  The cannons at Fort Picolet were long since silent. There was no more artillery fire at all, though the doctor could hear small arms popping in the burning town, as he made his way back to the Cigny group. From this height the view was panoramic, and he saw the lights of the French ships sailing into the harbor, though none of them approached the burning waterfront. It was for this spectacle he’d stayed, he thought. The town was on fire from one end to the other.

  The doctor settled his haunches on the piece of sheet, by Isabelle. Héloïse had now cried herself into collapse and snuffled gently against her mother’s blouse. This high on the hill, it was rather chilly at night, though their faces were warmed by the fire below. The doctor watched firelight flickering on Robert’s face, wishing again that his son Paul were nearer. Isabelle’s boy seemed calm enough, fascinated. And certainly the vision was both awful and grand. The cathedral and the customs house were two great bonfires. The doctor looked toward Government House in time to see the whole of its roof collapsing in the fire. He picked out the enclosure of his hospital, it too engulfed in flames. Then the powder depot of the Batterie Circulaire blew up, blasting the embers of its building into the star-speckled sky. The crowd on the hill responded with an awestruck moan. Isabelle turned her ashen face toward the doctor.

  “That was he,” she said in a soft voice. “You saw him too—riding Bel Argent. That was Toussaint we saw.”