The Stone that the Builder Refused

by Madison Smartt Bell

  Then Pauline’s voice was heard from behind the curtain. “My dear, can you not speak more softly?—if you must speak at all. Or take your councils elsewhere—at this hour, really. You make it quite impossible for me to rest, and if Dermide wakes he will not sleep again before morning.”

  Leclerc wilted when he heard this; he looked at Placide and Isaac as if he’d take back a part of what he’d said. But Coisnon and Daspir were already leading them out of the room. Only Cyprien and Granville remained with the Captain-General.

  “So,” said Leclerc, with a glance toward the curtain. “He asks me for an armistice. Though my orders forbid me to cease any action of war once it has begun, I will allot him four days and no more. Within that time he may yet become my second in command, but if he has not submitted to that role by the fourth day, I will declare him outlaw.” Gritting his teeth on these last words, Leclerc shot Cyprien a quelling look (though Cyprien was more than a head the taller), then sent the captain to fetch a secretary to copy out the gist of what he’d said.

  Now Placide rocked half-dreaming in the saddle—they’d had no more than three hours’ sleep before being sent back, with Leclerc’s new dispatch, to Ennery. They’d been too exhausted, if not too discouraged, to whisper to each other from their pallets—besides, their guardians were near. Coisnon and Granville had remained at Le Cap, but Cyprien and Daspir were with them still, and always riding close enough to intercept any private contact. Nonetheless Placide knew that his brother was miserable and apprehensive. He himself was a little frightened, a little excited too.

  And yet he dozed. He’d learned to ride at his father’s hands, and now he’d ride his father’s hours. He knew Toussaint’s habit of laying a pillow across the saddle of Bel Argent if he meant to remain there for many days. Placide had no pillow, but his knees held him firmly in his seat and his back held straight, though his head rolled from side to side on the short tether of his neck, as he dozed and woke by fits and starts. The day passed flickering through the mountain passes: Haut Limbé, Plaisance, Pilboreau. At the crossroads the people lined the road to watch their passage, but there were no shouts or celebration this time, though the smiles were all as warm as before.

  Toussaint was absent when they reached Ennery, but the impatience of Captain Cyprien was nothing to Suzanne. She fed her sons and put them to bed. Placide smiled inwardly at this—he hadn’t known such treatment since he was a small boy, down with a summer fever. But fatigue swelled over him as soon as he stretched out, and he did sleep, and Isaac also, without a private word having passed between them.

  In some small hour of the morning, Cyprien and Daspir roused them. Quietly, groggily, they remounted and rode out the drive from Sancey. Placide wondered if the French captains meant to elude Suzanne with this departure, but when he looked back over his shoulder he saw his mother standing on the steps, straight and still as a green sapling, holding a white candle in her hands.

  The moon, just one day off the full, shone fitfully through hurrying clouds as they rode into Gonaives. At headquarters they learned from the sentries that Toussaint had gone to mass. Cyprien and Daspir rushed the boys to the church. The ceremony was entering its final phase: the priest chanting, elevating the Host. Though this service was wholly open to the public, most citizens of Gonaives preferred to observe at a more comfortable hour, so Toussaint was alone except for Morisset, a couple more officers of his suite, and a few old women shawled in black.

  Captain Cyprien looked ready to interrupt, but Daspir drew him off with some murmured caution. Toussaint was kneeling at the altar rail. The Host was lowered to his tongue; meekly he pressed his lips to the chalice rim. While Placide hung back, Isaac crossed himself hastily and moved to kneel at his father’s side, but Toussaint stopped him as he rose.

  “If you have not made a good confession this day, Isaac,” Toussaint said, and masked his smile with his right hand, “it is better that you wait to take the sacraments.”

  Both boys sat beside the father on the front bench as the service concluded. They left the church with him, following the cross. Cyprien and Daspir flanked them as they walked toward headquarters, but Toussaint stopped them in the building’s anteroom.

  “Leave us, please.”

  Cyprien looked as if he would argue; he was beginning to say something about duty and his commission, but Daspir edged him gently away.

  “Let them be,” Daspir said, as Toussaint and the boys mounted the stairs. “What can half an hour hurt? As you have said, it is a mission of diplomacy. And I hardly think they’ll vanish from us now.” He glanced around the low-ceilinged room, where members of Toussaint’s guard were subtly checking the handles of their weapons.

  “Come,” Daspir said. “Let us go out—it’s stuffy here.”

  Together the two captains crossed the narrow street and stood under the eave of the house opposite. A smell of roasting coffee through the slatted door behind them set all of Daspir’s stomach juices working. The second story of the headquarters building had a little open porch overlooking the street, but from their angle they could see no more than the muted glow of one lone candle there.

  “So when will you snatch him by the scruff of his neck and haul him to account before the Captain-General?” Cyprien said.

  “If he concedes to come with us now,” Daspir said smoothly, “I think we may fairly claim to have won the bet.”

  Cyprien stared at him for a second, then let out a snort of laughter. “By God! I hadn’t looked at it that way,” he said. “But I believe you’re right.”

  Toussaint pointed the boys toward two chairs at a round table on the small second-story porch. He settled himself into a third. From an inner pocket he pulled out a stub of candle and struck fire to it. When the flame was warm, he tilted it and let a drop of wax fall on the table and fixed the candle there.

  “My sons,” he said, as he leaned back. “What news do you bring?”

  Placide looked at Isaac, who reached into his inner pocket and drew out Leclerc’s letter. Toussaint turned it over once before he broke the seal and spread the paper on the table, below the candle flame. No request that it be read aloud now, and yet he was a long time in the reading. The candle flame guttered, then steadied and bloomed upward; Placide felt that he and his brother had both suspended their breath. The cords of Toussaint’s neck stood out, and his eyes glared downward on the paper, so that Placide thought he might burst into a rage. Instead, he relaxed and sat back in his chair, covering the folded letter with his left hand and looking out to the west, where the ocean lay just out of sight beneath the fading disk of moon, where the black of the night sky was just bleeding a trace of blue.

  “My children,” he said, “I would not blame your attachment to France—to her you owe your education. But between ourselves and France there is our color, and I will not put us at the mercy of an expedition that includes Rigaud, Pétion, Villatte, and others who are all my personal enemies. This order which the Captain-General mentions, not to stop fighting for negotiations, makes me believe that France has put more confidence in her arms than in her rights. It smacks of despotism. And if they will not deal with us while we have still some power, what do you suppose they will do when we have none?”

  Placide looked at Isaac in the gaining daylight. Now it seemed to him that if they had never discussed the matter fully, it was not for lack of a private opportunity but because they had both somehow known that something of this sort would have to be said once the subject was opened. Isaac’s face was ashen, bloodless and ghostly in the dawning light, and Placide could feel his miserable uncertainty like a sickness, though he did not know yet what he felt himself.

  “My children,” Toussaint said, even more softly than before. “I declare war upon General Leclerc, but not upon France—I want France to respect the constitution which the people of Saint Domingue have given to themselves. I cannot treat with the First Consul since he has torn up the act which guarantees all our liberties. My children, I would not
go against your feelings, and I will use no violence nor trickery to keep you near me. Remorse would follow me all of my life if I were to become the author of your misfortunes. I leave you free to choose between the Captain-General and the liberty of your country.”

  Between Placide and Isaac, an agonized look arced like a flash of lightning. Toussaint sat straighter in his chair, folded his arms across his chest.

  “What?” he said. “You hesitate in your choice? A man of honor must declare himself for one cause, and not try to serve two at the same time.”

  “Very well,” Isaac said quickly, as if stung. “You see in me the faithful servant of France, who can never bear arms against her.”

  “Soit,” Toussaint said. So be it. “I will cherish you all the same. You have my blessing, Isaac, wherever the roads of your life may take you.” But when he turned his face to Placide it was full of pain.

  Placide, unthinking, dropped onto his knees and pressed his face against his father’s tightly trousered thigh, snuffling the scent of horse and sweat and leather for a moment. When he raised his face it was wet with tears. “I fear the future,” he heard himself say. “I fear slavery even more.” He swallowed and got better control of his voice. “I have already forgotten France and all its glory,” he said. “If it is God’s will, let me live or die by your side.”

  “Good,” Toussaint said. For a moment he cradled the back of Placide’s head in both his hands, looking closely into his eyes. “Stand up now,” he said and rose himself. As Placide stood, Toussaint took him by the shoulder and turned him to face Morisset and General Vernet, who were standing by the stairwell that went down into the interior of the building.

  “This is my son!” Toussaint said. “Now, go to the drummers and tell them to beat the call to arms.”

  As Morisset and Vernet clattered down the stairs, Toussaint turned toward Isaac again. Up until now they had been speaking in the most formal French, but now he switched to Creole.

  “Ba’m main’ou,” he said. Give me your hand. Isaac put his hand in his.

  “You must go to your mother now,” Toussaint said. “Go up to Ennery and tell her how you have decided.”

  Already the drums were rolling, beyond the headquarters building, toward the Place d’Armes. Toussaint dropped Isaac’s hand and, guiding Placide by his shoulder, hurried down the stairs. Isaac followed, a pace behind. As they emerged into the street, the two French captains rushed up toward them; the drum roll and stirring of the troops had thrown them into consternation.

  “Ah, my friends,” Toussaint said. “You have been waiting a long time. I have a mission for you now. You have taken such care of my sons since they returned here—I ask you now to go with my son Isaac to his mother at Ennery.”

  “But have you no reply for the Captain-General?” Cyprien said, with rather a sickly smile. “One would not wish to disrupt the filial pieties, but our business is too urgent for another such detour.”

  “The Captain-General has accorded me an armistice of four days, as you probably already know,” Toussaint said. “I invite you to remain as my guests at Habitation Sancey during that time. My son will see to your comfort there, and these ten horsemen of my guard will assure your safety on the road.”

  “Are we your prisoners, then?” said Cyprien.

  “By no means.” Toussaint covered his mouth with his hand. “But at present it is not convenient that you return to the Captain-General.”

  On the Place d’Armes the troops were already assembled: Toussaint’s personal guard in the strength of a battalion and two squadrons. The light of dawn was coming up quickly now, though still more bluish gray than rose. The tall palms shivered in the corners of the square. Shoulder to shoulder with Placide, Toussaint stood to address the men.

  “The Captain-General Leclerc offers us ignominy and shame,” he said. “He wants to destroy the constitution, sole guarantee of our liberty—he wants us to abandon ourselves to the discretion of the French government. Are we cowards who’d submit to such caprices? Will we lower our heads again to wear the yoke of slavery?”

  “Never!” Morisset led the cry, and led the men in flourishing their swords. “We all stand ready to die for liberty.”

  “I give you Placide Louverture,” Toussaint shouted. “He is ready to die for our cause also. Accept him in the grade of a commander.”

  Placide stepped forward, or maybe it was Toussaint who stepped back. But in an instant he was covered with shouts of acclaim as Morisset and Vernet wrapped their heavy arms around his shoulders and pulled him into the ranks. Then all the men were touching him, pounding his back, shouting encouragement and praise. It was like it had been when they first crossed the height of Pilboreau, only this reception was fiercer than that one. But for a moment all Placide’s fear was pummeled out of him and he felt nothing but a wild joy.

  At the grand’case of Habitation Thibodet the women and children and all the house were sleeping, except the doctor, who woke at first cock crow, though it was some other sound, he thought, that roused him. He listened for a moment but heard nothing but more of the little cocks calling up and down the coffee terraces and the jungle beyond. A cool breeze shivered the slats of the jalousies. The doctor leaned over and kissed the tendon of Nanon’s neck, just below her ear. Her mouth parted to breathe over her pillow; she sighed and curled a little tighter. He was tempted to remain, but his curiosity was stronger.

  Bare-chested and barefoot, he shuffled out onto the gallery. A crew of charcoal sellers was just turning the corner of the house toward the kitchen in back; they grinned at him, teeth white in their sooty faces, but this was not what he had heard. His bare toes splaying in the dust, he walked down toward the cane mill and found Bazau and Gros-Jean, Tocquet’s oldest retainers, loyal to him since slavery time, strapping pack saddles to a couple of donkeys.

  “S’ak pasé?” the doctor said. What’s happening?

  “N’ap soti,” Bazau said and took the doctor’s hand in a soft loose grip. We’re going.

  As Bazau released the doctor’s hand, Tocquet came out of the cane mill, carrying a canvas duster rolled up under one arm. He gave the doctor a brief nod, then lowered his head to the business of strapping the garment behind the saddle of his horse.

  “They say you are leaving us,” the doctor said.

  “Only to the border, or a little beyond,” Tocquet grunted. “There’s a market for tobacco in Gonaives, with all the people who’ve just come down from Le Cap without any—damn it!” He raised his head and stared at the piece of dry-rotted strap in his right hand.

  Bazau jogged to the mill to find him another. But Tocquet moved away from his horse and walked with the doctor. They strolled to a stop above the lily pool.

  “Oh,” said Tocquet. “It’s she herself who’s sending me away this time.”

  “I have not reproached you,” the doctor said.

  “You have not. But I know your mind.”

  “With what word does she send you now?”

  “No words.” Tocquet shook his head, running the rotten strap from one hand to the other. “Nor any action one could name. It is her manner.”

  “That seems rather a slight cause, and at a time of such uncertainty.”

  “I would have taken her and our daughters to some refuge on the Spanish side,” Tocquet said. “Your family also, certainly. Elise will have none of it. I don’t know why. There will be trouble here, and soon—do you not feel it closing in?”

  “I only think that everything is all unsettled,” the doctor said. “I have no notion how it may resolve.”

  “There was something between us when I returned,” Tocquet muttered.

  “From the North American Republic?”

  “Yes,” said Tocquet. “A barrier, a dam. I thought if I went off for a time, it might give way.”

  “If absence was the cause of it,” the doctor said, “it seems strange to think it would be healed by absence.”

  “Well, she is welcome to go with me!” To
cquet said. “But she will not. Nor will I force her. That is not my way.” Abruptly he turned toward the pack donkeys. “Bazau! Gros-Jean! W met lesé tonbé tout sa! N’ap reté isit jodi-a.” With no sign of surprise the two black men set about undoing the work they’d begun. You can let all that drop! We’ll be staying here today.

  The doctor smiled and tapped the shoulder of the taller man. Never before had he seen Tocquet hesitate, but he was happy all the same that he would not follow through his morning’s plan.

  “I don’t mean to stay in this snare forever, understand,” Tocquet said. “Perhaps you can try some brotherly persuasion. I would see you out of this situation also, Nanon and Isabelle and their children too.”

  “You don’t believe Toussaint will harm us?”

  “With his own hands, no. But the bloodiest work is always done by someone among his subordinates. Listen,” he said and lowered his voice. “Isabelle and Elise believe that they are safe because Toussaint is here. And that was your own theory, if I remember well— but now the French columns are certainly closing on this place, for the same reason.”

  “You know this?”

  “I have no certain information, but it must be so. What else? Suppose Toussaint is hemmed up here, and has to cut a line of retreat. Toussaint likes us well enough, but then we will be hostages, not friends. And if the retreat is too hard pressed, we’ll finish with our throats slit by the side of the road, man, woman, and child alike. You know very well it has happened before.”

  The doctor felt he’d inhaled a shadow. “But Toussaint is negotiating with Leclerc.”

  “No doubt,” said Tocquet. “The old fox!—but what if he’s only playing for time? If you were Toussaint, after all that has passed, would you give yourself up to a French general without a struggle?”

  The doctor looked down at the still surface of the water. There was enough light now that he could see his silhouette by Tocquet’s, quavering among the floating flowers, their buds still sealed.