The Stone that the Builder Refused

by Madison Smartt Bell

  “I have come to make the service that we spoke of,” I said to him.

  Quamba did not move. “You don’t give yourself much time,” he said.

  “No,” I said. “But now the spirit will not let me rest.”

  Then Quamba opened his arms and smiled. “Ba’m main’ou,” he said. Give me your hand.

  I took the hand that he held out and held it lightly as he held mine.

  “Well,” Quamba said, as he let it go. “We can begin.”

  Before Riau was stolen out of Guinée, I served the spirits of my family there, but I was only a small boy then, and afterward I remembered almost nothing of that service. At Bréda we were all made to follow the cross of Jesus, and even Toussaint—Toussaint most of all—pretended to serve Jesus only. After I ran away from Bréda, in those first days of my marronage, it was Achille, the hûngan among our band, who taught Riau to serve the lwa. In the years between that time and this one, I had gained some konesans, a knowledge of the sacred things. Since Merbillay had lived here at Thibodet, I had learned many things from Quamba, and the spirits gave me much through Quamba’s hands. Quamba tore the leaves of Ayizan to hide my face and made the bath to clean my body and made the bed of mombin leaves for me to lie on. Quamba saw my gros bon ange go into the govi, and saw that govi touched by fire. From all this Riau rose up hûnsi-canzo, with Ogûn Ferraille the master of his head. But to take the asson there was more.

  Again I lay on a bed of leaves, in the shadow of the kay mystè, till I no longer knew the rising or the setting of the sun. How many days it was I did not know for certain, but maybe it was less than all the nine, because with the blancs bringing war all over the country there were not so many days to spend. What happened through those days I will not tell. When it was finished, Quamba put the asson in my hand. I closed my fingers on its neck, and heard the bead strings clashing on the body of the gourd, but it was not my hand or Quamba’s that moved so. It was the lwa that moved through me.

  Then I would have gone back to Merbillay’s case, to rest a little while beside her living flesh. But by the time Quamba raised me up, Guiaou had come, and Toussaint himself was not far off. Toussaint had returned to Ennery, and chased away the few blanc soldiers who had stayed there, and now he waited on the hill of Descahaux.

  Now there was really not much time. We did not make a great assembly. Quamba and Riau prepared alone. There were no drummers and no dancing, but at dusk, after he had stretched a cloth from the door of the kay mystè toward the cross of Baron, Quamba sounded the drum himself, lightly, steadily, till Papa Loco came to him. With the lwa there came also some people in their bodies, Merbillay, Caco, Jean-Pic, Zabeth, Michau, and Guiaou himself. All these sat quietly on the one side of the cloth with Riau, their backs toward the hill of Descahaux. As we waited for it to begin, it seemed to me that Toussaint’s eye was on us too, or that his spirit had let him know what we were doing. But that thought did not frighten me.

  Quamba held the asson, with Loco on the other side of the cloth where we could not see him. He did so because, he told me, since it was Riau who had the questions, it was better for Quamba to bring the dead from beneath the waters this time.

  Then we heard water gurgling from one jar to another, and a sound like the voice of a drowning man. But it was not Moyse who spoke. Bouquart was the first to come, and Zabeth was the first to speak to him.

  “Who killed you, Bouquart?” Zabeth’s voice was choked and shaking. “Who was it brought your death to you?”

  Now, I knew the answer to that question, and Zabeth too—there was no mystery. After Moyse’s rising was put down, Toussaint told Bouquart to step from the line and shoot himself, and he did so, and this Zabeth had seen with her own eyes, and Riau had seen it too, but maybe her grief was no sharper than mine. Bouquart was father of Zabeth’s Bibiane. But it was I, Riau, who cut the iron from Bouquart’s legs when we came out of Bahoruco together here to Thibodet, and his freedom was the work of my own hands.

  Sé blan yo ki té touyé moin, Bouquart’s voice croaked. It was the whites who killed me.

  Zabeth wept. Michau held her head against his chest, till all his shirt was wet with her tears. Merbillay and Guiaou stroked the fingers down her back, and Caco held her hand. Bouquart’s answer seemed strange to me. Yet I saw how this answer freed Zabeth from her hatred of Toussaint. Now she could give her hatred to the blancs, who had no faces. And the sense was this—it was the blanc slavemasters who stood behind Toussaint and moved his hands to make those actions. That was the reason Moyse made the rising at that time.

  Then Bouquart went into the govi, and his voice stopped. Now it was dark, and the stars were coming, and I, Riau, felt the whirl in my head I knew through the days I had spent lying on the leaves with my face turned up to the emptying sky. But I held on to my own head now, till everything came steady. Moyse was the next to come. I could not mistake his voice, though his throat was full of water.

  “Ki moun ki té touyé w, Moyse?” I said, and heard the choking in the sounds I made. Moyse, who killed you? Riau, Riau, might be his answer. Because although it was Toussaint who gave the order that Moyse be shot, Riau’s hands had worked in that affair. Riau’s voice loosed Guiaou to betray Moyse’s rising to Toussaint. If Moyse accused me, he would be just, though I never let myself know it before now.

  Moin-même, said Moyse. I killed myself. Toussaint gave me time to run away, but I would not go. And when I came before the firing squad, it was I myself who told the men to fire.

  I thought of it. These things were true. I had been there myself at Port-de-Paix, and heard Moyse’s voice give the order to the men who shot him. But I did not think that was the whole truth of his death, and Moyse had cursed Toussaint, also, before he died.

  A different spirit is with Toussaint now, Moyse said, although I had not asked the question. I did not quite know how to ask it. But Moyse was ready with his answer just the same. You have seen how hard Toussaint has turned against the blancs, he said. And these soldiers in the ships have surely come to bring back slavery, no matter what they say. If you would keep your freedom, follow Toussaint.

  Moyse went into his govi then, and I knew that my own face was all wet with tears, though I had never felt them begin. I was shivering too, like the leaves of the high palms that shivered in the wind above the hûnfor,but after a little time it stopped.

  There were more dead who stood behind Moyse, a great many more. Quamba had not called them but still they came. Most of them were men who’d died in Moyse’s last rising. They kept on coming for a long time, and in the end Quamba did not have jars enough to hold them.

  My horse was well rested after all that time I spent lying in the hûnfor.Caco had kept him fed and watered, and brushed his coat to a red gleam. Caco had ridden him a little too, though he did not think I knew it, and he had not ridden him too far or too hard.

  The morning after that night when Moyse spoke, I rode to Descahaux. There was some chance that Toussaint might order me shot, I was thinking, while my horse climbed up the path. Twice before I had run away from Toussaint’s army, and shooting was the punishment for that. It was Moyse who received me back the second time when I returned, and as I went riding to Descahaux, I heard an echo of his voice in my head. Toussaint would not shoot a good officer now, said that drowned voice of Moyse, when there was war with so many blancs, and so many of his men were getting killed in battle.

  Also I had the letter of Chancy to give Toussaint. As I had hoped, this letter told how Riau had helped Chancy to get out of his cachot where he was waiting to be shot in Port-au-Prince. And beyond that I thought it was not likely Toussaint could know that Riau had been the one to bring Lamour Dérance and Lafortune to the side of the French blanc soldiers, to attack that column of the Eighth and frighten Dessalines away. Toussaint might only believe that I had been held by the blancs there in Port-au-Prince, the same way that Chancy was held.

  Toussaint asked me many questions after I had read this letter, and
I answered him—that I had not been able to take his message to Laplume in time, before Laplume had sold himself to the blancs after all. I told him how I came to Dessalines before Saint Marc was burned. I told him a little of the fighting I had seen at Port-au-Prince, and how the cannons of the ships blew up the forts. I told him how Major Maillart seemed to fall in with the blancs who had just come, since after all he was himself a French blanc soldier. Then Toussaint asked me more questions about the French blancs I had seen, the quality of their officers and the number of their men. Each one of these questions I answered truly, and any lies I gave to him were hidden underneath the things I did not say.

  All this talk did not last so very long, because Toussaint was hurrying to go to Marmelade. When the talk was done, he gave me his long jagged smile and hid it quickly with his hand. Then he told me he would name me to his honor guard. Guiaou was standing by him all this time, and at Toussaint’s word Guiaou stepped forward to give Riau a guard’s uniform, with the silver helmet. These things not long ago belonged to a man who had been killed at Ravine à Couleuvre, but what his name was I never knew. There was a hole in the front of the coat and a bigger hole at the back. The cloth had been washed and scrubbed so only a few brown spots remained, but the holes had not yet been mended.

  I bowed to Toussaint to show the honor that I felt. In Toussaint’s guard, Riau would keep his rank of Captain.

  Then I took the coat back down to Thibodet. Merbillay smiled as she sewed up the holes, because now both her men belonged to Toussaint’s guard, and that to her was a great thing. It did not take her long to finish and it was not yet noon when I was ready to go and join Toussaint. All the children looked at me round-eyed when I set the silver helmet on my head. I picked up each one of them to kiss, even Caco, though Caco had grown heavy to lift. Maybe if I saw him again, I could not lift him.

  Jean-Pic met me at the gate of Thibodet, and he smiled very wide in his beard when he saw my honor guard uniform and helmet. We rode together to join Toussaint. His men were already on the road, but there were not so many. From Guiaou and Guerrier I learned that he had left most of his guard, especially the horsemen under Monpoint and Morisset, to protect the fort at La Crête à Pierrot. He had still some companies of the guard footsoldiers, and some companies of the Fourth commanded by Gabart, but it did not seem a lot of men to fight these French blanc soldiers. I remembered how they had gone over the wall of the fort of Léogane like ants and how they were not stopped any more than ants by how many of them were crushed. But we did not meet so many on the road to Marmelade, and those we did meet ran away soon. They looked surprised and frightened to see us come, as if they had not expected us at all.

  So Toussaint took Marmelade without much fighting, and made his headquarters there as he had been used to do for a long time. That night to Marmelade there came a letter from Dessalines that told how he had fought a battle with Rochambeau in the mountains of Grand Cahos and that there was a lot of fighting around the fort of La Crête à Pierrot. So maybe the French blanc soldiers had all gone south, or most of them. But that same night we learned that there were more blanc soldiers at Plaisance and that probably we would have a fight with them next day.

  Before the sun came up next morning, Toussaint sent men out to take the next fort on the road to Plaisance, which stood on a hill of Habitation Bidourete. There were two companies under Gabart and another two under Lafontaine, and I, Riau, went with them, though most of the guard stayed back, under command of Pourcely, because Toussaint wanted to keep them fresh for fighting later in the day. There were not many blanc soldiers in that fort, though they were stubborn, and by sunrise we had killed many and driven off the rest. More soldiers came to try to help them, but still there were not too many, and we killed some and drove away the others. But by the time Toussaint had come up with Pourcely and the rest of our men, news had come that the blanc general Desfourneaux was on his way from Plaisance, leading fifteen hundred men.

  Then Toussaint divided the men he had in two. Half went with Toussaint and Gabart in a column to the right, from Habitation Bidourete toward Habitation Laforestie. These were all men of the Fourth that they led. The others, the men of the honor guard, were sent to the left, led by Pourcely. But Toussaint sent Riau ahead of them all, up onto the mountain above Plaisance, to look for Sylla, who was supposed to be fighting the blancs somewhere in those hills, and try to bring his men to our battle.

  I got Toussaint’s leave to take Jean-Pic with me, and we rode very fast together across the fields of Habitation Bidourete and Habitation Laforestie, cutting through gaps in the hedges or jumping the hedges when there were no gaps. Toussaint had sent Pourcely by the back roads to come upon Desfourneaux from behind. But Jean-Pic and Riau were coming in front of the French blanc soldiers. When we crossed Habitation Laforestie, we began to hear their drums as they came on, though they were not yet in sight of us.

  So we came safely as far as the path that climbed the eastern wall of the mountain. It was steep, and we needed to let our horses go slowly at first, because they were already hot from the gallop across the fields. If we stopped we could look down and see the blanc soldiers moving quickly across the low ground to the rattling of their drums. Beyond them was the Plaisance river valley like a wide deep bowl, with the green of trees and blue of the mountain mist wrapped around each other like veins in stone. Some of those blanc soldiers saw us too. There were puffs of musket smoke from their column, and a moment later the sound of their shots. But we were too high on the mountain for their muskets to reach us.

  Soon we met watchmen of Sylla on the mountain, and they were in a big hurry to get us off the trail. More blancs were coming that way, they said, though we could not yet see them. Our horses did not want to leave the trail, and Jean-Pic had to get down and drag his along by the reins, with one of Sylla’s men following and pushing it from behind. But I stayed mounted, leaning forward, my weight all the way forward and low and my face pushed tight into the horse’s mane. I had learned this way of riding from Toussaint, and though my horse’s hooves slipped in the shale, the horse kept climbing, till finally we came into a flatter place in a notch of the mountain, where there was a stand of old acajou.

  Sylla was waiting, between those old trees, but he did not have many of his men with him there. He had sent for them when he saw what was going to happen in the valley, but they were far off, on the other side of the mountain, where they could ambush supply trains on the road between Limbé and Gonaives. Until more men came there was nothing we could do but watch what happened from where we were. Sylla had a long-seeing glass, which he passed around among us, but I could see well enough without the glass, and voices carried a long way in those hills.

  The shooting had already started by the time we got our horses hidden in the acajou. The blanc general Desfourneaux had a lot more regular soldiers than Toussaint did, though it was hard to know just how many men of the hoe had joined Toussaint with their hidden muskets, on the way from Ennery and Marmelade. Toussaint was much outnumbered, that was plain, and even so he had divided his men in half.

  Yet when the fighting started on the right, Toussaint and Gabart broke the French advance and drove them back. Those French blanc soldiers had to retreat, but they kept tight in their lines and squares. Even when Toussaint sent a charge of horsemen on them, he could not break them up. These were tough soldiers. But if Pourcely’s men came upon them from behind as they were falling back, I saw they would be in a bad place—Toussaint might wipe them all out then, and that was the way he had planned it.

  I was watching, with my heart swollen high in my throat, to see the men Pourcely was leading come out of the woods on the left. But Pourcely was a man of Jean Rabel, on the northwest coast, and he did not know his way very well through the Plaisance valley or these mountains. He got all his men lost in the bush somehow, and that is why they never came where they were meant to be. Instead, Desfourneaux’s blanc soldiers began to work their way around to Toussaint’s left
, because Pourcely was not there to stop them, and soon those blanc soldiers began to get up on the trail that Jean-Pic and I had just ridden across a little while before.

  Then Toussaint must have understood what was happening, because he took his horsemen and a lot of Gabart’s foot soldiers across to the left. We could see well enough it was Toussaint, because of the one red feather set high above the white feathers in his hat, though he was riding a different horse today, not Bel Argent. The French blanc soldiers were getting ready to meet him on the trail, not far below where we were watching from the grove of acajou. There were black soldiers in the front of their line, and they were near enough for me to see that they wore uniforms of the Ninth Demibrigade, the soldiers from Port-de-Paix.

  That meant that Maurepas must have surrendered, or been killed or captured by the blancs. That would be very bad news for Toussaint, because he had set a lot of his hopes on joining with Maurepas. But I did not have much time to think about this much before Toussaint himself came riding around a bend of the trail below.

  Now I did take the glass from Sylla’s hand, to see if Maurepas was among the men of the Ninth who were with the blancs now, but if he was I did not see him. It looked like the man leading the Ninth was Lubin Golart, who had been commander of the Fourth Battalion of the Ninth for a long time. Golart had always been against Toussaint, since the war against Rigaud or even before. He was leading his old battalion now at the head of the French blanc soldiers, but there were a lot more men of the Ninth with him now than just that one battalion.

  Toussaint came around the bend of the road with a lot of his horsemen around him, but when he saw the uniforms of the black soldiers, he rode on to meet them all alone. Golart gave the order to fire, but the men of the Ninth did not obey, not even the men of the Fourth Battalion. Though Toussaint rode within twenty-five paces of the line, those soldiers did not fire. Golart screamed at them till foam from his mouth ran down his chin. Golart was crazy as a mad dog then. He had tried to kill Toussaint in a hundred different ways before, and now Toussaint was so close his men could almost touch him with their musket barrels and still they did not fire. I wondered why Golart did not shoot his own gun at Toussaint, but at that moment Toussaint’s spirit was too strong for him.