The Stone that the Builder Refused

by Madison Smartt Bell

  He rode on, forbidding himself to look back, fingering the bullet hole in his hat. But still—it was a triumph to sit where he now sat. He remembered his first glimpse of the white stallion, with Toussaint’s small, dark figure astride him, on the far side of the river at Limbé. And now— Daspir glanced at Guizot to see if he’d grasped the import of their situation. Guizot grinned back at him and even winked. Daspir replaced his hat, at a jaunty angle. Toussaint had come to terms with Leclerc, and now it looked very much as if they were going to bring him in.

  In spite of everything, Placide felt his heart rising as they rode out of Marmelade, the guard almost its full two thousand strong and all their silver helmets gleaming in the rising sun. They held a brisk trot for most of the way, breaking the gait only when the grade up or down was too steep to sustain it. On the level ground on the plateau of Mornet, they broadened their line and swept into a canter, pennants streaming out behind them, then pulled up, none too sharply, before the pickets of the French advance guard there.

  Leclerc was not present to receive them after all. In his place appeared General Fressinet, who made them much courtesy, inviting Toussaint and his officers to lunch in the grand’case of the habitation where he had made his camp, with a contingent of the Tenth Colonial Demibrigade and a smaller force of European soldiers. Placide sat on Toussaint’s right hand, between Isaac and his father, listening to Fressinet explain how the French had made their way across the Spanish side of the island with scarcely a battle to fight. And Fressinet also had dispatches which showed that the peace between England and France had definitely been concluded. Toussaint said little to this news, but nodded and massaged his jaw, as if his old wound pained him there. On the same excuse he ate very little, taking only a glass of water and part of a soft, ripe mango which he’d peeled and cut himself.

  Fressinet embraced Toussaint very warmly when the meal was finished, but when Toussaint returned to the horses, the senior officers clustered around to dissuade him from riding on to Le Cap. Morisset and Gabart, especially, feared that Leclerc’s absence from the rendezvous forbode some treachery, and Gabart had sounded the men of the Tenth and thought that they might turn on the blancs, if given encouragement, and follow Toussaint back to the mountains of Marmelade.

  Toussaint listened to their urgent whispers, still stroking his jaw and gazing past their worried faces, toward a pair of hawks circling the western edge of the plateau. One folded its wings to fall upon some prey—a smaller bird it must have been, which Placide’s eye could not pick out at this distance—and then the two hawks flew away beyond the rim of the plateau, losing themselves in the green of the trees that covered the mountains. Placide shifted his eye to Isaac, who was watching Toussaint anxiously—afraid, Placide realized, that the surrender might be aborted.

  “No,” said Toussaint, when the others had gone silent. “With the treaty between the English and the French, there is nothing to stop more soldiers from coming here, and they will come.” He smiled and wiped the smile away with his hand. “Besides, I have given my word to the Captain-General, and we must all trust to the word he has given to me.”

  So they rode on, descending the winding trail from the height of Mornet. The sun had reached its height by then, and the heat grew stronger as they moved onto the plain, man sweat mingling with the hot smell of the horses. Green fronds were sprouting everywhere from fields that had been burnt, though no one worked them, and some of the gateposts either side of the road were still smoke-stained. Placide and Isaac rode in a pocket formed by Riau and Bienvenu and Guiaou and Guerrier. A change of aspect in Guiaou was Placide’s first signal that something was coming their way from the outskirts of Haut du Cap. A little thread of tension ran around their pocket, though no one spoke; only Isaac seemed unaware of it. When they’d ridden on another quarter-mile, Placide began to see the dust of another party of horsemen on the way out to intercept them. Someone at the fore of their column sounded a trumpet, joined by several conchs as their speed increased.

  Daspir had the chance for a little more preening in the saddle of Bel Argent as they passed along the main street of Haut du Cap. Most of the soldiers of the Sixth Colonial Demibrigade stayed in barracks, though a couple of sentries appeared for a pro forma salute, but the women and children came in numbers almost enough to line the street, with the young girls pointing and giggling as the big white stallion passed, then hiding their embarrassment behind their hands.

  At the edge of the town, Daspir’s concentration tightened, because there was a big dust cloud rolling very quickly toward them down the road, long red pennants streaming above, and dots of silver gleaming within it. A brass horn sounded, then, more unnervingly, several of those squealing conchs. Mornet was still a long way off. Daspir stole a quick glance at Guizot, whose face reflected his own concern. Colonel Robillard faced strictly forward, his handsome features completely impassive.

  Though there was no shock of battle contact, Toussaint’s guard swept over their smaller party, reversing its direction back toward Haut du Cap. In the shifting movement, Daspir felt Bel Argent shuddering between his knees, and he slacked the rein and stroked the horse’s withers. As the stallion settled, Daspir plucked out the bundle of dispatches and displayed them.

  “General Louverture!” he called.

  At that Bel Argent raised his head to whinny, and might have reared, but Daspir was ready and held him in. Toussaint was just a length away, but looking at his captured horse exclusively. When his eyes raised to Daspir, they were hot enough to have burned him out of the saddle. The bundle of dispatches fluttered in Daspir’s hand, ignored. Toussaint, who rode no mean horse himself, turned his mount away and shouldered past. Robillard rode up then to meet him, and Daspir heard the colonel raise his voice.

  “Governor, I am sent by General Christophe to say that he awaits your orders.”

  “I never want to hear that name,” Toussaint rapped out. At the sound of his voice, Bel Argent bunched his legs and tried another buck that Daspir had more trouble containing. His tone was so sharp that Robillard’s immovable expression buckled for a moment, but then Toussaint softened slightly: “I am glad to see you, Colonel Robillard,” he said, “though I have no answer to give you on the subject of your mission.”

  Robillard’s horse fell into step beside Toussaint’s, and the two men continued toward Haut du Cap, talking in a tone too low for Daspir to make out what they said. They seemed to have assumed the head of the whole procession. Daspir looked back and saw a horseman with a red head cloth riding on him. Though it had almost completely healed since La Crête à Pierrot, his shoulder gave a painful throb. Daspir thought his flinch was only mental—was almost completely sure it did not show. And Placide was holding out an empty hand to him.

  “La paix,” Placide said. Peace.

  Daspir put a quick, hard grip on the hand he’d offered, but Placide returned no pressure. This was the style of handclasp he’d lately learned from Guiaou and Guerrier and others like them. Let the Frenchman make of it what he would. In fact, Captain Daspir smiled at him quite warmly.

  Then Isaac rode up and leaned half out of his saddle to give Daspir his full embrace. Placide watched the white hands settle either side of his brother’s spine. Bel Argent’s dark eye rolled toward him. That his father should see an enemy astride his favorite horse and not swipe his head off with his long sword—it was then Placide had realized the surrender was truly inevitable.

  He pulled the red cloth from his head and folded it in a careful triangle and put it into his pocket for some other day—the future that Toussaint might still secretly be planning. The French tricolor he’d snatched from Daspir’s hands at Gonaives still rode on its shortened stave in the holster by his boot, and beside the holster hung the silver helmet of the guard. Since Guiaou had given it to him, Placide had preferred the headcloth in every fight, for protection and for inspiration too. He would not look at Guiaou now, but loosened and raised the helmet and buried his whole head inside.


  As they returned through Haut du Cap, the whole of the Sixth, with Clairvaux himself, turned out to salute them with cheers and musket shots and hats tossed in the air. Half an hour later, when they reached the gate of Le Cap itself, the same military honors were rendered them. There were even cannons firing salutes from a couple of the ships out in the harbor, quite as though Toussaint were entering in triumph.

  In the second rank of the riders, Daspir could not help but feel a little disregarded. He caught Guizot’s eye in hope of encouragement, but Guizot seemed to have suffered a similar drop in his own spirits. Only when he saw Paltre among the onlookers crowding the gateway did Daspir feel moved to some display of bravado.

  “You see, we have brought him in at the last!” Rag-headed Negro . . . In fact, the yellow madras binding Toussaint’s head was what led them through the gate. Daspir would have liked to flourish his sword, but settled for a big sweep of his hat. Paltre looked more flabbergasted than impressed. He stood with his mouth open, massaging the bridge of his twice-broken nose. Then, as if struck by some other thought, he twisted and ducked away through the thickening crowd.

  Daspir shot another glance at Guizot, who did no more than shrug. Well, Paltre had been queer in recent days, ever since his quarrel with the doctor. Let it pass. And this entry was a triumph, never mind whose. Daspir pressed Bel Argent with his knees and urged him forward through the cheering crowd, moving just behind the head of the column, toward the center of town.

  Leclerc had lunched aboard ship with the Vice-Admiral Magon; it was cooler there, and the fresh harbor breeze relieved the fevers that still plagued him. Also, this situation gave him respite from Pauline’s plaintive interruptions. She was ever more discontent with the noise and dust of Le Cap under reconstruction and wished to return, if not to France, again to La Tortue (with of course a whole covey of lovers from the officer corps) or to Port-au-Prince, where she’d discovered a large plantation to her liking. And with Magon there was much to discuss: the dubious quality and insufficient quantity of supplies and reinforcement trickling out of France, the quite unreasonable demands of the Minister of Marine that several key vessels of Leclerc’s fleet be returned to the home port . . .

  They had moved to the afterdeck, for their digestion and discussion, when the shots began exploding around the lower gate of the town. Once the cannons began to bark from the ships deeper in the harbor, Leclerc felt a stirring of alarm; the cannonade was in the style of a salute, but who was being so honored?

  Then his eye fell on a rowboat pulling rapidly to their ship from the shore, though it went against the tide. An officer stood precariously in the bow, gesticulating; when the boat came astern, Leclerc recognized Captain Paltre. He was shouting with such fervor that spittle flew out of his mouth to mingle with the sea foam, but the wind carried most of his words away.

  “What?” said Leclerc, cupping his ear as he leaned over the rail, and now he made out the phrase, Toussaint has come. At once he swung his legs over the rail and scrambled down a knotted rope, rocking the boat so deeply that Paltre had to crouch and clutch the gunwales to stop from being catapulted into the water. Captain Cyprien came clambering down after him.

  “Toussaint has come,” Paltre repeated.

  “To make his submission,” Leclerc said, with much more confidence than he felt. Only that morning he had suddenly decided that the rendezvous at Mornet was not secure enough for his liking and that he would send instead another emissary—Daspir, whom he would not object to losing.

  “Yes, so they claim.” Paltre turned and pointed. “But he has come with two thousand horsemen, and the people are cheering him like a conqueror wherever he goes.”

  “You do well to tell me.” Leclerc swallowed, and shouted up an order to Magon—that he should make the ships ready for an assault on the town if it were needed. Then he gestured to the oarsmen that they must return to the shore with all possible speed.

  In the early morning Doctor Hébert had passed by Morne Calvaire to look in upon his sister, who lay still pale and feeble on her bed of boughs, though she did not look so moribund as before. Her bleeding had slowed, though not entirely stopped, the women told him. She had no strength and did not speak to him. How it would go with her was most uncertain, the doctor thought. Sophie had come with him on the morning visit, with Paul—they were both frequent visitors to the lakou anyway, but the infant Mireille had been kept away by Isabelle. Afterward the doctor had sent Sophie and Paul back to the Cigny house. Though Sophie had a whim to try her hand at nursing in the hospital, the doctor thought Elise would not have liked the risk, and besides, there was some party of pleasure being organized for the children with Dermide Leclerc and Saint-Jean Louverture.

  Worry for Elise kept him from settling to any concentrated work. Though at first he’d been relieved by Tocquet’s absence, now he very much wished he’d return. Before she—he wouldn’t think that. But often he rose from whatever task and drifted to the hospital gate, looking through the ironwork as if he expected some arrival.

  Midafternoon there was a tumult in the lower part of the town, punctured by salvoes of gunfire too orderly to be that of battle. Some parade exercise most likely, but what? At last he saw Captain Cyprien coming up toward the gate, his figure distorted by the shimmer of the afternoon heat.

  “Have you any men fit enough to bear arms?”

  “Very few,” said the doctor, startled.

  “Turn them out, whoever you have—the Captain-General’s order.” Cyprien looked over his shoulder. “Look to your own weapons too—it is a general muster—army, militia, everyone.”

  “Are we under attack?” The doctor unchained the gate for Cyprien to come in, and went to get his pistols from a bag that hung on a stob of a tree above his hammock.

  “Toussaint has arrived,” said Cyprien. “To surrender—they say—but he has brought a great many men with him for that purpose, and they seem to have invested the Government House.”

  The doctor canvassed the pick of his malaria and dysentery cases, and with this escort of unfortunate conscripts they went staggering through the blazing heat across Rue Espagnole. A stronger contingent of troops was filing down from the barracks higher on the hill. All halted below the gate of the Government, where the doctor found Tocquet and Arnaud waiting by the gate along with Major Maillart.

  “Well met,” said Tocquet. He pulled the doctor to him and kissed his cheeks. “We have not returned an hour from La Tortue, and what do we find? It looks like a double encirclement.”

  The doctor peered through the bars of the gate. What he saw made Tocquet’s remark seem quite reasonable. Hundreds of Toussaint’s guardsmen stood in ranks in the courtyard, holding their sabers bare. They stood in pairs by the smoke-stained trunk of every palm that lined the avenue and lined the stairway that rose to the main entrance of the building. The gathering French troops, meanwhile, were all without, and had filled every street on the square surrounding the Government compound.

  “And Leclerc?” said the doctor.

  “He has already gone in,” Arnaud said.

  “And let us follow,” Tocquet said, with a glance at Maillart, who pushed the gate inward. No one opposed them. Cyprien followed them through, though he pushed the gate back against other French soldiers who might also have come in. They walked slowly up the avenue of palms. With every step the pistol butts scraped awkwardly under the doctor’s loose shirt, and the stony eyes of Toussaint’s guardsmen inclined him to hold his breath. The brilliant sunlight reflected on the edges of those naked blades. It was quiet, too quiet—even the crows in the high palm crowns had ceased all palaver. But on the steps the doctor recognized Riau and Guiaou, and they smiled and took his hands briefly when he offered them.

  The Government building had been much restored, though it still smelled faintly of soot and smoke. But in the grand salon a number of attendants were laying long tables for a meal, and there the stronger smell was of spiced beef. They went on down the corridor to
a doorway to the Governor’s cabinet, where others had clustered. The hall was crowded but by standing tiptoe the doctor could see Leclerc’s small form, puffed as full as a rooster’s but overshadowed by the Generals Hardy and Debelle on either side of him. Leclerc inclined his blond head to the oath of loyalty to France that Toussaint was reciting to him in a low but quite clear tone.

  “He’s actually submitting,” Tocquet breathed in the doctor’s ear. “It astonishes me.”

  “Why?” the doctor whispered, without turning his head.

  “He was winning,” Tocquet said, then fell silent.

  When Toussaint had finished his oration, Leclerc raised his voice to address him:

  “General, one can only praise and admire when one has seen how well you have borne the burden of the government of Saint Domingue. Your presence in this city is proof of your magnanimity and your good faith. Our reconciliation will make this island, of which you have been the restorer, flower again, and will consolidate the new institutions which are the fundamental basis for the liberty and happiness of all.”

  Toussaint passed a hand over his mouth and replied, “Since the people of Saint Domingue had just triumphed in a foreign war—both for France and for themselves—they did not think that they would ever have to resist the protective power of France. If some notification had preceded you in this island, the cannons would only have fired to honor the envoy of a great power, and you would only have been illuminated, upon your arrival, by fires of celebration and joy.”

  Tocquet laughed out loud at that remark, and several people in the hallway turned to stare at him, though he was unabashed. Toussaint went on in this vein for about five minutes, and Leclerc’s response, though cordial, was a little tight-lipped: “Let us not cling to any memory of the past,” he said; “everything will be repaired; let us rather rejoice, General, in our union.”