It was dusk when finally they came to Habitation Georges, and Brunet’s sentries were seething with impatience.
“My Christ,” one of them hissed. “Where have you been?”
“No use telling it,” Maillart sighed, squinting at the house. “Is he here?”
“He has been here for some time.” The sentry looked over his shoulder. “He’s in the house—but he’s impatient. He brought more guards than we expected—take your positions quickly, will you?”
Maillart nodded and looked back the way they had come. The doctor had not yet materialized—he was trailing the others by a couple of hundred yards, to keep his blood stench away from the horses. Maillart gave a few quick orders, and as his men dispersed to their duties he walked up toward the grand’case with Guizot and Daspir and Aloyse, toward a couple of Toussaint’s guards who were talking quietly below a tall hedge that covered them from the house. Young Captain Ferrari had already gone inside, with a couple of Brunet’s people.
As Maillart drew near enough to pick out the faces of Toussaint’s men, he let out a quick breath of dismay.
“What is it?” Daspir said, bumping his shoulder.
“Nothing,” Maillart whispered. “Only—that one with the scars is a fanatic. We’ll take Toussaint over his dead body.” But it was Riau whose presence really troubled him—if only Riau, above all, had not been there.
Half a mile north of Morne Saint Juste, Placide pulled up his horse. César, one of his father’s men who had been riding with him, reined up too and looked at him. Placide turned his face across the wind that blew in steadily from the coast. The low plain was empty except for scrubs of raket and baroron and the blowing white dust. The shaly white eminence of Morne Saint Juste was the only feature west of the road, round and white as a church dome. On the summit Placide could just make out the faces of a few people who were standing there; their bodies were mostly indistinguishable because they were all dressed in white. The wind was blowing at their backs. In spite of the distance he felt that possibly they saw him too.
“Come on,” he said and turned his horse. A long way south down the road, below Morne Saint Juste, bloomed a cloud of dust that concealed other riders.
“Koté n’alé?” César said. Where are we going? But he didn’t seem surprised or troubled when Placide did not answer.
They held a trot going up the hill down which they had just come. A file of market women passed them, going down to Gonaives, and one of them looked up, smiling, and returned her head to the way before her. Placide felt how the eggshell closed around him. It still possessed the harmony he’d felt that morning, but it was no longer working in his favor. When the ground leveled they rode in a smooth canter toward the crossroads of Ennery. The red mouchwa têt, folded in Placide’s shirt pocket, felt warm over his heart, and he thought of stopping to tie it on his head, but then thought better of that, or worse.
A strange silence covered the mango sellers at the Ennery kalfou, though the marchandes had been jovial when they passed that way an hour before. A French cavalry squadron was galloping down the road ahead, and now foot soldiers swarmed up from the river, overrunning the women with their baskets full of mangoes. Placide wheeled, to see that the other squadron, the one they’d seen below Morne Saint Juste, was coming up to cut off that retreat.
César produced an enormous dragoon pistol, but Placide checked him with a hand on his arm.
“Don’t,” he said. “There’s no hope in it.” And César seemed to accept what he had said. Mutely he shifted his hand from the grip to the barrel, ready to give up the gun to the approaching blancs. Placide supposed he would do the same with his own weapons.
The moment was whole, though inauspicious. We’ll see each other, Toussaint had said, if God wills. But apparently God willed otherwise.
A couple of middle-sized boys trotted alongside the doctor’s mule as he rode up the drive of Habitation Georges, smiling appreciatively at the butchered goat. One of them reached out shyly to touch a dangling hoof. It would be agreeable, the doctor thought, to cut off a shoulder for their mothers’ cookpots. But if he started on that course he wouldn’t have a scrap of meat to offer back at Thibodet.
He dismounted a good distance from the others’ horses and pegged the mule on a long tether so it could graze. The goat was still strapped behind the saddle and the rifle tilted crazily before it. In the thickening dusk he could just make out the shadowy figures of Maillart’s men as they spread along the pathways that spiraled in back of the house and into the fields, encountering others of Brunet’s corps, and also some of Toussaint’s guards, he now realized. It was peculiarly quiet, the air damp and heavy, as before rain. Though he could see the direction of movement of the clouds in the dark, the stars above him were closing off one by one. On an impulse he checked the pistols on his belt, and looked back once to where his mule grazed calmly, secure on its tether.
As he turned forward, he recognized the group beneath the hedge: his friends, Maillart and Guiaou and Riau, with Daspir and Guizot. His vision rushed out from him to the distant point where these men stood, as it had done that afternoon when he picked the goat off the crag. Though he had never known why this gift was his, to see a target at any distance was the same as touching it with a bullet from his gun.
When he reached the little group below the hedge, one of his pistols had climbed into his hand, and he knew the others most certainly were aware of it, though none of them looked at it directly, and no one spoke. The sound of thunder shuddered over the mountain east of the grand’case. Now the doctor knew why Maillart had been so reluctant for him to come here; he saw it as clearly as the place behind the shoulder of the goat where he had known his rifle would surely send its bullet. But there was no action he would take. He could not choose between Maillart or Riau or any of the other men who stood before him. The pistol dropped from his slackening hand and discharged as it hit the ground, the bullet digging a furrow in the turf.
Guizot barked his surprise and skipped aside, though the shot had not come near him. The doctor turned away from the group before anyone else could react or speak to him. He walked in a hasty, stumbling stride, passing the mule and turning toward the low ground where brush and small trees sprouted from a branching ditch. A little stream ran through it, and the doctor crouched on the bank, pulling his knees to his chin and wrapping his hands around his head, thinking: It could have all been different. It should have all been different, but it wasn’t going to be.
Toussaint turned his head toward the open window through which they’d heard the shot.
“What was that?” he said, though his tone barely made it a question.
“The thunder,” Brunet said with an uneasy smile. The two of them were alone in a pleasant rectangular room with generous windows on three sides, though now the glass had darkened as the rain settled in with the night. The table between them was spread with maps and lists of the disposition of French troops in the region, but little progress had been made on the matter at hand. Since Toussaint’s arrival, Brunet had filled most of the time by pressing him to stay the night and wondering why he had not brought his wife and sons with him and professing to be awaiting another officer who would come with more current information about the quartering of the troops.
“A gunshot.” Toussaint turned his head and touched the knot of his yellow headcloth with a fingertip. “A pistol, I would say.”
“Surely not. Look, there is the rain.” Brunet raised his chin. Beyond the window the first raindrops were splattering onto the hedge that enclosed the house.
“But pardon me,” Brunet said. “I will investigate.”
Toussaint could discern the faintest tremor in the blanc general’s fingers as he rose. Brunet bowed out of the room and drew the door carefully shut behind him. The door latch clicked. Beyond was the sound of whispering. Toussaint got up and walked slowly along the three walls of windows, cocking up the hilt of his sword so that the scabbard would not drag the floor. The w
indows were slick with rain, and several of them were ajar, so that rain blew in on the east side of the room to dampen the carpet, but Toussaint did not trouble to close them. The lamp on the table behind him returned his reflection, his face fractured and multiplied across the glossy black panes. The rainfall muffled the quiet movements of men outside, shuffling invisibly beyond the hedge. Toussaint returned to his seat, his long sword twitching behind him like the tail of a stalking cat.
When he had settled in his chair, General Brunet entered and stood with one hand on the doorknob behind him.
“It is nothing,” he said. “A misfire—the soldier has been reprimanded. But pardon me only a moment more. The man is just now coming with our information.”
Again the door latch clicked, and Toussaint relaxed, flattening his hands on the tabletop. He let his eyes sink almost shut and listened to the sound of scuffling feet outside, half covered by the growing roar of rain.
Though he had been warned and in any case knew what was likely to happen, Daspir was quite unprepared when, just as the first raindrops scattered over them, Maillart flung himself on Riau and carried him bodily to the ground. Maillart was much the larger of the two, and he covered Riau so entirely that it was not clear whether he meant to attack or somehow to shield him. Guizot looked frozen in his tracks, and even the veteran Aloyse was taken unaware, wiping rain from the barrel of his musket with a worn-out sock. Guiaou moved first, his coutelas rising to strike at Maillart’s back, but Daspir, with a strength and speed he didn’t know he possessed, swung his saber with a force that made a fresh tear in his injured shoulder and sent Guiaou’s severed head tumbling to a stop against the hedge. Guizot and Aloyse stared open-mouthed as the headless body took two steps forward, past the white man and the black one entwined on the muddy ground, and then as though its intention had changed, stabbed the coutelas deep into the earth as it collapsed.
Someone hissed from the next corner of the hedge: “Is it done?” And Daspir heard his own voice answer, “Yes, we are all secure.”
This other man gestured him urgently toward the house. Daspir had unconsciously been stripping blood from his blade with his fingers; now when he saw his bloody hand he held out the palm for the rain to cleanse it. Guizot nudged him, and Daspir began to walk toward the house, with Guizot a pace behind. He nudged him once more when they reached the steps, and Daspir remembered to return the saber to its sheath.
Riau only struggled a moment when Maillart flattened him to the ground, for Maillart pressed his lips to his ear as if he would kiss it and hissed, “Lie still, if you want to live. Lie still.” Then Riau went completely limp, pressed down into the damp earth by Maillart’s weight and so completely covered that no one could reach him.
When Daspir and Guizot had gone, Riau began to speak in a low voice, almost indistinguishable in the rain. “Tell me, my captain.” He had the rank wrong, and yet it was right. Maillart had been Riau’s captain at the start; that had been their first relation.
“My captain, you mean to betray us all to slavery.”
Maillart turned his face to the side and found himself looking at Guiaou’s head, upright on its stump against the hedge, the eyes still open and holding the false gleam of the rain. Nearby were the toes of Aloyse’s boots, and Maillart felt the weight of the sergeant’s unhappiness settling on him like shame, but Aloyse was soldier to the bone; he would not deviate from orders.
“Captain, you don’t look at me,” Riau still whispered. “You don’t answer, my captain. That is because you do not want to lie.”
Rainwater poured from Guiaou’s open eyes, filled the deep furrows of his scarred face, and carried the blood of his death into the ground. Maillart was choking uncontrollably, spilling fat salty tears into the cup of Riau’s collarbone, so bitter to him was the sum of his own actions. He did not remember any time when he had wept before, though he supposed he must have done so when a child. Riau wriggled to disengage one arm and laid it over Maillart’s back. Aloyse’s feet shifted as he trained his musket, but it was clear enough that Riau only meant to hold Maillart a little closer to him.
“So?” Brunet whispered when Daspir and Guizot entered the hall. The general’s face was pale and speckled with cold sweat.
“His guards are in our hands,” said Daspir, as that seemed to be the reply expected.
“It’s well it was done quietly,” Brunet said. A dozen more officers were with Ferrari in the foyer, and the salon opposite was full of bristling grenadiers.
“Let us get on with it,” Brunet said. But it was clear that the general himself did not mean to enter the room where Toussaint waited. And so for that moment there was no leader. Daspir saw in a flash that he and Guizot might very well take command in this vacuum, and make the capture they had wagered to make. But he no longer desired the prize, and he saw from a glance at Guizot’s face that Guizot didn’t either.
In the end it was Ferrari who took them through the door. Since Paltre’s death, Ferrari had completed the quartet of captains. He was a more agreeable fellow than Paltre, though because they had shared less, the other three did not feel as close to him. And Cyprien was absent, off on some other mission; Daspir felt how queer it was to be distracted by that thought now, as they all pressed into the room where the little black general was waiting.
At first Toussaint seemed completely unaware of them, so deep was his stillness behind the table, but in the next moment he was on his feet, the table overturned between him and the officers, and Toussaint had put his back into a corner where he could not be reached from either window, where any man moving toward him would tangle with the table legs. His sword was half out of the sheath, and his hip was cocked to complete the draw.
“General,” said Ferrari. His voice was careful, but warm at the same time; Daspir thought it was just the right note to have struck.
“We don’t intend any attempt on your days,” Ferrari said. “But you must know that the house is surrounded, and all your men have been disarmed.”
Toussaint made no reply to that. The grenadiers were jostling in behind Daspir, but they were pressing for a look, not to attack. The invisible half-circle between Toussaint and the soldiers remained inviolate, and Daspir knew he did not have the will to break the barrier, and he doubted if anyone else among them did. Then Toussaint settled on his heels, and sheathed his sword.
Dessounen: Fort de Joux, France
April 1803
The flagstones on the floor were frozen. Each step fired a bolt of cold from the arch of Toussaint’s foot to the top of his head. He crept to the hearth, curling his shoulders around the pain of his heartbeat and his ragged breath. His left arm was a dead weight in its sling. One-handed, crouching at the edge of the fireplace, he slowly teased a coal free of the ash and blew it to flame, then added tinder till the fire began to grow.
For some little time he rested, squatting on his heels, then pushed himself up and went to the table where his provisions were laid. He put a measure of oats and a measure of water into an iron pot and covered it and set it on the fire. A few beads of water sizzled dry on the outside surface of the iron. With his one good arm he dragged his chair to a spot almost within the hearth and sat.
As often, it seemed that the heat could not reach him. Though the flames were bright and lively, they felt cold as the snow outside the fort. There was a draft behind him, a current of cold air running from the grate that closed the far end of the cell to the crack beneath the iron-bound door. Behind him too was another figure which Toussaint saw in his mind’s eye, black-garbed and crouching like a cricket, twitching the bones of its fingers to make a rattling sound. The tall black hat slouched down to cover the dark left socket of the toothy skull.
Baron was here. In the bones of his left hand, he held the filigreed iron cross. Toussaint knew, in part, that the rattle came from his own labored breathing, but truly it belonged to Baron Samedi, who waited just a pace behind him, raising his cross high above the cemetery gate. But this time h
e was not afraid, though Baron owned his breath. On the cemetery ground stood Guiaou and also the one-eyed Moyse, and between them Quamba, the hûngan of Thibodet. Strangely, the earth of the cemetery had all been covered over with cement, and Quamba was explaining to the other two that it was done to stop bokors from stealing corpses and raising them to work as slaves.
But all this masonry had no strength. Quamba stooped and showed how it would shatter in his hand, crumbling as easily as any dried-earth clod. Then Moyse and Guiaou fell to work with the tools they carried with them, Moyse a pointed spade and Guiaou his coutelas. Together they began to open the earth. Toussaint recognized with a shock and a thrill that the hard carapace of the Fort de Joux was breaking apart at the touch of their blades. If he had known sooner, if he could have known how easily the stones of the fort would disintegrate, he would have been gone a long time before now.
He sagged in the chair, resting the swollen side of his face against the stones around the fireplace, and let his right hand trail down to the floor. The cold of the paving stone made no impression on him now. In fact it was warm, as warm as himself, but the heat did not come from the fire. The source of the warmth was the great light above and behind him, a luminescence clearer than the sun. He saw his twin shadows moving on the timbers of the door, the dark shadow dancing within the flicker of the pale one. In the hollow at the base of his head he felt the fluttering of his own mêt’ têt, Attibon Legba, the master of changes, moving like a moth about to fly.
The Stone that the Builder Refused Page 97
