Master of the Crossroads

by Madison Smartt Bell

  And these were the officers meant to replace Toussaint’s cadre!—for almost all Hédouville’s suite was like these two: absurdly young, and arrogant in exact proportion to their inexperience. Maillart, who’d become for a time Toussaint’s particular envoy to the new agent, had divined that much: Hédouville meant to assert control of the indigenous army by infiltrating his own officers, these cubs, ha. Hédouville himself was quite a different matter, clearly a capable officer, seasoned in battle and yet equally skillful in winning contests without battles. During his service under Toussaint, Maillart had developed a special appreciation of that latter capacity. And Hédouville would need all the guile at his command, since he’d been sent out with no force at all, to speak of.

  The agent’s original instructions were to arrest Rigaud for the flagrant insubordination he’d shown Sonthonax, but Toussaint had absolutely refused to carry out this order when Hédouville sent it on to him. Captain Maillart had had the dubious privilege of delivering Toussaint’s letter of reply, which stated that since Rigaud was clearly a loyal servant of the Republic, as evidenced by the vigorous campaign he was then prosecuting against the British at Jérémie, why, to arrest Rigaud would be as if to arrest himself. Hédouville had received this response with equanimity, even with some appreciation (so it seemed to Maillart) for its pragmatism. Since then, he’d been evolving some quite different strategy, though the captain couldn’t make out what it was. But Maillart rather liked Hédouville, thus far. And if he played his cards very close to his vest, one must also admit that he’d been dealt a difficult hand to play.

  Isabelle was tittering at some remark he’d made, though Maillart himself could not remember his own witticism. He drained off the sugary swirl at the bottom of his coffee, set down the cup and stood to take his leave. Through the open doors that gave onto the balcony, he could see the masts of ships at dockside, over the rosy tile roofs of the houses down the slope. Flaville had also risen to go. Maillart stooped to brush Isabelle’s hand with his lips, and went out.

  In the stairwell, he paused to wait for Flaville, but it was Cypré and Paltre who appeared instead, and Maillart quickly turned his back on them.

  “Four grenadiers,” one of them said. “No more.” Maillart was not sure which. He did not bother distinguishing them. But he’d meant to be overheard; that was clear. Some clique among the puppy officers had declared that they’d want no more than four grenadiers to arrest “that old rag-headed Negro”—by which they meant Toussaint. The boast had become well known throughout Le Cap. Stiff-necked, Maillart walked across the foyer. A house servant was opening the door for him, and the light outside was a white-hot blaze. He spun, rage twirling him, but everything became strangely slow, so that while he watched his red fist floating toward the insolent face of Paltre, who was leading the pair, he was able to consider many things with apparent leisure. For some reason he was thinking of Xavier Tocquet and what he might do in such a situation—but he wouldn’t have been in it at all, would not have let himself be drawn in so far. Flaville, who had been a slave, was coming down the steps behind the young French captains, and what insults he must have had to bear in silence in his time. If he struck Paltre, there must be a duel, and when he’d been their age Maillart would have fought, without thinking, to the death, borne the official reprimand, perhaps demotion, defended himself on the grounds of honor. This instant he could have killed Paltre without compunction, but the waste of it all repelled him. Paltre was flinching, showing his fear, and Maillart stopped his hand short of contact, opened it, let it come to rest on the younger man’s shoulder. He smiled.

  “If you speak of my commanding officer, the General-in-Chief Toussaint Louverture, let me advise you that he is a civilized man. But there are many rag-headed old Negroes in this country, and if you are so unfortunate as to meet with one of the less civilized variety, why, you may find your severed head stuffed into your slit belly, your own male member crammed inside your mouth. Now smile, my boy, and show your courage. I will not stop smiling, when I see you so. I have seen things in this country that have not appeared in your worst nightmares.”

  He gave Paltre’s shoulder a little shake, released it, and strode out the door without waiting for any answer. But Flaville was in step with him as they turned to go find their horses.

  “Ou bay blan-yo pè djab,” Flaville said, as he unhitched his sorrel.

  “As I meant to.” Maillart returned his grin as he climbed aboard his mount. They saluted each other, then rode in opposite directions. You scared the devil out of those white people—an odd compliment for Flaville to have made to him, the captain thought as he rode across the Rue Espagnole toward the barracks, and yet its echo was most pleasing to his ear.

  Under the lifting tendrils of morning mist, Doctor Hébert rode out from the gateway of Habitation Thibodet, his medicaments stored in his saddlebags and his long gun’s stock thrusting up from a scabbard by his knee. His mount was a new mare Riau had procured for him—there’d been a lot of fresh horses coming over the Spanish border since the retaking of Mirebalais. The mare was a strong and handsome gray, but barely green-broke and skittish as a cat. She kept the doctor alert as he rode through the bourg of Ennery.

  Beyond the village the road was flat and went beneath the shade of mango trees, with the warming sun striping down between their branches. By then the mist had burned away, and the doctor overtook a line of market women going to the crossroads, who smiled up at him from beneath the baskets on their heads. Coming in the opposite direction were three horseback men leading a pair of donkeys—and where had the doctor seen that particular broad-brimmed hat before?

  But Tocquet recognized him first. When he swept off his outsized hat, the doctor’s mare skated sideways, reared and went down almost all the way to her hindquarters. Rather than be thrown, the doctor slipped down from the saddle, sinking to his right boot top in the rutted slough. He caught the reins tight under the bit and brought the mare back down to earth.

  “Saluez,” Tocquet said brightly as he rode up. Gros-jean and Bazau were also smiling as they halted their horses behind him.

  “A magnificent animal you have there,” Tocquet said. “She looks as if she could climb trees.”

  “She’s willing to try,” the doctor said, stroking the mare’s soft nose, as she went on trying to toss her head. He looked at Tocquet. “You’ve been a long time on the road.”

  Tocquet looked off into the treetops. His face was shadowed with beard stubble over his lean jaw and the hollow of his throat. “Did you tell her to expect me?” he finally said.

  “I didn’t know when you would come.” The doctor broke a stalk of bamboo from a cluster at the roadside and began pushing some of the swamp-smelling mud from the upper of his boot.

  “You should find Nanon at the Cigny house,” Tocquet said, shortening the focus of his eyes.

  “My God, yes,” the doctor said in a rush. “Riau told me she had come down to Le Cap with you but—is she well? . . . or not.”

  Tocquet looked into the treetops again. “Let us say, somewhere between the two. But you ought to go and see for yourself.”

  The doctor shook his head, irritably. “Yes, but Toussaint is most reluctant to spare me for the journey.”

  “I’ll give you odds he’ll be making that journey himself very soon, by the look of the messenger from Hédouville who passed me on the road.”

  “Oh?”

  “If you’re bound for Gonaives, you’ll soon know more than I.”

  Tocquet squeezed his heels into the flanks of his horse. The mare shuddered as he put the big hat on his head again, but kept all four feet on the ground. The doctor tossed away his bamboo stalk, mounted, and rode on.

  He had been shuttling between Gonaives and Ennery for the last few weeks, and knew that Toussaint was preoccupied with negotiations for the British withdrawal from Jérémie and the Grande Anse, which for the moment were going nowhere. Meanwhile, the luster of his triumph at Port-au-Prince had beg
un to fade, while Hédouville grew testy about concessions Toussaint had made to Maitland, and complained about the ease with which so many grand blancs proprietors had recovered their plantations in the Western Department.

  By the time the doctor reached the Gonaives casernes, the message Tocquet mentioned had been delivered. Toussaint was requested, in terms he could not deny short of open insubordination, to present himself to Hédouville at Le Cap. And rumor carried the implication that the French agent was determined to assert control over any further negotiation with the British.

  “I do not think he wants to go,” Riau told the doctor with a shrug. “But if he goes, it is good for you, because . . .”

  “Yes,” said the doctor. “Yes, that is true.” He felt an inner flutter at the thought of the attic room of the Cigny house, with its round window and low-angled walls, where he had been before Nanon, where she’d be now.

  He passed that night in the casernes, his hammock strung next to Riau’s. When he woke, the room was empty but for a small green lizard blowing out its throat contemplatively as it watched him from the windowsill. From the direction of the square he heard the hum of a commotion.

  He got up and dressed and went out, already beginning to sweat from his exertions. It was later than he’d expected to wake, the sun already high. At the gate the sentries seemed uneasy, and when he asked them what was happening, they said only, General Rigaud, and pointed toward the headquarters building, where that officer apparently had gone.

  Glancing once over his shoulder at the fading brick of the building, the doctor walked south, around the curve of the wide, white-dusty road, till he came to the square before the church. Some forty cavalrymen from the Southern Department stood holding their horses in the center of the square, ringed by many times their number of men from the Fourth Colonial Regiment, commanded by Jean-Jacques Dessalines.

  Noticing Riau’s tall hussar’s hat protruding from the crowd, the doctor made his way over to him, excusing himself and apologizing all around as he shouldered his way through.

  “What is it?” he said, but Riau was masked, no more expressive than a tree, though he shifted his weight slightly to acknowledge the doctor’s arrival. The doctor looked to the center of the ring of men and felt a contraction of his viscera when he recognized Choufleur.

  He wore the French uniform, though cut of a better cloth than that commonly used, with gold buttons to match the gold braid. Insignia of a colonel’s rank. His face was pale, so that the swirl of freckles over it stood out like a dark mist, concealing his features with a veil of points which were almost black. The doctor remembered several of the things that Madame Fortier had said about her son. Choufleur was facing Dessalines.

  “Your men are blocking our way,” he said carelessly. “Move them out of the road, at once, if you please.”

  Choufleur and Dessalines were of a height, but Choufleur was much the slenderer, though by no means frail. He glanced over his shoulder at the man who was holding his horse.

  “I do not take my orders from you.” Dessalines’s reply was uninflected; there was no anger in it but it was immovable, rooted like a tree. The black commander stood rooted, swinging slightly from the hips. When Choufleur turned to face him again, he seemed surprised to find Dessalines still standing there.

  A pair of gulls came crying over the square, blown by the warm wind from the sea. The gulls banked into the wind and hovered, the wind pushing them slowly backward, then cried again and flew back toward the port. Choufleur’s hand played over his sword hilt for a moment. Dessalines shifted his weight.

  “I would not dirty my weapon on a Congo like you,” Choufleur said. “Sooner a whip.”

  Dessalines said, nothing, but began to swell. Standing in place, he grew larger, heavier, darker. The doctor remembered the knot of scars that lay beneath his coat and thought of them moving, crawling like a nest of snakes. A murmur ran through the crowd surrounding the small mulatto troop, and the doctor’s entrails twisted tighter. Riau placed a hand on his back, as if he’d felt his distress and wanted to steady him.

  The ring of men opened, just to his left, and Toussaint Louverture stepped through the gap, accompanied by a taller, light-skinned general.

  “Let them pass,” Toussaint said.

  Dessalines, who had been staring only at Choufleur, turned his head fractionally, just enough to take in the newcomers at the far edge of his view.

  “Let the General Rigaud go to make his report to the agent, Hédouville,” Toussaint said, in a reasonable tone, as if debating, though it was an order. “Why should I wish to prevent his going?”

  Dessalines deflated. He turned fully toward Toussaint, saluted smartly, then called to his men, Alé! Kité yo pasé.

  Toussaint’s companion must be Rigaud, the doctor realized; he had not previously seen the colored general face to face, though he’d heard descriptions. He was taller than Toussaint, and quite a handsome man, with sharp European features. Only his hair looked somewhat unnatural; he was reported to wear a straight-hair wig. Now Rigaud had shaken Toussaint’s hand with all appearance of friendliness and trust. He swung onto his horse, and Choufleur followed his example. At Dessalines’s order, the men of the Fourth opened a corridor onto the road to the north, and Rigaud and his men rode through.

  Perhaps two hours later, on the heights above Plaisance, Toussaint returned to the subject as if there had never been any pause in the conversation. “Let General Rigaud attend his meeting with Agent Hédouville. I have no wish to arrest him. I need Rigaud—to fight this war with the English.”

  Toussaint rode at the head of his own small party, flanked by Riau and the doctor; they had all left Gonaives about an hour behind the mulatto group, bound for Le Cap. Toussaint was looking straight down the road, sitting the trot of Bel Argent. He had the air of talking to himself, though he spoke loudly enough to be heard by those on either side of him.

  “The class of the mulattoes believes itself superior to mine, and if I were to take Monsieur Rigaud away from them, they might find a leader more valuable than he. When he gallops, he lets his horse go. When he strikes, he shows his arm. As for myself, I know how to gallop, but I stop when and wherever I choose, exactly, and when I strike my force is felt, but no one sees my hand . . .”

  Toussaint’s face was set, his lower jaw thrusting out with his words. His companions, riding a half-length back, exchanged interested glances over the pumping hindquarters of Bel Argent. Their little column was atop a dizzy height with the Plaisance River valley winding below. Wet, gray clouds blanketed the peaks to the east. The doctor adjusted his hat and pulled his long duster closer about him. Though it was still hot, he knew it would be raining soon and that they would not stop for the rain. This peak, this range of mountains all the way east to the Spanish border, was the bedrock of the power of Toussaint Louverture. Perhaps it was their proximity that had unleashed the general’s tongue, for it was unusual for him to speak so freely, especially of himself.

  “Monsieur Rigaud can only make his people rise in blood and massacre,” Toussaint went on. “Then he moans to see the fury of the mob he has excited. If I have put the people into movement, their fury never troubles me, for whenever I appear in person, everything must grow calm.”

  He fell silent. It was quiet all down the line, but for the sound of hoofbeats, the rattle of a stone kicked over the rim of the trail, the infrequent cry of hawks above the valley. Already the first drops of rain were slapping the rock and the flanks of the horses. At the damp touches the mare jibbed and began to skate sideways. The doctor reined her in and leaned to pat her withers. He pulled his hat brim down. When they reached Le Cap that night, they found they were in advance of Rigaud’s men; they must have passed him on the way, whether because Toussaint knew a shorter route through the mountains, or that Rigaud was loath to ride through rain and darkness.

  Doctor Hébert took the opportunity, while Generals Toussaint and Rigaud were closeted with Agent Hédouville, to visit the Ci
gny house, for Maillart had been quick to tell him that he would find Nanon there. The scene in Isabelle’s salon was much as the captain had described it—a full complement of the supercilious youths in Hédouville’s suite, paying their court to the ladies, except that Nanon was not present. The doctor forced his way through a few pleasantries and accepted the refreshment urged upon him. When after half an hour she had not appeared, it occurred to him that since he was familiar with the house, nothing prevented him from going directly up to the little room she and he had both occupied, at different times.

  With this intention, he slipped out of the parlor, but Isabelle halted him before he had set his foot on the first step.

  “I must tell you that your room is engaged by another,” she said.

  “Yes,” he muttered, “I have heard so.”

  “Doctor Hébert,” she said, as he turned reluctantly from the stairway. “I am sorry to say she will not receive you now.”

  His face must have expressed his astonishment. She caught his sleeve and drew him into a small windowless room across the hall and shut the door behind them. The cubicle was furnished with a round table, a lamp, a chair, most prominently a daybed draped with silk shawls. The doctor knew the place to be a theater for her seductions; indeed she’d once handed him a certain humiliation here.

  “No,” said Isabelle, as if she’d read his memory. “I only want to explain myself—as if I could.” She fingered the light gold chain around her neck. Something attached to it stirred with the movement, but whatever it was lay hidden beneath the fabric of her dress.