Inside the gloomy church, it was a plain service. Roche said a few words about his compatriots, the elderly priest intoned a prayer and I, though I never really got to know Claire and Henri, managed to say something reasonably appropriate. Then, when the talking was done, my limping shipmates carried the two pine boxes to the corner of the churchyard where the few lingering blancs in Haiti found eternal rest.
As we exited the churchyard gate afterward, Rork nudged me. Across the side street stood a tall figure watching us from the shadows of an almond tree. Aldolfus’s teeth flashed white as he leered at me. Rork growled a Gaelic curse under his breath.
I steered the crew down the street and kept their attention away from Adolfus—no sense in knocking their morale even lower. The melancholy crowd hobbled along back to the hotel and our rooms for a final evening of recuperation. Everyone was nursing severe contusions and cuts, Roche had cracked ribs, Cynda’s leg throbbed, Rork and Dan still could barely walk, and Corny’s back was a constant source of pain. Even in his agony, though, Roche came alongside me and asked what I’d learned from Corny and Rork’s evening with the locals and from Hyppolite.
I replied, “Damned little, Roche. Your Russian’s raising cows, that’s all.”
Cynda and I walked together. Her resentment toward my decisions aboard Delilah having faded, our mutual fondness had returned. I think it was made stronger, desperate even, by the maudlin circumstances and eerie surroundings in which we found ourselves.
That was the night that I abandoned all reticence regarding Cynda. We lay under a mosquito net in her bed, lovers intertwined, as a silvered shaft of moonlight crossed the room like approval from heaven. Chastened by our experiences on the search so far, we murmured the hope that, against all that was arrayed against us, in the days to come we would find Luke and return to the lives we once knew.
Quite probably alone for the final time, due to the uncertainty of our coming journey, I harbored no doubts that my quiet affection for her was right. I was beyond caring about reproach by others. And so, my innately world-weary soul relaxed its defenses, surrendered to nature’s instincts, and allowed me a night of blissful contentedness. I felt normal again. Love was a word I hadn’t used, hadn’t felt, since Linda had passed away from me seven years earlier. My heart had been devoid of real romance for years, but that evening I allowed myself the luxury of intimacy and love.
I think Cynda felt it too. Later, touching the scar on my chest caused by an Arab bullet in Africa, she softly asked, “Peter, do you think we could make a life together? A life back in our world?”
I was contemplating the same thing. “Once we’ve got Luke and are out of Haiti, we’ll figure it out.”
At dawn the next day we set off.
Map 3
27
The Citadelle
Village of Milot
Palace of Sans Souci
Montagne Laferrière
Northern Haiti
Saturday, 25 August 1888
With Saturday’s sun still rising, we finally made it to our mountain goal, but it had been anything but an easy trip. The route was only thirty miles to the great fortress where we’d been told the New York tourist was heading—but it took three fatiguing days to get there. Nothing is easy in Haiti.
After starting late the previous Thursday morning, our column stretched out for fifty yards. Each of the eight foreigners had what we were told was a donkey to ride, as did the sergeant. Mine was the smallest donkey I’ve ever seen, barely supporting the weight of myself and my seabag. Six of the soldiers tended the pack animals while they walked alongside. Two soldiers formed an advance party a quarter-mile ahead, and two formed a rear guard a hundred yards astern. Yablonowski rode in front with me beside him. Rork and Roche were behind us, followed by Cynda, Absalom, Corny, and Dan. Behind them came the supplies.
Rork and I had our pistols pocket-ready, with the shotguns in the seabags stowed behind us on the donkeys’ backs. We’d taken great pains so far in the journey to keep these weapons out of sight from our companions, a decision based upon the mutual observation that we weren’t quite sure of who was friend and who was foe. All the better to surprise anyone trying to surprise us.
As is the case with most seamen, Rork and I are woefully deficient in equestrian skills, a trait our diminutive mounts grasped at the outset. The ensuing contest of wills provided great entertainment, especially for the curious natives who watched the column plod by. Rork and I finally established command over the brutes, following which they gave us little further trouble. Roche, who huffed condescendingly at our efforts, handled his steed like a cavalry officer from the start.
We left the crowded city and crossed a simple suspension bridge spanning the river Haut du Cap. Soon the road became nothing more than a cart path. Passing a French fort in ruins at Saline, we turned inland down a trail through a broad savannah of fields and swamps, made infinitely more difficult by recent deluges of the rainy season. Within ten miles, the coastal plains inclined into hills that grew in size with each step.
In the midst of yet another downpour Friday evening, we arrived at King Christophe’s palace of Sans Souci at the village of Milot, more than a thousand feet in elevation. Yablonowski steered us to the house of an acquaintance. This friendly fellow had the appropriate name of Jolicoeur—jolly heart—and lodged the whole group in several stone dwellings. All hands were thoroughly exhausted and soaked, and we gratefully accepted the meager accommodations without complaint.
Later that night, our local host took Roche, Sergeant Yablonowski, Rork, and myself into the ruins of Christophe’s palace and showed us where Kingston and his cohorts had rummaged for treasure. An earthquake in 1871 had laid waste to a large part of the edifice, but it was still an impressive sight—an exact copy of the palace at Versailles, complete with statuary-filled courtyards, colonnaded halls, sweeping entry stairs, ballrooms, and magnificent apartments for the king and the queen at separate ends of the palace. This was no savage’s crude copy from a picture in a book. It was an intricate stone manor that was larger than anything I’d seen in America.
A full moon bathed us in silvery gray light, making everything indistinct and gauzy in the ever-present haze. Almost mystical. The scene of such incredible grandeur, reproduced from a hated culture that had enslaved these very people and accompanied by the fearsome sounds of jungle animals at night, lent a unsettling feeling to our tour. Finally, we ended up in Christophe’s bedroom and sat down on the edge of a balcony to rest. Below us was the village and a narrow valley that cleaved the mountain. Torch lights flickered here and there, and from somewhere came the sound of drums, beating in a fluctuating staccato.
“A message,” said Yablonowski, looking uncomfortable. Jolicoeur regarded Roche and me with open suspicion and rattled off something in the native lingo. The sergeant translated: “The message is about you gentlemen. It is a warning to the people to beware of you. That you are not tourists.”
Roche asked, “A warning from whom?”
“Kalfu.”
I determined right then to get some answers immediately—by morning our hosts and the others in the town might be muted by fear or loathing of the blancs in their midst. Accordingly, Yablonowski translated my questions to Monsieur Jolicoeur and his answers.
Yes, he did recall the earlier visit of the blancs amerikens and their servant boy. It was memorable to him, for the foreigners had rampaged through the palace’s ruins all night in an alcohol-fueled frenzy to find the old king’s treasure. Right where we were sitting, in fact. Jolicoeur pointed to a mound of fresh rubble where they had dug. Naturally, as was the norm by that point, Vanderburg found nothing. This was the cause of an argument with their guide, a white man they referred to as “Captain.” The boy was a bystander in the affair, watching from the distance.
The next day, they had gone farther up the mountain to the Citadelle fortress, again searchi
ng for loot. They spent the night in the fort, something few blancs had permission to do. Beyond that, Jolicoeur knew only that the Americans had descended the mountain by a different route. They headed not back through Milot to Cap Haitien, but down a trail to the east, into the jungle. He knew not where or why. He said he knew nothing of Sokolov the Russian.
As we got up to return to the village, Roche said aloud what we were all thinking. “They were heading east, not north back to Cap Haitien, or south to Port au Prince. Sokolov’s lair is to the east. This is as I feared. They were heading into a trap.”
He let that sink in before adding a statement of the obvious.
“And now, my friends, so will we.”
***
As the sun rose to our left—a weird pumpkin orange orb in that smoky Haitian sky—we began the climb to the top of the mountain. From Jolicoeur’s place we could see the distant Citadelle, a brooding lead-colored monolith silhouetted against the gray morning sky. The great fortress built by King Christophe clung to the peak above us like an eagle grasping the body of its prey.
Initially, it looked to be an undemanding proposition, for the slope of the path out of Milot was not that adverse. We soon found out otherwise, for a quarter-mile along the path it became a cliffside route only wide enough for one person at a time. On our left side, the mountain plunged five hundred feet or more.
The incline steepened until our donkeys were plodding along at half a man’s pace, struggling with the effort. Perched precariously atop the animals, the members of our clan leaned to the right, ready to abandon ship should the mounts stumble and go down. For another mile we traveled like this, each step a gamble for donkey and human. No one talked, no one made a sound. Even the soldiers, normally a chatty bunch, grimly trudged onward and upward along the path, watching every footfall.
At a switchback, Yablonowski halted the column and pointed straight up where a gray stone wall poked out of the bush-covered crags far above us—the base of the fortress. “The mountain is very steep from this point on,” he informed us. “The donkeys cannot go farther. We must continue by foot. It is another two hundred fifty meters of elevation up to the fortress.”
That announcement was met by a collective groan. It was a death-defying cliff. Corny said something about the mountain and Mohammed, Rork let out an Irish oath that rang off the valley below. Roche absently muttered in French that someone would probably fall off the mountain and die.
Absalom helped Cynda down off her donkey. She looked at me and set her jaw. “If we have to, Peter, we have to. Let’s get to it. I can feel his presence here. Luke has been here. I think he’s close.”
The donkey path was a highway in comparison to our new course, which was literally a goat trail. With the sergeant leading the way, we clambered hand over hand up the rocks. There was no jungle here, we were too high, too exposed to wind. Bushes clung to crevasses and we clung to the bushes, pulling ourselves up, our arms and legs afire with pain, our lungs gasping for air. It was cold at that height. Not cold in a northern sense, but a humid chill aggravated by the wind and by our fear.
After two hours, we made it to the top, falling down in gasping heaps with our limbs twitching in pain. For at least half an hour we lay there, silently taking in the vista while recovering our breath. Around the northern horizon we could dimly see the coast through the haze. Nearer, a range of high ridges, like green waves in a storm, rolled off to the east—the direction Kingston and his party had gone.
Christophe’s Sans Souci palace had been magnificent, but his Citadelle made it look miniscule. Never in my life, before or since, have I seen anything that compares to it. It was gargantuan. Half a mile long, its outer parapets towered one hundred and fifty feet above us.
“Thousands died building this fortress,” Yablonowski explained as we subsequently made our way around the eastern side to the entrance. “King Christophe was insistent that it be the strongest fortification possible since he always expected the French to return and try to subjugate us again. It was built for four hundred cannons and has enough water and provisions for a garrison of four thousand men to last seven months without reinforcement. But, of course, the French never came back. Perhaps because of it.”
After passing a dozen pyramids, each composed of thousands of cannon balls, we arrived at the massive twenty-foot-high double oak doors, where our guide added, “The Citadelle is the largest fortification in the Western Hemisphere. The pride of our nation.”
Then he called up to the guards high above us, giving a password and the reason for our entry. Seconds later a thud resonated off the walls as the bolt was withdrawn and the doors slowly creaked opened.
“We will be staying inside the fortress for tonight, for it is not safe to be outside after dark.” He didn’t elaborate on that comment, but instead lightened his voice and stated, “Due to the fact you are under the special protection of General Hyppolite, we have been granted the privilege of staying in the royal apartment tonight. Please follow me and do not stray away. It is easy to get lost inside.”
We entered a dark, casemated room. It was crowded with thirty-two-pounder smooth-bore cannon, aimed to sweep the ground in front of the entry doors. Then we emerged into the daylight, circled around an inner wall of the fort to the opposite side where a moat separated us from another doorway. A drawbridge was lowered and we crossed into the inner fortress, through a wall at least one hundred feet high and thirty feet thick. Another line of casemates watched over this entrance.
Once inside, we entered another dank dungeonlike space and proceeded down a winding passageway to a steep set of steps that took us up many levels to the broad central courtyard. At least a thousand feet long and three hundred wide, it was divided across the middle by a wall, into an upper patio and lower courtyard. The royal apartments were on the western side of the lower. The inner walls had a row of cannon lining its top. There were, undeniably, hundreds of them there, but most were at least a century old. None were modern rifled ordnance. The place was a museum, manned by a platoon, at the most, and commanded by a lieutenant.
The royal apartment had seen better days, but my people settled in for an afternoon of rest. While the others recuperated, Yablonowski and I were summoned to the fortress commander. We found him at the very top parapet. Behind him, the sun was settling down, a magenta orb suspended in the gray curtain. It colored the surroundings in an unreal sepia-rose tone, like a badly developed photograph.
Lieutenant Adrien Laurent was not what I expected from a man given such a prestigious post. A solid sixty years old, he was the color of sienna, with a deeply lined face, snow white hair, and the ropy muscles of a farmer. Yablonowski said he was an old comrade of the general’s, a corporal until a year earlier, which is when he’d gotten this assignment as a repayment for some service rendered. By later that night I was able to surmise just what kind of service that had been.
The lieutenant wore the same fatigue uniform of his men, and I could see where his former chevrons had been removed upon the promotion. Though he spoke articulately, he had the look of a peasant about him, perched with his legs dangling over the edge of a two-hundred-foot drop, while eating a dinner of some sort of meat stew. Obviously not impressed by our arrival at his fort, he rudely motioned for us to sit down. We sat dutifully beside him, our own legs dangling in air. I tried not to look down, instead concentrating on the man before me. The conversation was brief and Laurent started it, with Yablonowski, as always, translating.
“Why are you blancs here?”
My reply was equally succinct. “Searching for the white boy who was with the white men that visited here in late May. I know they were here.”
He mumbled something.
I forged on. “Did any of them appear to be under any coercion?”
“Coercion?” He harrumphed at that notion. “They were under the influence of rum, and acted arrogantly, looking for the king’
s treasure and desecrating his memorial place in the courtyard, until I stopped them. Because they were ignorant blancs, I did not kill them. Instead, I let them stay the night, with the intention of making them leave in the morning. Yes, there was a boy with them. He was drunk and stupid too.”
“Where did they go after leaving in the morning?”
“They didn’t wait until morning. At midnight that night a couple of Bizango men arrived and asked for the leader of the blancs. He was expecting them.”
He chuckled, a wicked sound. “After meeting with the Bizango men, the leader—he was a sailor captain, like you—talked to his own people, an old man and the boy. I do not speak amerikan but it appeared that the sailor told them he had found the treasure and had guides to take them to it, that it was a day’s walk. He lied. Then he let the Bizango lead them all off into the night through jungle that way.” He pointed east.
“Where did they go?”
“There is nothing that way for a foreigner, except the crazy old Russian who tries to raise cattle on a mountain. He buys thousands from around the area but sells none. It takes five days’ walk, far past Grand Rivière du Nord, to get to his farm at Montay San.”
“Have you been there? Are there other blancs with the Russian?”
“No, I have not been there. I hear things, though. Yes, a few other blancs live with him. They act like they were once soldiers, but I think it must be a colony for foreign lunatics. They put together strange things in a barn but do no real work. To work and guard the farm, the Russian brought in forty, fifty Bizango men from the south. The Bizangos keep the local people away from the farm. They hate the Kongos and Efiks, and the feeling is mutual.”
Honor Bound Page 22
