“I appreciate your gallantry,” my wife said, with such astonishing pretend sincerity that I appreciated again the ability of females to negotiate relationships with the skill of actresses. “I do hope you can keep us protected during our sojourn in Saint-Domingue, my dear vicomte.”
“You can be sure of it.” He picked up a pistol to fondle absently, and I could only hope it was unloaded. “The secret to dealing with the Negro is ruthlessness. Leclerc did his best to be stern, tying some of his captive to heavy flour sacks and throwing them into the harbor to drown, but that’s a waste of good bread. There was a point beyond which he would not go. I have no such scruples. I have hanged, I have shot, I have burned, and I have boiled. Have you ever watched men being boiled alive, Mrs. Gage?”
“Never.” She gave a little shudder. If anyone could wring secrets out of Rochambeau, I supposed, it would be Astiza. But I was damned if she’d do it near his bedroom. “How soldierly to carry it through,” she continued, as I shifted uncomfortably.
“It takes a certain hardness,” he boasted. “Many officers quail when the victims begin screaming. And yet the result on the rest of the blacks is salutary. If I could only torture and execute ten thousand, I could bring order to a million.”
“So it’s a kind of mercy,” Astiza said.
“Exactly!” His eyes kept falling to the swell of her breasts, as if some physical problem prevented his gaze from staying level with hers. Not that I blame him, I’ve had the same problem. “I locked a hundred of them in the hold of a ship and suffocated them with sulfur, and then made a hundred more hurl the bodies into the sea. Word of that got around the island, I daresay.”
“I should imagine.”
“My latest innovation has been man-eating dogs. I’ve used my own money to import them from the Spanish in Cuba. Now, no black army can stand against a French regiment in the open field, you can be sure. But every time we pursue the rebels into the jungle, an ambush ensues. It’s maddening, and my men are becoming timid. The dogs, however, smell and ravage the rebels and give my forces fair warning. I haven’t been in the engagements myself, but I’m told the beasts are truly terrifying in how they rip their victims to pieces.”
My God, he was madman and sadist. I was about to blurt honest revulsion when my wife responded first. “Horrifying,” Astiza said. “And clever.”
“It’s only for the protection of beauties such as yourself. Every monstrosity I invent is but a necessity to save France’s children.”
“Your valor is known in Paris, I can assure you, Vicomte. And if it’s not, we will celebrate it when we return.”
He nodded, expecting as much.
Why do butchers feel compelled to boast? The truth was that Rochambeau and Dessalines would each slit a million throats if it furthered their personal ambitions, and both would destroy the whole island before letting their own demise occur. Nor would they ever muster the courage to duel in an arena by themselves, preferring to sacrifice thousands of others to settle their hash. The man kept eyeing my wife, and I sourly decided he had the soft look of too many pastries and not enough marching.
“So you believe there’s a chance of victory?” I interjected, after clearing my throat.
“There’s always a chance, Monsieur Gage, and an obligation to make a valiant stand if there is not. Remember the Spartans at Thermopylae! I’m hoping God will still see the justice of our cause, and bless us against the forces of darkness.”
“I understand the blacks believe they have supernatural protection, too.”
“From African witchcraft. Their courage is quite baffling.” He glanced out his window again at the harbor, and the ships that could carry him away. “Well. I must plan my ball, and I’m eager that you grace it with your presence. You’ll promise me at least one dance, Madame Gage?”
“I would be flattered, General.” I swear she batted her eyes. Was she enjoying this charade? But no, I knew Astiza: her mind hadn’t strayed off her quest for little Harry for one second. “I do want to meet all your brave officers. And my husband is eager to study your strategic dispositions. He was involved in the siege of Acre in 1799, and has been a student of fortification ever since.”
This was complete nonsense, since that bit of epic bloodletting had taught me to stay away from sieges as much as possible. Yet she was playing her part to the hilt.
“Is he really?” The general looked at me speculatively.
“Perhaps he can lend your officers advice.”
“I’m an amateur savant,” I said modestly, “an electrician and explorer, but I flatter myself to have slight military expertise.” Yes, I can lie, too. “I was actually wondering if I could learn from your engineering. It’s to your credit that you’ve held off the rebels this long.”
He nodded cautiously. “I appreciate your curiosity. But, monsieur, you are a foreigner talking of military strategy. Secrets, if you will.”
“As Lafayette was a foreigner to Washington.”
“My husband is ever so good at keeping secrets.” Astiza leaned forward, giving him an eyeful. “And he might share some of his.”
“I don’t know if I have an escort to spare…”
“I, however, am not fond of riding around in the sun,” she added.
I saw where she was going. “And I’m uncomfortable leaving you alone in a new city, rife with tension,” I told her.
Rochambeau, who was not the brightest general ever to take the field, finally realized his opportunity. “But she is not alone! She is with me!”
“General, were my husband to go on tour, I’d be ever so grateful to wait for him here. I would feel safe, if it would not be too distracting.”
His pig eyes gleamed as if we’d poured slops in a trough. “How could you help but distract? Yet a gentleman can always spare time for a woman in need. I am an important man, yes; I may have to issue orders, but perhaps we can issue orders from the veranda while Monsieur Gage sees how expertly we have fortified this city. You and I can have rum punch and compare memories of Paris.”
“In the Paris of the Antilles,” she said sweetly.
“Alas, if only you could have seen it at the height of its glory!”
“Your courageous stand gives grandeur to what is left.”
“I have pledged my life in its defense.”
“I cannot imagine more capable company for my wife,” I put in, tired of this prattle. “And I don’t need an escort. I can poke about on my own.”
“And be shot by a startled sentry? No, I’m sure there’s a colonel or major downstairs who is unoccupied.” Rochambeau rifled through some papers as if reminding himself who served on his staff. “Enjoy my hospitality, make your diplomatic report, and critique our heroic defense.” He looked at me. “I’m aware you have quite the reputation as a warrior, Monsieur Gage, both on France’s side and against her.”
I’d fought with the British at Acre, as I’ve said, but as an American my expediency had let me also do errands for Napoleon. Sometimes it’s convenient to bounce about, though you do accumulate a great deal of misunderstanding.
“You’re a neutral capable of honest and blunt opinion,” Rochambeau went on. “I hope you’ll lend your critique to the barricades of Cap-Francois, as Lafayette and my father did at Yorktown.”
“I would be humbled to learn and teach. I marvel at your skill. I have an interest in writing; perhaps I can tell the world how you did it.”
He cocked his head as if I’d gone too far, but then looked at my wife’s chest again. “So. Let me arrange a tour while Astiza and I enjoy a view of the sea. That is the way home, madame. The sea.”
Chapter 20
I wasn’t eager to leave my wife alone with Rochambeau the lecher, but I also knew Astiza was the type to put even Bonaparte in retreat if she had to. I, meanwhile, might spy out something useful for Dessalines, finding a French weakness and trading it for legends of treasure. That in turn could help get my boy back. I might seem a traitor to my race, but Leon Martel h
ad ensured my enmity by stealing my son and jewel. Besides, it appeared to me that the best choice for Rochambeau’s forces was to leave before they all succumbed to fever. Why not hurry them along?
With my skin color, my reputation, my diplomatic papers, and my wonder of a wife, the French officers assumed my loyalty. They’d also been instructed, I suspect, to keep me busy for the afternoon while Rochambeau tried to maneuver Astiza to that purple couch. So I was given a rambunctious cavalry mount-it took a few minutes for us to come to a proper understanding, which is that I would indicate the general direction I wanted to go and the horse would get there in a manner of its own choosing-and a colonel for escort named Gabriel Aucoin. This officer looked as soldiers are supposed to look, with erect torso, calm confidence, easy command of his mount, and an exploding souffle of blond curls that put me in mind of Alexander the Great.
“They gave you Pepper, American, but you sit him well,” he congratulated.
“It might be more accurate to say he lets me sit. I’m not really a horseman. Still, I can ride when I need to.”
“I’m not an engineer or a guide, but I can show you our gun batteries. And then share some Bordeaux. We’ll be friends, I think. I like honest men, not braggarts.”
And indeed, I liked him and felt guilty for preparing to betray him. But if I could help put an end to this damnable war, maybe Aucoin would live. A prolonged siege would likely mean he’d die. At least that’s what I told myself to justify my confusion of loyalties. I was pretending to be a diplomat while playing the spy, and pretending to be a loyal white while hoping to betray the members of my race here in Cap-Francois. None of this would have been necessary if Martel had not kidnapped Harry, but I regretted having to drag men like Aucoin into my quarrels.
We rode to the flat eastern end of Cap-Francois where the primary fortifications are. The island that Columbus called Hispaniola is divided into two colonies, the Spanish Santo Domingo to the east and the French Saint-Domingue, or Haiti, to the west. The land is very mountainous, and so the French colony was strategically divided into three parts. In the north, west, and south were separate pans of plantations, each hemmed in by hills. The blacks had already conquered west and south and now were pressing on this last white stronghold in the north, having seized all but the city of Cap-Francois itself.
The struggle would be decided on the city’s eastern boundary, between river and mountains.
It was hot as we rode, the scenery somnolent but luscious. The island is a gorgeous mosaic of greens, with cane, orchards, and jungles almost glowing like my emerald under a brilliant blue sky. Birds flit like darting flames, and flowers are a scattering of paint. Oranges, lemons, mangoes, and plantains erupt for the picking like something out of Eden. Butterflies flutter, and insects drone.
Disturbing the green tableau today were fires on the distant horizon, but from war or agriculture I couldn’t say. Haiti is a dream that hate turned into a nightmare, lush paradise as a portal to hell.
We rode along the stumps and graves of the Rue Espagnole. At midday, the lack of shade made the sun feel like it was pounding my straw hat. Past the city’s outskirts were the French lines, and behind them mildewed military tents, hot as ovens, and trampled grassy fields. Artillery waited hub to hub next to neat pyramids of black cannonballs. Soldiers lounged beneath awnings. Muskets, too, were stacked in pyramids.
“We confine drill to the cooler morning,” Colonel Aucoin volunteered when he saw me eyeing the inactivity. “Half my men are unwell, and all are thin from shortened rations.”
Useful, but Dessalines no doubt knew this. “When do you sally to meet the enemy?”
“Not much anymore, because disease depletes our ranks. Dessalines’s army swells, and ours shrinks. He grows bold, and we grow timid. He has the entire island on which to maneuver, and we have half a mile of breastworks.”
“How many men do you have?”
“About five thousand. The blacks have three times as many. The French art of war is all that holds the rebels at bay. We have better discipline and with reinforcement could still reverse events. But now war with the British makes it even unlikelier that help from France will arrive.”
“What are you hoping for, then?”
“Officially, that Dessalines breaks his army on our fortifications, letting our cannon do their bloody work. Then we pursue the remnants with our dogs.”
So I should not recommend a frontal attack. “And unofficially?”
“That we are given a chance to reach an honorable settlement before they murder us all.”
We passed a kennel of the man-eating mastiffs that Rochambeau had purchased from the Cubans. These were monsters almost the size of small ponies, great slobbering things that raced, barked, and lunged as we clopped past. Our horses shied and whinnied, instinctively increasing their pace. The dogs weighed about a hundred and fifty pounds, I guessed, and hurled themselves against the bars of their cages with anxious woofing and snarling. Their excitement bent the wood, which sprung them back like bows.
They reminded me of a brute of a canine owned by my old antagonist, Aurora Somerset, and I shuddered at the memory. That one had torn throats to gristle. “How do you control them?”
“Sometimes we don’t. They’ve turned on our men several times, and we’ve had to shoot some. But the blacks fear them more than a cavalry charge. Besides, our horses are wearing out.”
“Can the dogs turn the tide?”
“The rebels know how to shoot dogs, too.”
“And if Dessalines doesn’t conveniently destroy his army by throwing it against your cannon?”
“Then it will all have been for nothing.” His voice was resigned. Defeat starts weeks or months before an actual surrender.
“It seems a desperate strategy.”
“For desperate times.” He reined up, looking at me squarely. “I am happy to show you about, monsieur, but telling the truth is depressing, and I think we won’t tarry into the evening because you should return to your wife. Our general has a taste for other men’s women.”
“I trust Astiza.”
“Which could be exactly the problem. Her loyalty could make you an inconvenience in Rochambeau’s eyes. My orders are to keep you safe, but don’t count on that forever. You do not want to make her a convenient widow.”
“What do you mean?”
“Rochambeau and Admiral La Touche recently gave a dance aboard the admiral’s flagship, the deck turned into a garden. There were plants and flowers on the bulwarks and vines suspended from the rigging. It was lovely escape, letting one pretend war didn’t exist. But a young beauty not entirely in love with her husband came in a Parisian dress so scandalous she was almost naked. This Clara danced the night away with our commander, and the next day her husband was assigned to a column sent to smoke out the blacks. It was ambushed, and he never returned.”
“And Clara?”
“Seduced, and then packed off to Paris.”
“Astiza is entirely in love with me.” Even as I said it, I wasn’t sure. Her words echoed: What if it was a mistake to marry?
“Then you’re a lucky man.” His tone said he wasn’t sure, either. “But anyone can be tempted. What does she most desire? Rochambeau will find that out and then offer it to her.”
My son, I thought. “I’m not to volunteer for a sally, then.”
“And not to take for granted the fidelity of your wife or the word of our esteemed general. No disrespect for her. It’s just friendly advice, monsieur, for a treacherous island. Fear makes people do strange things.”
“No offense taken, Colonel Aucoin. General Rochambeau gives fair warning by his manner, doesn’t he? Is he simply greedy?”
“Afraid, I think, a man who doesn’t know what to do. That’s why he slaughters and tortures the Negroes, out of fear they’ll do the same to him. It will only make it worse in the end, which he knows, and yet he can’t help himself. I think he ruts so much simply to postpone his nightmares. Servants have heard
him screaming in the night.”
I liked this man’s realism. But rarely are the most sensible in charge.
“You must keep this conversation secret, of course,” Aucoin went on. “I am a soldier and will do what I am told, but I try to tell the truth to protect the innocent.”
I hadn’t been called that in some time.
“By the same token, you must not tell the truth about me to him,” the colonel added.
“But of course. I appreciate your trust.”
He shrugged. “I’m afraid, too. It puts me in the mood to confess.”
While the city’s eastern boundaries were flat and seemed to invite invasion, the French had used the terrain as best they could. At a low rise just to the right of the major trunk road, Rochambeau had ordered the construction of a sturdy fort of stone, earth, and logs that had just enough altitude to command the approaches. It was anchored to a much steeper mountain so precipitous that no sizable body of men could flank it from that direction. This fort, I judged, would be the key.
Aucoin led me up a causeway to the top of the bastion.
No enemy could be seen. The flat plantation country beyond seemed deserted, and with the loan of his spyglass I could make out the blackened shells of destroyed houses and sugar mills. Abandoned cane waved in the wind, a sea of ten-foot-high stalks hiding whatever was out there. Once-harvested fields had grown back wild, and smoke hazed the horizon.
“Where’s Dessalines?”
“Watching us as we watch him, and hoping disease finishes his campaign for him. He’s tried some assaults on our redoubts, and we’ve taught his men that voodoo doesn’t protect them from bullets. They charge fanatically, even the women, and it only adds to the carnage. You can smell the dead.”
Yes, there was a hint of the sickly sweet rot of abandoned corpses out there in the grass, apparently too close to French guns to be retrieved.
“So now he waits, licking his wounds. I’d like to go after him, but the general doesn’t believe we have the strength to retain any ground we capture.”
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