The War of Knives

by Broos Campbell

  But then a lone white man rode quietly out of the trees. He’d been leaning over in the saddle, watching the ground, but when his horse stopped at the lip of the ravine he raised his head and stared toward us. He was dressed in a black riding cape and broadbrim hat, and wore a fringe of gray beard along his jaw, like a Quaker; but no Friend I ever met wore a sword nor carried a brace of horse pistols in his saddle holsters, nor had such a gaunt and bloodless face. Connor hissed quietly between his teeth. But we all of us kept still, the dragoons patiently waiting with their carbines trained on his breast. Though surely he couldn’t see us in the shadows, the Parson—as I called him in my mind—kept his hands in sight as he craned slowly around to stare back down the trail.

  “Pa tiré,” Juge snapped. It was a Creole phrase I had memorized as being potentially handy: “Don’t shoot.” He stepped out into the sunlight, holding his carbine in one hand and raising the other. “Hssst!”

  The Parson didn’t move except to turn his head. Juge made an abrupt motion with his hand, as if to push him away.

  With a last bleak look toward us, the Parson eased his horse around and trotted across our left along the edge of the ravine before slipping back into the trees. Juge came back and squatted beside us.

  I said, “Who was that?”

  “A ghost.”

  “He looked alive enough to me.”

  “He does not yet know he is dead. Do not worry about him.”

  A rumble that wasn’t thunder or artillery rolled down the forest path toward us.

  “A troop of horse?” said Connor.

  “Soldats de cavalrie?” said I.

  “Chasseurs à cheval,” said Juge. “Mounted light infantry. They often slip through our lines at night and raise the Devil. May God punish them this day.” He made the sign of the Trinity and then snapped a few orders to his dragoons. They eased back the locks on their carbines. I hauled my pistols out.

  Metal glinted in the forest beyond the ravine. Over the thudding of hooves came the creak of leather and the jingle of harness. All at once a dozen riders in green and white thundered out of the woods and into the ravine. More men poured in behind them. Their muskets were strapped across their shoulders, but curved sabers flashed in their hands.

  Juge sprang to his feet. “Tiré, gason! Tiré!” he shouted. “Fire, boys! Fire!”

  The dragoons fired a volley into the chasseurs struggling up the rise toward us. Half a dozen men fell from their saddles. A horse rolled screaming back down into the gully, crushing its rider beneath it. Horses behind it bucked out of the way. The remnants of the lead riders reined up and tried to turn. The men behind crashed into them. Another horse and rider went down. An officer stood in his stirrups, waving his saber. Juge coolly put a ball through his head. Connor and I popped off our pistols. Then the chasseurs had turned and were beating hell for leather back the way they’d come.

  “Koté li cheval!” called Juge. The horse-holders ran forward, leaning against the reins as the horses pranced and shook their heads. “Ann alé, gason! Ataké!” Juge swung into the saddle, and he and Connor and the dragoons charged across the ravine and down the track in pursuit.

  I threw myself across Joséphine’s back. “Ha! Giddap,” I shouted, groping with my feet for the stirrups. We galloped in fine style into the ravine, where I promptly tumbled off and slid into the stream below.

  Franklin sat with his back to a tree with his traveling desk on his knees. He finished writing something, scattered sand on it, poured the sand back into its little jar, and then blew on the paper before tucking it carefully into a sheaf of papers that he tied up with red tape. Only then did he look at me. His eyes registered neither surprise nor concern as he took in my sodden pantaloons and the ripped elbow of my coat. He wiped his pen on an ink-stained rag and locked his things up in his desk. “Did I hear you to say, ‘Shit and perdition’?”

  “You did. That damn bitch throwed me.”

  “You seem remarkably unhurt for a man who has fallen off a horse.”

  I slapped mud out of my coat. “I landed on one of them dead chasseurs.”

  “Are you sure she threw you?”

  I felt a breeze and twisted around to look under my coattails. My pantaloons were ripped open across the seat, but my drawers seemed intact—uncommonly damp, but intact. “Why would I say she throwed me if she didn’t throw me?”

  “One might simply fall off, or even choose to fall off.” He looked at Joséphine, who had followed me back and stood peeking out at us from behind a tree. “One might change one’s mind about charging after who knows how many armed men.” He folded his hands on top of his desk. “One might show a fitting concern for one’s own safety.”

  “If I was concerned about my safety, why the hell would I jump off a running horse?” I gave him a sharp look. I may be slow, but I ain’t that slow.

  A hint of expression passed across his face. Maybe it was a smile. “I merely hoped you might have more concern for your mission,” he said, “than for your own glory.”

  I had to sort that one out for a bit. It was too slippery to grab hold of all at once.

  Joséphine scratched her rump against a tree and watched a butterfly flitting through a shaft of sunlight. I went to catch her, but as soon as I got close she scooted away. “Belay, God rot your eyes,” I said. But I said it under my breath, and she waited till I was almost close enough to grab the reins before trotting off again. We made a couple of wide circuits around Franklin before I gave up.

  “It would not surprise me if she were prepared to do that all afternoon,” said he. “Which obviates my next question: namely, do we press on or do we wait here for our guides?”

  “What’s ‘obviate’ mean?”

  “It means you are effectively without a horse. And neither of us knows the way, regardless.”

  The artillery still boomed away in the south. “We could double up on your horse and follow the noise of the guns.”

  There was a yelling way off in the woods, a clash of steel and a few shots, and then more yelling that grew rapidly distant. He said, “Hadn’t you ought to recharge your pistols?”

  “I guess I will, in about a minute.” I eyed my saddlebags, where I’d left my powderhorn, but I misliked the way Joséphine was swishing her tail. “Why, ain’t you got a pistol on you?”

  He tapped his portable desk. “Properly employed, a pen is deadlier than cannons.”

  Maybe so, I thought, but it wanted time and distance. I tucked my pistols into my belt and went to fetch a pair of muskets off the dead chasseurs in the ravine. Joséphine clumped down after me. She nickered at a horse trying to reach its feet. Its legs were broken and it fell back again, stretching its neck out and looking at me. I checked the loads in a couple of muskets and slung them over my shoulder. Then I found another, so I shot the horse. Joséphine scrambled out of the ravine and then stood there, twitching her ears.

  I tugged a cartouche belt off of one of the chasseurs and near hopped out of my boots when he spoke to me.

  “Quelle scie,” he said. “What a nuisance. I think I have been killed.” He grinned at me kind of lopsided, like he wanted me to tell him different.

  Blood soaked his middle and the ground under him. I opened his coat. Blood bubbled out of a hole in his belly. “I fear you are correct, monsieur. Does it hurt a great deal?”

  He shook his head. “No, I feel nothing but regret.”

  “Regret for what?”

  “That I am not a horse, so you might shoot me too.” He fumbled at his canteen.

  I sat him up and dribbled some water into his mouth, but his head lolled and the water ran back out again. I laid his body down and climbed out of the ravine.

  Franklin had set his writing desk aside. I held out one of the muskets, but he shook his head. I leaned them up against his tree, fished a cigar out of my pocket and stuck it between my teeth. Then I patted my pockets, looking for my flint and steel, but I’d left them in my saddlebags too. Joséphine snuffled at
my cigar. I held it out to her, and while she examined it I sidled up within reach of the saddlebags. “Nice horse,” I said. The skin across her shoulders quivered, but she let me unbuckle the bag and lift the flap. “Tout doux, ma belle—ow! Shit and perdition!” She capered away with my cigar in her teeth while I danced around flapping my hand and counting my fingers.

  “Not your shooting hand, I hope,” said Franklin.

  I held out my hand. “That’s my left hand,” I said. “Do I look left-handed to you?”

  As soon as it came out of my mouth I knew it was a foolish thing to say, but I’d meant it as a joke. I figured the least he could do was laugh; I was willing, but he just looked at me. That’s the only way I can describe it—he didn’t smile, didn’t glare, didn’t do a blame thing but look at me. It was nothing I could reasonably take offense at, but that was precisely where the offense lay, if you follow. I never met a more disagreeable man who wasn’t trying to kill me at the time. I bit a chunk off a fresh cigar and chawed and spat as if I liked it. “So,” I said, “what’ll you do if the chasseurs come back instead of the dragoons?”

  “Interesting.” He put two fingers to his cheek and pretended to ponder. “I suppose I should continue to sit here quietly, to avoid alarming them, and would thus prevent my being slaughtered out of hand. They would soon discover that I speak little French beyond ‘jay swee oon American,’ at which point I suppose I would be taken before a magistrate of some kind, who would ask me questions in various modes— high dudgeon, low threats, appeals to reason—to which I should give him the same reply. He would then condemn me to death as a spy, detain me in some damp and unpleasant place until I had learnt my lesson, and then let me go with instructions never to return. Or perhaps I would be offered a place on Pétion’s staff. One never knows.”

  I had swallowed some of my cigar while he was talking. When I could speak, I said: “How you talk! What kind of a dern fool plan is that?”

  “An excellent one.”

  “Excellent, my Aunt Fanny! In what way?”

  “It should serve admirably to keep me alive.”

  I had to look at him several times before I was sure what I was seeing. I never heard a man come so close to out-and-out saying he was a coward.

  “But what about yourself?” he said. “Perhaps you ought to start walking toward the sound of the artillery. Surely it is not so very far.”

  I calculated he was joking, but for the life of me I couldn’t tell. And he never took his eyes off me, neither. Just sat there with his legs crossed at the ankle and one hand resting on his travel desk beside him, regarding me from behind the glass mask of his spectacles. After a while I realized he was asleep with his eyes open. He didn’t move even when the Parson walked his horse in a slow circle around us half an hour later, just out of musket shot and staring at us about as friendly as an empty grave before trotting off toward Jacmel.

  Juge and Connor returned alone and in high spirits. Connor had blood on his right hand and sleeve, but nary a scratch on him. Juge snagged Joséphine’s bridle. As I climbed aboard he said, “It was good of you to stay behind to protect the scribbler.”

  “That was not the way of it, monsieur.” I grabbed the reins as Joséphine snorted. “I fell off.”

  “You look it, too, ha ha!” He ordered Franklin to his feet with a gesture. Then he grinned at me. “I have a sight for you, but we must be quick.”

  “What happened to your dragoons?”

  “Come, come, I show you!”

  The cannon fire grew louder as we rode, and the smell of spent powder drifted past on the sea breeze. In a short time we reached a high bluff that looked south over a bay and a town. “Jacmel,” said Juge, with a sweep of his arm that took in the entire view. “You may dismount.” Franklin scuttled off into the trees, trailed leisurely by Connor. Juge followed me to the edge of the bluff, where I compared what I saw before me against the chart in my mind’s eye.

  A pair of streams flowed from either side below us. The little one on the left was the Rivière de la Gosseline, the River of the Little Girl. It emptied into the big one on the right, the Grand Rivière de Jacmel, which widened as it flowed to the southeast into a swampy-looking area of low wooded islets before passing around a large triangular island and thence into the bay. A road ran along the near side of the Grand River before fording the Gosseline and then cutting across a flat field toward the town. On the left bank, hard by the bay, a group of four forts stood on a height surrounded by a long wall. The wall was little more than a heap of rubble, though whether it had been built that way a-purpose or had been knocked down and piled up again, I couldn’t say. A pall of smoke and buzzards hung over all. Dismal weren’t in it—the place looked like the steaming stump of a shot-off leg.

  Feeling like I had a hole in my heart, I scanned the glittering emptiness of the bay and the wide sea beyond.

  “One may grasp the whole situation at once from up here,” said Juge. He straightened in pride as he gazed out at the battleground, but I didn’t see what there was to be proud about. “Général Dessalines, who commands Father Toussaint’s army of the south, has invested the citadel.”

  The investment—the black army’s offensive line—was a long, semicircular ditch fronted by a breastwork of logs and earth, lying more or less concentric to the defensive wall and about three-quarters of a mile from it. The ditch was full of men, and the artillery was properly dug in behind revetments, but there were far too few guns. And they were mostly three-pounders and six-pounders—field guns, not siege guns. They could bang away at the forts all year without doing much except give the defenders more places to hide. Men and horses waded along a wide, muddy path to the rear of the ditch, all busily going nowhere in particular that I could see. The scene was about as inspirational as a barnyard at hog-killing time. Even the dirt looked dirty.

  Below us and off to the east huddled little gatherings of huts and tents and lean-tos. Beyond them, off to the left of the line, stood a large house surrounded by a low wall and outbuildings, with croplands around it. The croplands were a ruin of shrubs and rank weeds, as if they had lain untended for years—as no doubt they had. When the slaves had left the plantations and gathered themselves into armies some nine years before, there had been no one left to tend the fields. Toussaint’s army was starving on some of the richest real estate in the world.

  Juge pointed at a brushy expanse between the trench works and the citadel. “That is the killing ground, across which we make the periodic sorties to sound out the rebel defenses.” At the far end of the field was a log blockhouse, in front of which a company of horse-drawn artillery had set up shop. “I see Pétion has supported his redoubt with a flying battery since I was away. If he keeps it there much longer, we will kill all his horses and then go down and steal his cannons. Perhaps even tonight. Now, see that hill over there.” I followed his glance toward a rise near where the Grand River passed into the village. “Beyond it lies a little pocket of low ground that gives a great deal of trouble. We cannot cross it, and neither can he. But every night, we crawl down there and slit some throats.”

  A hamlet of flat-roofed houses sat in the pocket. Between the houses—with balconies running right the way round their upper stories, and well holed by cannon balls—stood heaps of broken stones, lined with sharpened stakes and strewn with swollen corpses. Puffs of smoke rose from the hamlet, provoking answering puffs from the bluffs where the trench made a sharp curve around the pocket’s upper end.

  “The pocket makes a salient into our lines,” said Juge, “but this is to our advantage because we possess the high ground. From there we enfilade the hamlet. One knows what this ‘enfilade’ is?”

  “Of course,” I said. “You fire into the enemy from stem to stern while he can bring only a few guns to bear. It’s the very acme of maneuvers at sea.” A flicker of white out in the bay caught my eye, but it was just a jumble of gulls fighting over something in the water.

  “Exactly,” said Juge, nodding
like I’d said something wise. “It is like one frigate taking advantage of another, except here the enemy cannot sail out of danger. But it is not enough.” He shook his head. “He is a determined fellow, this Pétion, and his men love him.”

  I didn’t like the ground, and I didn’t like it that the Croatoan was nowhere in sight. “I’ve heard it said that the man who fights for a commander he loves,” I said, intending to cut him, “cannot often be beaten.”

  He gave me a pitying look. “Pétion fights for the property rights of the men of color, but we fight for the liberty, the equality and the brotherhood. We carry on the revolution even as the reactionaries betray it.” He thumped his bare chest with his fist. “We are true Frenchmen.”

  “Touché, monsieur.” I doffed my hat and bowed to keep him from busting out singing “La Marseillaise.”

  Grinning, he pointed at a wooded watercourse to the southeast that snaked its way across the killing ground. “At the foot of the wall, that ravine becomes very deep. It prevents us from assaulting the citadel from that direction. In it is a stream called the River of Orange Trees, that flows down from our lines. Its banks are steep and covered with thick brush, which protects a man in it from the cannon fire, and it is very dark in there at night. This makes it a tempting roadway for fellows intent on the mischief. We have ambuscades set up all along in there. Every night the enemy tries to pierce our lines this way, but between our cane knives and our bayonets, we make a good harvest.”

  “It must be terrible,” I said.

  “Bon sang! We like this kind of fighting. It saves us the powder and ball.”

  I looked again at the empty bay. “Juge,” I said, “have you not seen a frigate out there?”

  “Rien de rien.” He gave me a look I couldn’t read. “Just sometimes the Yankee merchantmen.”

  “Surely you are mistaken. We have blockaded this port at Toussaint’s particular request.”