The War of Knives

by Broos Campbell

  Seamen are a prudish lot by and large, despite the stories that people tell. Etiquette demands that they avert their eyes when another man strips, for instance. I believe it comes from being so crowded together below decks. Juge, Treadwell, Sergeant Cahoon, and I were so crowded together in our little cell that before long we had few secrets from each other anymore, at least not of the kind that showed.

  One morning after breakfast time, to distract myself from the fact that we’d had no breakfast, I said, “Juge, when I first met you, you wore no shirt beneath your coat.”

  “Yes, I find it gives me a savage look that frightens the men of color.”

  “Like a red Indian in full war regalia. But if you will indulge my vulgar curiosity, what I wish to know is this: How is it you have your name branded on your chest, and how did you get such a name?”

  “Ah,” he grinned. His shirt was open, which is what had reminded me of it, and he ran his fingers across the raised letters J-U-G-E. “It is an interesting story. I will tell it to you. Juge is not the name given me at birth, of course—it is my name of war. But as the man who christened me did not consult my mother in the matter, any more than he consulted her in the fathering of me, I did not feel obliged to keep the name when I became a man.

  “But how I came to be called ‘Judge’ is simplicity itself. Our Lord Jesus gave me the name,” he said, crossing himself, “and it came about in the following way.

  “For the J and the E I claim no credit. They were my former master’s initials—and mine, too, for Javier-Étienne. That was how I was called as a boy: Javier because I was born in January, and Étienne for the saint.”

  “Why Saint Stephen?”

  “I don’t know. It is innocent of meaning.” He traced the J and the E with a fingertip. “His lady insisted that all their slaves be branded so, one letter on each breast. She even caused to be branded the ones like me whom she knew to be her husband’s children. Yes,” he said, anticipating me, “I am a griffe. My mother was black and my father was half white, an affranchi—this is an insulting term, as it supposes that freedom is granted by men and not given by God. He was too proud of his land and slaves to know it. But as in appearance I am like the true nègre, I trust you will not hold it against me.”

  “So you’re a mulatto, then?”

  “Mulatto! Do not call me this.”

  “Why? What’s wrong with it?”

  “What is wrong with it? It means mule, this is what is wrong with it.” He wagged his hands on either side of his head to indicate ears. “Anyway, you would have liked his lady, I think. She was a great beauty and a charming hostess, much admired and sought after. She was very kind to me as I got older, if you understand me.” Tenderness mingled with contempt on his face. “She even persuaded her husband to send me to the College de la Marche in Paris to be educated.”

  “The College de la Marche?” says I. “You must be older than you look.”

  “Yes, and so? I have twenty-four years, but this is not the point. The point . . .” He leaned his head back and stared at nothing.

  “Fine, that’s the J and the E. But what about the U and the G in between?”

  “I arrive at that shortly.” The smile had gone. “My older brother Joseph-Eugène was my lady’s pastry chef. On the evening that I returned from France, he was so excited to see me that he burned the shells for the pear tarts. They were her favorite. She flew into a wrath that she could not contain. And so she had Joseph-Eugène thrown into the still-glowing oven. You understand now why I say I cannot abide the smell of roasting meat.”

  “But what did you do?”

  “What could I do? I was a slave. Slaves died all the time, in worse ways than did my brother. And it was a remote habitation. They knew about the revolution, of course, and Dutty Boukman’s uprising.”

  “Who’s Boukman?”

  “Who is Boukman? He was the houngan whose ceremony in the Alligator Wood set fire to the spirit. The French cut off his head, and now he is a loa. This was in 1791. Surely you know of it.”

  “No, I confess not.”

  He shook his head, as if in sorrow at my ignorance. “Stories reached us, of course, even way off in the mountains as we were, but it was like a distant cry. We did not heed it. I brought further news when I returned from Paris. I landed in Le Cap and saw terrible things as I made my way home, but no one believed me. I did not wish to believe it myself. I wished to hide away, but once a man is infected with revolution, he cannot be cured. And then one day, all was in turmoil. The fields were burning, and out of the flames came black men with knives in their hands, naked like savages and seeking revenge. My master and lady begged me to place them and their children under my protection. I was the overseer by then, having my letters and of course being my lady’s favorite. I swore on the Holy Bible that I would let no harm come to them at the hands of the mob. This promise I kept to the letter. I took their money into safekeeping and put their children on a boat to France. Whether they arrived safely I never discovered.”

  “And your master and lady?”

  “I assumed control of the entire plantation, such of it as was left. My lady I put to work as my chef of cuisine, she who had never dirtied her fingers in her life. And then one evening she burned the tarts.”

  “Juge, tell me you didn’t—”

  “But I did, my friend, I did. Then I stoked the coals with the same fireplace poker that I had used to dash out her husband’s brains, and with the red-hot tip I burned the U and the G into my chest. As I say, it was at the command of Jesus Christ.” Again he crossed himself. “The money I gave to the other slaves and told them to do as they wished. Then I took my master’s boots and sword, and rode off in search of Father Toussaint. And bon sang! How my lady’s screams rang in my head as I rode.”

  Thirteen

  One morning a pair of grenadiers came and slapped a pair of darbies on my wrists. I asked where we were going. “Colonel Cravache,” said the uglier one. I asked who that was. “You’ll find out,” he said. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “March.”

  They took me down the stairs and through the yard. Lieutenant Négraud shook his head and looked away as we tramped out the gate. The grenadiers shoved me along the street to Fort Beliotte. The usual hullabaloo was going on down by the walls—cannons barking, muskets popping, men bellowing or screaming, depending. It was a normal day. It was a beautiful day, too, as usual—or it was overhead, anyway, and probably up in the hills and out on the bay. I didn’t much like how the day in the citadel was shaping up. It was hot in the fort, hot even for San Domingo, but a cold draft ran up my coattails as we turned down a narrow stairway to the basement. There we passed through a low doorway, above which a guttering torch shone on the words “Adjutant’s Office” painted in brown paint. The office, if it can be called that, was a dim, stinking room furnished with a rough table, some stout chairs and a leather-padded sawhorse streaked with dried blood. The table, chairs, and sawhorse were equipped with straps and ringbolts. A collection of manacles and whips dangled from the stone walls.

  A narrow-headed colonel with skin the color of a cockroach stood by the sawhorse and watched the grenadiers strap me to a chair. They did it without being told. It was all in a day’s work to them. When they were done the colonel bent over me to test the straps. His breath stank of rancid cheese. His mustache looked like a nest of spiders had crawled under his nose and died. “Go,” he said to the soldiers. Then he walked around the room, studying me from various angles as if there was something interesting about me.

  “I am called Cravache, the whip.” He folded his arms and leaned against the sawhorse. “Who sent you here?”

  “Commodore Gaswell, the commander of my squadron.”

  “For why?”

  “To assess the military situation here and to write a report about it. I have already discussed this with General Pétion.”

  “You are a sailor. Why did you not come by sea under a flag of truce?”

  “I
did not come under a flag of truce because we are not at war. I came by land because it was faster. God’s truth, Colonel,” I said. “I never intended to come to Jacmel. I was on my way to Cap Maréchaux when my horse bolted in the excitement.”

  “It is convenient to blame this on a horse.”

  “Nonetheless, Colonel, it is true.”

  “Liar. No one storms a city by accident.”

  I shrugged. “I just got caught up in it.”

  “We are all just caught up in it. That is the nature of war. Where did you learn your French?”

  “Baltimore.”

  “Who taught you?”

  “A refugee from Le Cap.”

  “Why did you hire him?”

  “I didn’t. My brother hired him.”

  “You split hairs. For why was he hired?”

  “My father wanted me to learn French.”

  “For why?”

  “My mother spoke French.”

  “Why did she not teach you?”

  “She died when I was born.”

  “She was French?”

  “Yes.”

  “From where?”

  “The Louisiana country.”

  “So she was not truly French. She was Creole.”

  “So I am told.”

  “You do not know whether your mother was French or Creole?”

  “I told you, I never knew her.”

  He slapped me across the face, once, twice and again till my eyes stung. He smiled. “That is to remind you to keep a civil tongue in your head. Now, why this refugee?”

  “He was cheap.”

  I got slapped again for that.

  “This man whom you call cheap, he was a former planter?”

  “I think so.”

  Cravache pressed his lips together and blew air between them. “He thinks so.” He looked up at the ceiling. “You see why we fight? A gentleman reduced to teaching beautiful French to snotty boys. ‘Un, deux, trois. I have a yellow pencil. Is this a yellow pencil? Yes, it is a yellow pencil.’ Bah. Now tell me what is so important about this.” He tapped me on the nose with Villon’s letter.

  “I don’t know, sir. I haven’t read it.”

  He slapped me three times again. I tasted blood. “Not sir,” he said. “You must call me citizen. I do not care for your bourgeois niceties. Now, we commence again. Why are you here?”

  He was good at his job, was Colonel Cravache. His earlier questioning was patty-cake compared to the games we played when he finally presented me with my set of watercolor sketches.

  Somebody tugged at my arm. “Where’s Juge?” said I. My face seemed to be glued to the floor with blood.

  “Extraordinary,” drawled Treadwell. “Could’ve sworn he was here. No? My mistake.” He put his arm across his eyes and pretended to sleep.

  “Himself was took by a couple o’ sojers,” said Cahoon as I peeled my face off the floor and he helped me sit up. “Are ya a-tall well, sir? Yer a sight for the ages, there, and so ya are.” He sopped my face with a filthy rag. It made me see lightning, but he did it so tender I near about wept.

  “A couple of soldiers took him where? When?”

  “Didn’t say, sir, not that I’d be understandin’ if they did. ’Twasn’t but half an hour ago, when they brought ya in an’ dropped ya on the floor there. Brave grenadiers they was,” he said darkly, “them with their great hams for fists an’ their bullyin’ ways.”

  I couldn’t remember anything between the watercolors and waking up there on the floor, although from the rawness of my throat I guessed I must’ve done some screaming. I hoped to Christ they hadn’t taken Juge away because of something I’d said. But that was my worry, not the sergeant’s. I asked him how he did.

  “’Tis the world’s great wonder how the body heals, sir. I even took meself to the head while you were gone.”

  “I’m obliged to hear it.”

  “The board’s wobbly, sir. A man might fall to his doom and death, and such a one as no one bears thinkin’ about.”

  Talking to him was like talking to a three-year-old who was proud he hadn’t shit himself all day. I ignored his prattle while I tried to think of a way to make myself scarce. I’d gotten off lightly with Cravache, I was sure of it. I hated to think of what was happening to Juge while Cahoon nattered on about the state of his bowels and Treadwell sulked in his bed. And well they might, too—no one was savoring the thought of murdering them slowly.

  Every inch of me ached, and I believed Cravache had broken my nose again. But I was damned if I was going to let Dr. Pepin set it for me, not after the last time. I straightened it myself—and it was a damn good thing I sat down before I did it, too.

  I looked at Cahoon blithering and Treadwell pouting, and decided I’d had enough of them both. Stranding Cahoon in the middle of a sentence, I took myself for a walk along the corridor, stopping on the far side of the prison to look out the window of an empty cell toward the courtyard under Pétion’s balcony. A group of soldiers had staked out a chubby white man face down on the ground and were painting crimson stripes across his naked back and buttocks with switches cut from the lemon tree in the corner. I turned my face away. My heart felt colder than a Labrador clam as I continued down the corridor.

  I tried the stairwell door out of habit, and to my surprise it opened. There was no point in going down, where the first turnkey I met would just send me back to my cell if he didn’t knock me down first. I went up.

  The door at the top of the stairs had come off its hinges. It was propped up against the wall, and was fuzzy with grime and cobwebs, as if no one had thought about it in years. Several sets of footprints led away from it along the dusty floor. Only a few footprints came back out. Daylight glimmered beyond the turning of the corridor. I felt a puff of cool breeze on my face. I could still hear the man screaming in the courtyard below, but the sound was muffled by walls and distance, and I didn’t want to think about him anymore. I trod lightly along the corridor as if in a church, ignoring the empty cells on the right and the narrow windows on the left, and looked around the corner.

  Shafts of sunlight streamed through holes where the wall faced the far left of Toussaint’s lines. I stuck my head and shoulders out the biggest hole and looked down into the trench that we had blundered through on the night we were captured. Soldiers hunkered in it, obviously bored despite the occasional musket balls kicking up the dirt. It occurred to me that if I had a rope I might shinny down—right spang among the soldiers, who might not take it too friendly. But I didn’t have a rope anyway.

  I continued along toward the seaward side. The cornerstones at the turning had been smashed in and the ceiling had come down. I climbed up the broken stones to the roof.

  The prison had been built to keep people in, not out, and there were neither battlements nor guards on its pitched roof. It would have been a dangerous as well as an uncomfortably hot place to be posted, anyway—the heat radiating off the slates would roast a man in about an hour, I guessed, if the sun didn’t boil his brains first.

  A slate skittered out from under my foot as I crawled to the peak. I held my breath at the noise it made as it shattered on the stones four stories below.

  A soldier on the parapet of Fort Beliotte looked in my direction. I waved, and he waved back.

  I was surprised to see that the sun hadn’t yet reached the zenith— the interview with Cravache seemed like something that had happened to someone else and long ago. On my left I could see the Croatoan working her way to windward on her usual patrol route across the mouth of the bay. To my right I had an excellent view of Pétion’s forts and redoubts and Toussaint’s lines beyond them. I inventoried Pétion’s guns out of professional curiosity. He had mostly four-and eight-pounder fieldpieces with maybe half a dozen twelves in the main fort, all of them facing toward Toussaint’s trenches. Not one gun that I could see covered the seaward approach.

  A sergeant joined the soldier on the parapet. I waved at him, too, but he didn’t wave back.<
br />
  As the Croatoan came about to make her leeward leg to the southwest, a string of bunting broke out on her far side. Her shivering main topsail masked the flags until she braced her yards round, but as she settled on her new course I could see them just as plain.

  Make your number, they read.

  And there, due south and close-hauled on the larboard tack as she made her easting to clear Cap Jacmel, was a fourteen-gun schooner with an old-fashioned raised quarterdeck. I’d have recognized her at once even without the familiar three-flag number fluttering at her forepeak. It was about all I could do not to blubber at the sight of the Rattle-Snake.

  I glanced at the sun again. Nearly eight bells in the forenoon watch, when Peter Wickett and John Rogers, the sailing master, would shoot the sun with their sextants and Peter would declare it to be noon, when today would officially commence by sea reckoning. And after the declaration had been duly entered in the duty log along with various remarks about the bearing and distance of landmarks to pinpoint the schooner’s position at precisely one point on the globe and no other, the sun would continue in its course across the sky, the half-hour glass in the binnacle would be turned, the watch would change, and the schooner’s carefully plotted position would be left forever behind her as an unmarked spot on the unmarkable sea.

  But the people, now—there probably weren’t three hands in fifty who’d give two shits to know where the schooner was or where she was going until she got there. Of infinitely more importance to them would be that dinner was on its way. And afterwards Bosun Klemso would pipe All hands to splice the mainbrace while Corporal Haversham’s Marines stood watch over the serving out of the grog and all was right in the world.

  I had a chest full of clean clothes over there, and all the whiskey and tobacco and fresh air a man could want, and friends, and a berth that, while it tended to be dampish in any kind of a sea, had sheets and blankets that Ambrose aired out whenever the weather permitted. Pinched and crowded though she was, Rattle-Snake was a regular floating palace compared to the prison of Jacmel. As suddenly as my joy had come—it was joy, I decided—it upped anchor and slipped away, leaving me floundering in a whirlpool of self-pity.