The War of Knives

by Broos Campbell

  “The bombardment is important, but your presence here is not. Captain Block is free to fire as soon as he is in position. I think we will know it when he has begun.” His eyes had hardened again. “No one else can do what I ask of you.” He gave me a kindly look that didn’t fool me for a second. I could feel his spirit pulling on mine, the way a quagmire sucks on your boots. “I do not order this,” he said. “I ask it. Put it that way to Captain Block and you will see what he says.”

  Seventeen

  “I still say it’s a stupid idea, Mr. Connor.”

  Dick and I had spent all afternoon hauling the pair of twelve-pounders ashore and siting them on the hill west of the river. Well, we’d seen to it, I mean, the men having done the actual donkey work; but now Dick was having a whee of a time pasting the redoubts with round shot while I slogged around in the crick mud down at the mouth of the Grand Rivière. I poured water out of my boots. The rain was coming down by the hogshead and I didn’t see how I could get any wetter, but I hate having water sloshing around in my boots. “I know how I got hornswaggled into being here, but ain’t no reason for you to come along.”

  “Dessalines has placed you in my custody.”

  “I done told you before he don’t have the authority to do that.” I had a hole in my sock and my big toe was sticking out.

  “He has the authority in this camp to shoot you on sight if he feels like it.”

  “We ain’t in his camp. We’re on an island in the middle of a fucking river.”

  “Come along now, we don’t have all night.”

  I peered out toward the bay. “They ain’t anywhere in sight yet. But you mark me, we’re going to have a power of iron around our heads in about a minute.”

  He looked at his watch. “It’s barely nine o’clock. We have an hour yet.”

  “Shit and perdition! Are you in a hurry or ain’t you?”

  “Let’s see if we have any dry powder left, and get on with our business.”

  He said it so mild I wanted to kick him, but I checked my pistols anyway. “They’re both of ’em soaked.”

  “No time to reload,” he said, more cheerful than I cared for. “Besides, it’s too damp for that anyway.”

  “Damp!” says I. “Damp ain’t in it.” I shoved my pistols back into my belt. “I don’t see how that old Toussaint thinks I’m going to rescue Juge, anyway. Once Pétion busts out, he can just walk out all by his lone.”

  “Pétion will see he is killed before the troops move.”

  “Well, what am I doing here, then?”

  “It’s a classic manipulation.” He snapped his fingers at me to put my boots back on. “Dessalines threatens to see that an accident befalls you if you fail, and Christophe and Toussaint offer you friendship if you succeed. You are caught between fear and greed, the two motivators for all human behavior.”

  I stomped around till my wet feet had settled in my boots. My socks were all wadded up around the toes. “I don’t think wanting to live makes me exactly what you’d call greedy,” I said. “Naturally I want to live.” And see to it that someone get what’s coming to them, I thought, but I shut my mouth and checked the contents of my bag. The bread and cheese were soaked, but the bottle of wine was intact.

  Voyou, the man that Toussaint had sent along with us, was a middle-aged rouge, a mix of African and Indian, with filed teeth and straight black hair that looked like half a cocoanut stuck upside down on top of his head. He wore a coil of rope over his naked shoulder and, in the belt he’d buckled on over his breechclout, a U.S. Navy tomahawk that I’d given him as a present. He waded up out of the dark and waved the crowbar in his hand, singsonging in Creole.

  “He says the coast is clear, Mr. Connor.”

  “Then let us go.”

  Dick’s twelve-pounders flashed and roared as he traded shots with the flying battery the mulattoes had brought up across the river. He’d beaten it down to one gun by sundown, but that gun had survived for hours by moving after each shot. It was firing slowly now, even accounting for the time it would take to limber up and resituate, as if most of its gunners had been killed. Flying batteries were meant to hit and run. They were murder on massed infantry but suicidal against emplaced artillery.

  One of the twelve-pounders began concentrating its fire on a redoubt on the bluff above us.

  Connor snuck another look at his watch. “Right on time,” he said. “That will keep their heads down while we cross the stream.”

  The water was no more than knee-deep over the sandbar that ran from the triangular island at the mouth of the river to the bluff the redoubt stood on, but storm runoff boiling down from the mountains had set up a fierce current. It would’ve been better for us to wait for the flood tide to stem the river’s flow, but that would’ve meant sneaking into the citadel while the Croatoan and the Rattle-Snake were doing their best to knock it down. My boots filled up with water again, but I had sense enough to keep my mouth shut about it.

  Another load of ball and canister rumbled overhead and slammed into the redoubt. Yells came from inside the little wooden fort, but I doubted much damage had been done yet. As soon as the twelve-pounder’s shot had struck home, the musketeers inside popped up their heads and began shooting. Their defiance was impressive, but I doubted they’d hit anything—Pétion’s full moon, so necessary for his plan, lay hidden behind the clouds.

  We reached the far side of the river and made our way upstream along the little bit of beach at the foot of the southernmost stronghold. Fort Beliotte was a beacon to the north, its wooden roof burning steadily despite the downpour. We came to a stretch where water willows crowded the bank, and we stepped into the river again. Alongshore the current was sluggish and greasy, but to our left it rushed and foamed and was rich with the stench of death. Firelight danced on the stream and sparkled in the falling rain.

  We left the stream and half-crawled, half-swam across a fetid series of trenches filled with liquid mud. Equipment lay scattered around as if it had been abandoned in a hurry. No one challenged us, but I did meet one man, who lay so still that I didn’t notice him till I’d oozed into his arms. He was buried in the slime with just his head and hands sticking out. Even though he was about as dead as a man can be and still stink, his left eye moved—maggots, writhing in the socket. I rolled away, swallowing puke, and at last we came to a low breastwork.

  “Vil mi,” whispered Voyou. His Creole pronunciation was worse than mine. I didn’t know what language he was used to speaking; some Indian tongue, maybe, though I thought the Spaniards had wiped them all out centuries ago. I imagine it was his pointed teeth that made him sound like he had a mouthful of porcupine quills.

  “He says it’s the town wall,” I told Connor.

  “Oh, how wonderful to have a guide,” said Connor. “I could not have figured that out for myself.”

  There was a good deal of shouting and screaming coming from beyond the wall, interspersed with the rattle of musketry and a distant clinking of steel on steel. I peeked through the spikes of a broken cheval-de-frise.

  Figures in silhouette flitted through the streets, fleeing, chasing, while others marched in orderly groups. Beyond them rose Fort Beliotte, its lower walls as bright as brass in the glow of burning houses, its upper reaches flaring and smoking in the rain. A group of white officers dashed past, pursued by a mob of mulatto fusiliers.

  “They’re off their nuts,” I said. “They’re killing their commanders.”

  “Good,” said Connor. “Then they won’t notice us.”

  Wrapped in our cloaks and with our hats pulled low, we slipped into the confusion unremarked and worked our way along back streets toward the prison. Through the rafters and broken walls of the houses along the way I saw a group on the next street over that stood out because of its regularity: a long string of men dangling from jury-rigged gallows. Looters were at work stripping the corpses. A squad of soldiers charged the looters, who returned like flies as soon as the soldiers had passed on.


  We stopped in the rubble of an abandoned house hard up against the south wall to catch our breath and reconnoiter. A bit of its roof remained, and we bunched together out of the drizzle.

  “Did you see the upper part of the prison this afternoon?” I said. “Looked like it caved in.”

  “Yes. It may be bad for poor Franklin,” said Connor. “You say you saw him up there?”

  “Top floor on the seaward side, on this side of the building. That part seemed intact.”

  I hoped Franklin was still safe and sound in his cell so I could pound a straight answer out of him. The sooner MacGuffin was in hell the better, as far as I was concerned, but I hoped he was alive, too, so I could acquaint him with the wrong end of his sword. But Juge, now . . . I cringed with shame as I recalled the way I’d caviled in front of Toussaint. Juge would be laughing and eager, was he in my place. I hoped someone had moved him before the wall collapsed.

  My teeth were rattling like a couple of skeletons fucking on a tin roof. To mask it I said, “My pistols ain’t getting any drier. I better draw the charges and reload while we’re out of the rain.”

  “I’ll not waste time on that,” said Connor. “My powder is dry, and we both have swords. Now, where is the place where your remarkable sewer empties from the prison?”

  We climbed the wall and sat astride it. “Over there, by that alligator-pear tree,” I said. “No, the short one with the fat leaves.”

  Voyou pointed. “Ahuacatl,” he said.

  “Ki sa?”

  “Ahuacatl,” he repeated. Then, “Aguacate.” He cupped his crotch.

  “Good God, Mr. Graves, what’s he saying?”

  “Dunno, but I’m pretty sure it ain’t Creole.” I thought about it and then laughed. “Aguacate’s Spanish for alligator pear. I bet the other thing he said is the Injun word it come from. I calculate it means balls, ha ha!”

  “You are entirely too frivolous ever to amount to anything, Mr. Graves.”

  “As you say, Mr. Connor.” His displeasure had put me in a good mood. “Let’s shove off.”

  Someone had hammered the gate back in place, but Voyou managed to pry it open about six or eight inches with his crowbar. A foul reek issued from the tunnel. I felt my gorge rising. “I can’t go back in there,” I said.

  “Nonsense. You’re the smaller man. Come along, there’s little time to waste.”

  “I’ll puke. I can’t do it.”

  “It was the plan agreed upon. Now get along.”

  It was the plan, all right. And it was my plan, too, which didn’t make me feel any better about it. However, I took off my coat and weapons and bag and handed them to Connor, who promptly set them on the wet ground. Telling myself that I could always strangle him later, I squeezed through the gap and slid on my knees into the dribbling filth.

  “Oh, fuh! Fuh!” I gagged. “Lordy, but it don’t half stink in here!”

  “Shh!” hissed Connor. “I am quite aware of the smell. Tell this nigger to put his back into it or he will never get inside.”

  “I don’t think he’ll find that much of an enticement, Mr. Connor.”

  Voyou was willing and strong, however, although his efforts were diminished somewhat by his tendency to giggle, and between us we managed to pry the grating open enough for him to slip inside. He literally slipped inside, grasping the front of my shirt when his legs went out from under him. We performed an obscene waltz on our knees for an awful moment before we could be certain not to fall on our faces. There was an oily sploosh as Voyou dropped the crowbar.

  “What was that?” hissed Connor.

  The moon broke through the clouds, and beyond him I caught a pale glimmer of sails as the Croatoan drifted in across the bay with the Rattle-Snake in her wake.

  “Voyou lost the crow.”

  “Well, pick it up then.”

  “I’m not grubbing around down there for it.”

  “Damn you for a recalcitrant ninny! Do as I say, blast you!”

  “You’re in luck, Mr. Connor. Voyou has picked it up.” I passed it through the bars without wiping it off first.

  Connor took it without thinking, the way you do when someone hands you something. “Oh God,” he said, dropping it like a dead thing. He wiped his hand on the wall. “Get a move on.” He passed me my things, using my coat as a glove to return the crowbar. “Remember, I wait half an hour, no more.”

  “What, ain’t you coming?”

  “Duty takes me so far and no farther.”

  I slipped my coat on, reslung my sword and bag, and stuck my pistols in my belt. I hadn’t bothered to bring a lantern; carrying a flame into those vapors would be as crazy as striking a light in a powder magazine. We knee-walked in darkness through the slimy tunnel until at last we could stand upright again. A faint light glowed in the passage above our heads.

  Voyou boosted me up into the bottom of the shaft, but then a new problem presented itself. Though the upward passage had been as filthy when I had slid down it on my way out, it was much wetter now, as if the rain had found a passage into the shaft. When I braced my back against one side and my feet on the other and tried inching my way upward, the streaming ooze on the walls and the sludge on my boots sent me slobbing downward onto Voyou’s head. Giggling, he caught my feet and shoved me as high up as he could reach. By standing on his hands I was able to gain a rough place that allowed me to hoist myself up and hold my perch.

  About a fathom and a half above me I saw candlelight glimmering through a crack in the door to the guardroom on the first floor. Voyou below me was a blacker shadow in the reeking gloom. I whispered to him to toss up his coil of rope.

  With the rope draped around my neck and my hands behind me, I put my back and feet to the wall and inched upward until I reached an outcrop. With its help I was able to haul myself onto the bench straddling the shaft, where I sat for a while, listening for any hint of sound above the plashing of water and the thrumming of the pulse in my ears. I heard nothing.

  I measured out two fathoms of rope. Taking a bight around myself and bracing my feet, I tossed the end down to Voyou, who swarmed up the line and squeezed onto the bench beside me. He hauled up the rope and re-coiled it. Then he drew his tomahawk, I drew my sword along with one of my useless pistols for style, and slowly, slowly, I pushed the door open a crack. No movement in the guardroom. I pushed the door open a little farther, waited some more. Still no movement, still no sound. I saw a pair of legs sprawled on the floor by the far door. I waited. The legs didn’t move.

  Then at my nod we burst yelling into the room.

  A candle burned in a dented old dark-lantern on the table. The air was heavy with the smell of rum and blood. Except for ourselves the only person in the room was Lieutenant Négraud, and he was dead.

  He’d been stabbed in the belly and had a disappointed look on his face. The blood that he lay in was fresh. I touched his throat, and it was still warm.

  His ring of keys was missing from his belt. I pawed through his pockets.

  “My watch!” said I, holding it up.

  Voyou’s eyes glinted. He held out his hand. “Ala bel! How pretty!” He waggled his fingers.

  I closed my fist over the watch. “Vouzan! Nan dan-ou,” I said, telling him where he could put his fingers. “This watch is very expensive. You can’t afford it.”

  “Ah wi? Poukisa ou di sa?” he said. “Oh yes? Why do you say that?”

  “Because it killed two men already. If you try to take it, it will kill a third.” I stood up and took a step back.

  He looked at the sword in my hand and shrugged. “Byen. I take what is left.”

  “Mete-w alez. Be my guest.”

  He got the best of the bargain. Négraud’s cartouche was filled with gold coins. The Indian chuckled as he slung the cartridge belt over his shoulder.

  “Eske-w kontan?” says I.

  “Wi, anpil!” Yes, he was amply content.

  I glanced at my watch before stuffing it into my pocket—half past nine, if N
égraud had kept it wound and correct. Half an hour until the bombardment commenced. I stepped to the door and peeked out.

  The corridor was empty, thank God. A tarnal pair of dead idiots we’d be if someone had heard us a-whooping like Shawnees as we flang ourselves out of the latrine. I sheathed my sword and checked my cartouche for dry cartridges. A couple of them seemed serviceable. I dried the pans of my pistols on Négraud’s shirttail, wormed the damp charges out of the barrels and reloaded.

  “Suiv mwen,” I said, snatching up the lantern. “Follow me, and stop laughing.” I led the way to the stairwell, hoping we didn’t meet any guards coming from the other direction. Even more than that, I hoped we didn’t run into whoever had done for Négraud.

  Captain Block had given Toussaint as much powder as he could spare, and Dessalines’ guns had smashed blocks of the outer wall inward, letting in the wind and rain and strewing the corridor floor with stony rubbish. Whether it was stupidity or merely bad marksmanship that had caused his gunners to pound the prison, I could only guess, but they’d done a good job of it and at least they’d stopped by the time we got there. Black holes gaped in the floor, and I thanked a beneficent universe for having placed the lantern in the guardroom.

  I barely recognized our old third-floor cell in the rubble. The ironbound wooden door had sagged outward, splintered at the top but still attached by its massive lower hinge. I flashed the light around the cell, holding the lantern and a pistol out at arm’s length. The man who lay slumped against the far wall was the right size and shape, but his face was all wrong.

  “Juge? Parlez fort,” I said. “Speak up!”

  “Ah, Matty, mon ami,” came the familiar voice, “you still speak French like a Spanish cow.”

  “Juge, my friend, is it you?”

  “Of course it is I,” he mumbled. “Who else would dare answer to my name?”