The War of Knives

by Broos Campbell

  I examined him in the light of the lantern. “You have paid Cravache one too many visits, I think.”

  He smiled at me with broken teeth and scabby lips, his gums black with congealed blood. “Our hosts, they did not wish me to leave.” Around his wrist was a shackle, and attached to the shackle was a heavy chain that was pinned to the wall.

  “I just found Négraud downstairs,” I said. “He was murdered.”

  “No! Perhaps he was caught stealing rats, hein?”

  “Have you seen or heard anything?”

  “There was a banging on the walls, but once that stopped, all was silence until someone crept by a few minutes ago. I heard him go upstairs.”

  “Did you see who it was?”

  “Bon sang! It was so dark, I would not have recognized my own sweetheart unless she farted.” He worked his lips. “You wouldn’t have any wine, would you, and a scrap of bread?”

  “Of course I have.” I handed him my bag and suppressed a pang of guilt. “Am I the simpleton, that I would not think of it?”

  He stuffed a wad of damp bread and cheese into his mouth and swallowed it without chewing. He choked a bit, but waved me away when I tried to whack him on the back. He snapped the neck of the bottle off against the wall and poured wine into his mouth.

  “Ah, this is much better.” He ate more bread and cheese and slugged down some more wine before setting them aside. “Enough. Now the important thing is to remove this chain from my wrist. Someone is trying to knock down the whole city, I think.”

  “Pétion’s breaking out tonight, and the city’s gone mad. Father Toussaint sent me here to get you out. But I also need to find Franklin and MacGuffin. Do you know where they are?”

  “Pfff! How would I know this? They did not invite me upstairs for cakes and lemonade this evening. But get me loose and l help you find them.”

  It was no good trying to get him free of the shackle, but the pin in the wall seemed promising. Voyou braced himself with a foot on the wall and yanked with his crowbar, yanked again, and the pin came free. Juge reached out his hand, and I hauled him to his feet. He yawned and stretched, the chain clanking. He gathered it up for want of anything better to do with it.

  I climbed up the crates and looked out the window. The Croatoan and the Rattle-Snake lay below me and to the right. They had anchored fore and aft to secure themselves in position for the bombardment. They had boats out, rigging the springs, the heavy lines attached to the anchor cables and run around the capstans, that would allow them to traverse their guns across a wide arc as they chose their targets.

  I hopped down. “I am going upstairs to see that justice is done,” I said. “You can wait here if you want. You may not want to help me do what I need to do.”

  Juge was leaning against Voyou. “You intend to murder Franklin?”

  “No. I intend to arrest him.”

  “But you will not mind if he resists, I think. I shall accompany you.”

  “No, you’re too weak. You stay here and rest till I come back.”

  He drew himself away from Voyou. “I am a remarkable fellow. Too weak? Fah. It is my fervor to see justice done.”

  A light flickered in the cell at the end of the corridor. I shuttered the dark-lantern and handed it to Voyou. “Be silent as death, now,” I said. With sword and pistol in my hands I crept down the passageway till I came to the lighted room. I peeked inside.

  Franklin sat on the floor, with a smoldering dip in a clay bowl beside him casting an uncertain light. He sat in a puddle of blood, and in his lap he cradled MacGuffin’s head and shoulders. The death’shead hilt of our missing dagger of the White Hand protruded from the Parson’s lower spine.

  “George Franklin,” I said, pointing my pistol at his face, “or whatever your name is, in the name of the United States I arrest you for treason. Murder, too, it looks like.” I sidestepped into the room away from the doorway as Juge and Voyou entered behind me. “Venez donc,” I said, switching to French to be sure that Juge understood. “Get up. My friends here will bear witness that everything is clean and above board.”

  “Vous êtes un parfait idiot,” said Franklin. He stayed where he was and kept his hands in sight. “You’re a perfect idiot. Connor stabbed this man, not I.”

  “Connor’s waiting downstairs, so who’s the idiot?”

  “You’re mistaken. He left not a moment ago. No doubt you met him in the passageway and let him escape.”

  He said it with such conviction that I gave him a second look. “How’d he get up here, then? We had to come in the back way up the shit-hole.”

  “He knows people, and they know him. I imagine he simply said hello and walked in the front door.”

  “So where’s he now, then, if you know so much?”

  Juge rattled his chain. “Maybe he heard us coming and lay in some dark corner until we passed. Or maybe he hides in one of the cells. Remember I heard someone going up the stairs.”

  “I didn’t see him.”

  “That proves nothing,” said Franklin. “Perhaps he was there, perhaps he was not.”

  “And maybe you’re lying, and maybe you’re not.” I wanted an end to it. I gave Juge my pistol. “Please go see if Connor’s hiding around here. Are you strong enough for that?”

  “Mais oui, I am the Hercules. You do nothing rash while I am gone?”

  “I won’t kill him unless he forces me to it.”

  “I’ll not move a finger,” said Franklin.

  “Bien. I leave Voyou here to keep you company.”

  “As for your charge of murder,” said Franklin, switching back to English as Juge left, “MacGuffin still lives.”

  “Then lay him down and stand aside.”

  “No,” rasped the Parson, so faint I had to lean close to hear him. “The blade is in my vitals. It will kill me if I move.”

  “Fear not,” said Franklin. “I shan’t drop you.” He cradled MacGuffin’s head and shoulders tenderly but distantly, as you would a sick kid that wasn’t your own.

  I sheathed my sword and squatted beside them. “It’s over, MacGuffin. I know what you are. I can’t promise you clemency. In fact, I’m pretty sure you’ll hang if you live.”

  His lips were drawn back in pain—or perhaps wickedness, I couldn’t tell. “Deus vult,” he said.

  “Amen, brother. God wills it, yessir.” If that’s what it took to get him to talk, I didn’t see any harm in mouthing the words. “But you have time yet to redeem your soul. Tell me what you know.”

  “Iure divino.” He rolled his eyes toward me, a chuckle rattling deep in his chest as he muttered the word that Quilty’s fever victim had said just before he died: “Dixi—” He jerked away from Franklin and thrust himself onto the dagger. “Oh, sweet Jesus!” The blade sythed through his innards and cut his screams short.

  “Shit and perdition, Franklin, why didn’t you stop him?” I put my hand to MacGuffin’s throat.

  “It’s pointless to throttle him now,” said Franklin. He leaned away from the body but stayed where he was on the floor.

  “I ain’t trying to strangle him. I’m seeing is he still alive.”

  “Is he?”

  “No he ain’t, no thanks to you.”

  “You had the same opportunity as I to stop him.” He tapped two fingers against his chin, considering. “Fortunately, Mr. MacGuffin and I had a little chat before you arrived. He told me where Connor plans to rendezvous with the ships that will take him and his men to a certain place.”

  “What d’ye mean, ‘a certain place’?”

  “I will divulge that to the senior officer on this station.”

  “You should tell me in case something happens to you.”

  “That is exactly why I won’t tell you. I want you to take very good care of me. In the meanwhile we must arrest Connor, which we may yet do if we act quickly. I suspect he is going through Pétion’s files in Fort Beliotte as we speak, looking for certain documents that might prove dangerous to him. He also absconde
d with all my notes when he abandoned me here.”

  “Who cares about your notes? Pétion’s about to move,” I snapped. “He’s already got all the intelligence he’s going to get about Toussaint’s army. He’s already committed.”

  “I mean my notes on Connor, you fool. He’s as white as you are. There are also documents that could prove damaging to a certain highly placed American official, whose name I can’t divulge as yet.”

  I eyed him up and down, wondering if he was trying a new piece of bait. Either way, he knew it was too tempting for me not to snap at it. “You wouldn’t be talking about a certain assistant U.S. consul, would you?”

  He gave me a fishy stare from behind his spectacles. “As I said—”

  Juge ran back into the cell. “Bon sang! What is the screaming?”

  “Mr. MacGuffin has spared us the trouble and expense of a trial.” I filled him in on what Franklin had said. “I take it you didn’t find Connor.”

  “No. Let us fetch this villain at once.”

  I yanked the dagger out of MacGuffin’s spine. With Voyou and Juge on my heels, I marched out of the room without looking back. A clever man, Franklin—I’d lost interest in him.

  As we dashed through a confused crowd of soldiers toward Fort Beliotte, a pair of rockets rose from the bay and burst overhead, lighting up the clouds with a sullen crimson glow.

  “Gare à vous!” says I. “Look out!” And then a roaring filled the air, followed an instant later by the boom of the frigate’s twelve-pounders and the crack of the schooner’s sixes out in the bay. The wind of a passing ball spun me around and threw me on my face. I looked up to see my companions scattered around me—Juge sprawling on his back, moving his arms and legs like an upended turtle; Voyou on his belly, peeking through his fingers; and Franklin fumbling around on his hands and knees, as if looking for his stolen writing desk.

  “Come on,” I said. We might have two minutes before the next salvo, and the air would be filled with a steady rain of iron once the faster gun crews began to outpace the others.

  Officers were herding the mulatto army into the central square and sorting them into their proper units. Another salvo sailed in, kicking up stone chips and knocking men around.

  “Stand steady! Close up,” cried the officers.

  “Let us move or let us lie on the ground,” called a soldier.

  “Non, garçons!” cried Pétion from astride a gray charger. “Am I not more exposed than you, as is fitting and proper? We must not move until we move as one. If you trust in me and do your duty as Frenchmen, we will soon be drinking rum with our comrades in Petite Goâve. This I promise you! In the meantime, we must give Dessalines time to swallow the bait. Hear the fighting to the east? Already he falls into our trap!”

  The soldiers gave him a cheer, too preoccupied to bother with the four of us.

  We shoved our way along the edge of the crowd till we came to the gates of Fort Beliotte. But for the torches sputtering in their sconces in the arched entry hall, all was quiet. In the guardroom three grenadiers had been stabbed to death. There was no one else around, neither in the hall nor on the wide stairs as we ran up into smoky darkness.

  Connor arose from behind Pétion’s desk as we burst in. On the desk stood a lighted candle, and beside the candle lay his pocket pistol—on full cock, but out of easy reach. It was hellish hot in the room. Smoke beyond the balcony glowed in the firelight, and from upstairs came the moaning of flames.

  “Oh, good,” said Connor, as if he had sent me on a minor errand and then forgotten about it, “you have found Juge.” Ignoring the pistols in our hands, he went back to rummaging through the drawer he’d pried open. “Your work here is done, Mr. Graves. You may go now.” He started to put a paper in his inside pocket, but then he looked again at my pistol and thought better of reaching a hand into his coat. He placed the paper on the desk and gestured at Juge. “Toussaint will wish to see his protégé as soon as possible. Oughtn’t you to be going?”

  “It’s a little crazy outside right now. I think I’ll wait a bit.” I sidled around till I could see everyone in the room. Franklin followed me, uncomfortably close.

  “Do put up your pistol, Mr. Graves,” said Connor. “It is one thing to be shot a-purpose, but it should gall me severely to be holed through carelessness.”

  “Mr. Connor, I aim to bring you aboard the Croatoan.”

  “I appreciate the escort,” said he, riffling through a sheaf of papers and then tossing them aside, “but I am expected elsewhere. Ah.” He pulled a familiar-looking paper out of the drawer. Villon’s letter. Holding his coat open by the lapel, and moving ever so slowly, he tucked it into his breast pocket.

  “I’m sure Dessalines will be eager to have a chat with you,” I said, “if ye’d rather go see him instead.”

  “No, no, that will not be necessary.” He closed the drawer with his thigh and leaned on the desk, looking at the shuttered lantern that Voyou carried.

  I snapped my fingers, the way he’d snapped his at me. “Step away from the desk. And I want that letter.”

  “I believe your powder is wet, Mr. Graves,” said Connor.

  I was watching his hands, but he made no move to pick up his pistol. He blew out the candle instead. And then in the sudden darkness, Franklin grabbed me in a bear hug and threw me against the wall.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw the door of the lantern snap open, fixing Connor in the glare of its bull’s-eye lens. Then Connor’s pistol blazed, and Voyou dropped the lantern with a grunt. Juge’s pistol flashed in the pan—a misfire. The lantern clanked across the floor, the light flicking on and off as the shutter opened and closed.

  In the points of light that punctuated the darkness I caught a glimpse of Juge shaking out his length of chain, and of Franklin, who but never carried a weapon, lurching after me with a knife in his hand. Cuss me for a slackjawed ninny—I’d taken the dagger out of MacGuffin’s back but forgotten to search his body. Then the lantern went out and Franklin was on me like a duck on a June bug.

  “You son of a bitch! You traitor,” I squeaked. I tried to kick away from him, but he was stronger than I’d took him for. The point of the dagger scraped along my ribs. I grabbed his wrist, but he grabbed my pistol with his other hand. I pulled the trigger and hoped to Christ I’d shot him for his trouble. He let go suddenly, at any rate, and I lurched face first into the corner of the desk. That lit up the inside of my head like jubilee, but of the room I couldn’t see a damn thing. I stood up, holding out my sword the way a blind man does with a cane.

  A shadow on my right ducked under my guard. I backhanded the son of a bitch with my elbow and then punched his head with the steel handguard of my sword. I heard the crunch of teeth or bone—oh, happy day! thinks I, pretty proud of myself—and as I went to follow through with my blade, there was a flash and a bang in my skull.

  A pistol must’ve gone off right behind my left ear. A roaring silence filled my head. Oh, lordy, I thought as my legs gave way, I’m struck deef as well as blind. I stretched out on the floor. It was cool and smooth— quite comfortable, actually, in the tropic heat. I gazed thoughtfully up at the flames licking through suddenly bright seams in the ceiling as someone tripped over me and stumbled off toward the doorway. Ain’t deef after all, I thought, pleased with the notion. I heard a whoosh and a clank and a yelp, and then I decided to sleep for a while.

  We trudged beside a road that ran straight as a rifle bullet toward— I looked up at the stars in the clear night sky—toward the east. The Baynet Road, I decided, though I couldn’t remember how I knew that name. The road was silvery in the moonlight. All around us women struggled along with their children in tow. Squadrons of cavalry trotted past us on the road, filling the air with the tang of horse lather. My companions and I walked without speaking. The snorting of the horses and the jingling of the harness seemed horribly loud in the unnatural quiet. I wanted very much to tell someone that the rain had stopped, and that the stars and moon were out,
but everybody seemed so anxious to get wherever we were going that I thought maybe they didn’t care about rain and stars and moonlight. The clouds had gone and the moon hung in the sky like a bloody eye. It was the smoke that made it look that way. The air was filled with smoke. I walked with my hand on a litter on which a groaning man lay, clutching his belly and coughing up smoke.

  The musketry behind us increased, answered by cannons. Two pieces, I judged, nine-pounders or maybe twelves—heavy field artillery. Somebody back there was getting it, sure as shooting.

  “Sure as shooting—ha ha!” I said to the litter-bearer next to me. He shushed me, and whispered something in what sounded like French. I could’ve sworn I’d spoken in the same language. No, that couldn’t be right. The joke didn’t make sense in French.

  From off to our right came a pounding of hooves, closing fast. The cavalry that had been screening us wheeled to meet them.

  The men carrying the litter stopped. The black man who was leading us said something that wasn’t in English or French, but which I understood well enough that I wasn’t surprised when they hurried their burden behind an outcropping of rock.

  The sounds of a terrible fight came from our right.

  I was proud that I spoke French. I conjugated various verbs as I continued walking, uncurious about the fight or where my companions had gone, but the black man came back and grabbed my arm.

  “Bonsoir, Juge,” I said, surprised that I hadn’t recognized him before. “Parlez-vous français?”

  “Idiot! Shut up and come with me!”

  “That’s no way to talk to an old shipmate.”

  He pulled me down behind the rocks. I heard thunder. I popped my head up again. A line of shrieking hussars fell on the women and children. Juge yanked me down again. I threw him off and stood up, watching in horror.

  “Aba blan avek milat! Tuyé moun-yo!” The hussars tore the women and children to pieces with saber and hoof. “Down with the whites and mulattoes! Kill them!” They slaughtered those who raised their hands or fell to their knees—children, women covering their babies with their bodies—and darted like dogs after those who ran.