All Souls' Rising (33 page)

The doctor stretched out and propped himself up on his elbows, holding the pistol grip in his two hands. The pitted surface of the stone was warm and gratifying on his belly through his rags. Following Riau’s glance, he looked down the gorge. A heavy-billed toucan came flying over the gap and lit in a leafy swag of a creeper and remained there lightly swinging and turning its thick horny bill to and fro. Below, in a clear patch lowly overgrown with wide flat ferns, two spotted goats had quietly appeared.

Riau nudged him, mimed picking up the pistol, and pointed down at the big billy goat, crowned with long gray twists of horn. The doctor turned and mimicked the gesture, inviting Riau to take the first shot. But Riau rolled his eyes till they showed only white and exhaled hissingly through his nose; he was insisting.

The doctor lifted the heavy pistol and adjusted it in his double grip, scraping the rounded butt on the stone. It was a long shot at a queer angle—down to the patch of clearing where the stream ran out of the gorge and the goats were drinking. Sour juices squelched into his stomach, for he was at least as hungry as Riau. The doctor closed one eye and stared down the pistol barrel. He was very confident that he would miss.

“No,” Riau whispered to him. “Not like that.” He made a hideously strained grimace of squinting concentration. “Like this…” He made a pistol of his hand and lowered it quickly to the angle of fire and immediately snapped the hammer of his thumb. “Like when you shot the dog.”

“Dog?”

“At Habitation Arnaud.”

Again Riau demonstrated the movements he evidently believed he had once seen the doctor make.

The doctor shrugged. As good a way to miss as any…He sat up and raised the pistol two-handed till it pointed to the sky. For about a minute he stared at the billy goat, just at a place behind the muscle of the shoulder, until his eyes began to blur. He dragged the pistol down and when the muzzle covered the place he had been staring at he pulled the trigger. Riau had slightly overcharged the pistol and the flare from the flashpan blinded the doctor for an instant. When he could look again he saw that the nanny goat had bolted and the billy had been knocked over dead; it lay on its side with the foreleg reflexively kicking and pawing the air.

Riau had jumped up and was doing a capering dance on his toes. Of a sudden he skidded onto his knees and seized the doctor by the shoulders.

“Listen,
blanc
,” he said. “You will teach me this new way of shooting.”

“I don’t know what there is to teach,” the doctor said. “I don’t understand at all. Habitation Arnaud? How did you see me shoot the dog?”

“
Moin caché
.” Preparatory to goat-skinning, Riau had pulled out his knife and he was grinning across its edge. “I was hiding.”

W
ITHIN THE WEEK
, Père Bonne-chance had erected a church of leaves and sticks, comparable to one he’d used on the outskirts of Oua-naminthe, and was celebrating Mass there daily. His oldest son, a skinny boy of fifteen whom everyone seemed to call Moustique, served him as an acolyte. Doctor Hébert, though he’d rarely entered a church before his capture, took considerable comfort in these services. Toussaint was also faithful in his attendance, and fluent in the Latin responses. A few others came, Toussaint’s familiars. Riau stood in the back, his face dark and clouded. Jean-François and Biassou stayed away from these occasions, but the priest, like the doctor and Riau, was admitted to their councils, where Toussaint made the best use of their literacy that he might.

So after one Sunday’s Mass they adjourned to the tent of Biassou, ornamented with skulls on its four corners, with strings of snake bones swinging in the wind. Biassou sat in a low carved chair, stroking a small striped cat that stretched across his military tunic.

“We must make him
some
answer,” Toussaint was saying, referring to Governor Blanchelande’s demand for the immediate, unconditional submission of the slaves. His pale pointed fingernail tapped on the paper which the doctor had drafted to the group’s dictation.

“This answer will bring the soldiers down on on us,” said Jean-François from his corner of the table.

Toussaint pinched his fingernail between his teeth. “Yes, the ten thousand soldiers…”

“A letter like this will madden the whites,” Jean-François said. “You know it.”

“Would you crawl to them?” Biassou said. “Let the soldiers come.”

“You have a
ouanga
to stop them,” Jean-François said. “Is it so?”

“Perhaps the soldiers will
not
come,” said Toussaint.

Jean-François cleared his throat. “You must know the whites will never accept what the letter says.”

“No,” said Toussaint. “But we must not give ourselves up for nothing. And it is possible to send more than one message at one time.”

“
Comment ça?
” said Jean-François.

“Jeannot,” Toussaint said, as if nothing more were needed than the name. For some reason everyone in the tent looked at Père Bonne-chance.

“Do you mean to assassinate Jeannot?” the priest said.

“Bring him to justice,” Toussaint said, “I had rather say. Put an end to murders for amusement. An end to rape.” He looked at Biassou, who glanced down at the cat purring on his belly.

“
And
send this letter,” Jean-François said.

“
And
let them see we can be treated with,” Toussaint said. “That we keep order in our camps. We are not a mob but an Army.”

He looked around at the others’ faces. No one gainsaid him. He folded the letter over twice and began softening a stick of sealing wax in a candle flame.

“Whose army?” asked Biassou, and the cat raised its head inquisitively at his grunt.

“Of course,” Toussaint said smoothly. “We are the army of the King of France.”

T
HE WAX FELL ON THE LETTER’S SEAM
and spread like a brilliant globe of blood. By the time it crossed the wasted northern plain to reach the hands of Governor Blanchelande in Le Cap, the seal had dried and hardened to the color of a scab. Blanchelande, whose gray hair had paled toward white in the last months, turned the letter over and over without opening it. He was in the presence of several members of the Colonial Assembly, all immoderate
Pompons Rouges
, who thought his hesitation rather strange.

“Shall we get on with it?” one of them said. Blanchelande sighed and broke the seal, turned up the top fold of the letter.

“Allow me,” he said wearily, and began to read.

“‘
Galliflet Camp

“‘
Sir
,

“‘
We have never sought to deviate from the duty and from the respect we owe to the King’s representative, nor indeed, to His Majesty. But you, General, who are a just man, come among us and see this land which we have sprinkled with our sweat or, rather, with our blood; these buildings which we have raised, and that in hope of a just reward. Have we obtained it, General? The King, the universe, have bemoaned our fate and have broken the chains we bear. And we, humble victims, we were ready for anything, not wishing at all to abandon our masters. What am I saying? I am wrong! Those who should have been as fathers to us, after God, they were tyrants, monsters unworthy of the fruits of our labors, and you wish, brave General, that we should be like sheep and go and throw ourselves into the wolf’s mouth? No, it is too late. God, who fights for the innocent, is our guide. He will never abandon us. This is our motto—Conquer or Die
.’”

“No nigger could have written that,” one of the assemblymen said.

“Possibly not,” Blanchelande remarked. “I’m told they have a few bush priests in league with them.”

“If it is not all the work of royalists and the
émigrés
,” said the assemblyman.

“Yes, Governor,” said another among the
Pompons Rouges
. “Why do they campaign under the white flag and fleur-de-lis? Why do they talk so much of kings?”

The paper shivered in Blanchelande’s hand. “May I continue?” he said, and raised an eyebrow.

“‘
To prove to you, worthy General, that we are not as cruel as you may believe, we wish, with all our hearts, to make peace. BUT on condition that all the whites, whether from the plains or the hills retreat in your presence and return to their homes and so leave Le Cap, without any exception, and take with them their gold and jewels. We only seek after that so precious thing, beloved liberty
.

“‘
There, General, our profession of faith which we will uphold until the last drop of our blood. Then will all our vows have been fulfilled and believe me, it costs our hearts dear that we have taken this course
.

“‘
But, alas! I finish by assuring you that the entire contents of this is as sincere as if we were before you. The respect which we have for you, and which we swear to maintain, will not disappoint you, think that it is weakness, as we shall never have another motto: Conquer or Die for Liberty
.

“‘
Your humble and obedient servants
,

“‘
The Generals and Chiefs who make up our Army
.’”

“There’s only one answer possible to
that
,” said the first assemblyman. The second snatched the paper from the desk, threw it on the floor and stamped on it.

T
WO HOURS BEFORE DAWN THEY WOKE US
, those who would go to Jeannot’s camp. There was a way worn through the jungle between the one place and the other. That priest of Jesus might have used it, if he had known where it led, instead of finding his own way down the river. It was wide and easy, like a road. Biassou and Jean-François went horseback in their uniforms with the braid and sashes and ornaments taken from the whitemen, and Toussaint was mounted too, though he wore only his old green coat, but I, Riau, I was going on my feet, with the musket they had given me on my shoulder. There were fifty men, the trusted ones, and each with a good musket from the Spanish whitemen. They had all been training to walk in rows like whiteman soldiers, and our line went into the jungle two by two, although we did not make the noise that a whiteman column would have made. Everyone stepped softly on bare feet and Toussaint had even wrapped the horses’ feet in rags and tied up the rings of the bits so they would not jingle.

But before we had gone very far from our own camp, we at the end of the line heard a noise behind, a gasp and the sound of stumbling. Quietly a pair of us went back, I, Riau, and another. It was that little priest of Jesus who had been following us and although I tried to send him back he would not go and finally we agreed to let him come, walking beside me in the column.

It was raining when we first began to travel, and very dark under the big
gommier
trees the trail passed among. We could see nothing, and went along by touch, nose to the neck of the man ahead. Some rain leaked down through the leaves above and I doubled my hands over the flashpan of my musket, to keep the powder dry. We did not know if there would be any real fighting, though we hoped that there would not. After a while the rain stopped and we could hear the voices of birds speaking in the high branches as if they could see light somewhere. When we came out into the clearing of Jeannot’s camp the sky had cleared and the stars were there, and a little crescent of moon like a fingernail.

All of the camp was sleeping, no one had yet stirred. Dogs began to bark as we came across on our soft feet, but no one raised his head before we reached Jeannot’s
ajoupa
. We went around in a circle, the first man facing in and the second out—to protect the place from the people of the camp. Jean-François opened the
ajoupa
by kicking down a wall, which made me think again of how the raiders first came to our village in Guinée, bursting through the walls of all the huts…A woman jumped up from beside Jeannot and broke out of the circle screaming. Her voice mixed with the barking of the dogs and then the camp began to wake.

By then the light was turning silver and the piece of moon began to fade. There were a couple of men in the
ajoupa
with Jeannot but right away some of us knocked them down with musket butts. Looking at all the gun barrels pointed at his head, Jeannot had already begun to cry like a woman and beg.

Toussaint said something to Jean-François, who opened our line to a half-circle, so that we faced the camp, and the people there could see and hear what we were doing. People were coming up quickly, women and children and men. Some of the men had weapons, but no one raised them against us. I watched Toussaint, whispering again to Jean-François.

“This is a military tribunal,” Jean-François said in a loud voice. “You, Jeannot, have offended against the King In France. You have broken the law of our Army. How? You have done unspeakable things to women. You have killed helpless prisoners with torture, you have drunk their blood…”

And Jean-François went on speaking this way for a long time, but I stopped listening to him. In the crowd that was silently watching I saw Merbillay, with Pierre Toussaint on her hip. Her face was sober, and the baby hid his face against the cloth under her breasts. Jeannot was kissing Jean-François’s boots and crying that he would serve him in chains for the rest of his life, if he were only let to live, and I remembered how he had been in the first fights against the whitemen, facing their guns with his chest bare, and calling insults at them. But this bravery was not his own, it belonged to
Maît’Carrefour
, who was hungry for death. Jeannot had fed him well, in the fights and with the prisoners in the camp. But the Baron’s hunger is bottomless. Time now for Jeannot to feed the grave with his own flesh.

Jean-François kicked Jeannot’s face away from his boots and took a few steps back. The priest came forward then, the little fat man who had walked with us, for Jeannot’s bad father had run away in the jungle when he first heard that we had come, and no one ever saw him again in that place. The priest was holding out his cross with God nailed to it and he was talking in a low voice about the kindness of Jesus. But Jeannot clutched him and held him with his arms and legs like the priest was a woman and Jeannot wanted to do the thing with him.