Master of the Crossroads (62 page)

In his haste he had worked up a sweat which now adhered stickily to his every crease. With a handkerchief, he sponged some wet dust from his face. No conversation. They might have been eavesdropping, but nothing could be heard through the inner door. After half an hour, Raimond took a large gold watch from his waistcoat pocket and looked at the dial, then wound the watch with a gold key attached to the other end of the chain. More silence followed, interrupted infrequently by a voice raised outside. A black fly flew in the open window, bumbled around the high corners of the ceiling, and finally found its way back out. Beyond the window the light was just beginning to fade and the air was thickening with rain.

Then Julien Raimond was on his feet, and the doctor registered that Toussaint had come into the room, though he had heard nothing, had not seen the inner door open. The general stood with his large bicorne hat in his hand. There was nothing particular about his expression, and yet he seemed extraordinarily compressed upon himself, like a tightened, swollen fist.

“When a hog has once eaten a chicken,” Toussaint said, “you may put out one of its eyes, you may put out the other eye, but this hog will still try to eat chickens whenever it passes them.”

Julien Raimond opened his mouth, then closed it. Toussaint had uttered this proverb in Creole—
parler nèg,
he called it. Black talk. His words seemed addressed to no one in particular, but now he focused on Doctor Hébert.

“I shall wait for you at Bréda,” he said. He knocked his hat against his tight trouser leg a couple of times, then settled it on his head and marched out the door.

The atmosphere in the room relaxed slightly when he had gone, but the doctor felt foreboding. What had been the color of Toussaint’s headcloth? He had seen the black general so densely concentrated a few times before, and killing had invariably started soon afterward, though not always or obviously at Toussaint’s instigation. The door of the inner cabinet was slightly ajar. The three of them looked at each other; then Pascal, with a light push of his fingertips, swung it farther open.

Sonthonax was standing, behind his desk, with his hair sticking up in several directions, flexing his left hand on a ball of crumpled paper. He looked up at them all as though wakened from a dream.

“Oh,” he said. “There has been a misunderstanding.” He frowned at the desktop. “But no, perhaps it is nothing.”

The doctor went down to the front steps of the building and stood watching the rain from the shelter of the portico. Toussaint and his men would have passed the city gate by this time, would be riding through sheets and curtains of rain, indifferent to the drenching, the horses splashing out mud and water to either side of the road to Haut du Cap. He stared into the rain, half mesmerized, listened to the rush of it over the roof. Presently Pascal came out to join him.

“Enlighten me,” the doctor said. “What could he have meant by that parable about the pig?”

Pascal cleared his throat and glanced over his shoulder into the hallway of the building. “According to Commissioner Raimond,” he said, dropping his voice, “Sonthonax proposed to Toussaint—and months ago, when he was promoted General-in-Chief—that the two of them should conspire to massacre all the whites here and make the colony independent of France.”

The doctor felt air rushing out of his body through his open mouth. Pascal was married to Julien Raimond’s daughter, but always referred to Raimond with the greatest formality in conversation with third parties. Nevertheless one might assume that there was greater confidence between them than their official positions would require.

“Improbable, you say?” Pascal’s mouth was wry. “Well, General Toussaint rejected this proposal, and he gave his word of honor to mention it to no one—still according to Commissioner Raimond, whom he did tell, so as to safeguard his reputation from being stained with this plot.”

“But today,” the doctor said. “This afternoon, what passed between them?”

“Today,” Pascal said, “the general recommends that the commissioner should return to France to occupy his elected office in the Council of Five Hundred, where his eloquence may continue to serve the sacred cause of Liberty, et cetera, et cetera . . .”

“But the scheme of independence—”

“And massacre—one mustn’t forget the massacre.” Pascal frowned into the rain. “But the pig—yes, one supposes that like the pig who has eaten chickens, Sonthonax cannot help himself from returning to the notion of slaughtering the whites, when he has once conceived it. Or, that was the general’s implication—of course Sonthonax said nothing of the kind either to me or to the Citizen Raimond.”

The doctor looked at him. Pascal took a step nearer and lowered his voice. The doctor smelled stale coffee on his breath.

“Sonthonax is certainly popular among the great majority here,” he said. “I mean of course all the new-freed blacks. Also there are some black officers who seem quite devoted to him. Clervaux, Maurepas, Moyse . . . perhaps Pierre Michel?”

There was more to the question than he had asked aloud. The doctor felt his center of gravity frost over and sink to the level of his heels. “If I understand you correctly,” he said. “That notion is without a prayer.”

“Ah,” said Pascal. His eyes grew distant; he took a step back. “Well, with the changes in Paris—all the colonists gathered at Vaublanc’s back and so on—perhaps it
would
be better for the commissioner to labor for liberty in France.”

“They’re calling for his head back there,” the doctor said. “At least, that party which you have just mentioned.”

“Perhaps, but as a lawyer, Sonthonax is not to be underestimated—whatever his qualifications as colonial administrator. Remember, he eluded those same charges, last time he was recalled to France.” Pascal shrugged. “He may fall, but he seems to fall on his feet.”

When the rain had stopped, the doctor walked back toward the Cigny house, picking his way round sloughs in the unpaved street. He did not enter at the front door, but instead went round to the square yard in back, and negotiated with one servant to borrow a donkey, and with another to discreetly fetch his writing implements and his pistols from the garret room. He was not disposed to answer any questions from his hosts at the moment. And though he might have gone out to Bréda with a military escort from the
casernes,
he much preferred to be alone this time. On donkeyback, his white face hidden beneath his hat, he’d likely be taken for a laborer returning from the field. The region was fairly quiet in any case, and at the worst he had his pistols. There was moonlight enough and the donkey seemed to know the way.

What a strange world it was, he thought, as the unshod donkey slipped almost silently through the posts of the city gateway. Puddles reflected moonlight from the road; to his left the cane fields bristled against the moonlit sky. When the Revolution had swept over France, the royalists had thought to make this colony a sanctuary for themselves (some of them were still struggling, feebly, in league with the English, to bring that about). Now that the Revolution looked to be faltering at home, perhaps it did make sense for a Jacobin of Sonthonax’s type to try to make the colony a refuge for wandering revolutionaries. Although Pascal was right, of course: in answering for the excesses and failures of his first sojourn in Saint Domingue, Sonthonax had contrived his transformation into a good Thermidorean. Still, in the current climate, that might not be quite good enough.

The air was fresh and pleasant after the rain, and the road was mostly empty. Occasionally he overtook a file of women walking in the fragrant shadows with baskets on their heads, or was hailed by a donkey-riding peasant in a straw hat much like his own. Deeper in the trees to the right of the road, the flicker of firelight appeared at intervals, with the smell of roasting meat or beans boiling with peppers. The doctor took a lump of hard cheese from his pocket and gnawed it as he rode along. It was late when he came to Bréda, but the
grand’case
was ablaze with light, and he knew it would be a good deal later before his tasks were done.

Next morning the doctor rode back to Le Cap on an ordinary horse (the borrowed donkey had wound up somewhere in the train of Toussaint’s entourage), swaying in the saddle and half hallucinating from fatigue. The letter which had been ground out all through the previous night, through numerous drafts by many secretaries, was in the form of congratulations, praising the successes of Sonthonax in defeating the enemies of the colony, restoring peace and stability and the prosperity of the plantations—in his dictation, Toussaint kept revisiting the phrasing of those lines, which had apparently been discussed with the commissioner beforehand. But the rest of the document underlined the idea that it was now essential for Sonthonax to return to France, in order to present the truth of events of Saint Domingue to the Directoire, at this time when so many others were trying so energetically to misrepresent the situation here.

The letter was carried by a small detachment of Toussaint’s honor guard, along with the doctor and some other functionaries, but behind them by perhaps a half-mile the army was also moving toward the town, though with less than its usual sharp discipline. Toussaint’s party rode across the Rue Espagnole toward the
casernes;
midway along that route the doctor doubled back and found the donkey, and leading it by its rope behind his horse, he went down to the Cigny house to return it to its owner. Already he could hear the clamor of the troops massing outside the city gate.

Exhausted as he was, he rode back to the
casernes
at once; for one thing, there was his horse to return, for this mount too had been borrowed out of Toussaint’s cavalry. With that accomplished, he went into the mess hall of the barracks, where the officers of Toussaint’s Etat Major had been summoned to add their signatures to the letter. Maillart, Vaublanc and Riau stood toward the end of the room, and the doctor joined their company.

“. . . May you always be the defender of the cause which we have
embraced . . .”
Toussaint, standing at the front of the room, was intoning the last phrases of the final draft.
“. . . of which we will be the eternal soldiers. Vive la République! Salut et Respect.”
He reversed the paper and laid it on the table, where it might be legible to the officers. His own signature, the characteristic three dots enclosed in the final loop, was already affixed, but plenty of room had been left for the others.

After a moment of silence, a hubbub of discussion and argument broke out. Many of the officers were admirers of Sonthonax, few were prepared for this news of his departure, and some seemed downright unwilling to sign the letter, though also reluctant to say so.

Toussaint sat down beside the table, adjusting the scabbard of his ceremonial sword, and remained there, legs crossed, elbow on table, his jaw supported by his hand. His eyes were somewhat heavy-lidded, but that was his only sign of weariness, though he’d had no more sleep than the rest of them, the doctor thought, as he swayed drowsily from foot to foot. A long time seemed to pass very slowly. Riau was rapt, inexpressive as a statue, and the doctor and Maillart restricted themselves to the exchange of a couple of anxious glances.

Toussaint stood up and raised his hand, palm out. Very quickly the room grew silent, but Toussaint’s head was cocked, listening to a more distant commotion. The noise of the troops swirling outside the gate was just audible, like the rising hum of a hive of bees.

“What is that disorder?” Toussaint rapped out. “Go and settle it at once.” He cocked a finger and aimed it toward the rear of the room. Vaublanc and Riau dashed out on the double. Toussaint relaxed, but only slightly. He remained standing, hitching up his sword belt with one hand. In a low voice he announced that Sonthonax himself had requested this letter of congratulations and that the officers had been gathered not to discuss the letter but to sign it.

Fifteen minutes later, the doctor, Maillart and Adjutant-General Henri Christophe were mounting the steps of Government House. Pascal waited outside the door, beneath the portico.

“What was that disturbance over at the gate?” he said. “One began to imagine a riot.”

“Well, it is calm now,” Maillart said shortly.

“So.” Pascal mopped his forehead with a madras cloth. Christophe produced the letter, unsealed, its corners fluttering slightly, and Pascal took it. After the most cursory scan of the text he began to examine the signatures below Toussaint’s: Moyse, Chevalier, Clervaux, Paparel, Dupuis . . .

“It’s done then,” Pascal said. No one contradicted him. He looked into their faces one after the other and then bowed and carried the letter into the building.

There were certain officers who had not signed the letter, though these, a short while afterward, came again to Toussaint and asked to be allowed to do so. Request denied. Toussaint now told them that no signatures had ever been needed beyond his own and that he was prepared to take sole responsibility for the message the letter bore. In any case it had already been delivered.

For three more days, Sonthonax writhed on the point of his departure. More letters were exchanged between him and Toussaint (who had withdrawn to Petite Anse), wreathed in compliments which smothered their veiled intent. There was no repetition of the disturbance at the gate; the considerable number of those soldiers who had entered the town maintained perfect discipline and a perfect obedience to Toussaint’s orders; and it became increasingly clear that if there were to be any popular uprising, it would not be in favor of the commissioner.

Julien Raimond, Pascal, the young Colonel of Engineers Vincent, all encouraged Sonthonax to . . . accept his election to the Council of Five Hundred. Then, at four o’clock in the morning, the alarm cannon fired once at Petite Anse. Shortly afterward, the French General Agé arrived to bring the message from Toussaint to Raimond: if Sonthonax had not departed by sunrise, the next shot would have a much more definite target.