Master of the Crossroads (66 page)

The doctor followed this latter channel to its terminus at the fountain in front of Government House. Toussaint’s troops stood in quiet, orderly groups at the corners of the square, barefoot and shirtless for the most part, lean as greyhounds but just as fit. Some of them saluted the doctor as he walked toward the building. These were men who could march all day on one banana or a cupful of corn, sleep on their feet, fight on the morrow—they had been doing so for years. Small children circled them, wide-eyed and curious; a woman approached one of the squads with a covered basketful of bread. After a week of perfect discipline on the part of the black soldiers, and none of the pillaging or disorder that had been anticipated, the townspeople had begun to lose their fear.

Petitioners lined the hallways of Government House, waiting, hoping, to see Toussaint. The doctor felt envious eyes on his back as the sentries acknowledged him and let him pass through. In the anteroom, Bruno Pinchon sat next to a young woman cradling a newborn infant. The wife he had mentioned? the doctor wondered—but no, he’d said she was in France.

Seeing the doctor, Pinchon sprang up, his mouth already open to begin some plea, but just then the door of the inner office opened and the mayor of Port-au-Prince bowed his way out. Toussaint came after him through the doorway, telling him that Christophe Mornet would follow through on whatever business they had just settled. The young woman was instantly on her feet, thrusting the baby forward.

“Habitation Anlouis,”
Pinchon interjected, but the woman stepped quickly in front of him, cutting off his approach. She made an accordion movement with her arms, gathering the infant to herself, then proffering it again.

“General,” she said. Her voice was sweet, but a little shrill, and had a nagging familiarity to the doctor’s ear. “General, I beg you—I beseech you! Be godfather to my child. We will name him, perhaps . . . Toussaint.”

And now the doctor recognized her, from their first entrance to the town—she must have delivered this infant only the day, or two days, before. A pretty thing, he judged, with glossy black hair and large dark eyes and an appealing flush that spread across her face and also her bosom, which was very generously revealed by the cut of her gown. Held at arm’s length, the baby did not cry or complain, but worked its little fingers at random, peering myopically from its button eyes.

Toussaint covered his mouth with his hand, and studied the woman and child without speaking. Then he reached to the back of his head, unfastened the knot of his yellow headcloth, and shook it out.

“Cover yourself, Madame, if you please.”

As she absorbed his meaning, the young woman’s color darkened to the shade of new-fired brick. Shifting the child to the crook of one arm, she accepted the square of cloth with her other hand. Pinchon, maybe a little too eager for the service, helped her to arrange it over her décolletage.

Toussaint indicated a chair, and she sat down and lowered her head. A fine high color, the doctor thought; it spread round the back of her neck like wine. Pinchon moved as if to renew his approach, then suddenly fell back into a seat, as if the force of Toussaint’s look had flung him there.

It was a rare thing to see Toussaint completely bareheaded. The head was larger than it looked beneath his hat or headcloth, high and egg-shaped, with gray hair thinning at the dome. He covered his mouth with his hand. His eyes drifted half-shut, so that only the whites of them showed. The doctor knew he was very tired. The enthusiasm of his reception by the residents of Port-au-Prince had not been altogether feigned, but he had not fully anticipated its cause. The great majority of the whites who had remained believed that he would make the colony independent of France, and almost as many confidently expected him to solve the mulatto problem, permanently, by massacring them all.

“Madame,” said Toussaint, “why should you wish me to name your son? Have you considered well what you are asking? I know you are seeking a post for your husband—I also know that all the white
colons
despise me in their hearts.”

At this the young woman started up from her seat as if to protest, but Toussaint, who had seemed to be talking in his sleep, widened his eyes and stayed her with his hand.

“No, if I wore a skin like yours—but I am black, and I know the deep distaste the
colons
have for me and all my kind. It is true that Revolution has enlightened the French, so that we are well enough liked for the moment, but no work of man is truly durable. Only the work of God Himself can last forever. It may be that after my death, my brothers will pass into slavery again, and go under the whip of the white
colons,
who have always been our enemies. Then your son, when he has reached the age of reason, will reproach you for having given him a black to be his godfather.”

Abruptly, Toussaint sat down himself, and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “No, Madame, I cannot accept this honor which you suggest to me. You wish a place for your husband in the Customs—it is his. Tell Commander Christophe Mornet what I have said, and it will be so arranged. You may also tell your husband that, while I cannot see all that he does, nothing is invisible to God. Let him serve honestly.”

The young woman’s blush had subsided considerably by the time Toussaint had done speaking. She stood up and curtsied gracefully. It was circumspect, the doctor thought, for her to say nothing, not even to risk a word of thanks. No fool she. Carrying the child, she went out, with Toussaint’s yellow madras still half tucked into her bodice. They could hear the baby beginning to mew in the hall as she retreated.

“Monsieur Général,”
Pinchon began, once more rising to his feet. “You do not remember me, but—”

Toussaint looked up at him, his eyes red-rimmed. “Oh, I remember you very well,” he said. “Better than you would perhaps prefer. Your name is Bruno Pinchon, and through your marriage to Marie-Céleste Latrobe you claim possession of Habitation Anlouis, a sugar plantation of eighty-six
carrés,
in the plain of Cul de Sac. This land was gambled away at cards by the son of the original Anlouis, now dead of his debaucheries, and so came into the hands of your father-in-law, who is a broker at Nantes. But neither he nor your wife nor you yourself have ever laid eyes on the property. You are no planter, and you know nothing of the work. I remember all these things, and I also recall our first meeting at Ennery, with everything that you said and did on that occasion.”

Pinchon took a long step backward, his Adam’s apple working.

“At Gonaives too, when I claimed it for France, you barely escaped being shot for your involvement with the enemy,” Toussaint said. “Now we meet for the third time.” He exhaled, glancing toward the window, as if the sight of Pinchon pained him. “Well, you may enjoy your dowry. Make of it what you can. See Commander Paul Louverture at Croix des Bouquets and it will be arranged. Your life and property will be respected.”

Pinchon also elected the virtue of silence—wisely, the doctor thought again. He bowed, stumbled, made his way to the door. In the hall outside there was a commotion among the others waiting for their audiences. The doctor stepped across and shoved the door closed on them all.

Toussaint was bowed in his seat, his shoulders shaking. The patchy baldness of his head looked oddly fragile. The doctor had never heard him speak with such a bitter pessimism as he’d used with that young woman—not, at least, of his own cause. But when he straightened and took his hand from his mouth, he revealed that his convulsions had been laughter, all along.

“Very well,” he said, shaking his head and giving the doctor his cayman’s smile as he pointed to the door. “Open! let the next one come in.”

29

Captain Maillart did his best to swallow his irritation as he bowed his way into the Cigny parlor and found it full of the junior attachés of Agent Hédouville’s suite, who were swift enough to discover the charms of his friend Isabelle. The Cigny house was enjoying a burst of popularity these days, for although the official policy with which Hédouville was invested must regard the family with a certain suspicion, a good many of the juniors seemed quite thoroughly
ancien régime
in their personal sentiments, and wore the black collars to show it.

He adjusted his frayed cuffs and sat down in the place Isabelle had indicated for him, a long, sturdy sofa, next to Joseph Flaville. The black-collared youths were looking at him, he felt, with slyly concealed amusement. That impudent puppy Paltre (not twenty-five years of age) was whispering with his companion Ciprien Cypré, similarly unlicked. They’d be sneering, Maillart was sure enough, at his worn coat with its stains of tropical campaigning (which they ought to regard as marks of honor) and still more at his subordination to the black officers, former slaves from whom he took his orders, whose rank was exaggerated so far past his own. Ten years in the colony and still a captain—that was due to his many changes of service, and Maillart had not wasted much thought on it either, until Hédouville’s puppy pack had obliged him to. Paltre and Cypré were captains themselves, at the same age Maillart had been when he first came out to Saint Domingue, and perhaps no more feckless either, but he was not in a forgiving mood.

“Sé fransé m’yé,”
he said to Flaville, but loudly enough to be heard everywhere in the room.
“Men, m’pa rinmin fransé tankou moun sa yo.”

Flaville, who relaxed on the sofa with a serpentine ease, grinned and let a fluid movement flow through his whole long body, while Isabelle clicked her tongue and frowned to reprove them both. The two young captains drew themselves up a little, sensing they had been insulted but without knowing exactly how. I am French, but I don’t like Frenchmen like these people. Maillart had learned that it distressed the new arrivals to hear patois, which sounded exactly like their own language but was incomprehensible to them.

Nanon raised her head from her embroidery hoop and gave him a quick, secret smile, then lowered her face again, indifferent to the blandishments of the two civilian clerks who were trying to engage her interest. Maillart felt distinctly better now. By God, she was a beauty—none of it had tarnished her, whatever she had been through. Say what you would about the wisdom of throwing one’s whole heart at a colored courtesan, the captain could not dispute the doctor’s taste. For himself, he was glad to have found her safe in the Cigny house, and that he would have this news for Antoine Hébert when they next met.

He accepted the coffee that was served him, and devoted about a quarter of his attention to flirting with Isabelle. The pattern of their banter was familiar as a waltz—he could sustain his steps without thinking about them. It meant little; he would not taste her honeyed chalice. So far as he knew, she’d given her full sweetness to no man at all, if not to her husband, since their odd quarrel at Môle Saint Nicolas. Friendship with a woman—ha. But his ease with her would annoy the little captains. It was childish to score off the puppies, Maillart knew, but he enjoyed it all the same.

And these were the officers meant to replace Toussaint’s cadre!—for almost all Hédouville’s suite was like these two: absurdly young, and arrogant in exact proportion to their inexperience. Maillart, who’d become for a time Toussaint’s particular envoy to the new agent, had divined that much: Hédouville meant to assert control of the indigenous army by infiltrating his own officers, these cubs, ha. Hédouville himself was quite a different matter, clearly a capable officer, seasoned in battle and yet equally skillful in winning contests without battles. During his service under Toussaint, Maillart had developed a special appreciation of that latter capacity. And Hédouville would need all the guile at his command, since he’d been sent out with no force at all, to speak of.

The agent’s original instructions were to arrest Rigaud for the flagrant insubordination he’d shown Sonthonax, but Toussaint had absolutely refused to carry out this order when Hédouville sent it on to him. Captain Maillart had had the dubious privilege of delivering Toussaint’s letter of reply, which stated that since Rigaud was clearly a loyal servant of the Republic, as evidenced by the vigorous campaign he was then prosecuting against the British at Jérémie, why, to arrest Rigaud would be as if to arrest himself. Hédouville had received this response with equanimity, even with some appreciation (so it seemed to Maillart) for its pragmatism. Since then, he’d been evolving some quite different strategy, though the captain couldn’t make out what it was. But Maillart rather liked Hédouville, thus far. And if he played his cards very close to his vest, one must also admit that he’d been dealt a difficult hand to play.

Isabelle was tittering at some remark he’d made, though Maillart himself could not remember his own witticism. He drained off the sugary swirl at the bottom of his coffee, set down the cup and stood to take his leave. Through the open doors that gave onto the balcony, he could see the masts of ships at dockside, over the rosy tile roofs of the houses down the slope. Flaville had also risen to go. Maillart stooped to brush Isabelle’s hand with his lips, and went out.

In the stairwell, he paused to wait for Flaville, but it was Cypré and Paltre who appeared instead, and Maillart quickly turned his back on them.

“Four grenadiers,” one of them said. “No more.” Maillart was not sure which. He did not bother distinguishing them. But he’d meant to be overheard; that was clear. Some clique among the puppy officers had declared that they’d want no more than four grenadiers to arrest “that old rag-headed Negro”—by which they meant Toussaint. The boast had become well known throughout Le Cap. Stiff-necked, Maillart walked across the foyer. A house servant was opening the door for him, and the light outside was a white-hot blaze. He spun, rage twirling him, but everything became strangely slow, so that while he watched his red fist floating toward the insolent face of Paltre, who was leading the pair, he was able to consider many things with apparent leisure. For some reason he was thinking of Xavier Tocquet and what he might do in such a situation—but he wouldn’t have been in it at all, would not have let himself be drawn in so far. Flaville, who had been a slave, was coming down the steps behind the young French captains, and what insults he must have had to bear in silence in his time. If he struck Paltre, there must be a duel, and when he’d been their age Maillart would have fought, without thinking, to the death, borne the official reprimand, perhaps demotion, defended himself on the grounds of honor. This instant he could have killed Paltre without compunction, but the waste of it all repelled him. Paltre was flinching, showing his fear, and Maillart stopped his hand short of contact, opened it, let it come to rest on the younger man’s shoulder. He smiled.

“If you speak of my commanding officer, the General-in-Chief Toussaint Louverture, let me advise you that he is a civilized man. But there are many
rag-headed old Negroes
in this country, and if you are so unfortunate as to meet with one of the less civilized variety, why, you may find your severed head stuffed into your slit belly, your own male member crammed inside your mouth. Now smile, my boy, and show your courage. I will not stop smiling, when I see you so. I have seen things in this country that have not appeared in your worst nightmares.”

He gave Paltre’s shoulder a little shake, released it, and strode out the door without waiting for any answer. But Flaville was in step with him as they turned to go find their horses.

“Ou bay blan-yo pè djab,”
Flaville said, as he unhitched his sorrel.

“As I meant to.” Maillart returned his grin as he climbed aboard his mount. They saluted each other, then rode in opposite directions. You scared the devil out of those white people
—
an odd compliment for Flaville to have made to him, the captain thought as he rode across the Rue Espagnole toward the barracks, and yet its echo was most pleasing to his ear.

Under the lifting tendrils of morning mist, Doctor Hébert rode out from the gateway of Habitation Thibodet, his medicaments stored in his saddlebags and his long gun’s stock thrusting up from a scabbard by his knee. His mount was a new mare Riau had procured for him—there’d been a lot of fresh horses coming over the Spanish border since the retaking of Mirebalais. The mare was a strong and handsome gray, but barely green-broke and skittish as a cat. She kept the doctor alert as he rode through the
bourg
of Ennery.

Beyond the village the road was flat and went beneath the shade of mango trees, with the warming sun striping down between their branches. By then the mist had burned away, and the doctor overtook a line of market women going to the crossroads, who smiled up at him from beneath the baskets on their heads. Coming in the opposite direction were three horseback men leading a pair of donkeys—and where had the doctor seen that particular broad-brimmed hat before?

But Tocquet recognized him first. When he swept off his outsized hat, the doctor’s mare skated sideways, reared and went down almost all the way to her hindquarters. Rather than be thrown, the doctor slipped down from the saddle, sinking to his right boot top in the rutted slough. He caught the reins tight under the bit and brought the mare back down to earth.

“Saluez,”
Tocquet said brightly as he rode up. Gros-jean and Bazau were also smiling as they halted their horses behind him.

“A magnificent animal you have there,” Tocquet said. “She looks as if she could climb trees.”

“She’s willing to try,” the doctor said, stroking the mare’s soft nose, as she went on trying to toss her head. He looked at Tocquet. “You’ve been a long time on the road.”

Tocquet looked off into the treetops. His face was shadowed with beard stubble over his lean jaw and the hollow of his throat. “Did you tell her to expect me?” he finally said.

“I didn’t know when you would come.” The doctor broke a stalk of bamboo from a cluster at the roadside and began pushing some of the swamp-smelling mud from the upper of his boot.

“You should find Nanon at the Cigny house,” Tocquet said, shortening the focus of his eyes.

“My God, yes,” the doctor said in a rush. “Riau told me she had come down to Le Cap with you but—is she well? . . . or not.”

Tocquet looked into the treetops again. “Let us say, somewhere between the two. But you ought to go and see for yourself.”

The doctor shook his head, irritably. “Yes, but Toussaint is most reluctant to spare me for the journey.”

“I’ll give you odds he’ll be making that journey himself very soon, by the look of the messenger from Hédouville who passed me on the road.”

“Oh?”

“If you’re bound for Gonaives, you’ll soon know more than I.”

Tocquet squeezed his heels into the flanks of his horse. The mare shuddered as he put the big hat on his head again, but kept all four feet on the ground. The doctor tossed away his bamboo stalk, mounted, and rode on.

He had been shuttling between Gonaives and Ennery for the last few weeks, and knew that Toussaint was preoccupied with negotiations for the British withdrawal from Jérémie and the Grande Anse, which for the moment were going nowhere. Meanwhile, the luster of his triumph at Port-au-Prince had begun to fade, while Hédouville grew testy about concessions Toussaint had made to Maitland, and complained about the ease with which so many
grand blancs
proprietors had recovered their plantations in the Western Department.

By the time the doctor reached the Gonaives
casernes,
the message Tocquet mentioned had been delivered. Toussaint was requested, in terms he could not deny short of open insubordination, to present himself to Hédouville at Le Cap. And rumor carried the implication that the French agent was determined to assert control over any further negotiation with the British.

“I do not think he wants to go,” Riau told the doctor with a shrug. “But if he goes, it is good for you, because . . .”

“Yes,” said the doctor. “Yes, that is true.” He felt an inner flutter at the thought of the attic room of the Cigny house, with its round window and low-angled walls, where he had been before Nanon, where she’d be now.

He passed that night in the
casernes,
his hammock strung next to Riau’s. When he woke, the room was empty but for a small green lizard blowing out its throat contemplatively as it watched him from the windowsill. From the direction of the square he heard the hum of a commotion.

He got up and dressed and went out, already beginning to sweat from his exertions. It was later than he’d expected to wake, the sun already high. At the gate the sentries seemed uneasy, and when he asked them what was happening, they said only,
General Rigaud,
and pointed toward the headquarters building, where that officer apparently had gone.

Glancing once over his shoulder at the fading brick of the building, the doctor walked south, around the curve of the wide, white-dusty road, till he came to the square before the church. Some forty cavalrymen from the Southern Department stood holding their horses in the center of the square, ringed by many times their number of men from the Fourth Colonial Regiment, commanded by Jean-Jacques Dessalines.

Noticing Riau’s tall hussar’s hat protruding from the crowd, the doctor made his way over to him, excusing himself and apologizing all around as he shouldered his way through.

“What is it?” he said, but Riau was masked, no more expressive than a tree, though he shifted his weight slightly to acknowledge the doctor’s arrival. The doctor looked to the center of the ring of men and felt a contraction of his viscera when he recognized Choufleur.

He wore the French uniform, though cut of a better cloth than that commonly used, with gold buttons to match the gold braid. Insignia of a colonel’s rank. His face was pale, so that the swirl of freckles over it stood out like a dark mist, concealing his features with a veil of points which were almost black. The doctor remembered several of the things that Madame Fortier had said about her son. Choufleur was facing Dessalines.