Master of the Crossroads (67 page)

“Your men are blocking our way,” he said carelessly. “Move them out of the road, at once, if you please.”

Choufleur and Dessalines were of a height, but Choufleur was much the slenderer, though by no means frail. He glanced over his shoulder at the man who was holding his horse.

“I do not take my orders from you.” Dessalines’s reply was uninflected; there was no anger in it but it was immovable, rooted like a tree. The black commander stood rooted, swinging slightly from the hips. When Choufleur turned to face him again, he seemed surprised to find Dessalines still standing there.

A pair of gulls came crying over the square, blown by the warm wind from the sea. The gulls banked into the wind and hovered, the wind pushing them slowly backward, then cried again and flew back toward the port. Choufleur’s hand played over his sword hilt for a moment. Dessalines shifted his weight.

“I would not dirty my weapon on a Congo like you,” Choufleur said. “Sooner a whip.”

Dessalines said, nothing, but began to swell. Standing in place, he grew larger, heavier, darker. The doctor remembered the knot of scars that lay beneath his coat and thought of them moving, crawling like a nest of snakes. A murmur ran through the crowd surrounding the small mulatto troop, and the doctor’s entrails twisted tighter. Riau placed a hand on his back, as if he’d felt his distress and wanted to steady him.

The ring of men opened, just to his left, and Toussaint Louverture stepped through the gap, accompanied by a taller, light-skinned general.

“Let them pass,” Toussaint said.

Dessalines, who had been staring only at Choufleur, turned his head fractionally, just enough to take in the newcomers at the far edge of his view.

“Let the General Rigaud go to make his report to the agent, Hédouville,” Toussaint said, in a reasonable tone, as if debating, though it was an order. “Why should I wish to prevent his going?”

Dessalines deflated. He turned fully toward Toussaint, saluted smartly, then called to his men,
Alé! Kité yo pasé.

Toussaint’s companion must be Rigaud, the doctor realized; he had not previously seen the colored general face to face, though he’d heard descriptions. He was taller than Toussaint, and quite a handsome man, with sharp European features. Only his hair looked somewhat unnatural; he was reported to wear a straight-hair wig. Now Rigaud had shaken Toussaint’s hand with all appearance of friendliness and trust. He swung onto his horse, and Choufleur followed his example. At Dessalines’s order, the men of the Fourth opened a corridor onto the road to the north, and Rigaud and his men rode through.

Perhaps two hours later, on the heights above Plaisance, Toussaint returned to the subject as if there had never been any pause in the conversation. “Let General Rigaud attend his meeting with Agent Hédouville. I have no wish to arrest him. I need Rigaud—to fight this war with the English.”

Toussaint rode at the head of his own small party, flanked by Riau and the doctor; they had all left Gonaives about an hour behind the mulatto group, bound for Le Cap. Toussaint was looking straight down the road, sitting the trot of Bel Argent. He had the air of talking to himself, though he spoke loudly enough to be heard by those on either side of him.

“The class of the mulattoes believes itself superior to mine, and if I were to take Monsieur Rigaud away from them, they might find a leader more valuable than he. When he gallops, he lets his horse go. When he strikes, he shows his arm. As for myself, I know how to gallop, but I stop when and wherever I choose, exactly, and when I strike my force is felt, but no one sees my hand . . .”

Toussaint’s face was set, his lower jaw thrusting out with his words. His companions, riding a half-length back, exchanged interested glances over the pumping hindquarters of Bel Argent. Their little column was atop a dizzy height with the Plaisance River valley winding below. Wet, gray clouds blanketed the peaks to the east. The doctor adjusted his hat and pulled his long duster closer about him. Though it was still hot, he knew it would be raining soon and that they would not stop for the rain. This peak, this range of mountains all the way east to the Spanish border, was the bedrock of the power of Toussaint Louverture. Perhaps it was their proximity that had unleashed the general’s tongue, for it was unusual for him to speak so freely, especially of himself.

“Monsieur Rigaud can only make his people rise in blood and massacre,” Toussaint went on. “Then he moans to see the fury of the mob he has excited. If I have put the people into movement, their fury never troubles me, for whenever I appear in person, everything must grow calm.”

He fell silent. It was quiet all down the line, but for the sound of hoofbeats, the rattle of a stone kicked over the rim of the trail, the infrequent cry of hawks above the valley. Already the first drops of rain were slapping the rock and the flanks of the horses. At the damp touches the mare jibbed and began to skate sideways. The doctor reined her in and leaned to pat her withers. He pulled his hat brim down. When they reached Le Cap that night, they found they were in advance of Rigaud’s men; they must have passed him on the way, whether because Toussaint knew a shorter route through the mountains, or that Rigaud was loath to ride through rain and darkness.

Doctor Hébert took the opportunity, while Generals Toussaint and Rigaud were closeted with Agent Hédouville, to visit the Cigny house, for Maillart had been quick to tell him that he would find Nanon there. The scene in Isabelle’s salon was much as the captain had described it—a full complement of the supercilious youths in Hédouville’s suite, paying their court to the ladies, except that Nanon was not present. The doctor forced his way through a few pleasantries and accepted the refreshment urged upon him. When after half an hour she had not appeared, it occurred to him that since he was familiar with the house, nothing prevented him from going directly up to the little room she and he had both occupied, at different times.

With this intention, he slipped out of the parlor, but Isabelle halted him before he had set his foot on the first step.

“I must tell you that your room is engaged by another,” she said.

“Yes,” he muttered, “I have heard so.”

“Doctor Hébert,” she said, as he turned reluctantly from the stairway. “I am sorry to say she will not receive you now.”

His face must have expressed his astonishment. She caught his sleeve and drew him into a small windowless room across the hall and shut the door behind them. The cubicle was furnished with a round table, a lamp, a chair, most prominently a daybed draped with silk shawls. The doctor knew the place to be a theater for her seductions; indeed she’d once handed him a certain humiliation here.

“No,” said Isabelle, as if she’d read his memory. “I only want to explain myself—as if I could.” She fingered the light gold chain around her neck. Something attached to it stirred with the movement, but whatever it was lay hidden beneath the fabric of her dress.

“You must be puzzled,” she went on, “when at first I was something less than enthusiastic to accept this colored courtesan whom you brought to shelter in my house, that I should now respect her wishes—even when they are perverse. And I do find them so. You are that unusual thing of value: a decent man.”

The doctor inclined in her direction.

“I do not mean to flatter,” said Isabelle, “but to give you your due. She would do well to remain with you for as long as you are willing to have her. But her relation with that bastard of the Sieur Maltrot was very powerful, it seems, whatever it has been—oh, she has told me nothing of it, I only suppose. You understand that
he
is certainly not welcome here, not to take one step across the threshold.”

“Yes,” said the doctor, “but—”

“She is uncertain as to your intentions,” Isabelle said. “Or so I infer. That is not all. But perhaps your intentions are not perfectly clear even to yourself. I’d counsel you not to press your case at once, but leave her time. But do come often.” Isabelle smiled, with a half-curtsey. “It always pleases
me
to see you.”

Following this interview the doctor got his horse and went out herb-gathering along the roads east of Le Cap, hoping the exercise would settle his mind. He did not return to the city gate until dusk, and went directly to the
casernes,
where he shared Maillart’s billet for the night. The captain inveighed against Nanon’s peculiarity.
What does a woman
want?
he kept saying, as the doctor rolled in his hammock, searching for sleep.
And I don’t say such a woman, but any woman at all . . .
But the doctor did not want to talk about it.

The next morning he lingered in his hammock, his mood despondent, pretending to sleep till long after Captain Maillart had gone out. At last he rose and half-heartedly began sorting through the plants he had been collecting, using thread to tie up a few bundles for drying. But this project failed to engage him for long. He pulled on his boots and moped through the streets toward Government House.

There his interest was piqued by the sight of Toussaint emerging from the enclosure, on foot, surrounded by several of Hédouville’s entourage. One might almost say he was being harassed by them, for the black general did not look at all pleased. The doctor came within earshot, as Fabre, captain of the little fleet that had brought Hédouville out from France, was gesturing toward the port.

“General,” he said, “it would be my honor, as well as my pleasure, to convey you to France, and in that same vessel in which I carried General Hédouville hither.”

The young officers at his back exchanged ironic smiles, fingering their black collars. Fabre’s tone was mocking, and the doctor thought he detected hints of threat. Supplantation, deportation . . .

“Your ship is not large enough,” Toussaint said darkly, “for a man like me.”

The doctor hid a smile behind his hand, watching the white men’s sour reaction to this rejoinder. That this African should rate himself higher than the representative of the French government . . . The gesture itself was something he must have absorbed from Toussaint. With that thought, he wiped the smile away and put his hand into his coat pocket, touching the shard of mirror.

“But,
mon général,
” said one of the young men at the rear of the group. “How can you deny yourself the sight of France, the nation which has conferred such benefits on yourself and your people?”

“One day I do intend to go to France,” Toussaint said. He took off his tricorne hat and revealed the yellow kerchief tightly knotted over his head.

The young Frenchmen standing out of his line of view smirked at each other.
Ce vieux magot coiffé de linge
—the doctor had heard the phrase, from Maillart and others, often enough. He’d also heard that two of the inexperienced officers who’d circulated the witticism had been killed in an ambush near Saint Marc; according to some whispers, Toussaint was behind their deaths.

Toussaint aimed the third corner of his hat at a sapling on the shady side of the street, no more than a green stick, and barely the diameter of his thumb.

“I will go,” he said, “when that tree has grown large enough to build the ship to carry me.”

To this the humorists found no reply at all. Toussaint stepped away from them, replacing his hat back on his head. He seemed to catch sight of the doctor for the first time.

“Ah—come with me, please,” he said. “I want you.”

At the
casernes
the doctor was set at once to transcribing, from Toussaint’s dictation, a letter redolent with airs of loyalty and submission, which proffered to the Directoire Toussaint’s resignation from his post as General-in-Chief and from the army altogether. In short, Toussaint requested his own retirement. As the doctor recognized this import, the quill began to dither in his hand.

“But,” he began, dangling a blob of ink from the nib. “Can you really mean—”

He cut himself off, for Toussaint had begun to tremble, from his hands that gripped the table’s edge through the cords of his neck to his temples throbbing beneath the yellow headcloth, where tufts of his iron hair showed under the sweat-stained fold of cloth. His eyes half closed, showing crescents of white. The feeling did not seem part of him but only to pass through him. This turbulence lasted for just a moment, then Toussaint smiled and wiped away the expression with one hand. He clapped and called the two sentries from outside the door: Guiaou and another whose name the doctor did not know. With his forefinger Toussaint indicated the stub of the second man’s left ear (lopped off for some offense like theft or
marronage
) and the letter
R
branded on his cheek (which marked him as a rebel).

“Such benefits,” Toussaint said. He lifted the tail of Guiaou’s shirt (for Guiaou now possessed a shirt) and showed the patterns of his horrific scars. Guiaou stood erect, motionless, looking fixedly forward, whether proud or ashamed or indifferent the doctor could not have told.

“These too are graces of the French government,” Toussaint said, his pointing hand vibrating slightly as he spoke, “along with whips and chains for every man and woman stolen out of Guinée, and when the final accounting is made before God, these will be reckoned with the other benefits. Yes, and if the French government had shown me one-half the honor offered by the English—” Toussaint’s arm dropped. “Well, leave off,” he said to the doctor. “I am done with you.”

The doctor quailed, visibly it must have been.

“For the moment,” Toussaint said, more equably. “You are at liberty. Only send in Riau as you go out.”

Sweating, the doctor did as he was bid. Riau was lingering just outside the door and the doctor, having delivered his message, watched as he went in and took his position at the writing desk. As he scanned the draft of the letter, Riau’s face, normally a rich and glossy black, dulled to slatish gray. Then Guiaou and the other sentry pulled the door shut and took up their positions before it.

The doctor wandered blindly down through the gate, toward the blaze of sun and the day-long commotion of the Rue Espagnole, imagining what would follow if Toussaint were to withdraw from the scene. He himself had better throw in his lot with Henri Christophe, or perhaps Maurepas. Ah Christ, it would all shatter and they’d fight among themselves. And who’d emerge the victor? Dessalines, or possibly Moyse. But more than likely, Dessalines—without a Toussaint to restrain him.