The Stone that the Builder Refused

by Madison Smartt Bell

  “I hope so,” Claudine said. “I believe so . . . yes, I mostly do.”

  “You may not be aware that your husband conspired long ago in a royalist plot against the Revolutionary government here,” Toussaint said. “Or then again, perhaps you know it. Those men engaged to start a false rising of the slaves in ninety-one—thinking to frighten the Jacobins with a spectacle of the likely outcome of their own beliefs. They thought they could control a slave rising, those conspirators, but as you see they were quite wrong. He was one of them, Michel Arnaud, with the Sieur de Maltrot, and Bayon de Libertat my former master, and Governor Blanchelande himself, who later lost his head for it, to the guillotine in France.”

  “As did so many others,” Claudine murmured. As she spoke, her eye fell on the rosary, which Toussaint held in one hand against the yellow headcloth, and she saw for the first time that each of the small wooden beads was an intricately rendered human skull.

  “What an extraordinary article,” she said. It seemed to her that each carved skull was just a little different from all the others.

  “It came to me as a spoil of war,” Toussaint said and put the rosary into his pocket, without telling her what other thing it might have come to mean to him now.

  Outside she heard voices, the clucking of chickens as they scuttled for shelter. The wind rose further, as the air grew chill with the coming rain.

  “Ah well,” said Toussaint. “We have our dead.”

  All at once Claudine’s leg stopped trembling and her raised foot relaxed against the floor. How intimately she had her dead! She wondered if Toussaint was similarly placed, sometimes, or always. It was certain that he’d caused the deaths of many more than the considerable number he’d ushered out of the world with his own hands.

  “Yes,” she burst out. “My husband killed many before the risings—he killed the children of Guinée with no more regard than for ants or for flies, and with torture sometimes, as bad as that—” She flung out her arm toward the crucifix. “Yes, this morning you rode your horse through the place where there once stood a pole, and to that pole my husband used to nail his victims, to die slowly as they hung—like that—” Her rigid fingers thrust toward the cross again. “And there was worse, still worse than that. No doubt you know it—he was famous for it all.” Her whole arm dropped, and she felt her face twisting, that alien sensation as she moved a step farther away from her body. The blood beat heavy in her temples, and she heard the other voice beginning to come out from behind her head. “Four hundred years of abominations—four hundred years for all to endure, and his no larger than a grain among them—”

  She stopped the voice, and came back to herself—she wanted now to remain herself. Toussaint had leaned back a little away from her and regarded her with his chin cupped in one hand.

  “During the risings my husband suffered very much,” Claudine said. “For a time he was made clean by suffering, as fire will burn corruption from the bone. Oh, he has still cruelty in his nature, and avarice, and too much pride, with contempt for others, white or black, but now he fights against it. I see him fight it every day.”

  Her voice cracked from hoarseness; her throat felt very dry.

  “And yourself, Madame?”

  She took it for an answer to the prayer she could not voice. With a lurch she dropped to her knees on the space of packed dirt between them, embraced his legs, and pushed her face into his lap.

  “Hear my confession,” she said, but her voice was too muffled to be understood. Toussaint was pushing her back by the shoulders.

  “Madame, Madame,” he said. “Control your feeling.”

  “No,” Claudine said. “No—I want to touch you not in the flesh but in the spirit.” But she had grasped his wrists now, to hold his hands firm against her collarbones.

  “Hear my confession,” she said, clearly now.

  “I am no priest,” Toussaint informed her. He twisted his hands free and drew them back. “You have your own priest here, who must confess you.”

  Claudine’s arms dropped slack to her sides. To her surprise, he reached for her again, wrapping both hands around her head, balancing it on the point where his fingertips joined in the deepest hollow at the back of her neck.

  “It is not easy to enter the spiritual world,” he said. From the soft and absent tone of his voice, he might have been talking to himself. But he was looking into her head as if it were transparent to him.

  “So you have been walking to the drum, my child,” he said. “Sometimes there is a spirit who dances in your head.”

  The release of his hands let go a flash of light behind her eyes. The wind had blown the bead strings apart and was stirring the dust under the benches around them.

  Toussaint cocked his head. “Lapli k’ap vini,” he said. The rain is coming.

  “Yes, you are right,” Claudine murmured. “We must go up before we are caught here.”

  Outside, the sky bulged purple over them, and above the mountains a wire of silent lightning glowed and vanished. Toussaint turned his head to the wind, letting his yellow madras flag out from his hand, then caught it up and bound it over his forehead and temples and knotted it carefully at the back before he followed Claudine, hastening to the grand’case, reaching the shelter of the porch’s overhang in the seconds before the deluge came down.

  Because Toussaint had stated, over dinner, his need for an early departure, the Mass commenced exactly at first light. The hour was painfully early for some, and fewer of the plantation’s inhabitants turned out for it than might have otherwise, but still there was a respectable crowd for Moustique to part when, with a slow and solemn step, he carried the wooden processional cross into the little chapel. Behind him the children of Claudine’s school marched, singing, Wi, wi, wi, nou sé Legliz, Legliz sé nou . . . Claudine took her seat in the front row, next to the yawning Arnaud, irritable with his too-early rising. Yes, yes, yes, the Church is us, we are the Church . . . Toussaint, the guest of honor, sat at Arnaud’s right hand, while Riau and Guiaou shared the opposite bench with Cléo and Marie-Noelle. The other benches were filled with commandeurs and skilled men from the cane mill or distillery and other persons of a similar importance. The bead curtain had been tied up above the eaves, so the whole wall was open to the larger congregation outside, whose members sat cross-legged on the ground as soon as the signal was given.

  Claudine paid small attention to the words of Moustique’s sermon; her mind was utterly fixed on the cross. Ah well, she thought, we have our dead . . . As she stared, she perceived that it was the vertical bar of the cross which pierced the membrane between the world of the living and the world of the dead, and allowed the spirits to rise.

  Now Moustique was chanting the Sanctus in Latin, his voice high and whining. Above the altar, the dark crucifix ran and blurred before Claudine’s weary eyes, till it became another image. She saw the body of her bossale maid Mouche, who’d been lashed quite near to that very same spot in the days when a dog shed stood on the chapel’s site, and saw again the flash of the razor in her own hand as it slashed out the child Arnaud had planted in Mouche’s womb and let the fetus spill on the dirt of the floor, then cut so viciously at the black girl’s throat that it uncorked her blood like a fountain. And now, as Moustique presented the host, the children sang, “Sé Jezi Kri ki limyè ki klere kè nou tout. Li disparèt fènwa pou’l mete klète . . .”

  The chapel was opened to the east, so that when the rising sun cleared the mountains it struck the whole interior with such force that everything before Claudine’s eyes was obliterated in the blaze. But the bread had been torn, the wine consecrated. She groped her way forward and knelt to receive.

  It is Jesus Christ who is the light that illuminates all our hearts. He drives out the darkness to put light in its place . . .

  A fringe of cloud drifted over the sun, dimming the interior enough for Claudine to see more plainly. Toussaint, hands clasped before him, opened his mouth for the descending Host as meekly as
a baby bird. Claudine’s turn followed. Moustique served Arnaud, Riau, and Guiaou and the other two women, then began his second circuit with the chalice made from a carefully trained and hollowed gourd. Claudine held the body of Christ on her tongue. She had confessed her crime many times and to more than one priest, but still the chalice, when raised to her lips, returned to her the salt taste of blood.

  4

  On the thirty-first day of their voyage, the troopship Jean-Jacques drew within range of La Sirène and lowered a boat which labored slowly toward them over the deep swells. The passenger in the bow was an ensign who carried a letter addressed to Placide and his brother. Admiral Latouche-Treville presented his compliments and desired the sons of Toussaint Louverture to transfer themselves and their effects to the Jean-Jacques.

  Within half an hour they had loaded their belongings onto the same boat that had brought the message. Isaac’s face looked pale to Placide, who sat facing him, opposite the oarsmen, but this was from excitement now, not nausea. He had got over the last of his seasickness weeks ago. Today was a clear morning, with the wind freshening in the east. The boat tossed like a chip among the billows. The troughs were deep enough that at moments they could not see either ship. Monsieur Coisnon crouched, clutching the gunwales, but Placide felt lighthearted, and Isaac went so far as to drop an arm and trail his fingers through the sea-green water. Coisnon shook his head tightly and mouthed the word shark. Isaac, grinning cheerfully, raised his dripping hand and kissed his salty fingers toward the tutor.

  Arrived, the boys climbed a swinging ladder to the deck of the Jean-Jacques.While Coisnon went immediately below to claim space for themselves and their trunks, the boys remained topside, flush with the excitement of the change and the activity. For some reason the two ships still held a tight parallel course, and the boat shoved off again toward La Sirène. Placide looked toward the western horizon, nudged Isaac when he saw the black curve of a dorsal fin break water.

  For twenty minutes the porpoises swam and leapt around the Jean-Jacques and La Sirène, circling the ships with their flat tails flogging the water, jumping so high sometimes that their whole bodies left the waves to be outlined against the sky. Monsieur Coisnon, looking much more confident now that the broad deck of the larger ship was under his feet, reappeared to tell them how Dionysus, Greek god of wine, had turned the pirates who would kidnap him into dolphins. It was a bright moment for the three of them, but a few minutes after the porpoises dove without resurfacing, Placide noticed the boat returning from La Sirène, loaded down this time with Guizot, Cyprien, Paltre, and Daspir.

  His heart regained its weary weight. Till this moment he had not realized how much it had relieved him to think they were quit of the four army officers. For the last couple of weeks it had seemed they had got up some conspiracy or scheme among themselves. They were forever whispering and sneaking sly glances at Isaac and Placide or, still worse, looks of pity.

  Now Placide would not meet Isaac’s eyes. One after another the four officers came grunting and clambering over the railing . . . Though they’d said nothing to one another, Placide and Isaac had both hoped this transfer meant they would now speed ahead of the rest of the fleet on this new vessel, as the First Consul had assured them, to bring word of this expedition to their father. But in the event it was La Sirène that put on sail and left them behind, hastening to Guadeloupe, as they were told, with orders of the government.

  One day after another slipped down behind the stern of the Jean-Jacques. Since putting out from Brest, the fleet had been scattered by some bouts of heavy weather. It was after the last of these storms that Isaac had made his complete recovery from mal de mer. But also the last storm had blown several of the squadrons out of touch with one another. Placide did not know if they were ahead or behind the main body of the fleet, but he was aware that he was no longer anxious for the voyage to end.

  There was no special accommodation for them on the Jean-Jacques, the officers’ quarters and cabins of choice having already been claimed by others. Placide and Isaac swung in hammocks with the ordinary seamen, and slept the better for it. The food was vile, but no worse than aboard La Sirène. The army officers grew edgier by the day, however, as Daspir’s private stock of brandy dwindled down toward nothing.

  One pearlescent dawn Placide happened to be standing by when a sailor fishing off the leeward side of the ship snagged a waterlogged branch, from whose crotch there flowed a trailing orchid, waxen yellow bulbs sealed and pickled in the salt. The army officers appeared and passed the flower from hand to hand, admiring it, nosing it for scent, which it had none. But afterward, as the sun broke water to the east, Daspir remained standing near Placide at the rail, tilting his face to the warmth and flaring his nostrils in the western breeze.

  “I have heard that the rum of Saint Domingue is very wonderful,” he said.

  “It has been so long,” Placide said, somewhat coldly. “I don’t remember.” In fact he had been forbidden to drink rum by his father, though once he had made himself drunk and ill on tafia stolen by older boys. At the recollection, he felt again the sick dizziness and the prickling numbness of his face.

  Daspir did not seem to be put off. He rolled his soft shoulders forward and back under his military coat, pressed up on the rail to stretch his spine. “There’s a change in the air,” he said. “Do you not think—” He broke off and raised his arm to point. “Look, look there.”

  Placide squinted but there was nothing to see on the western horizon but a low bank of cloud.

  “Birds,” Daspir breathed out, as if in rapture. Then Placide saw something swirling up from the cloud bank, a smoke-like current of vaguely moving specks. Someone else had shouted indistinctly from the bow.

  “Land birds, they are,” Daspir said, and turned on Placide a glowing smile. “I’m certain of it—and the land cannot be far.”

  In the early afternoon Major Maillart, riding in the midst of a squad of Toussaint’s honor guard, reached the crossing of the roads to Ouanaminthe and Fort Liberté. Here an ancient woman sat beneath a rickety shelter made of crooked sticks and broad flat leaves, with rows of green coconuts and bananas spread on the ground before her. These comestibles must have been carried some distance, since an almost treeless plain expanded all around the crossroads as far as the eye could see, to the ocean in one direction and the mountains in the other.

  Couachy, who led the squad, called a halt and purchased six green coconuts. With short chopping blows of his saber he opened each one and handed it around. The men shared the thin sweet liquor before breaking the shells apart for the white meat.

  Maillart bought a stalk of bananes Ti-Malice and immediately broke off four of them for the two small boys who were crawling around the old woman’s low stool. The children sat up and stared at him, too shy to peel their fruit. Maillart ate a couple of the bananas himself—each about the size of his thumb—and offered them to the other men, but still two-thirds of the stalk was left for him to tie at his saddlebow before remounting.

  They rode in the direction of Ouanaminthe, maintaining a gentle trot. Toussaint had outfitted the two thousand men of his personal guard with the best horses on the island; they ate up the ground relentlessly. The road was pinkish dust and the plain surrounding it almost featureless except for a few longhorned cattle grazing over the pasture. Bœuf marron,Couachy muttered, whenever he saw one of these, wild beef. His eyes lit up with appetite.

  Maillart was adrift in his own restless humor. He carried a note from Tocquet to Toussaint, announcing the arrival of the muskets, but this was a matter of no great urgency—boatloads of guns hove into the Le Cap harbor almost every day, it seemed. The truth was, he’d wanted to get out of town. The arrival of Isabelle’s children had disrupted his amours, though of course it was only natural for her to dote upon them after such a terribly long separation. The children, who might have half-forgotten her during their long absence, were rather cool to her at first. She won back Héloïse, the younger, easi
ly enough, but Robert remained aloof. It was absurd to be jealous of a twelve-year-old boy! . . . and yet Maillart had felt that sting.

  The worst was that Isabelle wasn’t doing it to torment him, as in her sometime dalliances with other swains. No, this time she was not thinking about Maillart at all. Possibly there’d be no coals to discover under the ashes this time around, supposing her attention ever returned. After all, Isabelle was far from her first youth, he reflected, and there was always the modestly inconvenient matter of her husband. Maillart might have sought the affections of another . . . however, it was surprising how many of the attractive white women of the town were receptive to the addresses of the black officers, the most enterprising of whom were advancing in wealth as well as in power, as Toussaint put the plantations back to work.

  Therefore Maillart had tried to distract himself in a thirty-six-hour fling with a colored courtesan of his acquaintance. This woman, though beautiful and exquisitely skilled in her profession, had finally left him a feeling of shame. And it was generally uneasy around the town, with the constant rumors of an expedition coming from France. A turn in the countryside, Maillart had thought, might do him some good.

  For the last hour the grade of plain had been gradually mounting, and the afternoon light reddened on their backs. A final twist of the road spilled them onto the main street of Ouanaminthe. All of a sudden they had an escort of barking dogs and scattering goats and small children running alongside the horses shouting “Toussaint! Toussaint! Papa Toussaint!” They’d recognized the fine horses and tall riders, the plumes and silver helmets each with the motto “Qui pourra en venir à bout?” But Toussaint was wont to send detachments of his guard hither and yon, to distract inquiring eyes from his own actual whereabouts.