His sister stood with Isabelle Cigny, in the front row of the assembly. The faces of Arnaud and Bertrand Cigny were visible behind them. Isabelle was flanked by her two children. Robert, who would be twelve by now, looked sleepy and a little sullen, but Héloïse, younger by two or three years, was clearly frightened, though it was not likely that she understood what it was all about. And Elise was holding Mireille swaddled at her bosom—what freak of fancy had inspired her to bring the baby out tonight? Mireille began to squirm and mew; Isabelle took her easily from Elise and held her against her own shoulder, patting her back till she calmed. All the while Télémaque droned on, for more than half an hour, his voice cracking occasionally, then slowly recuperating its strength. At the end he recited a long list of signatories, looking around to identify those who were present, making complex apologies for those who were not. Throughout this long conclusion, the doctor could feel Christophe’s impatience building, like electricity gathering in a thunder cloud.
“Messieurs, mesdames,” he said, when Télémaque had finally ended. “I am aware of all you say. I am awaiting orders from the Governor-General. Without his order, I cannot admit the French fleet to the harbor.”
With that, he turned smartly and started for the door, on the wave of a hubbub that broke out among the crowd of people who had spent the whole length of Télémaque’s speech shifting their weight quietly from one foot to the other on the polished ballroom floor. Isabelle’s voice stood above the rest, high and clear and unignorable.
“General, wait.”
Christophe’s step locked. Slowly he turned to face her as she advanced a step or two.
“General, it is not quite ten years since all our town was burned to cinders. And now—” Holding the baby with one arm, she made an expansive, swirling gesture with the other. “Do you not see how all of us have labored, shoulder to shoulder and hand in hand, to rebuild it to still a more splendid state than before? With that, we now have peace, prosperity, freedom, and dignity for all. And is all that to be destroyed?”
“Chère madame.” Christophe’s voice was almost inaudibly soft. “It is not I who come to destroy it.” Again he turned as if to depart, but Isabelle’s voice held him.
“Think only of your own house, General. The effort that it took to raise it to its present glory. Then multiply that effort by all the houses, and the finest public buildings of our town . . .”
In a flash the doctor pictured the tar barrels he’d seen rolled through the gateway to Christophe’s mansion, and wondered if Isabelle might have seen them too. Héloïse was clinging to her mother’s skirts with both hands now and hiding her small face in the cloth.
“Can you not think of our children?” Isabelle said, and thrust out Mireille toward Christophe at the length of her two arms. Startled by the brusque movement, the baby began to wail. “My little girl,” Isabelle went on. “In three weeks’ time she will be carrying her candle to the cathedral—if it has not been wasted by a greater flame.”
Héloïse, as if on cue, began to sob into her mother’s skirt. Isabelle raised her voice just enough to be heard above their cries. The doctor felt one of his occasional twitches of dislike for her, and yet she was only giving the effort her all. Such an energy was pent in her small body—the concentration a hummingbird must use to hold itself midair, suspended before the blossom which it meant to penetrate.
“Look at her, the innocent, and think of all the others.” Mireille’s face was glowing angry red as Isabelle talked across her body, which wriggled like a caterpillar. “Will you see them all unhoused, sent begging from the ruin of their homes?”
“Madame! Madame!” Christophe thundered. Then at once he reined his voice back from fire to ice. “I can only await the order of the Governor-General Toussaint Louverture. Without his order, I cannot and will not admit the fleet.” He paused, then shifted into Creole. “Ou mêt alé,” he said, You may go, and with that clipped instruction he revolved on his heel and stalked from the room.
It seemed that Isabelle might hurl herself to the floor, to enjoy an hysterical fit of rage and frustration and tears. But as such a demonstration would serve no purpose, she restrained herself from it. The doctor thought that in just half a second, this entire calculation was legible in her face. Isabelle handed Mireille back to Elise, who had stood by her through it all, dazed and expressionless as if in a dream. She took her own children by their hands and led them in the direction of the outer doors.
A few more voices were raised in protest, but they were feeble now, and Christophe was no longer there to hear them. The aides and adjutants were moving forward, encouraging the petitioners out of the ballroom, toward the front steps and the courtyard. The doctor slipped through their ranks and followed Pascal on the trail of Christophe.
The black general was just emerging from the cabinet when they reached the anteroom, paper and a stand with a pair of inkwells and two pens in his hands. He sat down with his back to the cabinet door, and for a moment covered his eyes with his large hands. In that posture he seemed exhausted, past the point of collapse. But when he had lowered his hands from his face, he looked solidly composed.
“Gentlemen,” he said, with a nod toward the writing instruments he had brought out. “I shall want two copies of this letter.”
Obediently the doctor and Pascal each reached for pen and paper. Christophe spread his fingers and pressed lightly down on them, looking over their heads at the ceiling as he began to speak.
From the headquarters of Le Cap, 13 Pluviôse, Year Ten. Henri Christophe, brigadier general commanding the arrondissement of Le Cap, to General in Chief Leclerc.
Your aide-de-camp, General, has delivered to me your letter of this day. I have the honor to let you know that I cannot deliver to you the forts and other places confided to my command until beforehandI have received the orders of the Governor Toussaint Louverture,my immediate superior, from whom I hold the powers vested in me.
The doctor noticed, as his pen scratched, that Christophe’s voice was loud enough to be quite audible through the cracked door of the cabinet behind him . . . but surely he had seen that small space to be empty, not more than an hour ago. And now there was nothing for him to do but concentrate on Christophe’s words, though every one of them made his heart sink lower.
I would very much like to believe that I am dealing with the French, and that you are the chief of the army called “expeditionary,” but I am waiting for the orders of the Governor, to whom I have dispatched one of my aides-de-camp, to announce to him your arrival and that of the French army; and until his response has reached me, I cannot permityou to debark . . .”
On the deck of the flagship L’Océan, Captain-General Leclerc paused in his reading and looked out across the coast. He had walked down from the bow of the vessel for the sake of privacy, though Lebrun and the admiral Villaret-Joyeuse had followed him and stood at a little distance, watching. Leclerc inhaled the many-layered scent of the nearby land. At sunrise they’d sailed closer into shore, and now the fleet stood west of Fort Picolet, well out of the range of cannon. Though certainly he could reduce that place in an hour, if it came to that. The town itself was hidden, behind the point where the fort was placed, sunk in the deepest pocket of the bay.
A gull swooped at the letter, mistaking it for bread. Leclerc tucked the paper to his belly and turned to give the striking bird his shoulder. The gull spiraled up and away from him, shrieking, losing itself among the several others gliding around the masts of the ship like chaff in the updraft of some bonfire. Had his movement seemed a flinch? Leclerc stole a glance at Lebrun and Villaret-Joyeuse, to see if they’d been amused at his expense, but they had turned their faces to the coast. He knew that there were some who mocked him, and because of his small stature called him the blond Napoleon; they accused him of aping his brother-in-law.
Leclerc looked up toward the bridge, where Pauline, his lady wife, was holding court. The captain’s chair enthroned her. She had got herself up
in an exotic motley of kerchiefs, scarves, and bandannas—her fantasy of what a grand Creole dame would wear. The junior naval and military officers were fawning all over her, as usual, as if she were already Queen of Saint Domingue, as she soon expected, in effect, to be. It was this whole extravaganza that had sent Captain-General Leclerc down from the bridge to the spot where he now stood.
Since his marriage to the First Consul’s sister, Leclerc had had more than one occasion to reflect that perhaps husband, at the end of the day, was not the most enviable relation to enjoy to the most recklessly beautiful woman in Europe. Never had he felt it so keenly as when Bonaparte had ordered his sister to accompany this expedition. At first Pauline herself had howled as if she were being exiled to a prison colony. It was no easy matter to pry her out of Paris—though the First Consul, embarrassed by the scandals in which she constantly entangled herself, was determined to do it one way or another. At length she’d been persuaded by her friends that it would all be a great party of pleasure. How she would reign over Saint Domingue, attended by whole regiments of Nubian slaves, and how well her charming self would appear in the very most daring colonial déshabillé!
For Pauline’s fancies, all the best cabins of the flagship L’Océan had been refitted as boudoirs, parlors, antechambers, and stuffed brimful with musicians, poets, chefs de cuisine, dancing masters, lady’s maids, mummers and players and jugglers and all the indispensable accoutrements of the court she meant to install as soon as they had occupied Le Cap, renowned as the most beautiful city in any colony of France: the Jewel of the Antilles. It was a great nuisance and distraction to a man in command of a military enterprise.
On the bridge, Pauline was on the point of losing one of the forty-odd kerchiefs which, after all, left her mostly uncovered. The attendant officers blundered into each other in their haste to retrieve the stray rag for her. Despite his irritation, Leclerc did not immediately look away—this tableau held the eye, like the glitter of a diamond or a bit of broken glass.
Were it not for Pauline, he would never think of temporizing now. He did not like to think of it. If Rochambeau had met resistance at Fort Liberté, he would certainly by this time have hammered it to dust . . . and General Boudet would be doing the same at Port-au-Prince, and Kerverseau on the Spanish side of the island, while Captain-General Leclerc had the chore of taking Le Cap undamaged, preserving its most fragile charms for the delectation of his wife.
Leclerc turned in the direction of the sea. He thumped the folded letter against his tightly trousered leg. The day was fine and clear, the air rinsed clean by yesterday’s storm. If he decided to force a landing, the weather conditions could be no better . . . as Villaret-Joyeuse had already mentioned this morning.
To his port side the ship La Vertu swung at anchor, crammed to the gunwales with all the surviving leaders of the mulatto faction in the colony’s recent civil war. Pétion, Rigaud, Villatte, Léveillé, Boyer, and dozens of others all eager to try their swords one more time against Toussaint, who had defeated them and driven them out of the colony. Their knowledge of the place, along with their passion for revenge, might well prove useful if it came to war again and everything had to be done by main force. If the colony could be occupied peacefully, however, Leclerc had orders to ship the mulatto chiefs to Madagascar, never allowing them to set foot in Saint Domingue.
He turned to starboard and studied the Jean-Jacques, the vessel which contained Toussaint’s two sons—Leclerc’s best instruments of diplomacy. To prevent the effusion of blood, and the wrecking of cities, he might send them with their tutor to join their father; they might well persuade Toussaint to cede his command of the colony without a fight. The difficulty was not knowing where to send them. Toussaint was somewhere on the island, presumably, but no one seemed to know just where, not even the officer he’d left in command of Le Cap. Leclerc shook out the creases of the letter, and continued, reluctantly, to read.
. . . until his response has reached me, I cannot permit you to debark. If you have the force with which you threaten me, I will offer you all the resistance proper to a general; and if the issue of arms should be favorable to you, you will not enter the city of Le Cap before it has been reduced to ashes—and on those ashes, I will fight you still.
7
Couachy, to whom Papa Toussaint had given the two letters for Paul Louverture, led their way south from Point Samana toward Santo Domingo City. Couachy had been to that place before, not so long ago, when Papa Toussaint had sent his army to the Spanish side of the island for the first time, but Guiaou had not. He had not been to Point Samana either until that day when Papa Toussaint had brought them to look at the ships of the French. It was the first time he had traveled so far across the border, but he had known Couachy for a long time and was content to follow him. Couachy rode in front, then Guerrier who had just been made a soldier by Papa Toussaint, and Guiaou third. Guiaou had never seen Guerrier before yesterday when Papa Toussaint tossed him the musket he carried now across his saddle bow, but he felt a warmth toward Guerrier because he remembered how, a long time ago, Papa Toussaint had taken him in when he was nearly naked and had made him a soldier too by giving him a gun. Guerrier rode well—he must have spent some time training horses at Toussaint’s hatte across the border— but he did not seem to know what to do with the musket. He kept turning it and flourishing it one way and another, and Guiaou’s horse twitched uneasily between his knees whenever the sunlight flashed on the barrel.
They had to ride someway inland along the north bank of the River Yuna to find a ford where they could cross. Even there the water was deeper than Guiaou liked, chest-deep on the horses in the middle of the river. It rose to touch Guiaou’s boot in the stirrup, cold water seeping through the seams of the uppers. The cold water climbed his shinbone toward his knee, spilling over the boot top. Guiaou closed his eyes and felt his teeth clench tight. He prayed, Gras lamisérikòd, loosening the rein and trusting his horse to follow the others without guidance. Gras lamisérikòd, Papa . . . The water climbed onto his thigh and he waited for the sick lurch when the horse’s hooves would be uprooted from the bottom and the horse would begin to swim. But this did not happen. Instead the water began to sink, finally releasing its grip on his ankle, and Guiaou opened his eyes as the horse came scrambling up the southern bank of the river. He prayed his thanksgiving as he dumped the water from his boots and slung them over his saddle bow. The cloth of his trousers and the skin of his legs dried quickly as they rode east in the afternoon sun, warming against the drying hide of the horse.
On the south side of the bay the trail became narrow, difficult, running steeply up and down the cliffside above the ocean. Far to the east, where the bay’s mouth gave onto the open sea, appeared white splotches of bellying sails—ships of the blancs sailing toward Cape Engaño.
“Ki moun yo yé?” Guerrier said. Who are they? The voice startled Guiaou, for there had been no word spoken among the three of them since they parted from Papa Toussaint, only the noise of the surf and the cries of the gulls diving down the black walls of the cliffs above the water.
“Moun fransé,” Couachy told him. French people.
“Poukisa y’ap vini?” Guerrier asked. What have they come for?
“To make us slaves again,” Couachy said shortly. Guerrier looked back over his shoulder, over the black switching tail of his bay horse. His eyes caught Guiaou’s for a moment before he faced forward again, but he did not ask another question. They rode on.
The sun turned red and quickly fell behind the mountains to the west. They rode through the brief twilight, and then, for a little while, under the stars. The trail was difficult in the faint light and they went slowly, often dismounting to lead their horses over the tricky ground. A warm, wet wind blew inland from the bay, carrying with it a shelf of cloud. By the time they had made their way down from the cliff trail to lower ground, the stars had all been darkened and they were making their way across a mangrove swamp by touch.
; “Nou pa kab vansé konsa!” Couachy announced. We cannot go on like this! He looked around himself—the writhing shadows of the mangroves stretched out in all directions. “We must stop for the night—in the dark we would miss the road.”
Guiaou said nothing, though a discontent settled on him—he pictured the blanc ships sailing on through the night, around Cape Engaño to the port of Santo Domingo City. But Couachy could not be disputed. It was a lucky thing that a horse had not already twisted a leg among the mangroves. Also it might be a long way before they found another broad dry hummock like this one, where they might stop in comfort. There was even a scraggly coastal pine tree here, whose lower branches might be broken off for firewood.
They tied their horses and built a small fire, though there was nothing to be cooked. Guerrier brought some dried beef out of his bundle—there was much smoking of beef at the hatte he had come from. Guiaou had some morsels of cassava bread wrapped in a rag inside his shirt, and Couachy brought out two shriveled, pulpy mangoes. They shared the food and ate it slowly, reserving about half of the dried beef for the next day.
After eating, Couachy and Guiaou reclined on their elbows beside the fire, while Guerrier sat up crosslegged, caressing the barrel of his musket intently, as if it were a cat. The knobs of his knees stuck out from the faded rags of his tricolor trousers. He told them how he had once been a slave on a coffee farm in the hills above Ouanaminthe, how he had run away across the Spanish border and lived for years as a maroon in the mountains near Santiago. When Couachy and Guiaou did not volunteer anything about themselves, Guerrier asked how they had come to know each other.
“Nou tuyé blan ansanm,” Couachy grunted, rolling up on one hip to scratch his back. We killed whites together.
The Stone that the Builder Refused Page 15