The Stone that the Builder Refused

by Madison Smartt Bell

  “Wi, blan ak milat, nou tuyé yo.” The words sounded from his mouth without Guiaou’s intention—Yes, whites and mulattoes, we killed them . . . He had first met Couachy during a raid on the English on the outskirts of Saint Marc, a long time ago before Papa Toussaint had chased all the English out of the country. In those days Guiaou had had an especially lively hatred of mixed-blood people—he still did when he thought about it—and that day he and Couachy had been able to kill many of them up close with their knives. That raid was led by Moyse, who was dead now, shot by a firing squad at Port-de-Paix, because he had dared to raise a rebellion against his uncle, Papa Toussaint.

  It took Guiaou some time to think all of these thoughts, and during that time no one said anything more. There was no sound except the whine of the mosquitoes, which were plentiful here in the mangrove swamp. Couachy sat up to put a damp, leafy branch onto the fire. The smoke thickened, but it did not discourage the mosquitoes very much. Guerrier coughed and spat to one side.

  “Why did the general give you two letters?” he said.

  “Let-sa-a bay manti,” Couachy answered, pulling out a corner of the letter he carried in his outside pocket. This letter tells lies. He moved his hand to pat the second letter, which he held hidden under his shirt. “This is the letter which tells the truth.”

  “What does the letter say truly?” Guerrier said. “And what does the letter say which is not true?”

  Guiaou felt that Guerrier asked too many questions, and asked them too directly. He would never have asked such questions himself, not even in his thoughts, but Couachy did not seem unwilling to answer and Guiaou found that he himself was curious to know.

  Couachy brushed his outer pocket. “This one says that the General Paul must welcome the French as brothers and friends and do all that they say.” He smiled and tapped the letter tucked into his waistband. “This one says that he must burn Santo Domingo City, kill the blancs and retreat to Saint Raphael.”

  At that Guerrier only nodded and stretched out on the ground beside his musket. The fire burned down to its last coals. Guiaou lay with his eyes closed, listening to the plop of frogs in the swamp, the horses snuffling at the brackish water along the edge of the mangroves, finally the familiar sound of Couachy’s snoring. After a blank period his eyes came open on the mist of a gray dawn. The others slept, but one-eyed Ghede was there, sitting in the shadow of the salt-withered pine tree, greedily scooping up food from a bowl with the fingers of his right hand. His left hand reached out as if to gather and protect another bowl, but Guiaou saw with a pulse of alarm that Ghede’s left hand was hovering above the head of sleeping Couachy. It seemed to him then that Ghede wore the face of Moyse, who had lost an eye in battle with the blancs, so that the lid sagged wrinkled and gray into the empty socket, but Moyse had gone to be with the dead already—Guiaou rolled awake so quickly that his own horse snorted and jerked at its tether. It was still night, but the clouds had dissipated, and a slender new moon had risen among the stars. In the cold light the path lay palely visible, running from hummock to hummock through the mangroves.

  Guiaou walked around the cold feathery ashes of their fire, and stooped to rock Couachy by the shoulder.

  “Ann alé,” he hissed. Let’s go.

  Couachy came awake with a grumble. He slapped at a clutch of mosquitoes that battened on his neck and wiped the wreckage of their legs and wings in a blood smear over his collar bone. His eyes came clear enough to take in the new moonlight and the plain lie of the path between the hummocks.

  “Dakò,” he said. All right.

  Guiaou woke Guerrier by tapping the flat of his coutelas across the ball of the sleeping man’s bare foot. Guerrier came up into consciousness without a whisper. There was no coffee to be brewed so they were on their way at once, going single file among the mangroves. By the time first light had begun to lift the blue herons and white egrets out of the hummocks and into the air, they had come to the edge of the swamp and reached the junction of a broad road which ran south through the lowlands from the edge of the bay.

  In this spot they paused for long enough for Guerrier to share out the last of his dried beef. They rode on, at a brisk trot. The road was wide enough for them to ride all three abreast. Guiaou wished for greater speed—he feared ships would be outdistancing them around the cape, and the lingering images of his dream filled his head with chilly fog. One did not meet Ghede in dreams without a reason. But Couachy was the better horseman and more knowledgeable of the country where they were and the distance they had yet to go, and he would not press their pace for fear of overheating the horses. It was true that the heat rose very fast once the sun had cleared the mountains east of the wide savanna where they rode. Guiaou held his morsel of dried beef in his mouth, encouraging it to dissolve slowly with just an occasional pump of his jaw.

  By midday the taste of that beef was not even a memory. They came in sight of a small cabin seated some twenty yards from the road. Though they’d passed several small herds of cattle grazing untended, this was the first evidence of human habitation they had met. A small black boy stood at the roadside watching their approach, covered to his knees in a dirt-brown canvas smock.

  “Salwé,” Couachy said as they drew near, and when the Creole greeting drew no answer, “Holá.” The boy turned and ran for the house, dashing in the open door. Two kerchiefed heads of women peeked out the doorway and as quickly withdrew. Then a white man dressed in a pair of loose cotton trousers stepped barefoot into the dooryard and stood yawning and scratching at the hair above his waistband as he inspected them. A young woman came out behind him, carrying a pail. With her free hand she traced a line of string that ran from the house to a small cocotier off to the left. Beside the tree she stopped and began drawing water from the well.

  The white man left off his scratching and beckoned. Guiaou would have returned to the road. But Couachy clucked to his horse and rode down into the packed earth of the yard, dismounting without waiting for an invitation.

  “You come from Toussaint?” By his accent it was plain he was a Spaniard, though he spoke in Creole.

  “No,” said Couachy. “We come from Clervaux, at Santiago.”

  It was a good answer, Guiaou thought, a lie well chosen. A dispatch from Clervaux’s garrison at Santiago to Paul Louverture would be no more than routine. But he saw the Spaniard’s eyes flick from the faded tricolor rosette Couachy wore pinned to the frayed lapel of his short jacket to the guardsman’s helmet that crowned Guiaou. Guiaou had been tremendously proud of this helmet ever since Toussaint had elevated him to his honor guard, but now he took it off and tucked it under his arm, wishing very much that he could make it invisible.

  “How far is it to Santo Domingo City?” Couachy said.

  “Oh,” said the Spaniard, “not so far at all. You are quite near. But have something to eat before you go on, and you must fodder your horses, certainly.”

  “You are kind—” Couachy began, but Guiaou broke in: “Let us go on.”

  The Spaniard looked sharply into Guiaou’s face. “Is your mission so urgent?” His fingers worked the sprigs of hair on his pointed chin; they did not quite amount to a beard. As his gaze lowered from Guiaou, it caught for a moment on the red wax seal of the letter visible in Couachy’s pocket.

  “Not at all,” Couachy said. He turned in Guiaou’s direction but without quite meeting his eyes. “Though, after all, we must not stay long.”

  “Very good,” the Spaniard said. The young woman was coming back from the well with her pail slopping onto the dirt, free hand still running over the string. From the fixed regard when she came near, Guiaou guessed she must be blind. She had pleasant features, but these were confused by many dark red blotches on her face, from some disease.

  Two larger boys, both of them white, were peeking around the door frame now. “Take these horses to the barn,” the Spaniard said. “And bring some eggs to feed our visitors.”

  Unhappily Guiaou slid down from the saddle; G
uerrier followed suit.

  “Go in, go in!” The Spaniard gestured to the open door. Guiaou let his horse be taken and led around the corner of the cabin. Clutching his musket to him still, Guerrier followed Couachy into the house. Guiaou looked back and saw that the Spaniard had walked closer to the boys as they led the horses off, to give them some further instruction.

  Guiaou stepped over the threshold, cradling his helmet, blinking in the dim interior.

  “Sit down.” The Spaniard walked inside, waving his arms at a rough-hewn table against the wall. The others were already seated there. Guiaou lowered himself gingerly to a three-legged stool and pushed his helmet under the table, out of sight.

  The Spaniard rattled off a phrase of his own tongue to the older woman, the one who was not blind. She grunted something in reply and stooped to lift an iron tripod and a kettle. Guiaou moved to take the tripod, an excuse to follow her out the back door. Another string, he noticed, ran from the door frame to a small barn at the crest of a little rise behind the house. The horses had been taken there, he thought. He did not see the horses, but the figure of one of the white boys flashed for a second across the rise, running down toward a dark tree line beyond it.

  Very slowly, the old woman was arranging the tripod, the kettle, the pan below the kettle which would be spooned full of coals, once the fire which had yet to be kindled had produced the coals. It would all take too much time, Guiaou thought. He stepped back into the house. The Spaniard had picked up his helmet and was turning it in his hands, muttering the phrase embossed on the front of it: Qui pourra en venir à bout?

  Guiaou moved to whisper to Couachy that they must not wait for this promised meal, but the Spaniard seemed to intercept his thought.

  “Where are those boys?” he said, his beard wisps lifting in a rubbery smile. “Our hens are all half wild, you see? They hide their eggs, and it takes time to find them.”

  “I will help them,” Guiaou said. Couachy sat looking vacantly out the doorway, eyes half shut. He had put one hand under his shirt tail to warm his belly for the reception of hot food. Guiaou could not get his attention. He reached for the helmet, but the white man’s hands stuck to it, his fingertips lingering on the raised motto.

  “Who will be able to come through to the end?” he said with the same uneasy smile. “It is a curious phrase.”

  Guiaou twisted the helmet away from his clinging hands. “I will put eggs in it,” he said, to cover the roughness of his action. He jerked his head at Guerrier as he went out the door. The older woman was still puttering over the business of lighting the fire. Guiaou marched quickly up the rise. The Spaniard’s voice sounded behind him and he looked back once. The blind girl was following him, but slowly, finger on the string.

  The string ran from stall to stall in the lean-to area on the far side of the barn, and stopped at the door of a raised-floor room closed with a wooden latch, where fodder must have been stored. The three horses, tethered by a brace of oxen, were tossing their heads over a small wisp of hay. There was no sign of the two boys, nor any hens or eggs. This, Guiaou had expected. And now there was something like a rumble in the ground. He could not really hear it yet, but felt it in a prickle from his heels through his spine. He stepped clear of the barn and looked down the road they’d been traveling before they’d stopped here.

  Nothing at first, then a crawling speck on the road, a dust cloud, horses, many horsemen. Guiaou ran into the barn and began to untie the horses, fumbling in his hurry. He’d put his helmet on, to free his hands. It was awkward leading all three horses at once, and the animals picked up his nervousness. One of them twisted around to bite another on the haunch, and the bitten horse whinnied and made to rear. Before Guiaou came to Toussaint he had been afraid of horses as much as of water, and now it seemed to him that the skill and confidence he’d gained since might drain away and leave him helpless, like the blind girl frozen on her string halfway between the barn and the house. The yard was empty except for her—the older woman must have gone back in. Guiaou remembered the conch shell he carried in a saddlebag. He yanked it out and sounded it. At the harsh tone, Guerrier’s horse pulled free. Guiaou could not chase it—he started toward the house leading the two others, and the third horse followed, as he should have known it would do.

  He mounted and rode down toward the yard at a trot, trailing the second horse by the reins. Guerrier came dashing out of the house, carrying his musket. The horsemen on the road were near enough to be counted, and there were more than fifty of them, white men all, with the look of Spanish militia. But one of them wore the blue coat and epaulettes of a French cavalry officer, though it seemed impossible that those ships could have landed anyone this soon.

  Now, at last, Couachy came through the door. With a sweep of his head he took in the approaching riders. The Spaniard came scurrying after him, his messy mouth open and his arms spread out in some remonstrance. Couachy pulled out his dragoon’s pistol, took time to steady the barrel over his right wrist, and shot the other man in his shirtless chest. The range was so short that the impact sent the Spaniard cartwheeling backward, oversetting the iron kettle and tripod into the fire as he fell. The older woman stood screaming in the door frame.

  At the shot, the horse Guiaou was leading reared and broke the reins, but Guerrier ran up on it before it could go far, caught the mane, and vaulted one-handed into the saddle, always clutching the musket with the other. The third horse had bolted all the way to the horizon. Guiaou screamed wordlessly to Couachy, who was taking a slow, deliberate time to charge his pistol. A shot sounded from the approaching riders, and Guerrier fired his musket wild into the sky. Taking a carefully studied aim, Couachy shot one of the militiamen out of the saddle. His fall broke the advance of the others. Their horses milled. Couachy turned and walked toward Guiaou, in no obvious hurry, though he did not stop to reload his pistol now.

  The French officer was shouting orders, and the militiamen were regrouping for a charge. Guiaou, who had pushed his horse to a canter, pulled out his own pistol and fired into the cluster without seeing the effect of his shot. Couachy was reaching for his free hand, to pull himself up behind. As their fingers touched, several shots went off and Couachy’s hand jerked back as if it had been burned. Guerrier was twisting his musket around helplessly; it was too long for him to reload in the saddle. Couachy pulled his hand away from his shoulder and reached for Guiaou again, but his fingers were all slippery with blood and the shock of the colliding horses separated them.

  Guiaou gained a moment by smashing his pistol barrel into the face of the nearest militiaman, feeling the dampened crunch as cartilage gave way. Guerrier had set the stock of his empty musket to his shoulder and galloped in, guiding his horse with only his knees. His bayonet struck another Spaniard and swept him backward over the tail of his own horse. But Guiaou could not find Couachy. He wheeled his horse out of the melee and turned. Now he saw Couachy getting up from the dirt, one arm swinging loose from the bloody shoulder and the other reaching. Guiaou switched his discharged pistol for his coutelas and glanced at Guerrier, who rode at the Spanish again with his bayonet fixed as before. Guiaou moved toward Couachy, who made a spring to reach him, but as he jumped there was a whole volley of shots and Couachy’s arm was limp, jelly-like when Guiaou’s hand grasped at it. The arm ran through his fingers like water and Couachy slipped down under the hooves as the horses shocked together again. Guiaou took a tremendous blow to his helmet, from a saber or gun butt, he didn’t know, but it was hard enough to blur his sight. He swung his horse into the clear. There were too many, too many to fight.

  His vision resolved and he saw that he was riding on the blind girl now, who still stood paralyzed and mute, the red blots much darker against the sudden pallor of her skin. If one of the boys who’d betrayed them had been standing in her place, Guiaou would have cut him down with joy, but he turned away from the girl at the last moment, slashed her guide string and rode through, with a quick glance over his shoulder to see
that Guerrier was following. Further back, the French officer and another militiaman had jumped down to flip over Couachy’s body, which lay face down in the dirt, but the rest of the Spaniards were pursuing.

  In a flash Guiaou and Guerrier had crossed the tree line. Green branches whipped Guiaou across the face. He plastered his upper body along the horse’s neck. There was space enough among the pines for them to hold their pace, and they had the better horses. When they’d lost the Spaniards deep in the pines, they cut back in the direction of the road, halting finally at a point a quarter-mile north of the house. Guiaou took the time to load his pistol. He was still breathless, so he only motioned to Guerrier, who seemed to take his meaning well enough. They rode behind the screen of pines until the barn had lined up with the house, and then came out into the open, urging their horses to the gallop as they crossed the rise. Only two militiamen had stayed by the house, and they did not have time to reach their horses. Guiaou hacked the first one down with his coutelas and Guerrier pinned the other to the house wall with the bayonet.

  By the overturned kettle the older woman lay across the body of her husband, her shoulders heaving silently. Further off, the blind girl turned in a widening spiral, her arms outstretched, with nothing to grasp. Guerrier covered her with his musket, but Guiaou pushed the barrel aside. He dropped to his knees beside Couachy’s body. Couachy’s eyes were showing white and his mouth hung slack and there was a paste of blood and dirt on his teeth. Guiaou turned out all his pockets—empty. The true letter was gone from his waistband as well.

  Guerrier stood looking unhappily at the twisted bayonet on his musket. He’d broken off the point with the force of his charge against the house wall. Now he picked up the musket of one of the dead militiamen and compared it to his own to see if it would do. Meanwhile Guiaou was searching those bodies as quickly as he could, but the letters were not there. The French officer must have taken them, and he was riding back toward the house now, leading the Spanish horsemen on a wild charge out of the trees.