The Stone that the Builder Refused

by Madison Smartt Bell

  “Enchantée,” Pauline replied, and extended a languid arm from her litter. Isabelle took her hand and lowered her head over it for a moment. The doctor, meanwhile, recognized Cyprien at the side of the palanquin; the two men exchanged the very slightest of nods.

  “Pray excuse the disarray in which we at present find ourselves,” Isabelle was saying. “It appears that we have somehow blundered into a state of war. If our hospitality should be somewhat impaired by that condition, all that remains to us to offer is entirely yours.”

  Isabelle placed her keys into Pauline’s hand and, after a moment, produced the battered lock from her front door and laid it into the other. Exhibiting the curve of her famously graceful neck, Pauline inclined her head to study these items. Then she fitted the key to the lock and turned the mechanism as Isabelle had done before, shooting the bolt out, then retracting it, shooting it out a second time. She raised her pretty eyes to meet Isabelle’s. The two women held their gaze for just an instant before they were swept off into a wild gale of mutual laughter.

  In the midst of plenty, if plenty there was, Daspir got a very poor supper indeed. No more than a square of moldy hardtack, softened from its concrete consistency in gritty river water and slowly worried to pieces by his teeth. In the darkness he consoled himself with surreptitious sips of brandy; there was no friend with whom he wished to share. They’d bivouacked with Rochambeau’s men once they’d got across the river, and Daspir slept uneasily on the cold ground—it was quite surprisingly cold at night, after the fierce heat of the day. Whenever he woke he reached for the bottle again.

  At reveille he sat up with a headache and all his passages shut with phlegm, looking regretfully at the much diminished brandy bottle in the bottom of his pack. But half an hour’s time in the saddle as the troops went swinging down the road cleared his head and warmed his blood and improved his disposition. After all, he’d survived his first day of battle, and not discreditably. After all, they were victorious. And it seemed he had been face-to-face already with Toussaint Louverture.

  There was a rumor that Christophe’s soldiers were coming out from Haut du Cap to challenge them, but this did not occur. In all this day’s march they met no organized resistance though gangs of rioters were setting fire to the plantations all around and there was a good deal of sniping from the hedgerows. They marched on; there was no enemy who would stand and fight. Wherever they found a plantation intact, Leclerc detached a few men to guard it. Rochambeau had done the same as he maneuvered across the plain from Fort Liberté, which explained the patchwork pattern of ash and green which Daspir had observed from the heights above Acul.

  The image of that raghead Negro on the warhorse nagged at him. Had he truly been so near to Toussaint Louverture? Hardy’s information was not certain after all—it was the women of Limbé who’d claimed that he was there, who’d threatened the French soldiers with his presence even as they ran for cover in the bush. Yet there was the splendid horse, and his riding. And the consensus between Rochambeau’s detachment and Leclerc’s was that Toussaint must have been the one to order all the burning. If he could be brought to bay, then the destruction would be stopped. As he rode, Daspir began to imagine how he might put it to Cyprien and Paltre and Guizot. I might have hit him with a stone from across the river—I was that near. If only the bridge had not been down, I should have won our bet. The bullet hole through his hat would give at least some credence to this claim . . .

  Near noon they found themselves marching along an undamaged hedge whose tight-laced branches were heavy with green oranges. Some infantrymen made this discovery, and all at once a part of the column broke up into disorder as the soldiers attacked the hedge. Daspir knew he should be commanding them to cease, but instead he leaned sideways out of the saddle and captured an orange for himself. Under the lumpy green hide the flesh was pale yellow, fragrant, and sweet. Whatever thing he had eaten before under the title of orange bore no comparison to this. He was gnawing the rind when Hardy came up, and at once Daspir began to bellow to the troops to reform, the sweet juice still sticky on his chin.

  In the late afternoon they came marching into Le Cap along the Rue Espagnole. Through the smoke, which was heavy still, the sun spread a hellish light on the river where it uncoiled slowly into the bay. In their departure Christophe’s men had even tried to set fire to the trees lining the avenue on the approach to the city gate. On the Rue Espagnole they encountered a team of Villaret-Joyeuse’s sailors manning a pump, and learned that the admiral had made his landing the day before. The fires had been extinguished or brought under control, but there was no roof nor any shelter left standing anywhere in the town.

  Grimly they marched down the slope to the waterfront, where the fresh wind dispersed most of the smoke, and proceeded along the quai. Nothing to see during their descent but cracked fire-blackened walls and foundations. The whole town resembled the crater of a volcano. The admiral’s men had dragged the carcasses of dead animals into the public squares and piled them up in preparation for another burning. Leclerc’s men marched in a sepulchral silence, their boots whispering over the ash. Now and then a man cursed softly when his foot came down on a hot coal.

  L’Océan was moored not far from the smoking shell of the Customs House. Leclerc was quick to hail the first man he saw on the deck. When he was told that Pauline had disembarked the day before, the little general’s face seemed to go slightly paler under the film of ash that covered it already—or so Daspir thought, from where he sat his horse. The sailor pointed up the street into the wreckage of the town, and Leclerc and Hardy and their staff set out in that direction.

  In two blocks they’d reached the enclosure of the colonial Governor’s residence. The outer wall still stood, and some of the stone archways of the destroyed building. An area under these arches had been swept clean and given a tent-roof made of sailcloth furnished with a couple of cots and Indian hassocks arranged on flagstones recently scrubbed clean of soot. A pot steaming over a small brazier gave off a fresh citrus scent that awakened on Daspir’s tongue the taste of that green orange. Pauline sat crosslegged on a hassock, next to a dark-haired Creole woman to whom Daspir’s eyes were instantly drawn. But everyone else was watching Pauline. She sprang to her feet when she saw Leclerc, and after a nicely balanced pause, rushed up to fling her arms around his neck. A performance—everyone knew that—but it was a spirited one, and Leclerc seemed to appreciate it as much as any of the others standing by.

  Fort de Joux, France

  October 1802

  Toussaint moved with the smoothness of wind or water, or possibly it was the earth that rolled back beneath his planted feet, rushing its features up into his face. With a lifting of his heart, he knew he was again in Saint Domingue: the warmth of the air, heavy before rain; the stirring leaves of the almond trees; somewhere in the background a faint, fruity odor of corruption. A banana grove charged toward him, split to flow around him, the broad flat leaves whipping around his shoulders, skimming over his cheeks. He moved his hands to tighten the reins and check the reckless pace, but there was no horse, no bridle. He was looking up, abashed, into the crown of an enormous mapou tree, the dark green leaves all shivering together, and above a little hawk, the malfini, circling against the crimson sky. The odor he’d noticed was stronger now, and he swept onward, through undergrowth stunted by the shade of larger trees. Within the stone ring of a scorched foundation, there appeared a dump of mango seeds, banana peels, crushed cane stalks with the juice pressed out of them, some chicken bones and scattered feathers. Hence that fruity smell of ripeness, rot, and ferment. A couple of long-eared black pigs rooted through the garbage mound. One of them raised its head to look at him, its eyes red-rimmed, a wet red glare in the hollow of its nostrils.

  The color seemed wrong, as it had in the sky. Toussaint came awake, with a shudder. One hand had trailed from the cot to the floor; the cold of the flagstone cut through the skin of his knuckles into the bone. He raised the hand and cradle
d it to his chest, pressing with both hands to push down the rising cough. When the moment had passed he relaxed his diaphragm. The vapor of his breath was visible when it emerged, like smoke.

  With a painful contraction of his sore belly muscles, he managed to sit up. His stomach ached and his ribs were bruised from coughing. The cell wavered in the currents of his fever. When it came to rest, he crept to the hearth. A few quiescent coals still lurked beneath the whitish layer of ash. On hands and knees, Toussaint blew them to life, fed the nascent flame a handful of splinters, then a larger stick. He sat back on his skinny haunches. The fire was like a picture of a fire, it yielded no more warmth than that. But all his body burned inside with fever. Stiffly he pushed onto his feet, then lowered himself, joint by joint, into the chair beside the hearth. The movement made his head hurt terribly. His headcloth had come undone while he slept. He shook out the square of madras, lowered his head to refasten it, firmly tightening the knot at the back. The ring of compression around his brow and temples always seemed somewhat to ease the pain.

  He relaxed in the chair and began to drift. Swirls of chilly air moved in the cell around him. In the giddiness of fever he felt rather amused by the sight of his breath steam dissipating. When he closed his eyes, the black pig appeared again, thrusting the red holes of its snout. He heard it grunt—but no, that was the turning of the lock. His eyes popped open and he struggled to compose himself. If news had come at last from the First Consul, he must try to rally himself to receive it.

  In the open doorway appeared Colomier, standing beside another man whom Toussaint did not recognize. Baille, he remembered now, had gone away on a brief leave, placing this Colomier in temporary command of the Fort de Joux. A certain laxity seemed to have resulted. For example, Baille would not have let the cell door hang open quite so long, so that Toussaint could see a long way down the vaulted corridor, past the two soldiers standing there, old pigtailed veterans both of them, one holding a sputtering torch and the other shuffling his feet on the wet floor.

  “The doctor,” Colomier said, and the stranger stepped over the threshold with a little birdlike bob of his head.

  “Dormoy,” Colomier said, apparently by way of introduction. “Toussaint.” He swung the door, the lock crunched shut. In a moment Toussaint heard his feet and those of the guards splashing in the second corridor, which had held several inches of water when he was brought through it, however many months before; since then, he had not left this cell. Colomier, unlike Baille, never stayed to listen at the door.

  Dormoy was a small man who twittered in his movements. He carried a small leather satchel, which he set upon the table as he sat down. Remaining in his place by the fire, Toussaint merely turned his head to look at him. Even this small shift of position sent a rocket of pain to the top of his skull.

  “Gegne douleu,” he said, tongue thick in the mouth cavity. “Têt-moin bay problèm anpil, anpil.”

  “I don’t understand,” Dormoy said, with a fluttering smile.

  I have pain, Toussaint thought. What language had he spoken? My head gives many, many problems . . .

  “Take off?” Dormoy said tentatively. He raised both hands and made a queer unfurling gesture in the neighborhood of his ears. “Take off your . . .”

  Toussaint touched the knot of his headcloth, let his hand drop away. Dormoy reached into the satchel and pulled out a pair of scrolled brass calipers.

  “Your prominences, General,” he said, a little shyly. “I should especially like to measure the bump of cunning, and that for ambition— amour de la gloire, and of course the bump of sagacity.” With a flutter of his right hand the caliper points clicked together like an insect’s mandibles.

  “I am not an animal,” Toussaint said, concentrating on the crisp isolation of each word. He drew himself up very straight in his chair.

  Dormoy blushed and deflated. “No more am I a doctor.” He set the calipers on the table and gave them a wistful look.

  “Have you news from the First Consul?” Toussaint said.

  Dormoy did not appear to hear him. At the sound of the fort’s bell tolling nine slow rusty strokes, he raised his head toward the grating at the other end of the low vaulted cell from the door. This grate admitted freezing air in good supply, but only a few weak checks of daylight. If Toussaint stood peering through it for long enough, he might eventually see the bootheels of a sentry in the yard. He felt a kind of weakness at this thought.

  “If you are not a doctor,” he said, “I am still in need. Can you arrange for a doctor to come?”

  “I was a priest once,” Dormoy said, turning his watery smile toward Toussaint. “Once, I was mayor of Dijon. But today I am only a schoolmaster.”

  “If you are a priest,” Toussaint said, “have you come to confess me?”

  “Oh no!” Dormoy hissed. “You see, I have been—well, I cannot exercise the priestly functions. Today I am only a schoolmaster.”

  On the red glow of Toussaint’s closed eyelids appeared the image of that mad blanche, Claudine Arnaud. She had demanded that he confess her, an age ago and an ocean away. How had he answered? It is not easy to enter the spiritual world.

  He opened his eyes and stared at Dormoy. The window of clarity which by dint of concentration he had opened in his fever was beginning to collapse around the edges. It could not be that this person had appeared for no reason. There must be a message, or a sign.

  “Mon père,” he began. “Father, I—”

  “No, no,” Dormoy said, his hands fluttering before him. “It is only, I only—I was one of the Jesuits during my priesthood, and all of my order had the greatest sympathy for the sufferings of the slaves, you see—oh, I was not posted to Saint Domingue! nor to any other such place. You see, I only wanted to look upon the Liberator. See the face of Toussaint L’Ouverture. He who had the audacity to address the First Consul so: To the first of the whites from the first of the blacks.

  “I never used any such form of address,” Toussaint said wearily. “It is another of their lies.”

  “I only imposed myself as a doctor in coming here,” Dormoy went on, heedlessly. “Perhaps I was wrong, but I meant no harm. I meant only to offer you my congratulations—well, my . . . admiration. My best wishes, as it were.”

  Toussaint regarded him. The man was weak. Sometimes a weak vessel was better than a strong one. A weak man was like a chink in a wall which might be enlarged till the whole wall came down. One might inhabit the weak man altogether, subject his poor will entirely to one’s own. But for the moment Toussaint did not have the strength, himself, to set about it.

  “It must be dreadful for you here,” Dormoy said. “This climate, the cold, for a man from the tropics . . .”

  “The First Consul sends me no word,” Toussaint said. “I have been waiting for my judgment—I do not know how many months.” He paused. “I believe they mean for me to die here.”

  He felt a tremble rooting in his spine—the chill succeeding fever: ague. With a tremendous effort he clenched it in. He would not allow his teeth to chatter in the face of this lunatic guest. Though it was the first time he had allowed that last sentence to surface even in his thoughts.

  Dormoy plucked from his vest pocket a gold pince-nez which he clipped neatly upon the bridge of his nose. “I am a friend of the sous-préfet of Pontarlier,” he said, pointing a finger at the floor of the cell. “It was so that I was able to arrange my visit.” He broke disconcertingly into a high-pitched giggle. “Not so difficult at all, really!” he said. “It is surprising.” He glanced at Toussaint, over the lenses of the pince-nez.

  Toussaint did not respond. He knew next to nothing of Pontarlier or its subprefect. The place was further down the mountain and he had been brought quickly through it once while being conveyed here.

  “Well,” said Dormoy, lowering his gaze. “No matter. In connection with your presence here, my friend sometimes receives copies of correspondence addressed to the Consulate, or to the Minister of Marine.”
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  He was unfolding a small square of paper as he spoke. Toussaint’s attention bore down on the folded sheet. The aperture in his fever had regained its boundary.

  “This from the Captain-General Leclerc,” Dormoy said. “It is recent. I find his sentiment quite extraordinary! It struck me so that I copied it out.”

  “Do let me hear it,” Toussaint said.

  Dormoy squinted at the paper. “We must destroy all the mountain Negroes, men and women, sparing only children under twelve years of age. We must destroy half the Negroes of the plains, and not allow in the colony a single man who has ever worn an epaulette. Without these measures, the colony will never be at peace.”

  Dormoy folded the paper, pulling the crease between his finger as he glanced up. “Such a carnage!” he said. “Does one suppose he means to undertake it?”

  “He may undertake it, if he will,” Toussaint said. “To carry it out will not be possible.”

  “No,” said Dormoy. “No, I rather think the same.” He put the pince-nez into his pocket. Still, for the first time since he had entered, he looked at Toussaint with a certain gravity. “If you are right, then—”

  Before he could complete the sentence, the cell door came flying open. There was Baille, returned, with an unaccustomed number of the guard—half a dozen of them.

  “What is the meaning of this?” he shouted. “What do you—” When Baille looked at Dormoy, Toussaint could tell that the two men were acquainted at least to some degree, though Baille was in no mood to acknowledge it now.

  “Arrest that man!” he bellowed, thrusting his arm at Dormoy. Two guards descended on Dormoy and, gripping him by the armpits, began to hustle him from the cell. Dormoy’s head spun round like an owl’s, questing for his satchel and his calipers. “Wait!” he said. “I—My—” A third guard had taken up his effects and was following. “Ow!” Dormoy went on squeaking. “Gently, friend, I am—”