The Stone that the Builder Refused

by Madison Smartt Bell

  He glanced at Isaac, wondering if he felt the same; they could not speak freely, since Coisnon rode within earshot. Last night at Héricourt, Coisnon had slept in the same room. He was a good preceptor to them, and Placide knew he cared for them profoundly, and yet there could not be the frankness among them here that there had been in France.

  Isaac’s horse stumbled over a stone, and Isaac clucked his tongue and tightened the reins sharply. “Come up,” he hissed, as though it were the horse’s fault. Placide turned his eyes to the road ahead.

  In some way Coisnon had shared in the shock of their return. Their disappointment. They’d had several days to contemplate the burned shell of Le Cap from the deck of the Jean-Jacques, once that ship had entered the harbor and moored. After all they’d told Coisnon of its beauties and joys, their tongues were frozen in their heads. They’d spent their passage to Héricourt in a similar silence, turning their heads around like owls, toward wasteland that stretched to all horizons.

  But now Placide’s mood, at least, was changing. Now they had passed Haut Limbé and were mounting the steep and winding ascent to Plaisance, jungled mountains towering over them, with plots of corn or groves of bananas terraced into the cliff sides, by the little houses that clung there. I lift up my eyes unto the hills, whence cometh my hope. Placide’s father had catechized him with this line long ago, though now he could not number the chapter or the verse. Yet he felt now how powerfully Toussaint had attached his hope to the hills, and to these mornes in particular; the range of peaks called the Cordon de l’Ouest, running back through the interior to Dondon and the Spanish border.

  There were no French troops on this road through the mountains, except for those of their own escort, and there was no sign of war. The market women at the crossroads shouted out their excitement at their appearance, and packs of small children, dogs, and goats, came scampering after them on their way out of Plaisance, until they fell back, breathless, no longer able to keep pace with the horses.

  The horses were beginning to be winded too, with the increasing altitude and steady climbing. The way between Plaisance and Morne Pilboreau looked almost flat, but still their mounts had to take it slowly. From the roadside a cliff fell giddily away into the Plaisance river valley. All seemed tranquil, at peace there, along the serpentine turns of the slow stream, except for the vertigo that seemed to pull them toward the brink. Placide realized he was looking down upon the backs of flying hawks which hovered over that deep space.

  They rode on. The peak of Pilboreau was sheathed in cloud—a sudden chill as they rode into it, cool droplets condensing on the hairs of their eyebrows and forearms. A great market was here at the crossroads for Marmelade, and all the marchandes came rushing to them, out of the floating tendrils of cool mist.

  “Sé fils Papa Toussaint ou yé!” they cried. You are the sons of Papa Toussaint! Placide could not imagine how they had known it, yet they did know. The crowd pressed tight around the horses, dividing the riders from each other. Placide could see from their pale drawn faces that Cyprien and Daspir were uneasy in the crush, and the French cavalrymen looked positively afraid, but neither of the officers gave any order. There was no order to be given; this riot was peaceful, no weapon in sight. Among the whites, only the doctor seemed at ease, and Isabelle, but the crowd did not press on her so closely, still somewhat in awe of a white woman.

  They swarmed around Placide’s and Isaac’s horses, grasping their stirrups, the flaps of their saddles, stroking their trouser legs and reaching up to touch their hands and feel the fabric of their shirt cuffs and coat sleeves. Other hands came stretching up to present bunches of bananas and baskets of limes and lemons and oranges and avocados, none offered for sale but all in gift. The chill of the mountain mist was gone, and not only because rays of the westering sun had begun to cut through the cloud, but that the compression of so many bodies and beings around them created a warmth that was almost suffocating. Placide was a little alarmed himself at first, if only at the unidentifiable wave of feeling that built in him. Then whatever held it back gave way and the feeling poured out of him to flow into the being of all those others who were other no more.

  “Nou la!” Placide said in his strongest voice. His face was wet with the push and pull of the internal tide. “Nou la,” the shining faces upturned to him replied. The words meant simply We are here, but also, We are here and you are here with us and We have survived to arrive here in this place where we are meant to be together.

  Placide looked to Isaac and saw to his sadness that his brother understood nothing of what he felt and knew. In truth, Isaac’s French was more perfect than Placide’s, since Isaac had been younger when they were sent from home to the Collège de la Marche. But for the same reason the nuances of their Creole mother tongue, which had been rushing back to Placide since they landed, did not return so readily to Isaac. Indeed, the tightness of his face was something like the tension Placide saw in the French officers. He watched Isaac, saying nothing. Isaac reined up his horse so tight that it began to crab sideways, shunting away the people that surrounded him, creating a space in which he was alone.

  Some of the hussars had laid hands to their saber hilts. Placide could see they were ready to draw and begin swatting people away from them with the flats of the blades. Captain Daspir must have seen this too, for he called out, “Leave that! Let no man touch a weapon!”

  “Avancez!” Cyprien said crisply. Move on! Their column re-formed and Placide was closed within it, cut off from the people of the market. Then they had crossed the crest of the mountain and were going down under the red sun that shone on the scrubby cliff walls of this drier face. Placide twisted in the saddle to look back once, but he could not see the people any more, only the face of the doctor smiling back at him from his place in the line, and dark thunderheads piling up above Pilboreau. He faced forward, looking down the hairpin turns that lined the edges of the gorge below them, believing they’d reach Ennery before the rain.

  14

  I left Dessalines at Saint Marc then, standing among the burning torches and the tar barrels that had been gathered for the burning of that town. I rode for the south as fast as I could go, which was not so very fast since my horse was tired from the many days of long riding that had come before. In Arcahaye the people ran after me asking for news, catching at the leather skirts of my saddle and my boot heels and even the tail of the horse, but I, Riau, I did not stop for them. I did not know any news to tell them, because I did not know if Dessalines had yet dropped a torch into one of those tar barrels or not, and it seemed to me that was the only news that mattered.

  There was no news of Port-au-Prince either, or none that came to the ears of Riau. None that I could trust. Because I wanted to take the long way around Port-au-Prince, I rode my horse to Croix des Bouquets, but this way was not long enough. I ought to have gone further into the plain of Cul de Sac, and passed around Croix des Bouquets in the open country, instead of trying to ride through the town, though that way was a little shorter. There were men of the Third Demibrigade who stopped me in the square. I told them I was carrying messages for Toussaint, but I did not have any letter to show them by that time, only the words that Toussaint had stored in my head.

  Now my intention was to try again to carry those words to Laplume in the south, because it seemed to me that maybe I had been wrong not to have done it sooner. These men of the Third did not arrest me, but they would not let me pass, or not until I had come before their commander. They were tired and dirty and stained with mud and sweat, and one of them had brown bloodstains splattered on his shirt, so I thought they must have been in some fighting not long ago.

  It was as well to rest my horse, I thought, since it did not seem I could do anything different at that time, and find him some water and some grain. While I was doing these things I thought about the hatte which Toussaint kept across the border, where we had been not long ago. So many fine horses were raised and trained there, but it seemed a long w
ay off to Riau now. I knew I would have to make this horse last. In the days to come I would not be able to get another, unless I had the luck to capture a horse in the fighting.

  The commander they brought me to was Lamartinière, of course, and it was well that he knew Riau. He called me to eat with him at his officers’ table, because it was night by the time they brought me to him. Lamartinière wanted to know everywhere I had been since I left him last, and especially if I had seen Toussaint in any of those places. I told him only that I had been to Dessalines at Saint Marc, and that I did not yet know what Dessalines was going to do. I did not tell him anything more than that, but Lamartinière seemed satisfied with my answer.

  Lamartinière was angry and ashamed that night, and I think that maybe he was a little afraid too. The General Boudet had beaten him at the Fort Piémont, as I had thought was going to happen, and driven him out of Port-au-Prince later that same day, as far as Croix des Bouquets where I found him. So he had not been able to defend Port-au-Prince as he’d sworn he would, and he had not burned it either. The French blancs had it now, with its roofs and its stores. Lamartinière was not afraid of French blanc soldiers or their general. He was ready to fight them again as soon as he might. I believed he would have fought ten thousand Frenchmen himself all alone sooner than he would face Toussaint, when he had not done the thing Toussaint had ordered.

  It seemed to me from what Lamartinière said that the French soldiers had not left any strength at Léogane, since they were all busy running up the road to Port-au-Prince from where I had last seen them. I thought that I could go on my way the next morning, and pass through the mountains above Léogane by paths that the blanc soldiers would not know, and so go on to the south to find Laplume, or maybe I would meet Jean-Pic again, with the bands of Lamour Dérance. That was the thought I took into my sleep that night, and when I woke at dawn I was ready to ride, but the sound that woke me was Dessalines coming into Croix des Bouquets with all his division and more men besides.

  I think Lamartinière was not ready to see Dessalines so soon, after what Riau had said the night before. But many, even those who know him well, could be surprised by Dessalines’s speed in moving his men, when they were many and on foot, and often bringing cannon. Dessalines and Lamartinière were alone in a room for a little time, and their faces looked swollen when they came out, so I thought that Dessalines must be angry that Port-au-Prince had not been burned.

  Maybe he was carrying that anger from Toussaint, because half of Toussaint’s honor guard was with Dessalines that day, and those men had not been there when I left Saint Marc the day before. Almost a thousand men of the guard were there, though not Guiaou or Couachy, or a few others that I knew. Riau knew the commander, Morisset, and we spoke a little together while Lamartinière was alone with Dessalines. Morisset had seen Toussaint at Gonaives, and thought that he might now be in Ennery, though he could not be certain. He knew that Dessalines had come with Toussaint’s order, to see if there might still be a way to destroy Port-au-Prince.

  I stayed with Morisset when Lamartinière came out of the room with Dessalines. There were some other officers there too, and the camp women brought us coffee and some bananas for us to eat. The officers were all talking about what it would be best to do; only I, Riau, kept silent, only listening. While all this talk was happening, a messenger came to say that General Boudet had come out of Port-au-Prince with a lot of soldiers to attack us here at Croix des Bouquets. He was not very far away at all, so he might reach us in one hour.

  Lamartinière’s head grew very hot then. He wanted to go out at once and meet Boudet on the road. It seemed to me that his idea had reason, even if it came out of the heat of his head, because I thought Boudet might not know that Dessalines had come with all his men, and that would be a surprise to him, and one that he would not like very much.

  But Dessalines said no. It was the order of Toussaint, he said, not to meet the French blanc soldiers in the open country. We must not give them a battle on the plain.

  At this, Lamartinière grew even hotter. “Maybe Old Toussaint has lived too long,” he said. “Maybe his blood is thin, and he gives this counsel out of fear.”

  At that, Dessalines stroked his snuffbox and smiled in the way I never liked to see. “I wonder if you would be speaking so if ‘Old Toussaint’ was near enough to hear you.” Dessalines looked at Morisset when he said this, and Lamartinière lost a little of the color from his face. I knew that Morisset would not carry any such tale back to Toussaint, but maybe Lamartinière was not certain of it.

  Dessalines turned his snuffbox over and looked at something on the bottom of it. “Toussaint has not grown old for nothing,” he said. “Toussaint has outlived many of his enemies.” He clicked the snuffbox down on the table top. “It is not counsel that Toussaint gives,” he said, and made his voice a little stronger. “It is an order.”

  I was thinking of the letter Dessalines had shown me in Saint Marc before, and I thought that Toussaint had not written this letter in weakness or fear. I thought too from what I had seen already that it was better not to fight these French blanc soldiers as they would choose to fight, and I thought Lamartinière ought to know this too, from the beating he had taken from them in their meetings so far. But I did not say anything about it then.

  We moved quickly out of Croix des Bouquets and set the buildings of the town on fire as we were going, though it was not much more than a crossroads then. Dessalines’s men, and Toussaint’s guard, had been traveling fast through much of the night, and they had not rested for more than an hour at Croix des Bouquets, but they went quickly just the same. All that day we burned our path across the plain of Cul de Sac, which was rich country, setting afire the fields and houses. Riau felt pleasure in burning the cane and the big houses of the grand blancs that Toussaint had brought back to the country to work their land for him. But Dessalines also took care to burn the little houses of the field workers, those men who were made to work with the hoe. He did this so that they would have to follow him, with their women and children and whatever of their goods they might save. They would not have followed Dessalines for love.

  The French blanc soldiers were coming on our trail the whole time, as fast as they could follow through the fire and smoke, through country they did not know well, though it was open country and simple enough. Lamartinière kept to the rear with men with long guns who fired on the blanc soldiers from a distance and then fell back. This shooting slowed the French down only a little, since our men were commanded not to stand and fight. When the blanc soldiers saw they were not going to get any battle, they turned their hands to putting out the fires. Some of the field hands saw them doing this, and they went back to join them. That looked bad to me when I saw it. I thought from the first that Dessalines was wrong to burn their houses, and that his action might cost more than it won.

  All the blancs from the plantations on that plain we rounded up like they were cattle, and made them hurry along with us toward the mountains in the east. Dessalines did not kill any of them at first, but only took them prisoner. It was hard marching for them that day. There were some hundreds of them, and none had time to get anything to carry with them except whatever was near their hands when they were taken. There were women and children too, of course, and no food or water for them that day. In the heat of the afternoon some of them began to fall down on the ground, crying that they could not go any farther, but when Dessalines ordered these to be shot, the rest of them went on somehow.

  When we had reached the shadow of Morne Cabrit, Dessalines gave all these prisoners to Morisset and Toussaint’s guard, to take them over the mountains and hold them at Mirebalais, until Toussaint would say what to do with them. At the foot of the mountain he left Lamartinière with the men of the Third on the Habitation Jonc, which he had not burned, telling him he could stand to fight the French blanc soldiers as long as he wanted to if they came there.

  Then Dessalines took the rest of his men, and Riau a
lso, across the pass at Morne Lacoupe. He meant to cross the Rivière Froide and get onto the low road between Port-au-Prince and Léogane, but the General Boudet had seen ahead of this plan, so that we found French blanc soldiers waiting for us on the other bank of the river, many—we had not known there were so many blanc soldiers in all the world. Also, a lot of the field hands had joined the soldiers, because Dessalines had been driving them so hard in that part of the country that they thought the French blancs could not be any worse, and maybe they would be better.

  Dessalines was so angry at this that his two jaws ground his teeth together and bubbles came out the corners of his mouth. But the day was not done yet. We left the bank of the Rivière Froide and went into the mountains again. The French blanc soldiers did not try to follow, because the night was coming. They stayed on their side of the river. Still Dessalines kept moving, by trails so narrow and so steep the riders must get down and pull their horses from the front and push them from behind. There was no place for all the foot soldiers on these trails, so they crossed by climbing vines that hung down the cliff walls, with their cartridge boxes and their guns swinging from their backs.

  That was the way that I, Riau, had meant to go alone, but Dessalines crossed it with all his army in the dark. At dawn we came into Léogane and found there were not any French blanc soldiers waiting for us there at all.

  It was the same at Léogane as it had been at Port-au-Prince before, between the white general Agé and Lamartinière. There was a white commander at Léogane who wanted to let the French blanc soldiers into the town at once, but his second, who was named Pierre Louis Diane, had said that they must wait until an order came from Dessalines. When Diane met us he smiled and laughed, but his voice shook a little, and his hands too. He had not really believed any order would come, but here was Dessalines himself.