The Stone that the Builder Refused

by Madison Smartt Bell

  “Your Captain Riau,” he said. “You mean to say he can read and write?”

  “Oh, very adequately,” Maillart said.

  “And has served Toussaint as a secretary.”

  “From time to time. Toussaint uses many secretaries, often several for each letter that he writes.”

  “I have heard that the man cannot even speak real French,” Boudet said, “only that bastard patois which everyone chatters here.”

  “That rumor is false,” Maillart told him. “Toussaint’s French is correct. But his spelling is poor, and his handwriting not very legible.” As much could be said for the major’s own, though Maillart did not mention it.

  “I see,” said Boudet. He sat down and rested an elbow on the table. “As for your Captain Riau, how do you estimate his loyalty?”

  Maillart moved toward the office’s sole small window, twisting an end of his mustache. His angle afforded him a view of a section of the Place du Gouvernement, with the roofs of the town’s low buildings receding down the slope toward the harbor. Port-au-Prince was mostly built of wood, and it would have gone up in a flash if the blacks had managed to set it alight—much faster than Le Cap. Maillart pushed down the thought of what it must have been like there.

  “Major, you are long in choosing your words.”

  “Excuse me,” Maillart said. “I am considering the question. Is it loyalty to France you mean, or to Toussaint Louverture?”

  Boudet turned his head to the side, cupping his chin in one hand. “You may analyze the two.”

  “Very well,” said Maillart, then paused again. Long since, though not without some difficulty, he had accepted the status of the competent black officers of Toussaint’s command, and Riau was certainly one of these, if not the most devoted. Maillart had in fact been instrumental in Riau’s first training in the European arts of war. Since then, Riau had vanished from Toussaint’s ranks from time to time, and had at least once been on the point of being shot for desertion. For himself, he liked the black man well enough and trusted him when he had to. Maillart was no politician, but he understood that Toussaint had sent himself and Riau together on the mission from Samana so that each might serve as a check on the other. Where Riau had been or what he had done since they’d been separated, Maillart was not at all sure. Riau’s much stronger friendship was with Doctor Hébert, and for that alone, Maillart wished him well.

  “I would say that Captain Riau’s attachment to Toussaint is not so strong as to hinder his loyalty to France.”

  “But how great can that loyalty be among any of them?” Boudet grumbled. “To a country they have never seen.”

  “Why, I think most of them, if not all, attach their loyalty to the freedom of their kind. So long as they find their liberty best protected under the French flag, that is the flag they follow.” Maillart stopped and glanced again out the window. “One might say as much for Toussaint, indeed.”

  “Then why in God’s name is he in rebellion?” Boudet shifted his weight and recrossed his tight-trousered legs from one side to the other. “The First Consul’s proclamation of eternal liberty has been tacked to every tree on this wretched island.”

  To this Maillart made no answer. When he looked at the other two, he seemed to feel some muted tension between Boudet and Pamphile de Lacroix. It was the latter who broke the brief silence.

  “Consider the example of Paul Lafrance.”

  “Well,” said Boudet. “The name is evocative.”

  “You know how unswervingly he came to our side,” Lacroix said. “How many services he has rendered us since, and with alacrity and diligence. And I have had it on good authority that, black as he may be, he has acted a hundred times to help and protect our color, since the troubles first began in this colony, and often at the risk of his own life.”

  “Toussaint has done the same, you know,” Maillart put in. “When all the plantations of the north were laid to waste in ninety-one he preserved the lives of the white family of the manager of Bréda, where he’d been a slave, and he has been the savior of many French men and women since—including several of my dearest friends.”

  “One hears much talk of this,” said General Boudet. “But it hardly agrees with his conduct now.”

  Captain Paltre was no longer on the scene when Maillart and Lacroix emerged from the office (Maillart with the letterbox clutched to his chest), but they found Riau lingering on the steps of the Government. He came along with them as they went to dispose of the mementoes of Toussaint’s amours. If Lacroix was uncomfortable with his presence he did not show it, and Maillart was rather inclined to include him, after their conference with Boudet.

  Lacroix had proposed going down to the harbor, but Maillart said they needn’t go so far; there was an irrigation canal much closer by, which fed the grounds of the hospital from a spring in the hills above the town, and would be sufficient to their purpose. At the canal’s edge they kindled a small fire and fed it the letters one by one, along with anything else that would burn, always alert for flying sparks, as the weather was windy and dry. A black family passing with their donkeys approached curiously as the keepsake hair locks crinkled in the fire, then as quickly averted their eyes and moved to the other side of the road. Lacroix stood up and shaded his eyes to look after them.

  “They must suppose it is some witchcraft,” said Maillart from his place crouched over the fire. When it had burned down, he scraped the ashes into the canal with the side of his boot, then threw in handfuls of the rings and chains and hearts. Riau’s eyes were sharp on him as the trinkets turned glittering through the cloudy water and disappeared in the silt of the bottom. Why throw away such articles of value? When they were done, Maillart and Lacroix concluded to give the letterbox to Riau—it was a well-crafted article, after all, and there seemed no urgent reason to destroy it.

  Two days later, Maillart attended General Lacroix as he conducted a review of the troops of the Port-au-Prince garrison. Lacroix still moved with a slight hitch in his step from his leg wound, but the crispness of the drill was unmarred. The colonial troops who’d come over to the French at the time of the Port-au-Prince landing had by then been incorporated into Boudet’s force, and together they gave a good showing. As the review concluded, Maillart noticed Paul Lafrance standing nearby, with Riau saying something in his ear. The old man was grizzled and a little stooped, but his brigadier’s uniform was impeccable.

  He seemed to be trying to catch Lacroix’s eye, and once Maillart had given him a nudge in the right direction, Lacroix crossed the parade ground and greeted him warmly. Paul Lafrance had brought his wife with him to attend to the review, and also three daughters: Agnès, Marie-Odette, and Célestine. Lacroix bowed deeply over the hand of Madame Lafrance, a jet-black woman of a regal height, then turned his courtesies toward the girls. They were lovely, all three of them, in their early bloom, and dressed as they might be for church. All three were demure, their eyes downcast, but though their parents held themselves as stiffly, formally upright as the soldiers who’d lately stood to attention on the parade ground, the girls could not help themselves from swaying and shimmering like flowers in a moist spring breeze. They were as light on their feet as young deer and . . . a man might be moved to impure thoughts, but Maillart saw how Lacroix paid his respects in a genuinely respectful manner, so he followed that example. It was plain that Paul Lafrance was appreciating this decorum. Riau was easier with the girls, and perhaps he had known them from before, for he thought of something to whisper to Marie-Odette that made her bridle and swirl away, the whites of her eyes flashing, the grace of her movement such that Maillart’s breath caught for a moment in his throat.

  “Gentlemen, you must come to my house,” Paul Lafrance was saying. “Only for a moment—it is quite near, and there you may escape the heat and find something to refresh you.”

  “With pleasure,” Lacroix said, and Maillart fell into step with him as they walked where the old brigadier led them. The house was just a block away
from where they’d stood. Paul Lafrance rattled the bars of the gate, and a servant came out quickly to unchain it. The small dooryard was choked by two large hibiscus bushes; their lurid blooms brushed over Maillart’s sleeves as they passed through.

  Within it seemed quite dark, as the windows were blinded, but cool as Paul Lafrance had promised. Maillart squinted into the shadows. The room seemed sparsely furnished: a low carved table, a few wooden chairs. There was a flash of light as a door opened in the rear, and the women filed through it, going off to prepare lemonade. Riau trailed them, still bantering with Marie-Odette; her laugh rang back like silver through the doorway.

  But Paul Lafrance had turned to Lacroix and addressed him with a trembling intensity. “Mon général, honesty and frankness are all you breathe—tell me, in truth, have you come here to restore slavery?”

  Maillart felt his jaw go slack. He had not put himself this question, not exactly, but here it was, announced. In the light spilling in from the rear doorway, the amiable face of Pamphile de Lacroix looked rather pale. Why did he not answer? Maillart pressed his own lips shut. Behind him, something blocked the light.

  “Whatever it should be,” the old man said, “old Paul Lafrance will never harm you. But my daughters! my poor daughters . . . to see them slaves I should die of grief.”

  “As I myself should die of shame.” Lacroix opened his arms as he spoke, and Paul Lafrance fell into them. It looked to Maillart that the two men were so moved that they were shedding tears on each other’s coat collars, but for some reason he looked over his shoulder and saw Riau’s form filling the rear doorway, his face attentive, still. Sometimes looking at Riau’s face was like gazing into the darkness of a midnight well.

  When they had drunk their lemonade and praised it, Maillart and Lacroix made their farewells and departed, leaving Riau, for the moment, behind. After the dim interior the blaze of sunlight outdoors was almost blinding. Maillart flattened his hand above his eyes.

  “A touching scene,” he said tentatively.

  “Indeed it was.” Lacroix’s tone was rather dry. “And it only reminds us of the need to drive Dessalines away from this vicinity, for all those rumors of slavery are being put about by him, if not by Toussaint Louverture as well.”

  “Yes, of course,” Maillart said. He motioned Lacroix to the side of the street, where they could walk in the shade of the second-floor balconies.

  “It is a fortunate thing that Laplume has rallied to our side,” Lacroix went on. “Dessalines would present us a much more serious threat if he had not, but still his proximity is dangerous, for aside from those rumors of slavery, he seems to inspire all these people with a terrible fear.”

  And not without reason, Maillart was thinking, amid a number of other thoughts which simultaneously surfaced in his mind. If the daughters of Paul Lafrance were in their middle teens, as they appeared to be, then they would hardly have any memory of slavery. Lacroix had not really answered the old man’s question either, except by his gesture. Maillart’s fingers grazed the pendant that still lay in his coat pocket, beneath a crumpled handkerchief. How many secret orders might there be? But then, Lacroix had seemed surprised himself to hear the order to deport white women who had offered their love to black men . . .

  Above all this Maillart saw always hovering the face of Riau, watchful and silent, as it had appeared in Paul Lafrance’s rear doorway, absorbing the light. But by the next day all such images were scattered; Maillart was sent out with fourteen hundred men under command of the Adjutant d’Arbois for a day of heavy fighting which ended with the capture of Dessalines’s mountain post at Cabaret-Quart. At the same time, and to Maillart’s utter astonishment, General Boudet commissioned Riau to go as emissary to the large and thus far uncommitted maroon bands that roamed the region of the Léogane plain, led by Lamour Dérance and Lafortune.

  17

  Dawn at Thibodet came cool and breezy, fresh from the rain the night before. Elise and Isabelle hovered on the gallery, looking down at a pair of wild ducks that had settled on the lily pool. They paddled among the floating flowers, seeming unaware that they were watched.

  “One might contrive to trap them somehow.” Elise narrowed her eyes on the little drake. “Clip their wings and keep them here to breed.”

  “Yes, but how?” said Isabelle.

  “I should send for Caco,” Elise said. “That boy has a hand for catching birds. Where is Paul?”

  “You sent him out to gather eggs,” Isabelle reminded her. “With Sophie, and Robert.”

  “So I did.” Elise sighed and settled back in her wicker chair, fingering a loose ribbon of her peignoir. The younger children still lingered abed, as did Nanon and the doctor, who had been separated for some weeks before his arrival here. It made Elise a little irritable to think of their morning languors. Tocquet had been absent when she herself woke; he must have slipped from their boudoir before first light.

  Zabeth emerged, tinkling a coffee tray. She laid out cups and a sugar bowl before the two white women. Elise watched absently as she withdrew, then looked down at the pool again. Duck and drake still circled each other, among the violet blooms of bwa dlo. Then Sophie and Paul and Robert came galloping up the steps, Sophie cradling a basket of speckled eggs, sprinkled over with curls of down and bits of straw. Pauline followed, more slowly, a step or two behind the others—she was old enough now to consider the impression she made when she walked.

  “Look how many!” Sophie said. “Shall we have omelettes? Do let us, please.” The two boys pressed on either side of her basket.

  “No need for such extravagance on a weekday,” Elise said, frowning at Sophie’s bare feet and tousled hair.

  “But there is company, Maman.”

  “What?” Elise looked past the children. A group of charcoal sellers had arrived in the yard, leading donkeys loaded with bulging panniers coated with black silt. Behind them was a young black man afoot beside a woman who guided her donkey with a little stick. Elise blinked: it was Suzanne Louverture—with Isaac, whom she’d not recognized at first, for he had changed his dress uniform for a plain white shirt and loose canvas trousers.

  Suzanne possessed a coach and team, but seldom used them for short journeys among the plantations and the bourg of Ennery. Within that area she preferred to travel in the style of a prosperous marchande, seated sideways on a fat, well-curried donkey, her forward knee hitched up, beneath her long skirt, on the roll of a finely woven straw saddle. She took her son’s hand now as she stepped down.

  “Madame Louverture.” Elise’s hand groped to close the throat of her peignoir. “Do please come up! You must excuse us . . .”

  Suzanne caught up her skirt in one hand as she climbed the steps; the other still held the donkey stick, a peeled switch of a finger’s thickness and a little more than a foot long.

  “You’ll breakfast with us,” Elise said. “Perhaps an omelette.” She turned to Sophie, who was suppressing a spasm of excitement. “Take those eggs to Merbillay. And comb your hair! and put on shoes.”

  Automatically Pauline reached to take the eggs, but Sophie twisted away from her. The two girls bumped hips, giggling, then Sophie hurried into the house, the boys tagging after. Elise called Paul back to her. “Go and find Caco, quickly,” she said. “I have a task for him.”

  “But he will be working in the coffee today,” Paul said.

  “Tell them he is excused from the field.” Elise pointed over the gallery railing. “Tell him I want him to trap those two ducks.”

  “Oui, ma tante,” Paul said, and clattered down the steps, breaking into a trot as he reached level ground.

  Suzanne had come to the table’s edge. She wore a long blue skirt and a pale rose blouse, with a dark blue headcloth dotted with white. “I would not inconvenience you,” she said. “I will not stay so long.”

  “Come, sit down.” Elise indicated a third wicker chair. “Zabeth! More coffee.” She looked about. “But where has Isaac gone?”

  Zabet
h had reappeared on the gallery, holding the white infant against her shoulder and balancing the black one on her hip. She slipped Mireille into Elise’s lap, and set Bibiane down on the boards of the floor. Mireille had just nursed; a bubble of milk formed on her lips. Elise caught the cloth from Zabeth’s shoulder as she turned away and wiped the baby’s mouth.

  “A fine strong child you have, Madame,” Suzanne murmured. “How old is she?”

  “Six months,” said Elise. “Or no, it is seven.” She could feel herself coloring at this confusion.

  “The time goes quickly,” Suzanne said.

  “That it does,” Elise said. “But where is your son, who has grown so remarkably?”

  “He will profit from the cool of the morning by walking over your beautiful grounds,” said Suzanne. “He is a little confused in these days, my boy, having been so long from home. He—” She interrupted herself and turned to Isabelle.

  “Madame Cigny,” she said. “I am sorry for your misfortune.”

  “My misfortune,” Isabelle repeated blankly.

  “I heard that your house at Le Cap was destroyed,” Suzanne said.

  “Oh yes, it is so.” Isabelle’s social laugh had rather a metallic ring. “Not for the first time. And indeed I share that misfortune with my hostess, and with every property holder of Le Cap. Even yourself, Madame Louverture,” Isabelle concluded, in deference to the fact that Toussaint had erected quite a splendid dwelling for himself at Le Cap, though his wife was seldom in residence there.

  “But your plantations,” Suzanne said. “I believe that they are near Haut de Trou?”

  “Yes,” said Isabelle. “My husband has gone to see whether or not they have been preserved. But so far he has sent no word.”

  Zabeth reappeared with the coffee tray, laid a cup and saucer before Suzanne, and poured. The black stream wavered when Bibiane caught hold of the hem of her skirt and pulled. Zabeth set down the silver pot and, with a self-conscious smile, began to pry off the baby’s fingers. Suzanne aligned the donkey stick against her saucer and began putting spoons of sugar into her coffee—one, two, three—and stirred the mixture slowly, counterclockwise.