The Stone that the Builder Refused

by Madison Smartt Bell

  “One grows accustomed to these catastrophes,” Isabelle said. “Raze and rebuild. Burn, and rebuild.”

  Suzanne sipped her sweetened coffee. “It was peaceful before the fleet arrived,” she said. “You must have enjoyed that, mesdames.” Her brown eyes were level and calm beneath the tight crease of her headcloth. The white dots on the dark blue fabric resembled stars in a night sky.

  “At least it is still peaceful here,” Elise said.

  Mireille mewed and stretched her arms in the air. Then she caught sight of her own hands and fixed her gaze upon them, rapt. Suzanne reached her forefinger across the table and the baby curled her fist over it and smiled.

  “It may remain so,” Suzanne said.

  “So we must hope,” Elise returned. She shifted her weight; Mireille let go of Suzanne’s finger. Isaac had just reappeared from around the corner of the cane mill, pacing with stiff, agitated strides. Suzanne’s donkey followed him, trailing the braided reins. The donkey stretched its neck and reached with its loose, rubbery lips to pull the back of Isaac’s shirt loose from the waistband. Isabelle suppressed a giggle as Isaac whirled, a hand upraised; he subsided before he launched the blow.

  “He is troubled, my boy,” Suzanne said. “His attachment to France is so very strong! But his father does not make war upon France, he assures us. Only upon the General Leclerc.”

  Behind Elise’s eyes, the brightening day lost something of its color. Suzanne had spoken with such calm, Elise was not confident she’d heard her right. She stared out over the yard. Isaac had rearranged his shirt and gone back to his aimless pacing. The donkey still pursued him, but at a safer distance. Now Paul and Caco had come into the yard, on the other side of the pool; Paul nudged Caco and pointed at the ducks. On the gallery it was very quiet, except for Zabeth’s murmured remonstrances to Bibiane.

  Elise exchanged a glance with Isabelle. “The Governor General will make war upon Leclerc,” she said, with a slight shake of her head. “Yet not upon France. I do not wonder that Isaac is confused.”

  “Do you mean to leave Ennery, Madame Louverture?” Isabelle inquired.

  “Not at all,” Suzanne said. “I will remain here quietly, with my children at Sancey. All is still peaceful, as you see.” She took another sip of coffee. Elise turned her eyes back toward the pool, where Caco was setting up a snare with a bent green stick and a loop of string. Paul moved at a crouch toward the edge of the pool, dribbling a line of white corn kernels.

  “So it will still be safe here,” Elise said.

  “Yes, I am certain—there is no safer place.” Suzanne picked up her donkey stick and gave it a couple of light flicks against the pale palm of her left hand. The peeled wood was polished smooth and with a honey-toned patina from much handling.

  Now Pauline came onto the gallery, bearing a covered platter which sent out a warm fragrance. Sophie and Robert and Héloïse (who had just awakened) trailed her like a string of hungry chicks. Suzanne tapped her palm once more with the stick, gathered her skirts, and rose.

  “But you must—” Elise began.

  “No, no,” Suzanne said. “I have no appetite this morning. And I would return to Sancey before the heat.”

  “Well, if we cannot persuade you . . .” Elise got up, absently handing Mireille over to Isabelle. Bibiane now began to scrabble at Isabelle’s chair leg, wanting to climb to join her companion. Zabeth clucked at her as she set down the platter. Elise clasped Suzanne’s free hand in both of hers.

  “You are kind to bring us the news,” she said.

  “It is only your kindness I return,” Suzanne said. “I have never wished harm to my neighbors.” Suzanne’s eyes were deep beneath the spangled headcloth; Elise could not read them.

  Suzanne withdrew her hand and went briskly down the steps, the stick now flicking against her skirted thigh. Elise stood at the gallery rail, watching Isaac hand his mother up onto her donkey. When she was settled, Suzanne gave the donkey a tap on the flank, then raised the stick to the vertical as the animal broke into a trot. Isaac lengthened his step to catch up with her; soon they had both disappeared behind a screen of avocado trees.

  Sophie and Robert and Héloïse were in their places at the table, whetting knives against their forks. Paul stayed down by the pool with Caco, watching the two snares that had now been set and baited, but the ducks were not attracted by the corn; they were diving for something underneath the water. Then the doctor appeared in the doorway, fringes of his rusty hair ruffled up around the bald center of his head. He let go Nanon’s hand as he moved toward the table. Elise inspected the two of them a little sourly, as Nanon covered a yawn with her graceful hand; she half wanted to slap them both out of their voluptuous contentment.

  “Omelettes!” said the doctor, as he uncovered the platter. “What’s the occasion?”

  “War,” said Elise.

  “Ruin,” said Isabelle.

  “Destruction,” said Elise.

  The doctor sat down, took off his glasses and polished them on his loose shirt tail, then resettled them on his nose.

  “But we’re told we shall be quite safe here!” Elise said, full of false brightness.

  The doctor thumbed his beard and shrugged. “Then that’s a comfort,” he said, and reached to slide one of the small omelettes onto his plate.

  Daspir would not have thought it possible to have crossed this range of mountains so many times in so few days. They’d waited out the period of armistice at Habitation Sancey, dully enough, though in the company of Isaac and hospitably entertained by his mother. A few other relatives were in residence, so that the dinner table was well attended, but though the food was excellent, Daspir thought wistfully of the two French-women at Habitation Thibodet, especially the enchanting Isabelle Cigny. Suzanne Louverture had two nieces staying in the Sancey grand’case; both girls were strikingly pretty, but subdued as a pair of nuns.

  The two French captains were under no obvious restraint, left at liberty to explore the plantation as they chose. Their horses were well cared for at the Sancey stable. But every stablehand wore a pistol in his waistband, and every man on the property seemed to go armed; even the field workers propped muskets in the hedgerows before they lifted their hoes.

  If Isaac took any pleasure in how the tables had been turned on his former guardians, he did little to show it. On the contrary, he seemed to court their favor with more interest than before. He escorted them through the house and grounds, relaying anecdotes he must have picked up recently from his mother or younger brother Saint-Jean—the two captains knew that Isaac had not had much of his raising in the elegant surrounds of Sancey—and regaled them with many accounts of the prodigies his father had performed in defending and conserving the colony for France.

  Of Placide they saw comparatively little, for Toussaint seemed to have incorporated the older boy into his staff, and Toussaint was spending most of his time at the headquarters in Gonaives, though sometimes he did appear at Sancey with his entourage, late at night, long after the very quiet suppers the captains took with Madame Louverture, Saint-Jean, Isaac, and the handful of other relatives in residence. Placide had put aside the ornate uniform given to him by the First Consul, and now wore the outfit of Toussaint’s honor guard—a used one evidently, for the coat was slightly faded and the cuffs a little frayed. Still it fit him well enough that at passing glance he might be taken for one of Toussaint’s guardsmen.

  At the end of three slow, chafing days, Toussaint summoned Cyprien and Daspir and gave them another letter full of tortured ambiguities and sent them back to Leclerc at Le Cap, escorted by just five of his guardsmen this time. When they reached the main road from Ennery, they were joined by a deputation of Gonaives merchants, both colored and white, whom Toussaint had given leave to call on Leclerc also, to implore him to hold back the violent advances of his troops for the sake of peace and prosperity in the colony. Combined, their party began the ascent from the Ennery crossroads. Toussaint’s guardsmen held such a bris
k pace that they had reached the height of Morne Pilboreau before midmorning.

  They stopped for a quarter-hour to cool their horses. The marchandes of that crossroads swarmed around them, waving their wares, but Daspir slipped away from that group and stood on the edge of the precipice looking over the broad Plaisance river valley and into the mountains beyond, the green, gray, misty blue recession in range upon range to the bow of the horizon.

  “Deyè mòn gegne mòn,” a low voice said behind him. Daspir turned quickly, a little startled. One of the guardsmen stood behind him, his silver helmet caught under one elbow. Daspir did not know his name.

  “Behind mountains,” he repeated, “are more mountains.”

  “Yes,” said Daspir. “So it appears.” Despite the risk of vertigo he could not take his eyes away from the wild expanse. Because of the vertigo, possibly. He felt with a faint shiver that this sentence meant more than the sum of its words.

  Yet after so many rapid transits, the mountain passages were beginning to make some kind of sense to him. He could pick out the key landmarks and the most important crossroads, though he always underestimated the peaks and defiles and swoops and curves between them. For Cyprien it must have been the same, or better, since he had some earlier experience of the country. But he and Daspir did not talk much, between themselves or to the merchants’ deputation, since Toussaint’s guardsmen were always near, and the one who’d addressed Daspir, at least, spoke some orthodox French as well as the strange patois of all the blacks.

  Leclerc made short shrift of the Gonaives merchants when they were admitted to his presence late that afternoon. “You may tell Toussaint,” he snapped, “that I will answer him with bayonets.” He wheeled on Cyprien and Daspir, rattling the paper of Toussaint’s own written response. “And what nonsense have you brought me from his hand? He professes himself ready to obey my orders, but will not accept to be my second in command . . . Advises me to halt the march of my troops, indeed—let him know they will not halt before they have made him prisoner! He will learn the respect due to the brother-in-law of the First Consul!” Leclerc stooped and slapped his boot leather with his palm. “I am entering the campaign myself, ” he shouted, his face reddening. “And I will not take off these boots until I have captured Toussaint Louverture!”

  The commander’s excitement communicated a tingle to Daspir. It looked likely that the two of them would be in the vanguard of the pursuit so hotly announced, though Daspir did not try to share his thrill with Cyprien, whose expression looked a little cynical as they threaded their way through a gang of workmen who were cleaning and repairing the sooty and cracked façade of the governor’s residence.

  Outside, Monsieur Granville had turned up to greet his acquaintances just arrived from Gonaives. “Do you think it is true?” one of the latter was saying, “The Captain-General will not take off his boots until he has managed to capture Toussaint?”

  “Perhaps that is only poetry,” Granville said with a choking effort at a laugh. Then, in a lower, more careful voice, “If he does mean it, someone ought to prepare his lady wife for a pair of very smelly feet.”

  “ ‘Le Cap headquarters, 28 Pluviôse, Year Ten,’ ” Placide read aloud.

  Inhabitants of Saint Domingue: The General Toussaint has sent his children back to me, with a letter in which he assures me that he is ready to obey any order I give him. I have ordered him to report to me; I have given him my word to employ him as my Lieutenant-General. He has not replied to this order except with empty phrases; he is only seeking to gain time. I am entering into campaign and I am going to teach this rebel what the force of the French government is. From this moment forward, he must be nothing more, in the eyes of the good French people who live in Saint Domingue, than an insensatemonster.

  I have promised liberty to the inhabitants of Saint Domingue, and I will know how to make them enjoy it.

  I command the following:

  Article One: The General Toussaint and the General Christophe are outlawed; all citizens are ordered to pursue them—

  “Enough.” Toussaint made a cutting movement with his hand and scraped his chair sideways to the table. Placide set down the proclamation paper beside the oil lamp.

  “Why is it that he outlaws only you and the General Christophe?” Placide said. “Why not Dessalines or Maurepas or any of the others?”

  In lieu of a response, Toussaint stretched out a hand for the proclamation. The printed paper fluttered in the night wind as Placide passed it over. They were sitting, alone, on the open porch on the second floor of the Gonaives headquarters, under a waning moon which poured a cooler, paler light around the yellow orb of the lamp.

  Toussaint angled the paper toward the lamp’s glow and scanned it for a moment, his lips pursed. Then he passed it back to Placide. “Read here,” he said, flicking the paper. “And here.”

  Placide skimmed the lines Toussaint had indicated:

  Article Three: Cultivators who have been led into error and have taken up arms will be treated as misguided children and returned to agriculturalwork.

  Article Four: Soldiers who abandon Toussaint’s army will become part of the French army...1

  “Enough,” Toussaint said again. “It is Leclerc who is truly the outlaw and I will declare it so.”

  “I think I see it,” Placide said slowly. “He means to isolate you, if he can, through these betrayals he invites.”

  “Exactly,” Toussaint said. “You see it very clear.”

  “But why Christophe?”

  “I suppose that the Captain-General is piqued at Christophe, at least for the moment.” Toussaint smoothed away a smile with one hand. “Since Christophe has left him nothing of Le Cap but a wasteland of cinders on which to pitch his camp.”

  “And the others?” Placide said. “They will not betray us?”

  “Not Dessalines,” Toussaint said. “Not Maurepas.” He exhaled through his loose front teeth. “It may be that some of the field workers will seek the protection of the Captain-General, if he has occupied their land.”

  “But your officers,” Placide said.

  “Let us think carefully,” Toussaint said. “We must admit that some of the generals may be tempted to follow the example of your brother. Some may accept the false promises of these French blancs, especially those who do not much want to fight anyway, or risk the loss of their comforts and position. Laplume has already sworn his loyalty to General Boudet at Port-au-Prince, I know, but the loyalty of Laplume was never worth much.”

  Toussaint leaned back, his eyes half closed, and set the tips of his fingers together.

  “And the Grande Anse?” Placide said, remembering what Leclerc had rapped out, in front of him and Isaac, about the surrender of the Southern Peninsula. The weak smallness of his voice disgusted him.

  “Yes,” said Toussaint, without moving or widening his eyes. “That is a real misfortune. I could not have believed that Dommage could ever have betrayed our cause. But he did not receive my letter, I am sure. If only Dessalines had not been absent from Port-au-Prince when the fleet appeared—so much misfortune comes from that.”

  Placide was silent. He remembered his father’s aspect the day previous, when he’d received the certain news that Dommage had yielded Jérémie; Toussaint gave no obvious sign of shock, but stopped completely motionless for a few seconds, arresting all his movement like a startled snake. How that connected to Dessalines he did not understand.

  “Lamartinière fought bravely to save Port-au-Prince,” Toussaint said. “But since he could not hold it, he was wrong. Dessalines would not have left a wall standing there, if he had been present. Then the blancs would not have established themselves so comfortably. Perhaps they would not have intercepted my letter to Dommage, and Laplume might not have dared to change sides either, if the Grand Anse held and Port-au-Prince was burned.”

  Now Toussaint did open his eyes, and hitched his chair around to face Placide. “Nou pa dékourajé,” he said. We are not discoura
ged.

  Why not, Placide thought silently, and waited for the answer. Toussaint was unrolling a map, weighting it on either side with his palms.

  “Look here,” he said softly. “The Grande Anse will be a boon to the blancs, but they can be locked in there easily enough. Rigaud held all that country, in the time of his rebellion, but in the end I pushed him into the sea at Tiburon. If they cannot hold the rest of the land, they cannot last on the Grande Anse either.”

  Toussaint tapped a different area of the map: Port-de-Paix, on the northwest peninsula. “Here is Maurepas,” he said with a clear satisfaction. “He commands the Ninth Demibrigade, and a good number of irregulars too. The French General Humbert has attacked him at Port-de-Paix, but Maurepas destroyed the town before he withdrew, and now he is well placed in the gorges of Trois Pavillons, where he has won every engagement since. Humbert cannot move him, and he must ask Leclerc for reinforcements, and all those are soldiers who cannot be sent to trouble us here. It ought to have been like that at Port-au-Prince. Maybe it yet will be.”

  “And Dessalines?” Placide leaned over the map. “Where is Dessalines?”

  “Ah,” Toussaint said and masked his smile. “There is the great danger to our enemy—no one knows where Dessalines is for certain from one moment to the next. You were present when Leclerc threatened us with General Boudet—well, let him march to the Artibonite. I will receive him there, when I am ready. But when Boudet has wandered far enough from Port-au-Prince, Dessalines will fall upon the town and destroy it.”

  Placide looked down at the squiggling line of the Artibonite River and the hatch marks that stood for mountains. He could see it now, how Dessalines might burst out of the mountains at any point, to sweep down over Port-au-Prince.

  “The blancs may take our territory,” Toussaint said. “They cannot hold it. Not for long. We are strong here, and in the northwest still, at Grande Rivière and in Santo Domingo too, where everything is entrusted to your uncle Paul. The French will find no comfort in our land. I know they mean to bring us some hard battles, but it’s we, in the end, who will win the war.”