“Xavier Tocquet.”
“A Frenchman.”
“I was born here,” Tocquet said. “Likewise my father, and his father before him.”
Rochambeau sniffed. Tocquet felt the little eyes scouring him for any visible sign of African or Indian blood. Without waiting for an invitation, he pulled out a chair and sat down. He took off his dripping straw hat and smoothed the brim out on the table in a shape that it might hold when it dried. Rochambeau looked at him with a certain asperity; Tocquet affected unconsciousness.
“A trader,” Rochambeau said slowly. “I suppose you must trade with the rebel Negroes, as you seem to have come out of their camp.”
“I have a few bolts of cloth and some spices only,” Tocquet said. “No material of war.” He congratulated himself that what he claimed was true—well, he’d foreseen before he set out that it would be no time to get caught moving guns—and in any case Toussaint had snapped up every gun in the country, so there were none to move.
Rochambeau stood up. He was a short man, barrel-shaped; his black shako seemed to account for a fifth of his height. With a bobbing movement, like the walk of a parrot, he went to the open arcade overlooking the square. Bazau and Gros-Jean waited by the horses and mules, just within the shelter of the roof’s overhang. Rochambeau studied them for a moment, then snapped his fingers for the young captain and the pigtailed, mustachioed sergeant who attended him. He set the sergeant to inspecting the packs. Bazau and Gros-Jean looked on impassively, making no move to assist. Rochambeau, meanwhile, exchanged a few muttered sentences with the captain which Tocquet could not overhear. He took off his black-and-white head cloth and wrung water out of it onto the floor.
“Splendid horses you have there,” Rochambeau said. “Do you also trade in horse flesh?”
“No,” said Tocquet.
Rochambeau strolled back toward the table. “A pity,” he said. “But my captain tells me you own land in this region.”
“Only a small coffee plantation, and not so very near.” It was a lie; he knew that if the French came upon his hatte at Terre Cassée they would certainly commandeer all his livestock. “A matter of no more than forty carreaux, on the heights of Vallière,” he said. In fact he knew of such a place, though he did not own it; it belonged to some mulatto acquaintances of his.
“Oh,” said Rochambeau. “And would that have been your destination?”
“Yes,” said Tocquet, lying still, for his real intention was to head southeast toward Santo Domingo City. “A little further, even, to the frontier at Ouanaminthe, where I might trade cloth for tobacco.” He loosened the thong at the back of his neck and spread his hair on his shoulders to dry. Noël Lory was watching him. Tocquet had never liked him much, had never trusted him at all. It was possible that Lory knew he owned no land at Vallière, and likely he knew all about the hatte at Terre Cassée.
“I cannot recommend it,” Rochambeau plumped back into his chair at the head of the table. “There is too much fighting in that area for a small party like yours to get through safely.”
“Is it so?” Tocquet said. “I had understood that General Christophe controlled the Cordon de l’Ouest at least as far as Dondon, if not further.”
Rochambeau smiled. “The rebel Christophe was defeated yesterday at Dondon, and today at Marmelade.”
“Are those your victories, General?” Tocquet said silkily.
“Those battles are to the credit of General Hardy,” said Rochambeau. “And the Captain-General Leclerc is himself on the march. Today Hardy has beaten Christophe back as far as Ennery, perhaps. If you are coming from that direction, I wonder that you did not meet the remnants of his force.”
“I left near dawn,” Tocquet said. It was happening, then, as he had thought; somehow he hadn’t quite believed it, for all his insistence to Elise. “Though the distance is not so great, the way is difficult.”
“How did you come?” said Rochambeau.
“Northeast of Morne Basile, through Savane Carrée.” That much was true.
“Ah,” Rochambeau squinted down at the map, then looked up again. “Do you know the pass at Ravine à Couleuvre?”
Tocquet reached into his short jacket for a bundle of oilcloth that held three cheroots. Under Rochambeau’s disapproving stare he bit off the end of one and lit it, then leaned back to exhale a great blue feather of smoke.
“Ravine à Couleuvre?” Rochambeau’s fingers rattled the map against the table.
“Yes,” said Tocquet. “Ravine à Couleuvre offers another pass from the plateau to the coastal plain, though the distance is greater if you mean to go either to Ennery or Gonaives.”
He leaned forward abruptly, cupping the cheroot—the map was a good one, accurately detailed, and penciled with the route he’d just described. Noël Lory must have informed him. Tocquet took in some other pencilings, which marked the advance of Desfourneaux from Plaisance and Hardy from Dondon. The three columns were almost in position to pull the drawstring tight around Ennery and Gonaives. If Rochambeau passed through Ravine à Couleuvre, he would cut off retreat to the south or the east. Then Toussaint, if he could not fight his way through, would be squeezed out onto the open coastal plain.
“Well, it is plain enough,” Tocquet said, thinking that Noël Lory must have already given up this much. “If you descend Ravine à Couleuvre from Morne Barade, you will come out here”—he rapped his thumb on the map—“on the main road, in the middle of the Savane Désolée.”
“And how far then to Gonaives?”
Tocquet affected to consider. “No more than ten miles.”
“Very well.” Rochambeau stole a glance at Lory. “I am told that the rebel Toussaint has a great depot of arms and ammunition at Ravine à Couleuvre.”
Tocquet shrugged and drew on his cheroot. “That I can’t say. The Governor-General does not confide to me his dispositions.”
Though Rochambeau’s expression turned quizzical as Tocquet pronounced Toussaint’s official title, he made no comment on it. “Very well. But I cannot encourage you to continue your journey to the north. You would do better to remain with us. Perhaps you may render us some service as a guide.”
“Oh,” said Tocquet. “I think you will be very well guided by Monsieur Lory.” He shot Noël Lory a quick, hard look to see if the man would flinch. Certainly he’d betrayed Toussaint—if he’d betrayed Tocquet’s interest was a cloudier matter. All Tocquet knew for certain was that he had no interest at all in arriving at Ravine à Couleuvre as a member of this French division. He knew full well, as Lory must, that Toussaint not only had a huge arms cache there but that his men were entrenched to the eyeballs all along the gorge.
“You’ll stable my horses for me, then?” Tocquet got up. “I’ll just get my pistols first.”
“No need for that!” Rochambeau laughed. “You are with the French army now—we shall guarantee your safety. And Captain Guizot will look to your comfort for the night.”
“As you prefer.” Tocquet reached through the arcade to flick ash from his cheroot into the rain—with his free hand he flashed three fingers at Bazau, then made a spiraling gesture toward the great beyond. “Take care of the horses,” he said. Bazau smiled tightly, nodded as he lowered his red-kerchiefed head and turned away.
Some of the junior officers had managed to billet themselves in the houses of Saint Michel, but Guizot had missed this opportunity while out reconnoitering the ways west across the plateau. But a reasonably sound tent was erected for his use, and Sergeant Aloyse managed to requisition some planks for the floor, so they would not have to spread their bedrolls in the wet. Aloyse had also secured a couple of small kegs of rum from the Saint Raphael distillery—private stock, as he cheerfully put it. He seemed content to set himself up as Guizot’s personal quartermaster, so long as he could share in what he furnished. So there was rum to offer Xavier Tocquet, who shared their shelter for the night.
After they’d consumed their evening ration of dried beef and cornmeal mus
h, they sat in the open doorway of the tent, drinking rum and watching the rain. For his part, Tocquet offered round his supply of cheroots. Guizot declined—he was getting a cough—but Aloyse accepted with enthusiasm. Warmed by the rum and the tobacco, he began to tell tales of the European battles he’d attended. Tocquet seemed more than interested, and Aloyse was in any case an engaging raconteur. Guizot watched them, their hawk-like faces leaning together over a sputtering stump of candle the sergeant had waxed to a board. Tocquet’s long hair matched the sergeant’s snaky pigtail; their heads were joined in a mutual cloud of blue smoke. Guizot felt a little set apart. He felt the beginnings of a cold—from overexertion in the heat, followed by this damp and chill. A throb in his arrow wound worried him a little, though probably it was only caused by rum—there was no sign at all of proud flesh. He watched Tocquet curiously—Tocquet had let it drop that he descended from the flibustiers and boucaniers who had made the first French settlements here, so he really did come from pirate blood. However, he said little more about himself, said very little at all in fact, except to encourage the sergeant to continue if he paused.
Long after they’d pinched the candle out, Guizot lay wakeful on blanket and boards, listening to the sergeant’s snores and the steady beat of rain on canvas. The tickle in the back of his throat held him away from sleep, and at the same time his thoughts kept crawling. General Rochambeau had instructed him to keep a close eye on Tocquet, without going so far as to place their visitor formally under guard. With that in mind, Guizot had laid out his blanket across the doorway of the tent. Not the most comfortable position, for it seemed to leak a little around the flap, but then it seemed to leak a little everywhere else too. If Guizot put his finger into a crack between the boards, he found half an inch of running water there. The whole of the square had been trampled to a marsh.
He occupied himself with rehearsing the sergeant’s tales, and Tocquet’s occasional promptings. Most of Aloyse’s listeners, Guizot included, would quiz him about Bonaparte, but Tocquet seemed more interested in the general officers now in Saint Domingue: Hardy, Humbert, Leclerc himself. After all the drone of rain on the tent was soothing. When he closed his eyes, his mind presented him the dark face of the woman who had shot him. With his fingertip he touched the stone arrow point through the rough wool of his trouser pocket. There was her face in the leaves, heavy and handsome as a stone idol, beneath the shock of untameable hair, and there again looking down upon him from the cliff top, with nothing he would call malevolence—instead a calm challenge. Did the child she carried wear that same face?
Guizot sat up sharply, and coughed into his hand. He’d been asleep, for some time probably. Now his head ached from the rum. The sergeant’s snores were still resounding against the background of the rain, but the third place was empty, and water poured through a vertical slash in the back of the tent.
Quick as a thought, Guizot was through the tear in the canvas, dressed only in his trousers, wincing as his wounded arm brushed a stake. He put his left hand in his pants pocket to support the arm. The strip of cloth he’d been using for a sling was tangled somewhere in his bedding in the tent. The rain washed over his bare chest and head—he pushed his wet hair back. He could just make out a lean tall shadow slipping around the edge of the sodden encampment; by the wide hat brim it ought to be Tocquet.
The man was a spy then, as Rochambeau must have suspected all along. If he followed, Tocquet might lead him to Toussaint. Guizot might still be first to lay a hand on the raghead Negro. A flush of excitement propelled him forward, his bare toes spreading in the mud. For the moment he’d forgotten that he was nearly naked and unarmed. A sentry stood, ill-sheltered by a tree, in the southeast corner of the square, but he seemed to notice nothing when Tocquet’s shadow flitted past him. Of course the rain drowned out all sound. Guizot glanced back as he passed by; the man was asleep on his feet, like a horse, gun stock propped on the toe of his boot and rainwater overflowing from the barrel.
No time for that. With the rain shutting out any light from the sky, it was almost impossible to see anything, but Guizot locked onto Tocquet’s shadow: a deeper patch of darkness on the dark. Or maybe he’d deceived himself, for when he reached the crossroads at the edge of town there was nothing. He looked to the right—nothing at all. To the left a vague shape that might have been a tree, with horses beneath it? More than one horse, and a Negro voice spoke in that patois that Guizot had not yet learned to understand.
He stumbled in a puddle as he moved toward the sound, and at once something coiled and tightened around his throat, hauling him up backward on the balls of his heels. Tocquet’s tobacco smell surrounded him. Guizot groped with his good hand but could get no purchase—his hand grasped nothing but rainwater and he was running out of air. Then the grip shifted. He gasped a breath and felt a knife point pierce the loose skin just above his windpipe.
He tried to recall a prayer, could not. The Negro voice said something incomprehensible. Then Tocquet whispered, in clear French, I think I’m getting old.
At the instant of release something round and hard struck Guizot beside the temple. The knife pommel? That was what he pictured as he collapsed. Though the blow was glancing, he let himself fall headlong into the mud, feigning unconsciousness, lest Tocquet think better of his moment of compunction. The rapid splashing of hooves was out of earshot within seconds, but Guizot lay still for a longer time, thoughtfully probing the lump on his head and the shallow cut on the skin of his gullet. Tocquet had spared his life, after all, and Guizot waited ten minutes, possibly fifteen, before he ran back to raise the alarm.
19
Charmed as she was by her new infant grandson, Fontelle had never meant to remain at Habitation Arnaud for long. The mistress Claudine was kindly intentioned, but her head was ever a little off balance, and she could not control the lwa bossale which so often climbed unbidden to seat themselves on the saddle of her head. Disorders followed, and while Fontelle admired the patience and grace of her son Moustique in guiding those wild spirits into useful or harmless channels more often than not, the commotion was wearing on her after a few days. Also, soon after Michel Arnaud had come stumbling in at the gate with his injured ankle, rumors began that a large number of French soldiers were on the march south from Le Cap.
She left an hour before first light, kissing Dieufait where he slept on his pallet. Over Moustique’s snoring head she made the sign of the cross. Marie-Noelle was awake, quietly nursing the baby, whose name had not been finally chosen. Fontelle kissed them both and went silently out of the case. She meant to bring news of Moustique and his increased family to her daughter Paulette, at Ennery.
On the road just beyond the gate of Habitation Arnaud she fell in with a gang of cattle drovers, taking their herd up into the mountains, ahead of the French blanc soldiers said to be advancing, not half a day’s march behind. There was much discussion among the drovers as to whether these new blanc soldiers had come to restore slavery or not, but all agreed it was better to hide the cows from them, since it had been proven that these new blancs would slaughter and roast the beef without paying. Fontelle made no comment, but sat her little donkey in silence, now and then touching it up with a short stick she carried in her right hand. In her mind she tumbled possible names for the baby. Jean-Paul. Jean-Mathieu. Possibly Jean-Pierre, in honor of his grandfather. The drovers did not pay her much attention. Her face was too long-jawed and sallow to hold their eyes, though one of the older men seemed to notice that her body was still supple and limber under the loose and colorless dress she wore to travel.
At evening the drovers stopped at Plaisance, but Fontelle stayed there no longer than to water her donkey, get a drink for herself, and refresh her face and hands with a little cool water. She did not look for a meal at Plaisance, but rode on through the deepening, greening twilight, up the switchbacks of the northern approach to Morne Pilboreau. The vast hollow of the Plaisance river valley to the east gave her a touch of vertigo, and she
would look in that direction only from the corner of her eye, suspicious of spirits in the vacant air that might hope to tempt her to the brink. Earlier that day something had blown into the ear of a yearling bull, who’d then plunged over the cliff into a chasm, trailing a frayed rope’s end behind him, followed by the desolate cries of his owner.
Eastward, the peaks were shrouded in rain cloud, a gray wall drifting slowly toward her as the light dimmed further. It grew colder; Fontelle took a shawl from her straw pannier and wrapped it over her shoulders. She found a boiled egg and a banana in the pannier beneath the shawl, and nibbled at these as she rode along. From beyond the clouded peaks in the direction of Marmelade she heard the thundering fire of cannon and the brighter, sharper sound of musketry.
The shooting had stopped by nightfall, when Fontelle reached the height of Pilboreau, but the crossroads was crowded by many people who had come up the trail from Marmelade to get away from the fighting there. Fontelle sat quietly at the edge of their fires and learned from listening to the talk that Christophe and the Second Demibrigade had been driven from Dondon the day before—the fighting today was at Morne à Boispins. She spread her cloth on the ground and slept for three or four hours. Near midnight, when the stars were cold, she was roused by the murmurs of the marchandes making ready to travel, and she untied her donkey and rode among them down the southern cliffs of Pilboreau toward Ennery and Gonaives. The moon was near full and high in the sky, but the wet wind brought the clouds from the east to block the stars off one by one until the moon was darkened too and it began to rain. Fontelle wrapped her shawl around her head, but was soaked through soon enough just the same. The marchandes strode either side of her in the dark, their baskets solidly balanced on their heads despite the chattering of their teeth.
Before dawn the rain abated and finally stopped, and as the road leveled off from the mountain, the marchandes broke into a swaying trot and sang to warm and encourage themselves as they advanced. Under the old trees by the stream at the crossroads for Ennery, they halted and unpacked their baskets. Fontelle, who had a little store of money, bought a quantity of small, rosy mangoes and a stalk of bananes Ti-Malice. She wished good day to her companions of the night and urged her donkey up the trail toward Ennery. As sunlight began to leak yellow through the small round leaves of the lemon hedges that lined the road, she began to hear more musket fire from the ridges ahead. Though she did not much like to be riding in that direction, she kept on. There was no other disturbance except the distant shooting, and it seemed to have approached no nearer when she reached the gate of Habitation Thibodet.
The Stone that the Builder Refused Page 39