The Stone that the Builder Refused

by Madison Smartt Bell

  “Rochambeau knows that Toussaint has arms cached there,” he said. “He has found someone to guide him, too. If he meets Toussaint in the ravine, it’s likely he’ll outnumber him. And Antoine is with them! I ought to overtake them as soon as I may.”

  “Whose side are you on?” Elise said, with more curiosity than bitterness, this time.

  “Ours,” said Tocquet. “You and me and Sophie and Mireille. Gros-Jean and Bazau and Zabeth for that matter. Why should we not include them too?” Of a sudden he smiled, in an easy way. Setting the unlit cheroot in the corner of his mouth, he reached to squeeze her shoulder. “I’m only accepting your version, after all. For the moment our fortunes are thrown in with Toussaint’s, or rather our family’s with his, as you argued . . . what, was it the day before yesterday?”

  “It has been longer,” Elise said. “Oh, I thought I would never see you again! Must you really go so soon?”

  “I ought to get your brother out of it, if I can,” Tocquet said. “And if Toussaint is to protect his family, it would be well if he knew for certain where they are—and that he knew the odds that face him.”

  He prodded Mireille’s stomach lightly; the baby gurgled and reached again for his forefinger.

  “But not at once,” Tocquet said. “First I will take some soup if I may, and Bazau and Gros-Jean will take soup. I ought to speak to Morisset, and Madame Louverture, and see what they may have here for horses.”

  There was a small tavern across the road from Toussaint’s headquarters at Gonaives, and Doctor Hébert took his companions into that establishment to order a midmorning meal. He’d reported as soon as they reached the town, but Toussaint was absent and neither Magny nor Monpoint seemed to know quite what to do with him. The tavern offered stewed chicken, banane pesé, and greens. The doctor nagged at Paul to eat, though the boy was too excited to apply himself to the task. No one could say when they’d next sit down to a hot meal. Fontelle and Paulette worked slowly and diligently at their plates till they were empty. Neither of them spoke while they were eating. Likewise Caco ate in silence. Only Paul kept chattering, asking questions to which the doctor replied distractedly or not at all.

  He ordered half a dozen baked yams, and when they were delivered he carried them out to where their donkeys were tethered at the rail to pack them into his saddlebags. That accomplished, he lingered by his mule to check the priming of his pistols and the long gun. Across the mule saddle, he saw Placide and Guiaou come trotting up to the headquarters. Guiaou took the reins of Bel Argent as Placide got down and hurried inside, and led both horses off behind the building.

  Toussaint must have returned, the doctor surmised, while they were inside eating. And indeed it was not long before Toussaint himself appeared on the street. Within minutes he had formed up a battalion of grenadiers and a squadron of cavalry; with no more than a glance and a gesture, he beckoned the doctor to a place near the head of the cavalry column, just behind Placide. Magny and Monpoint repeated orders down the line. The troops strode down the block, turned through the square below the church, and soon were marching south from Gonaives along the broad, flat road through the Savane Désolée.

  A couple of buzzards appeared in the sky above them as they went on—not unusual in this desert, but the doctor did his best not to look at them. They kept going through the still parching heat of the Savane Désolée until they reached the cactus fence and wooden gates of Habitation Cocherelle. From Placide, the doctor understood that Toussaint’s family was expected to be here, and his own also if everything had gone according to plan, but none of them had yet arrived. He saw a chance to leave Paul in a safer place, for at midafternoon the boy seemed a little weary of the adventure they’d embarked on. Perhaps Caco might remain behind also. If only Paul’s mother and brothers had been there . . . but soon it was clear that Toussaint would not wait. The troops moved out from Cocherelle, crossing the back fields of the plantations Lacroix and Périsse on a trail that diverged from the main road to climb a slow grade toward the mountains.

  At dusk they’d reached the gravel shoals at the mouth of Ravine à Couleuvre. The stream bubbled merrily over the pebbles, swollen with the recent rain on the Central Plateau up above. Here Toussaint called a halt for a meal, though he forbade all fire. The men began munching such cold rations as they could discover. Doctor Hébert replenished his waterskin from the stream and passed a piece of cold yam to each member of his group. They ate sitting crosslegged on the gravel, as the darkness thickened around them. Paul finished his portion of yam, licked off his fingers, and settled in his father’s lap, leaning back against his chest, quiet, though his eyes were bright and alert. The doctor felt irrationally glad of the boy’s presence, the warm weight leaning back against him. He settled a hand across Paul’s full belly.

  At moonrise, Toussaint rose and addressed the men in a low voice, scarcely louder than a whisper, though somehow it carried to them all.

  “Open your shirts,” he said, with a gesture toward his own top buttons. “You will find on your bodies the brands of slavery. For ten years you have fought for freedom, and the memory of servitude has been burned off the face of this land by fire.”

  From the place where he’d been sitting by the stream, Guiaou stood up. The deep scars on his face and throat were silvered and softened by the moonlight. Then another man stood up, and another and another, with a wave of rustling, until all were standing. The doctor stood too. Though the boy was rather a heavy load, he hitched him up onto his hip so that he could see Toussaint’s small and slightly bowlegged figure, standing under the west bank of the ravine. Toussaint had left his own clothing closed. A high collar pushed up under his chin, and his coat was closed with a wide red sash. The scabbard of his sword scuffed on the gravel, while in his hands he held, somewhat incongruously, a dandy’s cane.

  “The enemies who come against us have no faith, nor law, nor religion. They come again with branding irons and chains, and if their lips still promise liberty, slavery hides in their secret, constant thought. They come as strangers, to a land that will always be alien to them. Our enemies are walking toward you over fields of ash and coal. Their skins have never been marked by slavery, and their women and children are far away across the ocean, along with the graves of their fathers. You who stand against them now have seen the earth and the rocks soaked with the blood of those who have gone before you in the battle. You know how the trees and the air itself are full of the spirits of those who’ve left their bodies on the field. Our enemies will never prosper, for our land itself rejects them, and when they breathe our air their strength fades from them and their courage fails. Nothing in our land will ever give them comfort. Let their bones be scattered over our mountains, or tumbled in the waves beneath our waters.”

  Toussaint signaled with his cane, and the troops began to filter up the gorge. No more than six hundred men all told, by the doctor’s best estimation, had marched from Gonaives. But as they climbed he realized that others had been waiting for them here. At every bend of the winding ravine was a new entrenchment, staked with palisades, with hundreds upon hundreds of field hands armed with muskets and dug in to the points of their teeth. Toussaint stopped for a quick word at each of these positions before pressing on. The trail zigzagged, sometimes following or crossing the stream along the floor of the ravine, sometimes scrambling to the top of the cliffs above. Along the bottom of the ravine grew ancient palms, following the twists and turns of the streambed, their roots driving through the gravel to scarce water. Many had been felled to reinforce the entrenchments, and fresh-torn wood was pale on the stumps and the hewn trunks.

  At last a bend of the trail through a dark grove brought them into the open on a high bank, and in view of the rolling curve of Morne Barade, still a considerable distance farther on, at the head of the gorge. The dark hill was calm under the moon, and there was no spark of any human light, but Toussaint halted. The doctor, sitting his mule behind Placide, thought he heard a click of beads, and the
n the voice: “Almighty God, give me the grace to reach that place before the enemy!—just half an hour more to march.”

  There was moonlight enough for Placide to read the face of the watch he had brought home from France: a quarter to eleven when Toussaint halted the column under the shadow of Morne Barade. Toussaint dismounted, and with a whisper summoned Placide, Guiaou, Guerrier, and a fourth man named Panzou. On foot they moved quietly up the trail, with Toussaint leading. The trail passed into the shadow of tall trees that blocked the moon. Placide could see nothing. Almost nothing. His father’s hand caught at his elbow, drew him up into the shelter of a rock.

  “Stay by me,” Toussaint breathed in his ear. He whispered something to the other three men, who separated and disappeared into the darkness, moving up the slope under the trees. Toussaint plucked again at Placide’s sleeve, and Placide followed him, climbing up over the curve of the boulder, setting his boot toes into cracks, grasping vines that clung to the stone. A patch of moonlight revealed his father on the rock, motionless as a lizard; then he flashed forward into darkness. Placide followed, groping his way from sapling to sapling. Then he stood by Toussaint on the brink of the ravine again, looking down. There was a glitter, metal? No, it was only moonlight on the water.

  Toussaint turned from the cliff’s brink. They went back, picking their way to the stone where they had separated. Presently Guiaou returned, then Guerrier. Neither had encountered anyone. They waited. Placide felt his watch in his pocket. Panzou did not return.

  Finally Toussaint grunted, and they all began to move back in the direction of the troops. When they came in sight of the waiting horses, Placide could not hold back the question.

  “Where is Panzou?”

  “I don’t know,” Toussaint muttered. “Maybe the enemy has taken him.”

  “Can they have reached Barade before us?” Placide felt a quick sharp thrust of alarm. “But we saw no one.”

  “No.” Toussaint grasped his forearm. “And yet one feels that they are here.”

  “What will we do?”

  “What we must do.” Toussaint’s gapped teeth flashed briefly in the moonlight. “Advance. Engage.”

  At sunset, Rochambeau’s column came at last within the shadow of the hills that bordered the plateau. Slow as their progress had been through the mud, Noël Lory had led them faultlessly to the pass. On the slope of Morne Barade the going was still slippery, but easier than it had been on the flat, for water could not pool on the rising ground to make a swamp. Guizot’s detachment blundered into a small settlement, too small to be called a village really—just a few mud huts with about a dozen people shouting at the sight of the soldiers, scattering with their dogs and goats, disappearing eastward into the brush, in the direction of the high savanna. Abandoned, their chickens ran cackling this way and that. With a quick burst of speed and concentration, Sergeant Aloyse ran down a hen.

  Rochambeau gathered his officers on the western brow of the hill, where he stood scanning the gorge below with a spyglass. He grunted as he collapsed the instrument, then turned to Noël Lory.

  “Where exactly is this powder depot?”

  “It is in the ravine,” Noël Lory said. “A little farther.”

  Guizot looked out, then down. The sun was a red blur melting on the blade of the horizon—mare’s tail clouds fanned out from the burning haze. The gorge snaked away from the side of the hill where they stood. In the gloaming he could see pale strands of gravel at the bottom and dull reddish glints from the water moving in the stream. The bushy tops of palm trees pushed up from the gravel. The cliffs on either side were heavily wooded. A trace of a path running through the trees was the only sign of any human use.

  “Captain Guizot.” Rochambeau had turned to face him, tapping a forefinger on the tube of his spyglass. “We must hope that the spy who escaped your guard has not alerted the enemy to the direction of our approach.”

  Guizot cast down his eyes. “So indeed we must, mon général. ”

  Rochambeau took a backward step, then raised his voice to include all the officers in his address. “No matter if he is prepared for us,” he said. “We have only slaves to fight, and they will not dare look us in the face— we who have carried our triumphs across the Tiber, the Nile, and the Rhine. We have not come these thousands of miles from our country to be defeated by a revolting slave.”

  He turned again to Guizot. “Captain, how goes your wound?”

  Guizot stiffened his back as he raised his head. “Sir, it scarcely hinders me.”

  “Then you may redeem your error. Go there.” Rochambeau turned to point down the slope. “Take three men of your choosing and establish a forward post.”

  Guizot saluted, and Rochambeau turned to his other officers to tell them where they were meant to go.

  As Rochambeau allowed no cook fires that night, Sergeant Aloyse was obliged to surrender the hen he’d requisitioned to a friend in another company. He bade the fowl a tender farewell, stroking its speckled feathers where it nestled in the crook of his arm, giving its rubbery comb a last touch of his finger after he’d handed it over to the other man. The hen ducked its head at the contact, and blinked back at him.

  The idea of roast chicken lingered with Guizot as he and the sergeant and two grenadiers went skating down the western hillside, into the darkness deepening under the trees. They stopped under cover of the brush, a dozen yards from the cliffs that walled the gorge, hidden in shadows around the edge of a teardrop-shaped clearing, which presently revealed the light of the rising moon.

  The night grew chill. Guizot’s sodden uniform congealed to his cold flesh. He swallowed mucus, suppressing the impulse to cough. Time dragged along. Always he could hear the water trickling at the bottom of the ravine. Sometimes there were other sounds more difficult to interpret. Now and again came a whistling so melodious Guizot was sure it must be human, though Sergeant Aloyse declared it to be the song of some night bird.

  Then he saw the sergeant move into the moonlight of the clearing. No voice: only pant and scuffle. It looked like Aloyse was struggling with a shadow—as if his own shadow were fighting to depart from him. Aloyse crouched at the shadow’s head while its bare heels drummed on the dirt. Then he sat back, his face striped in the moonlight filtered through the branches. His hands and the knife they held were blackened with wet blood. Guizot and the soldiers pressed in to look. In the center of their circle lay a black man in the rags of a colonial uniform. The trousers had been reduced to shorts and the shirt was pinned together with thorns. Above the collar, the gash in his throat gaped at the moon.

  “Go to the general,” Guizot hissed at the soldier to his left. His wounded arm felt numb and cold; he hitched it up a little in the sling. “Tell him we have killed an enemy scout.”

  The grenadier slipped into the bush. Sergeant Aloyse dragged the corpse by its heels into the shadows. Its arms still twitched in spasms of reflexive movement. Guizot was relieved to have it out of sight. No one spoke further. They resumed the places where they’d been before. With his good hand, Guizot fondled the flint of his pistol. He was aware of the bright odor of the blood spilled on the ground. His ears strained fervently toward nothing, only the ripple of the stream. Then his messenger returned, and behind him came the rustle of moving troops. Rochambeau was deploying a line down the hill.

  Strangely, the shuffling of the French soldiers seemed to echo back from the ravine. Guizot sent back a request for them to halt. But from below, the sound of marching men continued. Guizot shot a glance at Sergeant Aloyse.

  “Qui vive!” the sergeant bellowed, his voice deafening after such long silence. “Who goes?”

  No sound, only damp expectation from the darkness beyond the leaves. Then the reply rang back at them—it seemed no more than a yard away.

  “We are the Governor’s honor guard!” Then, almost without a pause, “Move forward! Fire!”

  20

  Moonglow shimmered on the leaves as Magny marshaled his grenadiers up
the trail that Placide, Toussaint, and the two other men had scouted half an hour before. This time they made less attempt at stealth, though orders were passed down in a muted tone and no one struck a light. The men, who were mostly barefoot, made little noise as they advanced, but otherwise it seemed as though Toussaint expected or even desired to be discovered.

  It was Toussaint himself who replied to the first challenge. Placide, who rode a horse length behind his father, beside the climbing infantry column, heard his voice come powerfully out of the dark: “Garde d’honneurdu Gouverneur!” and then, with scarcely a second’s pause, “Feu! En avant.”

  With that, Placide’s pistol was in his hand, an astonishingly heavy weight. He did not at all recall drawing it. Since there was no target, he did not fire; also his father was invisible in the shadows, lost to the moonlight, somewhere just ahead of him. The first musket volley had already gone off, and return fire seemed to come from three hundred degrees of the compass. The word envelop appeared in Placide’s mind. He had learned the term in tactical studies at the Collège de la Marche. Had they been enveloped by French infantry? Musket balls were most certainly crisscrossing in the darkness all around him, as Magny’s grenadiers fixed their bayonets and strode by.

  Placide balanced the weight of his pistol toward the darkness ahead. Toussaint had reappeared in a pool of moonlight, dismounted and holding his horse off the trail with his left hand. The tip of his cane gave each grenadier a quick, encouraging flick on the shoulder as he marched by. Somewhere forward was a brutal sound of shock, then groaning—then several grenadiers came flying back. Half a dozen French infantrymen charged after them. Placide picked one of them, pulled the trigger. The dead man carried on several paces past him before he fell, inert in his downhill momentum. Placide reholstered the pistol, drew the other. But no, he ought to recharge the first pistol now, while there was time. In this flash of confusion was a glimmer of fear.