The Stone that the Builder Refused

by Madison Smartt Bell

  “The Governor-General orders that you remove the hospital behind the third entrenchment.”

  “Yes,” said the doctor. “No doubt that is best.”

  But Placide somehow was still expectant. “Doctor,” he said, in a lower voice. “Have you ever killed anyone?”

  “Yes,” said the doctor. “More than once.” He turned and touched the back of Placide’s hand. “It’s terrible,” he said. “But better than being killed yourself.”

  “W’ap goumen fò, monchè.” Toussaint held Labarre’s head in his two hands. You have struggled powerfully, my dear.

  Guiaou watched them, seated calmly on his horse. Toussaint’s right hand lapped over Labarre’s forehead, and his left palm cupped and pressed the base of the skull, warming and securing the spirit in its seat. Guiaou seemed to feel the same two hands cradling his own head, and indeed the name of Guiaou had just occurred in Toussaint’s murmuring.

  “Guiaou will bring you more men, good marksmen . . .” Toussaint’s purring voice went on. But Guiaou did not wait to hear any more. With a click of his tongue to bring Guerrier, he turned his horse down the trail by which Placide had departed with the gunrunner Tocquet and his man. Soon they met the boy coming back up again, leading a hundred more field hands up from the lower trenches. Guiaou fell in with them and brought them up to Toussaint and Labarre. Already the new men had begun singing as they climbed.

  A l’assò, grenadyé!

  Sa ki mouri, sé pa zafè ou

  Nanpwen maman

  Nanpwen papa

  Sa ki mouri, sé pa zafè ou!

  Guiaou knew the quality of these men very well. A long time ago he had been the same sort of fighter as they. These men might charge furiously, inspired by their chant and the drumbeat in the blood. But perhaps they would not charge many times, if they met firm resistance. It was also possible that they would not hold so very long against the charge of massed blanc soldiers. That was the difference between these men and Toussaint’s trained soldiers such as Guiaou had now become.

  But these hundred men were not going into the line to meet a charge. Labarre was going to fan them out across the rim of the ravine. They would shoot down on the French soldiers filing along the bottom and cover them with fear, confusion, and death.

  Guiaou turned his horse to follow Labarre. But Toussaint called him and Guerrier back, to give them a different order. The key with which the order would be enacted Toussaint took from a string around his neck; Guiaou slipped his own head through the loop. In his lowest voice, breathing into Guiaou’s ear, Toussaint told him where to go, where he must leave their horses, how to find the necessary place, and how he must judge when the time was right.

  Then Toussaint himself had slipped away, skidding down a path so steep and worn it was more like a ditch, now and then catching a handhold from an overhanging branch as he swung toward the bottom of the ravine, which was now heaving up a roar of gunfire. Guiaou and Guerrier followed Placide across the clifftop. Now, after all, they did overtake Labarre, who had scattered his company along the edge of the cliff to take cover behind trees and boulders there. These men did not fire in volleys, but singly, upon such targets as they could pick out in the French column advancing below. Their aim seemed to be very good, for many of the blanc soldiers were falling, and yet the column never stopped—if it contracted, it soon thrust forward again. Monpoint’s cavalry, ranged on the wide gravel shoals beside the stream, barred the blanc soldiers’ way to the first entrenchment. The silver helmets of his riders glowed in the light of the lowering moon. Long shadows of the surviving palms stretched over them like bars.

  Then came the crump of a cannon firing, and confusion as a shell exploded among the horses below. Guiaou reined up and stared across the ravine. The French had maneuvered a couple of cannons onto the high ground there, and now the second gun discharged a round of mitraille. Below, the horses were bucking and whinnying, and Guiaou’s own mount was uneasy beneath him. Toussaint appeared, on foot, the red and white feathers floating high above his bicorne. His movements were quite deliberate and slow, and he used his cane, instead of his sword, to direct the movements of both the horsemen and foot soldiers. So conducted, Monpoint was beginning to file his cavalry back through the palings of the first entrenchment, while another gang of field hands moved up to absorb the shock of the French advance. The French column trembled, rippled like the body of a snake. There were many, so many of these blanc soldiers, stretching up out of the ravine as far as Guiaou’s eyes could follow them, up and over the crest of Morne Barade.

  Toussaint could no longer be seen in the confusion. Except for a few fallen horses, the cavalry had all got safely away, but now the brunt of the French charge had reached the first entrenchment, and the first few blanc soldiers had even spilled through. On the cliff, Labarre’s snipers had begun to fire faster, more wildly, though Labarre moved among them, calming them, encouraging them to take more careful aim. Some few who’d burned their ammunition had begun to hurl down stones.

  “Come on!” Placide called to Guiaou, his voice nearly breaking. “Hurry!” Guiaou and Guerrier swung their horses after them, moving into a trot. Below, the blanc soldiers had broken altogether through the first entrenchment and were moving across the flat ground by the stream at a dead run. Guiaou looked back over his shoulder once, toward the peaks of more distant mountains beyond Morne Barade, where the black of the night sky was beginning to break up in patches of deep blue.

  The doctor had scarcely time to organize his enterprise behind the third entrenchment when another stream of wounded began to come in, as rapidly as floodwater pouring down the gorge. He worked feverishly, cutting and binding, while trying to think with a part of his mind—how long since Tocquet had left with Paul and Caco, and what were their chances of getting clear of the ravine before all the defenses that dammed it gave way? But he could not manage to reckon the time. A stream of cavalry was coming back across the third entrenchment now, and word was that the first entrenchment had been overrun. He could hear the steady crump of cannon fire from the northern wall of the gorge.

  Then Placide, Guiaou, and Guerrier came tumbling in upon him. The doctor was happy to see Guiaou, for both his women assistants were staggering from exhaustion. But Guiaou was not to be diverted into nursing. He gave the reins of his horse to Placide and, ignoring the doctor’s importunings, trotted back toward the third entrenchment, with Guerrier following. The doctor went after them, pleading his case, but stopped when Guiaou passed the trench and slipped out through the stakes behind it. From where he stood he could see the French charge rounding the bend into the unexpected volley from the defenders dug into the second entrenchment, a hundred yards forward. A great many French soldiers fell and the rest, momentarily, dropped back. Guiaou and Guerrier, meanwhile, scurried across the bare moonlit shoal and reached the shadow of the northern cliffs. On roots and vines and outcroppings of stone they climbed toward the stone doorway Tocquet had pointed out. Guerrier crouched on the lintel, knuckles to the stone, while Guiaou hesitated in the shadow of the frame. Then the door folded inward and Guiaou disappeared inside.

  The charge on the second trench had been renewed, and spent balls were pocking into the gravel just before the third. The defenders here all urged the doctor away. With a long, draining sigh, he went stumbling back toward his makeshift surgery. The stream of the wounded had been broken; perhaps none could get through the fighting around the second entrenchment. Placide muttered something to him as he rode back toward the line, something about the horses just left here. The doctor squatted by the cold kettle, looking into the faces of Fontelle and Paulette, worn and grubby beneath their headcloths. They could be seen a little more plainly now, as the moonglow dissipated into the harsher, sharper light of dawn.

  At that first contact, Guizot had believed that the resistance would not be very stout—perhaps less stubborn than what they’d met at the forts of Fort Liberté, for the enemy seemed to melt away in the darkness, where the
y, the French, had the advantage of high ground. He’d wanted to lead his company in a quick pursuit, but Sergeant Aloyse had restrained him, warning of the likelihood of ambush.

  Then as suddenly they found themselves receiving a charge from below, and actually, incredibly, were repulsed, driven backward pace by pace onto the open brow of Morne Barade—into confusion, over which Rochambeau’s hoarse voice soon prevailed. The men formed a square in time to meet a charge by cavalry, or no—it was only a pair of horsemen, whom Guizot watched with his mouth agape, astonished at their mad temerity. As the riders retreated, fire opened on the French from a ridge just opposite; men fell and there was another spasm of bewilderment while Rochambeau hastily rallied his artillerymen to bring cannon to bear on that position.

  The rebel slaves were coming hard, charging up the hill, shouting some song in accents that sounded like French, though Guizot could decipher no word of it. Once, twice, the wave broke on the French square and receded, then on the third or fourth time it broke through and Guizot found himself in a welter of hand-to-hand fighting, managing the best he could with his one good arm, whipping his sword to bisect the darkness rushing down on him, until at last this charge was also broken and repulsed, and the French re-formed.

  A lull. The snipers’ ridge had gone completely silent, shattered by the cannon. Guizot had no idea how long the struggle had lasted, though he did notice that the moon hung much lower over the gorge than before. Now, at last, the troops moved forward confidently. The rebel slaves who’d been charging them were breaking, fleeing down the hill, and with a rattle of their drums the French pressed on, wetting their boots and trouser legs as they splashed across the stream, then picking up their pace on the gravel floor of the ravine.

  Rochambeau had come forward, a stout, compact figure, his black shako bobbing as he urged the men on, against the enemy cavalry which had formed to meet them here. No doubt of the general’s personal courage; he moved calmly, relaxed among his troops, indifferent to steady sniper fire that had begun to come down on them again, now from the northern wall of the gorge. On the opposite cliff, French cannon had begun to speak, exploding chaos among the cavalry that faced the foot soldiers in the ravine. Guizot, in the front line, caught sight of a little man on foot among the horses, small and bowlegged as a jockey, his face ugly as a frog’s. Guizot was so near he could see the tail of red kerchief that dangled from the little man’s feathered bicorne. Rag-head Negro. He was rooted to the spot in his squelching boots, as if fixed in his place by lightning, and when he first tried to speak, no sound emerged. The little man was directing the enemy movement with fluttering movements of a light cane, as if he were conductor of some opera.

  Rochambeau was passing nearby, and Guizot clutched at his elbow. Annoyed, Rochambeau shook free, glaring as if he’d strike his captain.

  “Mon général,” Guizot blurted at last. “Look there!—surely it is Toussaint Louverture.”

  Rochambeau absorbed the message. “Can it be?” he said, staring, then turning to Noël Lory, who stood, reluctantly, beside him. When Lory nodded, Rochambeau’s arm swept down. “Capture him! Kill him! Either will do—forward, quickly. En avant!”

  And Guizot rushed ahead with the others. He was near enough to see the wrinkles on the little black man’s face, and it even seemed that the other, facing him, wiped away a smile. Then with a cat’s agility he sprang into the saddle of a riderless horse that a cavalryman had just led up to him, and he was off, speeding up to a canter, jumping the bank of a palisaded ditch. All the cavalry had been swept away, like a curtain disclosing the array of sharpened stakes upon which Guizot was now charging, into a musket volley that rose from the trench behind.

  He was knocked down in the first shock, and when he rose, he was no longer in the van. But the French charge had carried the position, though there was still some ugly fighting in the trench they had broken through. Guizot ran to overtake his company, chasing the wagging pigtail of Sergeant Aloyse. They rounded the next bend of the gorge and came up short against another trench, another wall of musketfire. The French charge broke on the new line of stakes, in a blur of stumbling, cursing, screaming. Rochambeau’s voice again, loud above the others. The column pressed on them from behind.

  Guizot’s sling hung loose around his neck. He tried the wounded arm experimentally and felt no pain, or almost none—no more than a catch where the torn muscle moved over the bone. Someone shook him by the shoulder.

  “Captain.” It was Rochambeau. “Do you see there? The doorway in the cliff wall?”

  Guizot squinted through the dust. He’d tumbled away from the main action. Twenty yards ahead the French infantrymen were plunging one after another into hand-to-hand fighting in the rebel earthwork. Beyond that battle line, set into the north bank of the ravine, with a stone door, with another rag-head Negro, this one nearly naked, crouched on the lintel like a gargoyle. Guizot rubbed his eyes and looked again. The darkness was dissolving quickly, and he could see more clearly in the plain gray light of the dawn.

  “That is our target,” Rochambeau was saying. “A powder magazine, according to this one.” He nudged Noël Lory for confirmation; Lory returned a gloomy nod.

  “You will secure the magazine, Captain,” Rochambeau said. “As soon as the way is open, at whatever cost. Do you hear?”

  “Oui, mon général,” Guizot replied. Sergeant Aloyse, happily, was just at his back, nodding emphatically to affirm the order.

  “Excellent,” Rochambeau said as he moved away. “See to your men.”

  Since Guizot had been so far forward when the fighting began, he’d been cut off from his company, and when he tried to rally the men now, no more than half of them reported. Surely not so many could be casualties; surely most of them had only been scattered in the confusion. Enough had been found, he thought, for the task at hand.

  Guizot waited, a little anxiously, though he was happy not to be fighting in the trench. He rolled lightly from heel to toe, flexing the muscles of his thighs, thinking of the little man in the feathered hat—where had he vanished to? And probably Guizot had just been closer to him than any of his comrades of La Sirène had got . . .

  “Allons-y,” Sergeant Aloyse hummed, Let’s go. The trench had been definitively breached and the French troops were now pouring through. Guizot beckoned the men behind him, stumbled into the ditch, and scrambled out the other side on his all-fours, scraping the back of his hand on a splintered stake. As he emerged he broke into a run, hard on the heels of Sergeant Aloyse.

  The key Toussaint had given him was loose in the lock, and Guiaou was not very much practiced in the use of keys. It took him several tries before it engaged the lock and turned. The iron-bound door sank smoothly inward, but Guiaou remained poised on the sill. The smell of the cave came wafting out toward him. He could see nothing at all inside, and yet he felt, beyond a doubt, that the lost caciques of long ago had served their spirits here.

  “Ki sa w’ap tann?” Guerrier said from his post on the lintel. What are you waiting for? It was his good luck to stay outside and watch, though Guiaou had been honored with the more crucial task. With a grimace, he moved through the doorway and flattened himself against the wall. His heart was booming like a big asoto drum. In his head he sang his song for Agwé.

  Mait’ Agwé, koté ou yé

  Ou pa we’m—

  But here he faltered. Master Agwé, where are you?—don’t you see me . . . maybe Agwé could not see him at all, here in the dark blind stomach of the earth. Here was no place for Agwé, and no place for Guiaou either.

  As he clung to the wall, he began to notice that the familiar tang of gunpowder was stronger than the cave smell. This reassured him just a little. Also, daylight was coming on outside, and in a short while his eyes adjusted so that he could make out the shapes of barrels and boxes of the gunpowder stacked high against the walls and stretching back a long way into the cave.

  Just as Papa Toussaint had told him to do, Guiaou pried out the top of
a barrel with his cutlass and dumped a big mound of gunpowder onto the floor. The bright smell entered his nose and he sneezed. With both hands he shaped a fat, sausage-like trail of gunpowder all the way out to the stone sill. Then he turned to watch the fighting from his hidden place inside the doorway. When he faced outside, he did not feel so much frightened by the hollow darkness of the cave behind him. And Guerrier was very near—Guiaou might reach up a hand and touch his bare foot with its horny nails overlapping the lintel.

  Papa Toussaint had told him that he must not light the powder unless the second trench gave way. That was where they were fighting now, with bayonets and knives and fists. It looked to Guiaou that the fight was not going very well for Papa Toussaint’s people.

  The boom of the French cannons seemed to come from directly above him now. On the far side of the ravine, he could see one of Labarre’s snipers, firing out of a cleft of rock. He disappeared to charge his musket, then popped up and fired again. Guiaou could not make out what target the man was shooting at. But when he looked at the trench again, the French blanc soldiers had broken through and were swarming out over the fan of gravel just now yellowed by the rising sun. That was Guerrier’s voice, roaring the alarm. Most of the blanc soldiers were charging straight down the gorge, toward the third entrenchment. But one heavy-set man, with a big beaky nose and a gray pigtail, was rushing right up toward Guiaou, and behind him a thinner, pale-faced man with epaulettes on his coat and a grubby white sling flapping loose around his neck, and behind that one at least a dozen more. Guerrier’s musket exploded above him and he heard Guerrier shrieking because he had missed. The first man, the one with the big nose, had reached the bank and was scrabbling for handholds, beginning to climb.