Toussaint reached down for a brief clasp of Suzanne’s hand. Then he turned his horse back into the trees and began riding back down the trail as quickly as was prudent. He swayed in the saddle, reins gathered in one hand, sometimes licking away the blood that ran between the knuckles of the other.
He had required to be alone, to hide from the rest of them, his dependents, the awful hollowness that had seized him. An emptiness he could now understand to have been left by the unexpected loss of Saint-Jean. But that was not all. No matter the strategic sense of it, to lose Gonaives was like giving up the ribs that covered his heart. For years he’d maneuvered to win control of this port. But that was not all either. He almost wished Placide were still with him, to hear the explanation: the loss of Gonaives would break Toussaint’s communications with Port-de-Paix, where Maurepas, with the Ninth Demibrigade, had been making the most brilliant and successful resistance of any before today. Following Toussaint’s orders to the hilt, Maurepas had burned Port-de-Paix at the first appearance of French ships and retreated to the gorges of Trois Rivières, where he’d handily whipped every French general so far sent against him, including both Debelle and Humbert on more than one occasion.
Toussaint held on to the thought of Maurepas as he pressed his horse to gallop on the main road north to Gonaives. He met a portion of his own troops, falling back from Périsse toward Pont d’Ester; their startled faces turned to follow him, but he did not pause. There was no fighting at the lower entrance to Gonaives, and only the lightest guard. From the few men there, Toussaint learned that there were two battles under way, one on the road that came straight from Plaisance, the other at Pont des Dattes. He walked his horse through the town to cool it, through the square before the church. Headquarters was also almost deserted, with practically every man who could walk thrown into battle. From the stable behind, he heard the racket of Bel Argent whinnying and kicking his stall door. Toussaint felt his gloom disperse a little. The white stallion might return him some portion of his inner strength, if anything would or could. He sent a runner to warn General Vernet of his coming, and saddled and bridled Bel Argent himself.
“We have fought as well as we can,” Vernet said when Toussaint had reached him. “Morisset led a charge that drove them back as far as La Tannerie for a time. But there are too many for us to hold. It is Leclerc himself who presses us here, and Hardy has his whole division in the line at Pont des Dattes.”
“How do you estimate their strength?”
“In all? Twelve thousand, it must be,” Vernet said. “And we but fourteen hundred, and that at the start of the day.”
Toussaint removed his hat and massaged the bone of his head, through the sweat-soaked red madras cloth. He looked to the west, where the afternoon sun reddened and lowered.
“So,” he said softly. “We must burn the town and abandon this place. Let Morisset go back to Granmorne, where he left a small guard for my family. You will join with General Christophe as he retreats from Bayonet, and we will all reunite at Pont d’Ester.”
“Oui, mon général,” Vernet said dismally. “It will be as you have ordered.”
“Bon courage,” Toussaint admonished him. “Certainly we have lost some terrain, but we will still have an army.”
He felt none of the encouragement he’d recommended to Vernet as he rode back toward the center of town. Rather, the black shade of doom gripped him even more tightly. It had filled the hollowness in his head with rage and a fear he could not yet name. Even the surge of the refreshed and rested Bel Argent between his knees did not raise his spirit. He had not slept these last three days, and he thought he could feel the onset of a fever, but none of that was enough to explain the despair that occupied the cavity at his center which had held his fire and strength as recently as that morning.
Despair was reflected in the faces of the Gonaives bourgeois who were now scurrying toward the south portals of the town, carrying whatever they could quickly bundle up or toss into a wheelbarrow, hurrying just a pace ahead of Vernet’s fire-starters, who spread among the buildings with torches and lances à feu. Toussaint snatched up a torch from one of them and held it high. In its red blur he saw the inevitable, obvious to him at last: With the loss of Gonaives, Maurepas would not only be out of communication, but perfectly surrounded by the French. After today—after he had won today—Leclerc would have large forces free to block Maurepas’s retreat by way of Gros Morne—indeed to encircle him by that route. Under such pressure Maurepas could only surrender or be destroyed, and now the black shadow that possessed Toussaint told him there was no hope or help for it.
The door of the church stood open, dark. Bel Argent, who could go up anything short of a sheer cliff, had no difficulty scrambling up the steps. Toussaint ducked his head to pass beneath the lintel. Inside his torch fumed smoke among the rafters. A sexton darted out a side door, but the priest, a white man, held his ground before the altar.
“The spirit of Jesus has abandoned me,” Toussaint announced. His voice boomed along the nave. The priest raised one shaky palm, said nothing.
“How faithfully I served him, but for nothing,” Toussaint hissed. “It is the servants of Jesus who make war upon me now.” He spurred the horse; the priest dodged away from the iron-shod hooves. With his left hand, Toussaint ripped the carved crucifix from the wall above the altar, whirled it once around his head, then slammed it down to the stone floor.
“Aba Jisit! Down with Jesus! I will not serve Jesus any more!”
But the priest had fled, and the church was empty. Toussaint held his torch among the drapes until they were well ablaze, then flung it away among the wooden benches. Bel Argent was trembling, eyes rolling in the smoke. Toussaint stroked his mane and pressed his flanks more gently with his heels. The crucifix splintered under the hooves, then horse and rider moved together out the door, into the larger conflagration.
It was the shortage of cavalry, Daspir kept telling himself, that held back the French outside Gonaives through most of that day. Before his staff posting, he had trained as a hussar, so he could appreciate the élan of the silver-helmed black cavalry squadron that swooped down on Leclerc’s troops and routed them, though but briefly, a long way up the road they’d come. The Leclerc-Desfourneaux column lacked horses enough to counter these maneuvers properly. Leclerc, beside himself at what he thought sluggishness, ran madly about, screaming exhortations as he stung men’s legs with the flat of his sword blade. The French troops regained their discipline soon enough and marched back into the line. After two more hours of stubborn fighting, the opposition at the north gate of Gonaives began to crumple. But by then it was the close of the day, and when Daspir looked up he saw that the rose-colored mares’ tails of the sunset sky were darkened by swiftly rising clouds of smoke and stabbed with tongues of flame.
The rebels had set fire to the town, then disappeared in the confusion. So it seemed, for there was no armed resistance as the French marched in, though every building burned. It was just as it had been at Le Cap, Daspir thought bitterly. He was weary beyond description, and ready to faint from thirst. The smoke was heavy. He masked his face with a white handkerchief; the fabric was soon blackened around his nostrils and mouth.
The rebel headquarters was evacuated; flames licked out of every window. General Hardy, who’d entered the town by way of Pont des Dattes, was calling for a bucket brigade. But the well in the town square had been plugged by the carcass of a dead bullock. Daspir dismounted, rallied a handful of troopers, and supervised its removal. It then developed that no buckets were to be found, or nearly none—any container that would burn had been added to the pyres. Besides, the men were mostly out of order, plunging through the burning houses to loot whatever they could before the fire destroyed it all. Their huzzahs of victory, loud as they were, rang strangely against this background.
Daspir sank down on the curb of the well, took off his handkerchief, and looked dully at the mask-like charcoal marks his breath had made. Seated, he w
as below the worst of the smoke. His horse, reins trailing, moved up to snuffle the water that had begun to pool within the well curb once the dead ox was dragged off. Daspir rinsed his handkerchief and pressed it to his temples and the back of his neck, then dared to scoop some water in the palm of his hand to drink.
With that refreshment spreading through his parched body, he felt a little encouraged. When Cyprien blundered up to him, a phantom drifting out of the smoke, Daspir hailed him with an expression of good cheer.
“We shall not sup so well as we’d hoped tonight, it seems.”
“I think not,” Cyprien coughed. “Hardtack for us again, if we’re so lucky.”
Daspir stood up beside him, covering his nose and mouth with the wet handkerchief. Darkness had completely lowered now. They were facing the church, whose walls had already been consumed, so that the framework stood out like blackened ribs against the fire that breathed inside. As they watched, most of the timbers collapsed in the back of the building, sending up a great geyser of sparks.
“Has Toussaint been taken?” Daspir asked, with small hope.
Cyprien coughed again and spat on a cobblestone so hot from the fires that his spittle hissed. “Does it look like he has been? No, the report is that he has cut his way through Rochambeau and got off somewhere to the south.”
“Indeed,” Daspir said. “I suppose that only means that we will meet him on another day.”
There was some commotion now behind them, a beating of hooves and sudden shouting at the far end of the square, but Daspir was too weary even to turn his head that way. His stomach rumbled, and with that he remembered to tap the pockets of his coat.
“Take heart,” he said to Cyprien. “I have yet two avocados and an orange.”
22
At day’s end at the top of Granmorne, Placide began to hear roaring and the tattoo of French marching drums, rising above the gunfire from the direction of Gonaives. He slipped out of the pocket of trees where his family was sheltered and crept onto the rim of a huge black boulder that jutted from the northwestern brow of the hill. A red fire had crowned over the hollow of the town, and beyond it the sun burned bitterly on the horizon.
It was long since his father had ridden away, well past the appointed hour of three, but Suzanne had refused to leave Granmorne until some word of him came. The whites of Thibodet had only just departed. When he looked down more steeply from his rock ledge, Placide picked out a couple of their group—Isabelle Cigny and her son—as they turned a bend of the trail leading inland, a roundabout way which Tocquet hoped might allow them to skirt the fighting and return to Ennery.
“Quelle horreur.” The dull voice belonged to Isaac, who had joined Placide on the rock. What a horror. Placide said nothing. His brother had spoken in French, but the Creole word anmè unfolded itself in Placide’s mind: bitter. There was the bitterness of his father’s spirit at the destruction and death he had felt himself forced to order; now Placide felt he understood that better than before. But where was his father now?
He felt Isaac’s confusion too, and turned and wrapped an arm around his shoulder.
“It is well that you stay with our mother, after all,” he said.
Isaac nodded. “To the end, if it is bitter.” He returned the pressure of Placide’s arm. The choice of word placed them in the same spirit, closer than they had been at any time since the moment of their division. Placide recalled the internal rending he had felt that day in the headquarters of Gonaives. In his mind flashed an image of the building as it must be now, its blackened shell gnawed out by flame.
Isaac slipped out from under his arm and looked back toward the trees. “Come on,” he said. “Do you hear that?”
Placide, already following, did hear the shuffle of marching feet. There were three or four different trails that led to the summit of Granmorne. He recalled how the French had overtaken Saint-Jean without anyone knowing it till too late—he’d scarcely had time to think of it till now, his youngest brother in the hands of the enemy. His mother’s voice rose, though not in protest or anger; Placide could not make out the words. When he and Isaac came back into the grove, they found that General Vernet had come, leading the survivors of the Seventh Demibrigade up from the burning town below.
“Madame, the Governor-General is safe and well. He expects you now at Pont d’Ester—it’s likely he expects that you would be there already.”
“Yes,” said Suzanne. Her voice grew milder; her head lowered under its blue cloth. “We are ready to go to him, now we know where he is—”
But Placide was distracted by the sound of hoofbeats. Morisset was coming in, bringing his battered cavalry squadron along at a dull plod. The dust-caked silver helmets glimmered in the fading light. Morisset pulled his horse up at the edge of the trees. Placide was just moving toward him when he heard the sound of cheering from the town. French voices. The voices of blancs, Placide thought, with an unaccustomed thrust of resentment at that word. Blancs, exulting over another firepit they had captured.
Morisset’s helmet hung between his shoulder blades, the leather thong caught across his throat. His shallow features were turned to the wind. The sun was dropping below the horizon now, leaving trails of its red light to scar the clouds. The light from the fire in the town was stronger.
“That they should dare to cry victory after so much defeat.” A muscle jumped in Morisset’s jaw; his nostrils flared. Placide was near enough to hear his breathing.
“Let fifteen brave men come with me,” Morisset said. “We will still show them something.”
In an instant every man in the squadron had faced his horse back toward the town. Morisset, his face relaxing, detached half a dozen of them to remain as an escort for Madame Louverture. Then he raised a palm to stop Placide, who’d found his own horse and quickly mounted.
“Monchè, your bravery is admirable,” Morisset said. “But I must answer to the Governor for your safety.”
“But—” Placide stopped himself short. Obedience—first duty of the soldier. The swallowed argument lodged in his throat. Isaac was watching him from the ground, his expression difficult to read. Placide held in his horse, as the greater part of the squadron moved back onto the trail by which they’d just arrived. He looked at the backs of the men receding, the switching tails of the horses. A shimmer of their excitement washed over him; his heart still pounded.
“Kenbe sa.” It was the scarred one who spoke, the man who had brought the ill news from Santo Domingo City, who was so devoted to Placide’s father. Guiaou. Morisset had detached him with the escort. Now he jostled his horse toward Placide’s and held out a damp square of dark red cloth. Take this.
Placide only stared at him, bemused.
“Maré têt ou!” Guiaou said. Tie up your head!
It was his father’s fashion, Placide realized, and that of many men as they went into battle. Guiaou had just pulled the cloth from his own head; the corners were still creased to the old knot. But Placide’s head was larger. Automatically, he turned to the wind, letting the air carry the fabric from his forehead to the back. His fingers fumbled behind his head. Then the knot was solid, the pressure secure along his temples and at the nape of his neck. Guiaou grinned and nodded to him.
“Alé,” he said. Go.
Placide squeezed his heels to his horse’s flanks. In a moment he had overtaken the last rider in Morisset’s squadron; the man looked back once but gave no sign of disapproval. He faced forward again, and Placide closed the distance. Guiaou’s mouchwa têt had worked for him, maybe, like an invisibility cap. Onward and downward they jogged. A couple of small bats flittered back and forth across the trail, losing themselves in the bordering trees at the end of each pass. By some trick of the land’s lie, the sound of French cheering grew fainter for a time, then abruptly much louder.
It was full dark when they reached the slope of the cemetery hill on the southwest edge of town, but the moon was well risen, picking out the crypts and crosses in a cool wh
ite light, spreading shadows of the riders long across the graves. Placide prickled with something other than fear. He checked the knot at the nape of his neck. Thus the world would appear to Baron Lacroix, when that spirit arose through the cemetery. Placide’s blood beat a different pattern than before.
The iron cemetery gate hung shut before them. Morisset bunched his men in cover of the wall beside it. Firelight from the burning buildings warmed their faces and the horses’ manes. The cemetery was only a couple of blocks from the main square. Some effort must have been made to put the fires out, for most of the shells only smoldered now; just a few were fully ablaze. Spectral figures of blanc soldiers were black against the fire glow as they scurried back and forth across the streets, flittering like the bats on the trail above. Many were probably drunk by now, on looted rum.
Morisset looked over his men. His eye brushed over Placide but did not stop. As he faced the bars of the gate, his lips pulled back far enough that firelight wavered on his front teeth. At his gesture, a man got down to raise the bar from the gate and then quickly remounted. Placide checked the knot of his mouchwa têt once more. Something inspired him to close his left eye. His drumming pulse quickened, changed its beat; his right eye locked forward with a doubled concentration. The two wings of the gate went floating open with a squawl of rusted hinge. They charged in silence, except for the hooves.
“You there,” Daspir called to a passing grenadier. “Lay down that cask!”
The soldier stopped, but only stared at the captain. Cyprien was staring at Daspir too. But Daspir, emboldened by the effect of half an orange and a whole avocado, persisted.
The Stone that the Builder Refused Page 48