“Do you know that blanche at Thibodet, the woman of Tocquet?”
“Oui, mon général. I have just left her.”
“Can you give her this letter when none of the other blancs will see?”
“But of course, mon général.” Guiaou slipped the paper inside of his shirt.
“Go now, if it is not too late.” Toussaint masked a smile with his hand. “You need not return before morning.” He knew Guiaou had a woman at Thibodet.
“It will be as you say, mon général.”
And Guiaou was gone. Toussaint, content, pushed back his chair. His mind was clear of the nagging thought, and tomorrow’s actions seemed more evident to him now. Also he knew that the old grann was waiting to serve the callaloo.
“Ann manjé,” he said as he turned to Pourcely and Gabart. Let’s eat.
Nanon and Paul were dressed to travel, as Elise was too; the ladies would not linger in déshabillé this morning. The weariness of it!—Elise’s head felt leaden. It was too exhausting to leave Thibodet now, where the house was still intact, the fields still in some sort of order, though there’d been a considerable exodus of able-bodied men from the atelier since the most recent wave of disturbances had begun. Now that they’d been relieved of the French troops quartered on them, they might have enjoyed some days of peace here—but of course that was all a fantasy; Toussaint had said as much himself. There was nothing for it but to go back to Le Cap, and scrape what shelter they might out of those ashes.
She thought of Toussaint, astride the white charger at Pont des Dattes. It was only a picture in her mind, with no feeling attached to it, though it had a certain weight. Her thoughts divided, moved past the image, and rejoined. Tocquet was down at the stables, organizing horses and donkeys for their caravan, and Isabelle was packing her valises in the house. The children had breakfasted and then scattered. Only Nanon had retained Paul at the table, to compose his weekly letter to his father.
“But, Maman,” the boy said, his ivory face disconsolate. “Is it not useless to write now? How shall we send it?”
A fair question, Elise thought. She would have been lost for an answer herself. She watched Paul fidget with his cup; half-finished café au lait gone scummy. Nanon should make him drink up that milk; it would be hard to come by at Le Cap, no doubt. Along with other privations and discomforts they could certainly expect. It made her queasier to look at that cup. But Paul was not resisting the letter out of sheer sloth, she imagined; it must certainly distress him to think of his absent father.
“Maybe we will give it to a bird,” Nanon said, with a faint curve of her full lips. Her hands were folded demurely on the table’s edge, and her head slightly bowed, so that she seemed to be looking at the point of Paul’s chin. It was her habit, Elise knew, to avoid, almost imperceptibly, the eyes of white people.
“The malfini will find your father when he looks down from the top of the sky,” Nanon said. “Or maybe we will give this letter to one of these little brown doves, who are so careful.”
“But really, Maman,” Paul said sulkily. “There is no bird who will carry a letter.”
“Kouté,” Nanon said, listen. Her voice was still gentle, but she raised it enough to look her son full in the face. “To write to your father will put you in the same spirit with him, and even if we cannot send the paper, it may be that your thought will reach him still.”
Paul glanced at Elise, though not so petulantly.
“Your mother is right,” Elise said. She placed her fingers over her mouth for the moment it took her to swallow the sour bubble forming in her gullet. “Do as she says.”
Paul nodded and picked up his pen. There was merit in Nanon’s way of thinking of the thing, Elise considered. Between herself and Sans-Souci there’d been no letters, no exchange of tokens. There, the name had slipped out of its oubliette in the depths of her brain. Was he still alive at Grande Rivière? And if he were, what difference? No news, no word, no bird to carry messages. Quite likely she did not even wish that there were. She pushed the name back down where it had come from. Paul’s quill scratched upon the paper. Someone was watching her, she felt, from beyond the pool below the gallery—from the lemon hedge that bounded the yard. But before she could make out who it was, Merbillay came striding onto the gallery, carrying the coffee tray, her head held high and her height exaggerated by the long striped kerchiefs that swept her hair up into a cone.
Queen of the kitchen that she was, Merbillay almost never served at table; her manner was a little too imperious for that. Merbillay had spent too much of her youth as a maroon ever to acquire the submissiveness one wanted in a house servant. Where was Zabeth? She must be readying the infants for this day of travel. In fact, Elise had set her to that task. Elise had not ordered any more coffee, and wanted none. Her first cup had seemed to disagree with her. But Merbillay tilted the hot black stream from the silver spout, bracing her free hand on the table. The edge of her palm pressed warmly, insistently, against Elise’s hand.
Then somehow Merbillay’s hand had completely covered Elise’s with its warmth, but between their palms, there was some object: a folded paper. Elise looked up, meeting Merbillay’s eyes, calm and inscrutable beneath the embroidered hem of her kerchief, and as their contact sundered she slipped the paper to her knee, beneath the table’s edge. The letter was twice folded, but unsealed. At a rapid glance she could just make out the backward loop enclosing three dots which finished Toussaint’s signature.
As Merbillay withdrew from the gallery, Elise smoothed the paper against her knee. The watcher now stepped clear of the hedge: Guiaou. She had not recognized him at first, because he had put aside the honor guard uniform in which she had grown used to seeing him, and now stood shirtless in a pair of canvas trousers. Of course his ghastly scars made him unmistakable once he had stepped into the rapidly warming sunlight. And the morning was getting on, Elise thought abstractedly, and they should be setting out very soon, given the length of the road ahead. She nodded to Guiaou, who seemed to have been waiting for that, for at once he turned aside and slipped away through the nearest gap in the hedge.
But Riau had been here too, Elise realized. She had not consciously recognized him either, for he too had been out of uniform, but she certainly had seen him with Merbillay, last night or the night before. There was something for Isabelle to study, and maybe for Elise herself: the apparently effortless grace with which Merbillay could manage those two men.
She feigned a cough, raised her hand to her collarbone, and pushed the letter down into the space between her breasts. Paul was busy writing, and Nanon gave no sign. If she had seen, Elise felt sure, Nanon would say nothing.
26
At Port-au-Prince it was quiet enough for some days after Dessalines had been frightened away by all the men of Lamour Dérance and Lafortune and the blanc sailors who came out of the ships on the harbor, and after General Boudet came back from the ashes of Saint Marc with all the French blanc soldiers he had taken with him there. Quiet, yet I, Riau, could not rest easily, though there was no danger that I saw in those days. We did not see any fighting for a while though there was talk of it in other places. No one came to attack the town again, and Dessalines was supposed to have gone off through the mountains toward Mirebalais, killing any blancs he could find on the plantations because he was so angry at being shut out of Port-au-Prince a second time.
Yet when I lay down to sleep at night, my ti bon ange stayed trapped inside my head. It could not get out to wander in the world of dreams, but stayed between the bones of my skull beating its wings like a bird in a jar, while Riau’s open eyes bored all night into the shadows under the roof of the caserne. In the daytime, after such a night, I walked as if a loup-garou had bitten a hole through my chest to suck all my insides out so the loup-garou could travel in my skin. Or maybe some enemy had hired a bokor to send his dead against me. If I had really believed so, I might have looked for a hûngan that I might pay to turn the curse away, but I did not
know any hûngan near Port-au-Prince well enough to trust, and I did not really believe I had been attacked by a bokor anyway. I thought my trouble came from my own spirit, or from some spirit that I owed a service which I had not done, and the truth was that I knew well enough what kind of service it was.
At the same time it seemed to me that maybe I had been the good servant of these French blanc soldiers for too long. If I had not brought Lafortune and Lamour Dérance in from the plain, Dessalines could have burned Port-au-Prince when he came, and so weakened the power of the blancs. The blancs recognized the worth of what I had done for them. Maillart especially, for he understood that Dessalines would have put his head on a spear if he had been able to overrun the town that time, even though at other times he and Dessalines behaved as brother officers, especially when Toussaint was near. But the power the French blanc soldiers held began to worry me more and more. However much they declared that all our people would be free forever under their law, I did not like to see how they loaded Pierre Louis Diane and all his officers with chains and held them prisoner in the stinking bottoms of the hulks out in the harbor. Also I could not stop seeing the eyes of the general Pamphile de Lacroix when Paul Lafrance asked him so plainly if he and all the French blanc soldiers had not really come to bring back slavery? His eyes showed there was something hidden behind his answer even if he, Lacroix, did not like it. Maillart saw nothing of that, I thought. Maillart had an honest heart for a blanc, but he could blind himself without any effort to anything he did not want to see. Probably he had learned this skill from being the lover of such a blanche as Isabelle Cigny. Maillart hid no deception of Riau, but Captain Paltre and other officers who were friends of Paltre would smile behind their hands when they looked at me, and as my bad nights made me weaker, it seemed to me more and more that these blancs were the loup-garou that wanted to suck out all my blood and swallow my flesh and finally walk the world inside my skin.
All the blanc soldiers were planning a big battle where they would catch Toussaint at Petite Rivière, and make him their prisoner or kill him. That was where they all believed Toussaint had gone, after they chased him out of Gonaives. Leclerc, the little blanc general who stood above all the rest, had come down from Le Cap with a lot more men and was meaning to fight this battle himself. But I, Riau, I did not want to go to this battle at all. It was one thing to try to get out from under Toussaint’s rules and laws, and another to fight against him face to face.
Then Jean-Pic had a quarrel with his woman, and he came into Port-au-Prince from the camp of Lamour Dérance on the plain to look for Riau. He did not tell me so very much about this quarrel, but it made him want to go north again for a while, which was our old country, where Jean-Pic and Riau had been maroons together long ago before the risings. I thought I had been too long among these blancs anyway and maybe it was a good thing to go north, at least as far as Thibodet.
So I found for Jean-Pic a uniform coat with only a few patches and those in the back, and a pair of trousers not too worn. He had brought his own horse with him from the plain. I could not get him any boots, because the blancs had not brought enough boots for themselves. Jean-Pic liked the look of boots, but he would not have liked to wear them for long. The hide of his feet was harder than boot leather from all the years he had been walking all over the country.
To leave Port-au-Prince all I needed to do was offer to take a message to the commander at Croix des Bouquets. But before we rode in that direction, I found Chancy. I told him I was going to Toussaint and would take a message to him, if Chancy wanted it so. Chancy was still a prisoner of these French blanc soldiers, though they had made the whole town his prison now instead of that dark cachot beneath the fort, and he was bound by his promise not to run away, but he could still write a letter, secretly, to tell Toussaint what had happened to him, I said. Chancy was happy with this thought, and he did write the letter and sealed it with wax, and then I hid it in the lining of my coat. I did not mean to go to Petite Rivière at all, where all the blanc soldiers were getting ready to bring their battle, but I thought that where the blancs expected they would find Toussaint would probably be the last place he would go.
At sundown Jean-Pic and I reached the post at Croix des Bouquets and left our message there. Then instead of returning to Port-au-Prince we rode on across the plain of Cul de Sac. It was dark by the time we began to climb Morne Cabrit, and the moon was new, and it rose late. Still the sky was clear and the stars so bright we could ride without fear of falling off the rocky trail. I looked at the stars and remembered the blanc doctor Hébert and how he had told me that the stars were named after the old spirits of his own country. He had told me some of those names, sometimes, though I did not remember them now. I wondered that night if he was looking up to see the same stars that I was, from some other place in the country. That night I did not feel the loup-garou eating away at my insides any more, and at dawn when we stopped to sleep under cover of the trees, I slept easily, and through most of the day.
I thought it was better to travel through the mountains, since the French blanc soldiers had taken all the coast from Port-au-Prince to Gonaives at least. Even in the mountains it seemed better to travel by night. After we crossed the Artibonite River we heard that Dessalines and blanc soldiers under Rochambeau were chasing each other all through the mountains of Grand Cahos, but we kept away from both of them and so came on a bright morning to Ennery and Thibodet.
Guiaou was not at Thibodet when I and Jean-Pic came there. Guiaou was away somewhere else, following Toussaint, so I went at once to stay in the case of Merbillay, as Guiaou would have done if he came when Riau was not there. It seemed long since Riau had been with Merbillay. Between that morning and the noon meal we lay in the quiet cool of the case, because all the children had gone out, and I had sent Jean-Pic for Zabeth to find him a place to sleep somewhere, so Merbillay and I were alone. We spoke little in that time, and when I woke she had gone down to the grand’case to begin her cooking for the blancs. There was no sound but the buzzing of a wasp from a mud-daubed nest on the wall of the case, and outside the voices of children.
Caco was waiting for me outside the case, and so were Yoyo and Marielle. I kissed the little girls on their lips. They sat looking at me with big eyes in the shade of an ajoupa roof Caco had built out from the back door of Merbillay’s case, and listened to Caco talk. Caco had a lot to tell, because he had been to that big battle at Ravine à Couleuvre, traveling with the doctor and his son Paul. He had not done any fighting himself but he had seen a lot of it, though Tocquet took him and Paul out of that place before it was all finished.
It was from Caco that I learned all of the news. There were not many men of fighting age left at Thibodet now, because they had all uncovered the muskets Toussaint had given them to hide and gone off to one battle or another, and there was not much work happening on the plantation, even though the blancs had come back to the grand’case when the fighting had finished at Ravine à Couleuvre and all around Gonaives. There was no one there to work but women and old men and children and these only worked their own provision grounds. There had been a lot of French blanc soldiers here too, Caco told me, with all of their officers staying in the grand’case, but they had all marched away south a couple of days before Riau and Jean-Pic came there.
In the weeks that I had been away, Caco had grown. I saw that he was big enough to be in the fighting himself, if it came to that. His eyes missed little, and he spoke with a good understanding of what his eyes saw. But I did not want him to go into the fighting. When I looked at Caco and his sisters, I only wished that the fighting would stop.
Zabeth found a place for Jean-Pic in the ajoupa where Michau stayed, not far from the grand’case. This Michau was a house servant who came down from Le Cap with all the blancs when the blancs had to run away from there. In the evening we all gathered by this ajoupa and Merbillay gave us food she had saved from what she had cooked for the blancs that night. There was a lot of griot, an
d other good things too. They had just killed pigs on Thibodet, which was where the griot came from, and Caco had a story to tell about how he had helped hide those pigs from the blanc soldiers when they were there. It was a good feast that we had that night, and afterward I went to the case with Merbillay and the children. I slept well through the night because I was tired from the fast traveling, even though I had slept part of that day.
In the morning I learned that Jean-Pic had plenty of sleeping room in that ajoupa because Michau, he thought, had slipped into the grand’case to stay with Zabeth. At that I remembered from the night before that Zabeth’s eyes had seemed brighter, and her smile deeper, than at any time since Toussaint told Bouquart to shoot himself. I was glad for Zabeth then. I would have liked to stay another night in the case of Merbillay, but my service would not wait, and in the morning I went up the hill to find Quamba.
Though Quamba was a nearer friend to Guiaou than to Riau, sometimes he came when Riau was there with Merbillay. He would eat whatever there was and sit playing his bone flute in the darkness, and some of the children might sing and dance. But this time Quamba waited for Riau to come to him.
The hûnfor was on the point of a hill above Thibodet, and one could see a long way from it, even as far as Sancey, which was still smoking because the blanc soldiers had burned it for revenge against Toussaint. I stood beside the kay mystè, shading my eyes to look. I knew from Caco that the blancs had not burned Descahaux, which was another one of Toussaint’s places further up the gorge, but I could not quite see Descahaux from where I stood.
It was cool still, because the sun had not long risen from the mountains, and the breeze still came across the hilltop, hard enough to snap the red flag on the long cane pole above the kay mystè. When I turned from looking at the smoke above Sancey, Quamba was waiting by the cross of Baron, with both his arms folded across his chest.
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