The Stone that the Builder Refused

by Madison Smartt Bell

  “Soldiers of the Ninth!” Toussaint’s voice was so loud and large we could all hear it plainly where we were hidden in that acajou. “Will you dare to fire upon your general and your brothers? Only the blancs are our enemy!”

  And maybe Golart was an enemy too, I thought. It was a new thing for Toussaint to speak so boldly against the blancs. He had not been saying that before these French ships and soldiers came. But the men of the Ninth all lowered their muskets and began to shout, Vive le Gouverneur! Vive le Gouverneur! It even seemed that some of them were weeping. I thought that the Ninth was all going to come over to Toussaint’s side again then, and Desfourneaux’s soldiers would be wiped out after all. Long live the Governor! all of them were crying. But all at once the French blanc soldiers began to shoot down the men of the Ninth from where they stood behind them. Those soldiers of the Ninth were all confused when the bullets came from behind that way, and a lot of them were killed in the first firing, and the rest were scattered, down the hill and among the trees.

  Then there was nothing to stop the French blanc soldiers from shooting straight at Toussaint and his men. The ground was all against Toussaint. The blancs were on the high ground here, and could shoot from cover of the rocks and all the tight bends of the trail, the way Toussaint had taught all of us to do, but it seemed these blanc soldiers understood how to do it too. These were the toughest blanc soldiers I had seen.

  Jean-Pic had taken out his pistol, but Sylla stopped him with a hand on top of his arm. Sylla’s men had not yet come from the other side of the mountain, and there was nothing our few shots could do, except to tell those blancs where we were hidden. We watched then, and did nothing more. I, Riau, had seen a lot of battles, but this one was very bloody. I did not see how Toussaint was going to live, among all those bullets falling on his people like a rainstorm. I saw a bullet strike a captain of dragoons who rode beside Toussaint, and Toussaint caught him out of the saddle, and carried him away on his own horse. The horseman passed through the line of foot soldiers Toussaint had brought, and that line held a little while before the French blanc soldiers pushed it back.

  What I could not see from where I stood, I found out later from Guiaou and Guerrier. That night, with the darkness to hide us, Jean-Pic and I found our way back to Toussaint again. By then he had given up the fort at Bidourete to the blancs, and was getting ready to go south, with Pourcely’s men, who had missed most of the fighting, and what was left of the men under Gabart. Toussaint was going to lead them south next day, back along the way we had come. I did not speak to him that night, though I watched him from a little distance, sitting by the fire. Toussaint was always made sad by any deaths among his soldiers, but tonight he seemed more angry, at Golart and the men of the Ninth who had turned against him, and at Pourcely for leading his men to get lost, though he tried to swallow his anger at Pourcely. With all that, Toussaint did not seem so much discouraged yet.

  Another messenger had come from Dessalines that day, and Guiaou had seen him shot off his horse just as he rode up to Toussaint. That had been when Desfourneaux’s soldiers were still attacking hard. Toussaint carried that messenger off too, though he was wounded to his death, and he bled all down the front of Toussaint’s coat. But the message was in writing and it told we were not beaten yet. All our men were fighting still, around La Crête à Pierrot.

  27

  Michel Arnaud came abreast of his cane mill and paused for a moment to stare at the idle building. A little brown wren had nested under the eaves; she put her head out and turned the black bead of her eye toward him, then withdrew, into the cobwebbed shadows. Arnaud shrugged and walked on, depending a little more on the stick he carried in his left hand as the trail grew narrower and the ground more uncertain. He’d only sprained his ankle in the disastrous fall that had destroyed his horse— not broken it, which was a bit of good luck. In these last days the swelling had almost completely receded, thanks to the hot soaks that Cléo and Claudine forced him to endure morning, noon, and night, but the joint was still weak and he must go carefully. He did not heal as fast as he had done when he was younger.

  In his right hand he held an unsheathed coutelas, and as he progressed toward his distillery he swiped at the brush overgrowing the trail. Most branches only bent from the dull blade, springing back into place after he had passed. What did it matter? The effort made him sweat, though it was still early morning. He stopped for a moment to rest and listen, but heard only birdsong, and the drone of children reciting some lesson for Claudine in the school beside the chapel. No drums, no shots, no war cries. He went on.

  The area around the vats was suffused with the sour smell of fermenting cane. Half his crop was fermenting in the field at this point, but here at least there was some profit in it. The chief refiner touched his forehead in greeting as Arnaud limped toward the coils. He’d shifted his talents to distilling rum because they no longer had labor enough to make sugar. The fields were as empty as the mill. From an atelier of many hundreds, barely two dozen adult men remained, and many of those were halt, lacking a hand or a leg or an arm . . . In the old days, Arnaud had practiced amputation, as a punishment for runaways, or thieves sometimes. Many of those men stayed by him now; he fed them, and they worked as they could.

  As for the rest—they’d abandoned the mills and the fields, if not the plantation altogether. Arnaud was confident that a good many of his erstwhile mill and field hands were still living on the place, getting their sustenance from its provision grounds, or at any rate were frequent visitors. Many had uncached their muskets and gone off to join Toussaint, or some other leader, in fighting Leclerc’s army. In the mornes above Limbé, whose green rising Arnaud could see from where he stood beside the coils, Romain led a quasi-maroon insurgency against the French.

  And be damned to the French! Arnaud snapped mentally—as resentfully as if he were not French himself. But he was Creole, and more and more these new arrivals struck him as invaders, and it was a bungled invasion at that. He might have shared this complaint with Bertrand Cigny, except that Cigny was dead. They’d got the news a few days earlier, from an exhausted squadron of Leclerc’s cavalry, the men drooping in the saddle from fatigue and slow fever. They’d come with a wagon to purchase rum for the troops, and had with them Isidor, Arnaud’s old houseman who’d disappeared a decade before, in the midst of the risings of ninety-one. They brought the news of Cigny’s death but not his body, though they’d seen it by the scorched wreck of Cigny’s house at Haut de Trou, impaled, disemboweled, the genitals cut off and stuffed into the bearded mouth . . .

  Arnaud thrust the point of his coutelas in the ground, took up a clay cup from a flat stone beside the blade, and held it under the coil, interrupting the drip into the barrel. He rinsed his mouth with the oily white rum and swallowed. The refiner watched him carefully. Arnaud nodded as the thread of warmth worked through him. The rum was good. And Grâce, la miséricorde, for poor Bertrand Cigny. Arnaud shook the last drops onto the ground and replaced the clay cup on the stone. Lord, have mercy . . . Though Arnaud had never been remotely devout, he sometimes caught himself muttering prayers unconsciously, as if Claudine’s religious mania had infected him. What happened to Cigny might have happened to anyone. Might still. There were not enough of the French troops to occupy the ground they had ostensibly reconquered, and so for planters on their land there was no security at all, except, in Arnaud’s case, for whatever safety might derive from the peculiar prestige of his wife among the people that surrounded them. Since they’d fled the smoking ruin of Le Cap, there’d been much pilferage on the borders of Habitation Arnaud; their fruit was stolen, their pigs and goats were driven off, but no one had attacked the house, and there had been no burning.

  For no reason at all, his heart began to pound, and his palms and temple broke out in a cold, itching sweat. He had these attacks quite often now, though usually at night, when he must turn to his wife’s mute comfort, for Claudine woke by some instinct whenever one of Arnaud’s t
errors began. By day it was worse—one could not wait for daylight; there was no term to the terror and nothing to expect. He would have liked to drink more rum, but he knew it would not help. The refiner was still watching him, besides. Over the rush of his blood and the drum of his heartbeat, he heard the creak of wagon wheels, a single wagon coming to a halt in the ruts beyond the crusher and the vats of mash. His cane-cutting crew—such as it was. One of the men unhitched the mule from the wagon and led it to the crusher’s turning pole. Another, whose right arm ended in a stump, began to load cane stalks into the chute, using his left arm to gather the cane from the wagon into the crook of his right elbow.

  Arnaud lent his own arms to the task. The wagon driver clucked to the mule, and the reddish iron cylinders of the crusher began slowly to turn. Arnaud kept pulling cane from the wagon, careless of the blade-like leaves that slit his arms, and pushing it into the chute, leaving it to the amputee to guide the stalks into the crusher’s teeth. He could not now recall if the man had lost his hand to a punishment or some cane mill accident—he seemed to bear Arnaud no resentment, either way. In the old days Arnaud would never have put a hand to such work, not if he were the last man standing on his plantation. But now the physical effort pulled his mind out of its screaming spirals. His heartbeat leveled, and his sweat turned honestly warm. Now he could better understand what had moved Claudine to carry water to the field hands, under the noonday sun. Though recently she’d given up this practice, since there was no one in the fields.

  At noon, Arnaud helped the refiner seal a head on a filled cask, then dismissed the men for a siesta. He took up his stick and the coutelas, ringing the flat of the blade against the iron rim of the rum keg. There was some reasonable profit there, though nothing like what white sugar would have brought. But soldiering was thirsty work, and the military wagons did come steadily.

  Beside the chapel, the school lean-to was empty, the children scattered to some other shade. In the shadows of the open chapel, Moustique stood muttering half audibly, before the altar shelf, which was draped in black. About Moustique’s skinny, stooping shoulders was draped the stole which Claudine had clumsily embroidered for him. He chanted for the soul of Bertrand Cigny. Claudine had set him to this work, thrice daily, for some period of days—a funeral rite without a corpse. It was strange how little the boy resembled his father, the Père Bonne-chance, who had been burly, low to the ground, strong-built as a badger or a little black bear. Père Bonne-chance had once saved Arnaud’s life, inveigling him out of the hands of rebel slaves who certainly would have killed him. Later on, the priest had been executed for collaboration, and nothing Arnaud tried could stop it. Grâce, grâce, la miséricorde . . . If there was any truth to religion, Père Bonne-chance was with the martyrs. Arnaud got no comfort from praying for himself.

  Moustique was looking at him now, since Arnaud had drifted to a halt before the chapel. There had always been someone looking at him—no corner of this country was without at least one pair of watchful human eyes—but until recently he had never noticed it. He nodded, blinking sweat out of his eyes, and as he was facing the shrouded altar, he fumbled the sign of the cross before he turned away. A trio of speckled hens scattered from his feet in the dust as he walked on toward the grand’case.

  Isidor and Cléo sat on the gallery, much at their ease, as if they were the masters there. Claudine was nowhere in view. Arnaud looked up, above the roof tree, and saw her step up to the cleft in the rock where he’d cached his weapons of last resort, that watch post. It was where she often went at noontime now—against all persuasion she must make that climb in the fiercest blaze of the day’s heat. Rail-thin she stood, arms hanging slack, her garment fluttering from her bones in the breeze that combed the height. She was looking toward the mountains of Limbé.

  Arnaud lowered his head and walked on. In some way he would have liked to join her. But even the lesser climb to the grand’case seemed to wind him. He limped up the steps, his stick’s tip booming on the boards, and dropped into a low wooden chair such as market women used to squat above their wares. He closed his eyes, and presently felt a cool pressure against his temples—Cléo’s fingertips, dampened in the glass of water she had brought to him unbidden. He was too hot, she murmured. The cool fingertips pressed dispassionately on the insides of his wrists and then released, and he heard her long skirt swishing away across the floor. He sipped at the water, set down the glass. He had slept poorly. For so long he had been indifferent to any danger. Hazard might move him to anger but not fear. Now that indifference had all worn away, leaving him exposed and raw. If the wind stirred the palm leaves, he was startled. But the breeze had died, and for the moment it was utterly calm. He settled his weight in the chair and dozed.

  Tocquet had rushed them out of Thibodet before dawn; at daybreak they were passing through the drowsy bourg of Ennery. By the time the sun had fully risen, they were mounting the south slopes of Pilboreau. Tocquet would not let them dismount at the market on the height, though both Sophie and Isabelle complained with some sharpness. He only bought them all warm cassavas they could munch in the saddle as they rode on.

  Never had Nanon seen Tocquet show such an obvious tension. She was accustomed to his lazy, cat-like confidence. Now he more resembled a cat that knows itself pursued by some more dangerous hunter. He rode in silence at the head of their line, watching, watching, ceaselessly scanning the trees and rocks either side of the trail, down the long descent and the deeper distances of the Plaisance river valley. Gros-Jean and Bazau, bringing up the rear, had none of their usual joviality, but were as grim and silent and watchful.

  In this atmosphere, the conversation Isabelle and Elise attempted soon expired. The children were also uncharacteristically subdued. Paul especially, Nanon thought. He had been moody for nearly two weeks, ever since the battle which parted him from his father. Was she wrong, Nanon wondered, to urge him to write letters which could not be sent? Her conviction was that this exercise would not only keep the doctor alive in Paul’s mind, but also somehow protect his life in reality. This much she believed, though she could not have said why. But whether it helped Paul, in the short run, was more doubtful.

  She watched the boy, riding his donkey—he was pale and drawn, his ivory skin bloodless, his mouth a thin line. Robert too was silent and watchful. Of course he had witnessed the destruction of Le Cap, to which they were now supposed to return. Gabriel and François were too small to understand what was happening, and Isabelle’s Héloïse probably was too, but of the three older children only Sophie retained her usual belligerent energy. There was no foolishness of straying from the road this time, as there had been on their flight south from Thibodet— not that Tocquet would have allowed it now. Of course, that was how Saint-Jean had been lost, and Paul would not have forgotten that, though certainly he’d be missing Caco more. Caco was his closest friend, but he had stayed behind at Thibodet.

  Nanon watched Tocquet as she rode, following the movements of his head, letting her eyes linger where it seemed to her that his did. In this way she was able to pick out a band of armed men, all black and ragged as maroons, slipping through the trees a half a mile below the road. From the direction that they moved in came a muted sound of gunfire, so faint in the distance it could barely be distinguished. Tocquet made no remark on what he’d seen, though Bazau muttered something to Gros-Jean. Nanon kept silent. If Elise or Isabelle or the children noticed anything they did not say so.

  Gabriel and François rode in straw panniers slung to either side of Nanon’s donkey, which she sat sidesaddle in the country manner. François traveled quietly, looking all around with large eyes, while Gabriel kept trying to climb out, for the first hour or more of the journey. Yet after all François was the first to grow pettish, whimpering loudly enough to draw Tocquet’s reproving glance. Nanon gave him lumps of raw sugar to quiet him, and rather envied Zabeth—the infants in her charge were small enough to nurse to sleep, awkward as it might be to nurse them while bala
ncing on a donkey.

  In the early afternoon they reached the bourg of Plaisance, which seemed almost deserted, though a handful of French grenadiers watched the crossroads. From the soldiers they heard that General Desfourneaux had marched most of the troops out of town that morning, to confront a black army led in person, it was said, by Toussaint Louverture. Tocquet would not let them stop longer than the time it took to water their horses—and for Zabeth to change the babies by the well side; the glance Zabeth gave him set him a pace back. Elise approached him then, and argued in a low tone that they might very well stay here for a time, to let the children stretch their legs from the saddle, and when Tocquet pointed irritably at the sun, Elise suggested they might even stay the night, since the French soldiers would certainly have returned to Plaisance by then.

  “They are not guaranteed to return victorious,” Tocquet said shortly, and Elise fell silent. They rode on.

  At a fork in the road above Limbé they found four black women with bunches of bananas on offer, and a little way from them two colored women sat on the ground, eating bananas in the shade of a flamboyante. The younger woman quickly got to her feet as they approached, and Paul brightened when she called his name. It was Paulette, with her mother, Fontelle.

  Nanon found herself looking all around for the doctor, for surely he must be here with them somewhere—she knew Tocquet had left them together when he brought Paul home from Ravine à Couleuvre. But the doctor was nowhere to be found. He’d been safe at Petite Rivière when they last saw him, Fontelle said, and had charged her to give Nanon that word. She and Paulette had meant to bring their news to Thibodet, but Toussaint was threatening Gonaives when they came there, so when he withdrew they had decided to press on their way north—they hoped to reach Habitation Arnaud before night.