The Stone that the Builder Refused

by Madison Smartt Bell

  Boudet had been in a cold fury since the evening before, and at this news he rounded on the captain, who had been arrested but not yet restrained. “How many men have you murdered at Petite Rivière!” With these words Boudet snatched the captain’s arm. They struggled, chest to chest—then Boudet sprang back with a cry. He had been bitten in the thumb, bad enough to bleed. The captain meanwhile rolled under the belly of the horse from which he’d lately dismounted, scrambled through the legs of other horses, and ran full tilt for the river. He was a good swimmer, Maillart took note, and a swift one. Though musket balls plowed up the water all around him, none of them seemed to find a mark. The captain emerged on the far bank and went on still at a run. Some were still shooting at him, though the range was doubtful. Maillart had his own pistol drawn but did not discharge it. Then the black captain’s running stride developed a hitch. A lucky shot must have struck his leg. Awkwardly slowing, like a loose-wound clock, he managed a few paces more and then collapsed.

  “We’ll get him when we cross the river,” Boudet said.

  Saint James and the other men who’d come with him led Boudet’s division up the river to the ford they’d used themselves that morning. Snipers harried them from the woods as they marched, and a few horsemen rode feints along their flanks. Maillart learned from the scouts that these were men of Charles Belair, the same who had broken his sleep with their raid the night before. Boudet’s troops were hot to pursue these harassers. After what they’d seen the day before they wanted blood. But Boudet and Lacroix kept them close in their ranks and marching forward.

  On the north bank of the ford the enemy appeared in sufficient force to trouble them with musket fire across the river. Boudet formed his advance guard under command of Pétion, and ordered him to lead the crossing. A number of Pétion’s grenadiers were grumbling that it was always they who had to march in the van and risk the fire of ambushes. Pétion turned on them and snapped, “It is your glory to have this place of honor—now be silent and follow me.”

  Indeed, Pétion was the first man into the river and the first man across. Maillart watched him with an interested respect. Pétion was a mulatto and an old Rigaudin; he’d just come out from France on the same boat that carried Rigaud and his other partisans. He looked to be quite a capable and courageous officer, though Maillart was content, for his own part, to be marching well behind the vanguard.

  He joined the detachment that returned to the area of the bank where that black captain had fallen. Though the leaves where he’d lain were all soaked with his blood, the man himself was nowhere to be seen. Maillart supposed someone must have carried him off, for by the amount of blood soaking the ground, he’d have been too weak to shift on his own. Angry at his escape, a few of the soldiers kicked up the bloody leaves.

  The ambushes had been swept away by the time they rejoined the main advance. Boudet and Lacroix and most of the men were eager to press on to Petite Rivière, where they hoped they might engage Dessalines. But Saint James and the others who’d deserted with him told the French generals of a large powder depot in the vicinity, and Boudet decided it would be best to capture it if possible.

  With Belair’s raid, many of the men had got little sleep the night before, and marching under the full sun told on them quickly now. Soon their heavy wool uniforms were sweated through, so that all of them smelled like soggy sheep. In the mountains the trails became too steep and narrow for them to continue dragging their few cannon. Boudet called a halt to bury the artillery, that the enemy might not discover it. Despite these delays, they reached Plassac a little before noon.

  A howling came from across the gorge from them—some number of black irregulars appearing on an open bend of the trail that climbed the opposite hill. Lacroix shaded his eyes to look.

  “Can it be Dessalines?” he said.

  Maillart accepted the spyglass Lacroix offered him and squinted into it for a moment. “I recognize no uniforms,” he said as he lowered the instrument. “These might be anyone, but—”

  “If we could only come at him now . . .” Lacroix was flexing both his fists.

  “Blow up the magazine,” Pétion said. “That will hurt them as much as anything, whoever they may be.”

  Boudet nodded, then gave his orders. A couple of Pétion’s grenadiers laid the fuse, as the rest of the troops marched down the defile. Maillart turned his head as he passed and saw the flame hissing backward. At the bottom of the descent they halted and looked back to see the magazine erupt from the mountainside with a tremendous flash and roar. A little stone dust rained down on them. A few of the men cheered, while others cursed Dessalines. The echo of the explosion persisted in Maillart’s ears as they went on. He could just see the last of the black irregulars rounding the bend of the trail out of range above them, like the tail of a banded snake slipping into the jungle. They saw no more of the enemy for the rest of that day, though sometimes they were fired upon from cover. By sundown they had come within a cannon shot of La Crête à Pierrot.

  Doctor Hébert sprang awake at first light, with the unpleasantly startled feeling familiar to him since the killings at Petite Rivière. He lay face down, palms flat on the mat, until his heartbeat slowed. Under his hands was the softness of the earth he’d broken to bury his weapons. At last he sat up and sniffed the damp air. The chatter of crows came from beyond the parapets. He wished for coffee, uselessly. Rations were already short. General Vernet had not been able to supply them with the quantity of water expected. And the night before, Dessalines had returned to the fort in a towering rage. A French advance had crossed the river near Verrettes and cut him off before he could reach Plassac; he’d been unable to resupply from the powder magazine there, and feared the French might have discovered it.

  Amidst the crow talk began the thin scrape of a violin tuning. The doctor wished the man would desist. His head ached slightly, for want of coffee. He got up, though, and walked toward the sound. The naturalist Descourtilz squatted by the wall, talking to the violinist. Dessalines had brought in an odd assortment of Toussaint’s musicians the night before: two trumpeters, a drummer, and the violinist—white men all. It seemed that Toussaint had abandoned his whole orchestra on some plantation nearby, in the hurry of his march north. The others had tried to get away to the coast, but these four had stayed behind, to be scooped up by Dessalines.

  The doctor knew the violinist, from Toussaint’s fêtes at Le Cap. What was his name? Gaston, possibly. He nodded, rendered a thin smile. Bienvenu also looked on, fascinated, as Gaston scraped his bow across the strings. The other musicians lay sprawled and snoring beside their instruments on the ground.

  “Look there.” Descourtilz tilted his chin toward one of the embrasures. The doctor peered along the cannon barrel. Tucked in the river’s bend, below the fort, was a long column of French soldiers marching toward the trees that screened the town of Petite Rivière. The doctor felt a certain chill. He took his face away from the embrasure, lips formed in a silent whistle.

  “Yes,” said Descourtilz. “That looks to be an entire division.”

  “I think you’re right,” said the doctor. “Most likely they are maneuvering to attack from the direction of the town.”

  “A pity Dessalines has come.” The naturalist looked pale and shaky. “He’ll murder us before he’ll see us rescued.”

  The doctor shook his head as he glanced at Gaston. Better to leave such thoughts unvoiced. If the violinist was alarmed at Descourtilz’s remark he did not show it, but went on scraping out some melancholy air, under Bienvenu’s rapt gaze.

  “Come,” the doctor said to Bienvenu. “Let us build up the fire.” There were some wounded men to be tended, from the engagement with Debelle a few days before. His own head wound needed its dressing changed also, though now it was nearly closed. Descourtilz might lend some assistance and take his mind off his fretting. But Descourtilz was staring at the powder magazine.

  “Christ,” said the naturalist. “Now what does he mean to do?�
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  Dessalines was striding up toward the magazine, a blazing torch in his right hand. Lamartinière and Magny walked on either side of him. The few hundred soldiers of the garrison followed, like iron dust drawn by a magnet.

  Dessalines pushed open the door to the magazine and peered inside. A sulfur smell came wafting out, wrinkling the doctor’s nose. The torch in Dessalines’s hand sputtered and sparked. Descourtilz flinched against the wall and reflexively covered his ears with his hands.

  “Open the gate,” Dessalines said in a ringing voice. At the lower end of the fort, two puzzled sentries swung the two halves of the gate slowly outward.

  Dessalines sat down on a pyramid of cannonballs beside the magazine’s open door. He held the torch with both hands between his knees and narrowed his eyes on the flame. Now he spoke in a much lower tone, so that everyone must press closer and lean in to hear him.

  “I will have no one with me but the brave,” he said. “We will be attacked this morning. Let all who want to be slaves of the French again leave the fort now.”

  He thrust the torch with both hands toward the open gate. A few heads turned, but no man moved in that direction.

  “I don’t suppose we are included in that invitation,” Descourtilz muttered. Gaston, who’d lowered his violin, merely gaped.

  “Let those with the courage to die free men stay here with me,” said Dessalines.

  A cheer went up: We will all die for Liberty! The doctor noticed that Marie-Jeanne, Lamartinière’s wife, cried the affirmation as loud as any man. She was a tall and striking colored woman; he was rather astonished to see she was still here.

  “Quiet.” Dessalines chopped a hand in the air to cut off the cheer, then swung the torch toward the magazine’s open door. “If the French get over the wall, I will blow them all to hell, and us to Guinée,” he said. “Now, all of you, get down against the walls, and no man let himself be seen.”

  In the cool damp of the early morning, Maillart got up and washed his face in the river and moved out in the midst of Boudet’s column, his bones a little creaky from sleeping on the ground. On the cliff above them, the unremarkable fort was quiet, half hidden in lifting swirls of morning mist. Boudet’s men filed into the strip of woods outside Petite Rivière. A stench of smoke and scorched flesh lowered over them; this town had been burned, like the others.

  Boudet called a halt outside the town. With Pétion, Maillart, and Saint James, he rode out of the ranks up the low grade until they were just out of musket range of the first earthwork, outside the fort. Cannon mouths showed at the embrasure, but no guard was visible anywhere. There was no flag flying anywhere, though Maillart thought he could pick out a thin thread of smoke rising somewhere within the walls.

  Boudet scrutinized the position with a spyglass. “It looks deserted,” he declared. “These murderers will not stand to fight. I think they’ve spiked their guns and run away.”

  “Beware an ambush,” Pétion said softly.

  “What ambush? Their defenses are all apparent here.”

  The sun broke fully over the peak of the hill and the walls of the fort. Raising one hand, Boudet shaded his eyes against the blaze.

  “Leclerc is supposed to come out from Saint Marc to join us,” he said, twisting in the saddle to look toward the west. “No sign of him as yet . . . I think we may as well take this place. We’ll carry it, if it’s manned or not.”

  They’d ridden halfway back to their ranks when firing began in the trees to the west. Pamphile de Lacroix, scouting through the woods above the town, had come upon an enemy camp and, as it seemed at first, routed it. The blacks were in full flight as they broke from the trees and rushed across the open slope toward the fort, with the French troops pursuing them full tilt, already hooking and thrusting with their bayonets.

  Boudet gave a quick order to send his own men into the charge. Maillart could feel the force of their rage as the first line swept around his horse. This charge would wipe out the shame and horror of the Verrettes massacre, wash all that away in blood. But then the fleeing blacks all jumped down into the ditches and the cannons of the fort belched out mitraille across the suddenly cleared field.

  A hundred men must have gone down in that first volley. Maillart’s heart flipped over in his chest. But the line closed up its gaps at once and kept advancing, the pace of the charge barely slackened, all the way to the edge of the first ditch.

  “There, there! is that Toussaint?” It was Captain Paltre who spoke, jockeying his horse up to Maillart’s.

  The walls of the fort now swarmed with the enemy. Dessalines appeared on the rampart, brandishing a sword in one hand and a torch in the other. He’d stripped off coat and shirt to show his scars, but still wore a tall hat with fantastic plumes.

  “It is Dessalines,” said Maillart, “but he will do.” He drew his pistol. A dozen shots were fired at the black general at the same time as his, all of them without effect. By the legs of Maillart’s dancing Eclair a couple of grenadiers, felled by mitraille, were trying to drag themselves backward, but the infantry line trampled them down as it moved ahead. Paltre galloped his horse to the rim of the first ditch, jumped down, and with a wide sweep of his arm skimmed his hat beyond all the earthworks, over the wall and into the fort.

  “Follow me,” he called out hoarsely, and plunged into the ditch. Amazed, Maillart saw him emerge on the other side. He crossed the other ditches miraculously unharmed and pulled himself to the top of the wall. About thirty other grenadiers had followed him, making a wedge across the ditches. Maillart rode to the edge of the earthworks, undecided whether to join the assault on foot. On the rampart, Dessalines split a man’s head with his sword and at the same time jabbed his torch into the face of another soldier assailing him. Maillart loosed his reins to reload his pistol. Another grenadier reached the top of the wall and was pierced by ten bayonets at once. A black smashed Paltre in the face with a musket stock and Paltre crumpled over backward into the ditch. Another round of mitraille roared from the cannon. Maillart’s horse bucked and threw him.

  He floundered on the edge of the ditch, fumbling to recover his pistol among the milling feet of the infantry. The charge had broken under the last round of mitraille. Paltre came swimming up from the ditch, his face pouring blood from a broken nose. Maillart caught the back of his collar and hauled him out. He stood, supporting Paltre with one hand, the unloaded pistol dangling from the other. All around him the ranks had been shattered into complete disorder.

  From the walls a trumpet sounded, a drum rolled, and the gate swung open. Laying planks across the ditches, the blacks now charged the French with their bayonets. In the mêlée, Maillart’s horse brushed by him and he managed to catch the trailing reins. He mounted and dragged the half-stunned Paltre across the withers. Halfway down the slope the French had re-formed and returned to the charge, repelling the blacks, pursuing them again. Again they disappeared into the ditch, and this time the volley of mitraille did such terrible damage that the French could not rally.

  Maillart saw General Boudet sitting on the ground, hands wrapped around the toe of his boot and blood streaming through the fingers. He rode toward the wounded general, but before he could reach him another horseman had caught him up and was carrying him out of the fray. Behind the retreat of their general, the French line completely shattered. Again the trumpet sounded from the walls, and this time it was answered from the forest to the west. Out of the trees came galloping several hundred horsemen of Toussaint’s honor guard, sabers shining in the full morning light.

  Maillart recognized Morisset at the head of the cavalry, and he thought he saw Placide Louverture riding behind. He drew his own saber. But he was encumbered by his wounded passenger, and the French infantry had been stampeded completely by this fresh cavalry charge. Nothing for it but to ride to the rear, if there was any rear to ride to. Morisset’s horsemen pursued the French to the town and into the plain beyond it. For a few dreadful minutes Maillart believed that Boudet’
s whole division was about to be completely destroyed. But then they found themselves supported by Leclerc himself, just marching in from Saint Marc with Debelle’s division, now commanded by General Dugua.

  Maillart deposited Paltre behind the newly solidified infantry line. At the sight of the French reinforcement, Morisset had withdrawn his cavalry up the Grand Cahos road. The French advanced again, to the town and beyond, and halted just out of range of the fort’s cannon. Now the French tricolor flew from the walls. From within the fort came wild shouts of triumph from the blacks. The wide slope below the ditches was strewn with six hundred French corpses.

  In the moment before the battle was joined, Dessalines had stirred up the sleeping musicians from the ground with the point of his sword. It would be a rough awakening, the doctor thought, to open your eyes to Dessalines bestriding you, probing your ribs with his blade, a torch smoking in his other hand, his old whip scars writhing on his back like fat white snakes. When Dessalines bared his torso for a battle, it was a bloody sign.

  But at first Dessalines seemed in great good humor, as if he anticipated some fine entertainment, a favorite dance like the carabinier. He tickled the musicians into a row, though he did not yet command them to play. The doctor watched from the shade of his ajoupa, Descourtilz crouching beside him there. The cannoneers squatted low beside their gun carriages. At Dessalines’s signal, the fuses had been lit.

  Outside the fort came a roar like the wind. The French troopers were shouting their indignation as they charged. Descourtilz got up to peer over the wall, and the doctor cautiously followed suit. He was in time to see the retreating black skirmishers dive into the ditches just under the walls.

  “Feu!” Dessalines’s voice boomed, almost simultaneously with the cannon. The guns recoiled and the air filled with burnt-powder smoke. Grapeshot tore great gaps in the ranks of the French. A week previously, Debelle’s troops had broken at this moment, but these new soldiers did not falter. They closed their ranks, and when the second volley laid waste to them again, they closed ranks once more and kept advancing.