The Stone that the Builder Refused

by Madison Smartt Bell

  Maillart collided with Cyprien and Paltre. Then Leclerc himself emerged from his tent to hear Daspir’s stammered account—three intruders from Toussaint’s force—he waved his left arm in the direction they had gone. At Leclerc’s order, Cyprien and Paltre dashed off to organize pursuit, while Leclerc limped back into his tent, still ginger with his sore groin. Maillart remained by Daspir.

  “How are you certain they came from Toussaint?” he said. “There’re blacks aplenty in our own ranks. Are you sure you did not mistake them?”

  “So help me God, one of those men was Placide Louverture,” Daspir declared. “I crossed the Atlantic with him—I know his features well enough.”

  “Well then—” Maillart began, but before he could complete the sentence his head snapped around to the sound of firing, behind Lacroix’s lines, to the left. Behind the lines and at a point none too well defended. Maillart experienced a flash of pure terror. If Toussaint had really arrived, in sufficient force, the French would find themselves doubly encircled, and their whole force might go swirling down the vortex centered on La Crête à Pierrot.

  “Come on,” he said, batting at Daspir to start him moving. They ran toward the shooting and found Lacroix directing the defense himself, with a good success. Whoever was attacking was discouraged after a few volleys. Likely it was no more than a feint. But just as their effort dwindled, new muskets began nearer to the town—an attack on the earthworks there from the direction of the fort.

  “They’ve come out of their hole at last,” Lacroix cried, flushed with excitement, and with Maillart and Daspir in tow he hastened toward the new point of attack. The men of the Ninth had spent much effort on fortifying this line, reinforcing the earthworks with timber—they’d understood better than anyone else just what they were likely to confront. Maillart was grateful for the pains they’d taken now, as the skeletal warriors began boiling up from the surging darkness—there was some hand-to-hand fighting atop the works, but only a few could press so far, and these were slain or tumbled back. After fifteen minutes of hard struggle the attack evaporated as suddenly as it had begun.

  “Do we pursue?” Daspir blurted.

  “No,” said Lacroix. “We’ll not be caught in that same trap again.” He paused a moment to get his breath. “We’ll keep to our lines,” he panted. “There’s nowhere they’ll get through them. And sunrise will find them naked as worms up on that hill.”

  Unless they go back to the fort again, Maillart thought, but he didn’t say it. The three of them waited a quarter-hour more, straining their eyes and ears into the dark. Then firing commenced on the hill above.

  “Ah,” said Lacroix. “I think they’ve gone to visit Rochambeau.” With a thin smile he added, “I’ll warrant he’ll be ready to receive them.”

  Captain Guizot, once the night’s second bombardment had been terminated, went to lie quietly on his blanket. His wounded arm would not let him really sleep, but he drifted in the half-consciousness of fever. On his closed eyelids replayed images of shells bursting in the fort. No sight was more glorious, especially by night. Guizot had conceived a bitter hatred of the black defenders, who’d annihilated his whole company with a few minutes’ worth of grapeshot, all but himself and Sergeant Aloyse. Every night he went to Pétion’s battery to watch the shells pour down, and afterward those fireworks bled through his delirium in still more luridly explosive colors. Beyond it all, apart from it all, the throb of his arm ticked like the pendulum of a cabinet clock. No longer pain, but just the regular, maddening beat. For the last day he had not allowed even Aloyse to examine the wound. He kept it hidden inside his coat. In fact, the arm had swollen till his coat sleeve bulged like a sausage casing and he would have had to cut it off to remove it.

  For that reason he was more completely dressed than most when the sortie from the fort struck Rochambeau’s lines a little before dawn. He bolted straight up from his blanket and ran for the general’s tent, cradling his bad arm with the good one, across his belly. Since the destruction of his company he’d been billeted to staff. He found Rochambeau stuffing his chubby legs and the tail of his nightshirt into his trousers. Purple with agitation, the general had no more to say than “Fight them! Hold them!”

  With Aloyse at his side, Guizot scrambled toward the noise of fighting, to find that their earthworks, much less substantial than those of Lacroix opposite, had already been breached. What came through was a swarm of figures from a nightmare, stiff-legged and jerky-limbed as marionettes, skull bones cutting through the skin—they looked all nails and teeth as they swept forward screaming. Once their muskets had been fired, they let them drop on their slings and fought on with their long knives. The French fell back and the blacks poured through. On the crest of the wave of them rode a tall gaunt Amazon with piercing gray eyes, gesturing, striking through the breach with a long sword. To all the actions of the men there was a weird, unified rigidity, as if they had no awareness of their own but responded as one to the woman’s will. Shoot her, Guizot thought, and maybe the rest will lose their animation. He let his hurt arm fall limp to his side, but somehow failed to draw his pistol with the other. What if she were not real at all? He would be firing at a phantom.

  Then they were gone, all those survivors, streaming through the French camp into the heavy bush behind it and finally vanishing into a steep, vine-tangled ravine that writhed its way into the Cahos mountains. After what had happened to him in the mountains of Grande Rivière, Guizot was not eager to pursue, and no one else seemed moved to follow either.

  Rochambeau appeared on the scene for the first time since the attack had been launched. Not troubling to greet his own soldiers, or even to look at them, he walked toward a wounded black who’d been felled by a musket ball through the knee, and gave him a rattling kick in the ribs. The black curled up, hugging his body with a moan, then uncoiled with the speed of a striking snake. The blade of his coutelas scored a white line on the general’s boot top as Rochambeau skipped back out of range. The black was up on an elbow, coutelas at the ready. Anyone might have shot him but no one did. Not Guizot nor Aloyse nor anyone moved to interfere. Rochambeau advanced with his own surprising speed. He trapped the black’s knife hand under his boot, set his sword point in the hollow of his throat, and leaned on the hilt with all his weight.

  Guizot was inspired to look anywhere else. After a moment, Rochambeau sighed and stepped back, sheathing his blade and kicking the blood-clotted dust from his boots. Hand on his sword hilt, he addressed the various subalterns who’d gathered around this scene.

  “Shame, gentlemen, shame on you all.”

  At that, most of the junior officers looked at their shoes or away into the air, except for Guizot, who now fixed his eyes on Rochambeau’s twisting features.

  “Let the sentries, if any survive, be shot at sunrise,” Rochambeau said. No one replied.

  “Does no one hear me!”

  “Oui, mon général,” an aide-de-camp squeaked. “It will be done.”

  “The enemy has cut his way through us.” Rochambeau paced, stamping the dirt with his blood-stained boots. “You have allowed him to get away with his whole ragtag band of a few hundred wild niggers—when he is surrounded by twelve thousand crack troops! He leaves us nothing but his dead and his wounded—and two thousand of our best men dead upon this ground.”

  He cocked a forefinger and aimed it between Guizot’s eyes.

  “Captain Guizot,” he said.

  Guizot tensed. Until this moment he’d not been certain that Rochambeau actually knew his name.

  “As well as anyone, you know the shame of our losses here.”

  “It is so, mon général,” Guizot croaked.

  Rochambeau glanced at his watch and then at the sky. “I give you command of a fresh company for this morning,” he said. “I think you’ll find small resistance now in the fort. If you succeed, that company shall remain your command for the duration.” He looked down at the body of the black man he’d just killed, then rai
sed his eyes to the captain again. “I believe you will know how to do your duty.”

  With the thrill of the news his scouts had brought him, Toussaint’s whole person trembled like the body of a terrier on a hot scent. He caught Placide by his upper arms. “You’re certain it was him. Leclerc!— and you can bring us to that place.”

  “Yes, I am sure of it. Morisset too.” Placide was stammering in his own excitement. “We were seen by one of the captains who escorted us on the voyage, and yet they could not overtake us when he had raised the alarm.”

  “But they may be forewarned by him.” Toussaint covered his mouth with one hand.

  “There was an action on the line as well,” Morisset mentioned.

  “From the fort?” Toussaint wheeled toward him.

  “No.” Morisset glanced at Guerrier. “It was some of the field hands who overshot our position. Probably some of those we’d armed today.”

  “No matter, no matter.” Again Toussaint’s face began to shine. “What confusion they may cause is all to our advantage now. But we must strike with no delay.”

  He turned to Guiaou, who went flying off to fetch Bel Argent almost before Toussaint could complete the order. Morisset went with Monpoint to get the whole cavalry into the saddle. Toussaint was looking critically at the sky, where the stars were still bright on a black velvet ground. But before Bel Argent could be led up, a rider came galloping into the torchlight, pulled up his horse in a swirl of dust, and jumped down before his mount had stopped moving, lurching to catch himself against the trunk of a palm. Guerrier hurried to take the helmet he was fumbling from his head. Freed of the helmet, Riau wiped sweat from his face with his palm.

  “What news of Dessalines?” Toussaint rapped out.

  “I couldn’t reach him.” Riau straightened from the tree trunk and spread a hand over his sternum; the hand heaved outward with the force of his breath. Toussaint allowed him a moment of respiration.

  “Lamartinière has left the fort,” Riau said finally. “I crossed his rear guard going up the Cahos. They couldn’t hold out for lack of water—they say Dessalines sent word for them to leave. Lamartinière cut his way out through the army of Rochambeau. There are nearly five hundred left of the garrison.” Riau sucked in a fresh breath. “Lamartinière is going up the Cahos to join Dessalines,” he said. “But I thought I ought to come to you first.”

  “Too late!” Toussaint said. His voice burned. When Riau’s face went vacant, Toussaint raised his eyes to him and said, “Not you, Riau, you have done right.” He stopped and lowered his head. “So the fort has fallen.”

  Guiaou, who was just leading Bel Argent into the ring of torchlight, stopped cold, bewildered by the collapse of the atmosphere. Riau found the reins of his exhausted horse and discreetly led the animal away. The others had all vanished too. Only Guiaou and Guerrier remained with Placide and Toussaint, who sank down, somewhat unsteadily, onto a chunk of timber, and dropped his face in his two hands.

  Placide felt a sickening, giddy spin. If his father lost his certainty, nothing stood between himself and the void. He had not recognized that until now. And why, why could they not still act? But he found he could think his own way through it. With all the field hands they had raised, Toussaint alone was still handily outnumbered by the seasoned French troops gathered at Petite Rivière, and now that the fort was empty they could spend their whole strength on repelling Toussaint’s attack. Moreover, by now they were likely to have the same intelligence that Riau had just brought. The project had been daring from the start; now it was truly, absolutely too risky.

  Toussaint removed his hands from his face. He adjusted the knot of his blood-red headcloth, replaced his hat, and stared beyond the circle of light, eyes unmoving and unblinking, for what felt like a very long time. Placide stole a glance at Guiaou. Both Guiaou and Guerrier were waiting as easily as the big white horse—so easily one could not say they were waiting at all. Placide found himself a little encouraged by that. He tightened his headcloth at the base of his skull, and laid a hand on Bel Argent’s warm, breathing flank. His mind came to a steadier balance.

  Then Toussaint snapped onto his feet, lithe and limber as a cat.

  “Find General Gabart and rally the men.”

  “All of them?” Placide blurted.

  “Yes! Yes, all.” And Toussaint whipped away into the surrounding dark as Placide hurried to execute the order.

  By daybreak the men were all assembled, and Toussaint addressed them in triumphant tones.

  “The French army has been destroyed at La Crête à Pierrot!” he declaimed. “We’ll have no more trouble from them here. They are finished, and the blancs and their soldiers in the north have no one to defend them now. Go north!—my brothers, my friends, my children—go north to drive the last of the blancs out of our country. Drive them into the sea they came from. Wipe them out of creation!”

  At that the men all roared and clashed their knife blades in the air; some fired off their muskets (though the officers tried to prevent that) while others blew shrill blasts on conch shells. By sunrise the mass of armed field hands was hurrying north toward the passes of Ennery and Marmelade, with a few squads of cavalry and a handful of regular troops to guide them. But Toussaint, with Placide and his senior officers, with his honor guard and most of the regular troops that remained to him, headed instead into the Cahos mountains by the route Lamartinière was supposed to have taken.

  At daybreak the doctor gave a water ration to the surviving wounded. Three men had died in the course of the night. Among the rest, about a dozen would surely die no matter what this day brought—they were too far gone to come back now. The others, just under thirty of them, had lighter wounds and might recover, given medicine and proper nourishment and rest. That thought inspired the doctor to a twinge of hope.

  Gaston helped him carry water to the wounded. The doctor was a little surprised at that. Till now, all the musicians had given the hospital area a very wide berth.

  The three dead men he dragged a little apart from the living. He straightened their limbs, folded their hands across their chests, and finally weighted down their eyelids with scraps of iron scattered from the shelling. He had no strength to do more for them, and Gaston offered no aid in this endeavor.

  When the gray dawn light began to yellow with the sun, they heard a harsh voice ordering a charge outside the fort, and then the pounding boots across the empty ditches. In a few seconds, a pair of French grenadiers had rolled over the ramparts and were opening the gates to admit their fellows. The doctor wondered why it had not occurred to him or the musicians to throw the gates open earlier. Maybe they were simply too dulled by the habits of siege.

  The company that came hurrying in, muskets at the ready and aimed in all directions, was led by a peculiarly dead-eyed young captain, who wore his left arm in a sling. The four musicians struck up a rusty version of “La Marseillaise” to welcome them. The captain did not seem much gratified. He drew his pistol and fired a shot over their heads. The music came to a sudden stop.

  “So it’s you who taunted us with that tune,” the captain said.

  “Come now, we are loyal Frenchmen like yourselves,” Gaston protested. “We have been prisoners here all this time—we only played what they forced us to play.”

  The captain didn’t look to be impressed by this argument; on the contrary he was taking a better aim at the violinist. But a pigtailed sergeant caught his shoulder and murmured something in his ear, and the captain lowered his weapon and turned away from the musicians. In place of the pistol, he drew out his sword and began to advance on the area where the wounded lay. One of the three dead bodies tripped him up, and the captain kicked at it as he stepped over. The iron scraps fell from the corpse’s lids, and the eyes rolled open, round and pale.

  The wounded man on whom the captain had fixed his advance got up, to the doctor’s astonishment, for he didn’t believe that man could stand. He backed to the wall and held out his empty hands.
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  “Pitié pou mwen,” he said. Have mercy on me.

  The dead-eyed captain thrust his sword so hard that it chipped mortar from the wall when it came through the wounded man’s back. With an effort he pulled free the blade and used it to signal the troopers coming up behind him, their bayonets at the ready.

  “Carry on,” the captain said, and almost simultaneously the doctor shouted, “Stop it!”

  He was on his feet, holding both his pistols at hip height. He’d shifted the penny from his tongue to speak more clearly, and held it now between his cheek and gum. “How can you kill these men—they are wounded and offer no resistance.”

  “It wasn’t I who raised those banners.” The captain jerked his jaw toward the red flags of “no quarter” hanging dully from the corners of the walls. Now the doctor could see that the captain’s eyes were not only lightless but floating in fever.

  “The men who raised those flags have left the fort,” he said. “You have already killed them, maybe, as would be your right if they attacked you. But these—”

  “Carry on,” the captain repeated, and the men behind him marched stolidly on the wounded, bayonets lowered. A surprising number of men the doctor had thought wholly incapacitated managed somehow to reach their feet. Some held out their hands for mercy, others scrambled and uselessly groped for anything that might be used for a weapon of defense.

  “Stop it,” the doctor said again. He could not make his voice carry. “Stop this slaughter . . .” It did not stop. A short, stubby man in a general’s uniform topped with a black shako had just come at the gate below, and at his appearance the grenadiers seemed urged to wield their bayonets more fiercely. The general, however, paid no apparent attention to the massacre taking place, but toured the embrasures, pursing his lips at the cannon Lamartinière had been compelled to abandon.

  “And you,” the captain said to the doctor, who noticed he had sheathed his sword and again produced his pistol. “You who are so attached to these murderous rebels—are you not one of them?”