As I came into the valley of Grande Rivière, a dozen of Sans-Souci’s men rose out of the ground like smoke, and they were all around me and my horse before I knew. The spirit of Macandal had so filled Riau’s head that I did not have clear eyes to see them coming. Now when I shook my head and looked for that mosquito it was gone.
The men took me through the bourg of Grande Rivière and on into the hills to the grand’case of a coffee habitation that the blancs had run away from long before, where Sans-Souci sat on the gallery, eating chicken. When I came there he called my name and shared his food with me. He stood up to take my hand when I climbed the steps to his table, and I saw how small he was, with short arms and legs like the legs of a turtle, and yet the force in him was so great he always seemed twice bigger than he was.
Riau had last seen Sans-Souci when he brought his blanc prisoners to Toussaint at Marmelade, and that was not so long ago, but still Sans-Souci wanted to know where Riau had been and what he had done since. I told him that I had seen the blanc general Leclerc going up the road with all his soldiers to Le Cap, and Sans-Souci grunted and said he knew Leclerc was there. I did not tell him about the doctor and Maillart and those people on the road. They would have got to Le Cap anyway, by the time Riau had come to Grande Rivière.
“Pa wé Christophe?” Sans-Souci asked me. You didn’t see Christophe?
I told him I had not seen anything of Christophe or his men that day, because I had come across the plain where I would not expect to find them. Christophe commanded the posts of the mountains from Marmelade to Grande Rivière, which Toussaint now named the Cordon du Nord, and Sans-Souci knew that as well as Riau did. In Toussaint’s order of the army, Sans-Souci was in Christophe’s command since before Leclerc came with all his ships and soldiers. But I thought that Sans-Souci would never be commanded altogether by anyone but himself and his own mêt’têt.
“You came across the plain alone?” Sans-Souci said. “If the blancs are so weak, Christophe ought to come out of the mountains and drive them straight to the walls of Le Cap.”
Sans-Souci looked like he wanted to spit when he said this, and he did break a chicken bone and throw it over the gallery rail. A little dog came out from under the steps and began to crunch it, and then another dog came from behind the house to fight the first one for the bone. It was getting so dark I could not see the dogfight very well. Maybe it was true that the French blanc soldiers were weak enough in the plain that Christophe could beat them, but it was always dangerous to fight the blancs in the open country where they themselves best liked to fight, and no one knew exactly when more soldiers came into Le Cap on new ships, and Toussaint had ordered Christophe to stay in the mountains. Sans-Souci was staying in the mountains himself. But I did not say any of those things to him then.
“I got across the plain because the blancs are slow and I have a good horse,” I said.
Sans-Souci showed his teeth in a way that was not much like a smile. “If he needs to run away from the blancs,” he said, “I think Christophe could outrun your horse on his two legs, Riau.”
At that I laughed, and Sans-Souci laughed with me. His laugh was easier than that smile had been. It was true that in the beginning of the big fight with Hardy, Christophe came so close to getting made prisoner by the French blanc soldiers that he had to run away barefoot through the bush, because he had thrown away his boots and his coat and his general’s hat so those blancs would not know just who it was that they were chasing. But afterward Christophe had turned his men to face the blancs again, and helped to beat them.
“Maybe Christophe spent too long holding the dish for the blancs to help themselves,” Sans-Souci said when he had finished laughing. “Maybe that is a habit he can’t break.”
I did not make any answer to this at all, but only moved my head in a way that might mean either yes or no. The dogs had stopped fighting by then, and it was quiet, because the bone was gone. I looked across the gallery rail to the hill where coffee trees stood. There was just enough light to still see the trees and see how they were all covered with vine. Nobody had been tending those trees, and if Toussaint saw them so he would be angry, and Dessalines would have whipped the commandeurs with thorns. Now it was so dark I could see only the shape of Sans-Souci’s head, but not his face. Maybe Sans-Souci really did not trust Christophe, or maybe he only meant to test Riau.
Sans-Souci came out of Guinée, in chains like those that were hammered onto me. He was Congo, like Dessalines, and I think he must have been older than Riau when he was taken, old enough to know something about the Congo way of fighting before he came. Christophe was Creole, born a slave, as Toussaint was born, though Christophe came from one of the English islands. Before our rising, Christophe worked as a waiter in the Hôtel de la Couronne at Le Cap, and that was what Sans-Souci meant to spit on him for now. But in those same days Christophe had also gone across the water to Savannah to fight for the blancs there, and he had learned something of the blanc way of fighting, and fought well enough that he got his freedom for it. That was the story which was told. Soon after Boukman called the lwa to help us fight the blancs, Sans-Souci led men into the mountains, and I had crossed his road in those first days, when he held a camp at Habitation Cardinaux and was very hard on the blanc prisoners that he took. Christophe stayed on the blanc side at that time. He fought under the French blanc general Laveaux and never joined with our side until Toussaint and Laveaux had joined. He had been put over Sans-Souci then, and there alone was reason enough for Sans-Souci to hate him.
Since La Crête à Pierrot there was too much of this kind of quarreling. I, Riau, had seen it with Toussaint in Marmelade not long before, when Dessalines tried to undo Charles Belair in the eyes of Toussaint. Dessalines told this story to Toussaint, that Charles Belair meant to go over to the French blanc soldiers to the south. With Dessalines, Charles Belair was holding a line in the Grand Cahos mountains, the same as Christophe held the Cordon du Nord, and if that line was broken then the French blanc soldiers could come from Port-au-Prince to reach Toussaint at Marmelade, and maybe even at further places, like Saint Raphael on the plateau. It was true that Charles Belair received a letter from the General Pamphile de Lacroix at Port-au-Prince, and for that, Dessalines said that Toussaint must order Charles Belair to be shot. But Charles Belair brought to Toussaint both the letter from Pamphile de Lacroix and a copy of the letter he had sent back. Pamphile de Lacroix asked Charles Belair to come over to the side of the blancs, just as Dessalines had said, but in his answer Charles Belair refused. It was the same as when Christophe had got a letter from Leclerc asking him to help trap Toussaint, but Christophe had answered that he would not do it.
Toussaint took Charles Belair out of the Grand Cahos then, and sent the Colonel Montauban to take his place beside Dessalines. People whispered that Toussaint was showing more favor to Charles Belair than to Dessalines, by keeping Charles Belair near him at Marmelade, and maybe it was so, or maybe Toussaint better trusted Dessalines to hold that cordon of the Grand Cahos, and wanted Charles Belair close under his eye because in truth he trusted him less. Still there were people beginning to whisper that Toussaint meant Charles Belair to be Governor-General after him.
That was if we drove out the blancs, or made some peace with them. Toussaint had his letters too, that came to him from the General Boudet, and everything that was in those letters was hidden behind Toussaint’s head.
“I think Christophe does not have much more heart to keep fighting the blancs,” Sans-Souci said. I could not see his eyes any more, but I felt them searching for me in the dark. “Christophe is tired of sleeping on the ground in these mountains.” Sans-Souci made another sound like a laugh. “He would like a soft bed in the Hôtel de la Couronne.”
I noticed Sans-Souci was not sleeping on the ground at all, and probably Christophe was not either. The Hôtel de la Couronne had been burned down a long time ago anyway, not by Christophe when Leclerc came, but in the fire of our first rising man
y years before. Maybe Sans-Souci wanted Riau to carry his idea of Christophe to Toussaint, to wound Christophe in Toussaint’s spirit.
“Maybe you are right,” I said. “Christophe is more used to the town than the mountains.”
Then a girl came out from the grand’case to take away the chicken plate and give us some cassava with guava paste. Sans-Souci stopped talking about Christophe then. When we had eaten the bread and guava, I drank a glass of clairin with Sans-Souci, and then I went down to be certain that my horse was well. There was a small pond where the horses were watered, and in the last light I saw bats fly low and skim across the water, moving faster than my eye could follow.
I went to the room in the grand’case where Sans-Souci had told me I could sleep. Some other men were there already, talking quietly in the dark. I did not start any talk with them, but lay down on an empty mat. My thoughts came fluttering across my head like the bats had moved across the pond, with the arms of the trees above them reflected in the water.
I was very tired from this long day of riding, so my sleep was very deep, and it filled up like a well with a grand songe. In this dream I was Riau no longer, but I was in the spirit of Toussaint, lying in a small stone room as close and narrow as a grave. Toussaint lay like a dead man lies beneath the earth, waiting for the bokor to come to raise his body up to slavery, waiting without light or breath. Through the stone walls I heard the whistling of the siffleur montagne and the part of me that was still Riau knew this sound came from outside the dream, and wanted to move toward it, but the cross of Baron pressed down more heavily on the stone so that the walls closed in more tightly and I could not bend my legs or move my arms or even raise my chest to breathe, but the voice of Toussaint screamed through my lips, Dessalines! Sé Baron pou moin li yé! Dessalines is my Baron! Then out of the shadow of Baron’s cross came the shadow of a long, cloaked figure riding, and hidden in this cloak of darkness was the face of Dessalines, only it was one-eyed now, like Moyse’s face had been—
I sat up shaking and sweating, as if I had taken a fever, though I had not. I thought I might have screamed for the other men in the room to hear, but they were all still breathing quietly with their sleep. In the first blue light of morning, I could see their faces. I saw a mosquito settle on a blood vein on the back of my hand, and moved to crush it, but then I did not. I sent the mosquito away on my breath, thinking it could go to drink the blood of blancs. The only sound was the sound of horses in the yard.
I went out to the gallery then, without waiting to put on my boots. My head was still full of the dream of Dessalines, so at first it seemed to me that Dessalines was there, but instead it was Christophe getting out of the saddle. Then I saw that Sans-Souci had come to stand on the gallery next to me. He had put on his boots and all his uniform to receive Christophe and he was pushing the power that was inside him outward, to make himself seem bigger than his body was.
Christophe drank coffee with Sans-Souci, and gave him orders for the time he would be gone. He was going to see Toussaint at Marmelade, but for what reason he did not say. Sans-Souci said little when he took his orders. The power around him was large and dark. My head was still muddy from the dream, but by the time Christophe finished his coffee I had saddled my horse and joined the other men who were riding with him to Marmelade.
I did not know why my dream should show such a fear that Toussaint had for Dessalines. There was no stronger or fiercer general than Dessalines in all the army, especially since Maurepas had given his head to the blancs. Maybe it was only a false picture that came from the mirror of the dream to my eyes.
We rode into Marmelade with the rain, and as all the men hurried to get into shelter, I came with Christophe and some of the others into the hall of the house where he had made his headquarters on the north side of the square. Christophe took off his hat and his coat to shake the rain from them. He sat down at the table facing Toussaint, who had called for candles to be brought in, because the rain had made it dark. The light inside was watery with the rain, and the rain made a big noise on the roof which covered the words of Christophe and Toussaint, but still I could hear most of what they said.
Christophe took a paper from his shirt, another letter he had got from the Captain-General Leclerc, he said. Toussaint unfolded the paper and held it under the candle’s light, looking down his nose at it. Then he began to read, in a loud voice that rose above the sound of rain: The code is not yet in existence; I am working on it at this moment. The First Consul was unable to draw up a code for a country which he did not know and about which he had received contradictory reports. But I declare to you before the colony, and before the Supreme Being whose witness one does not invoke in vain, that the foundations of this code are liberty and equality, that all Blacks shall be free.
Kouté la libèté k’ap palé nan kè nou tou. Those words of Boukman sounded in my ears again while Toussaint read, but I did not know if I trusted the words of this blanc Leclerc so well. In some other place in my head I heard the words which Paul Lafrance had said to General Lacroix at Port-au-Prince, before I came back to Toussaint again. That seemed like a long time ago, but still those words were clear.
It looked like Toussaint was not well satisfied with the words Leclerc had sent. He stopped reading and dropped the letter on the table and spoke to Christophe in the same loud voice that reached all the other ears in the room.
“He may claim he is writing a law to safeguard our freedom,” Toussaint said. “But until that law is written and declared to France, whatever he claims means nothing.”
“Yes,” said Christophe, “Oui, mon général, of course you are right—but I believe the Captain-General is true to his word, for when I met with him at Haut du Cap, he let me go back to my men without hindrance, just as he promised there—”
Christophe was pointing to the letter on the table, but Toussaint had caught it up and crushed it in his hand. Toussaint was on his feet, and Christophe too, but Christophe was flung back away from the table as if the force of Toussaint’s words had pushed him.
“You met Leclerc? You dare to meet Leclerc without my order?”
I had not seen such a djab climb on top of Toussaint’s head since the day when he ordered Bouquart to step out of the line and shoot himself. But if he ordered the same to Christophe now, I thought that maybe Christophe would not obey. It looked like Toussaint was going to burn the letter in the candle flame, but then he stopped himself and let the ball of paper roll on the table. Then for the first time he seemed to know that others were there listening.
“Guards!” he shouted. “Clear out this room.”
I saw this order was for me, since Riau belonged to the honor guard now, so I turned and helped to herd the others out into the square. Some went away, but I stayed under the shelter of the balcony in front of the headquarters house, watching the rain pour down over the empty stones of the square. With so much noise of the rain I could hear nothing from inside, but Christophe stayed there for a long time with Toussaint.
When the rain had stopped I went looking for Guiaou, and found out he had gone down to Ennery, one or two days before. Instead of Guiaou I met Bienvenu, who had come up from the Cahos with a message that Dessalines had fever again and was resting at his house in Marchand, leaving the longer part of the Cahos line to the Colonel Montauban. It was a long time since I saw Bienvenu, before La Crête à Pierrot, and I was glad to see him now. He had a woman who was cooking callaloo, and gave me some of it in a gourd. We sat to eat in a place where an overhanging ledge of rock had kept the ground dry from the rain, at the edge of the road from Marmelade to Dondon, where many of our soldiers camped.
Bienvenu told me a lot of things I did not know about what happened at the fort of La Crête à Pierrot. He was glad to know from me that Doctor Hébert was still alive and had got safely into Le Cap. Bienvenu knew that Rochambeau had killed all our wounded men with the bayonet when the French blanc soldiers came into the fort at the end, so he thought maybe the d
octor had been killed too. I had not known before that Bienvenu had put so much work into protecting the doctor’s life.
“I have more happiness for you,” I said. “Michel Arnaud is still alive too and safe in Le Cap with the doctor.”
“Is it so?” Bienvenu rubbed a place on the back of his head as if this word had made it ache or itch. “And the crazy one, his woman?”
“She may be crazy, but her spirit is too strong to let her die,” I said. “Maybe neither one of them will ever die.”
I was wrong in that idea, but I would not see it until later. Bienvenu kept rubbing that same spot on his neck, where I, Riau, had struck with my coutelas to break the metal cage Arnaud had locked around his head to stop him eating in the cane fields. Bienvenu ran away from Habitation Arnaud, so long ago before our rising and in my time of marronage, but the cage had spikes that caught in the bush, and it was I, Riau, who set him free. If not, the dogs of the maréchaussée would have caught him. I could already hear them when I found Bienvenu in the bush. It was a trick to measure the blow of the coutelas so it broke the cage but not his neck. Another time Riau had set Bouquart free of the iron nabots forged to his legs, but then Toussaint had killed Bouquart.
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