The Stone that the Builder Refused

by Madison Smartt Bell

  That evening at the Cigny house they dined on doves that the doctor had brought in the previous day from a hunt on the headland beyond Fort Picolet. His marksmanship was much praised at the table, along with the sauce Isabelle had organized out of oranges and cloves. Maillart ate half a dozen of the bite-sized birds and felt that he could have put away a few more, but afterward, when they’d repaired to the upstairs salon and he’d drunk half a glass of rum, he felt a pleasant glaze settle over him.

  There was the usual company—the Arnauds, the doctor, Nanon, and Tocquet, who’d come alone, without Elise. Though much recovered from her miscarriage, she seldom stirred out in the evenings, but remained in her own half-reconstructed domicile, where she and Tocquet had set up temporary quarters in the room where the doctor stored his paraphernalia and herbs.

  From downstairs, Maillart could hear Zabeth giggling, and Michau chaffing her in a lower, indistinguishable tone, as the two of them cleared spent dishes from the table. A few more callers trickled in, including Captain Daspir. He was without his usual companions tonight—Guizot and Cyprien had gone whoring, Maillart reckoned, to be more certain of their game. He himself was reasonably certain that Isabelle still entertained Daspir privately from time to time (and after all there really was some fiber in the boy), but tonight she was fully occupied by flirting with General Pamphile de Lacroix, who was enjoying himself tremendously, although with no notion of following through.

  Maillart found that he rather enjoyed watching Isabelle practice her wiles on Lacroix. A few years back, he’d have fumed with jealousy, as Daspir was visibly doing now. But tonight he was content to loll in his chair and admire her work, as he half attended to the gossip circulating through the room around him. It was possible that the late Bertrand Cigny had sometimes felt the same—that thought startled Maillart, so much so that he made, surreptitiously, the sign of the cross.

  He waited until the others had departed or retired to their rooms, till even Daspir, despairing of Isabelle’s favor, had run his finger around his collar and somewhat sulkily made his adieux. But Isabelle took no notice of Maillart either. As Daspir’s boots clomped down the stairs, she shrugged and sighed and strolled out onto the balcony. Maillart waited a moment before he followed.

  The night was cool, and breezy enough to send away the mosquitoes. Below, they heard the door slap shut, and Daspir appeared in the middle of the street, turning his wistful face up to Isabelle, who affected not to notice him. She’d raised her own eyes to the moon, and held them there until Daspir had dropped his head and begun limping slowly back toward the barracks.

  “You tease the boy terribly,” Maillart observed.

  “Ah.” Isabelle laughed softly, deep in her throat. “But sometimes I reward him, too.”

  Strangely, Maillart was not piqued by this remark, but rather felt pleased by her confidence. He watched, admiring the lift of her breasts as she raised both arms to loosen her hair. From their moments of intimacy, he knew there were now a few white strands in the current of dark curls flowing loose of their ribbon, although the moonlight was not strong enough to betray them. The breeze swirled up and the salt air moved an excitement through him. He wanted to sink his finger into her hair, but something moved him to reach for her hand instead.

  “Will you marry me?”

  Isabelle shook back her hair and turned to him, eyes wide with the moon.

  “No,” she said. “I will not.”

  “It is better to marry than to burn,” Maillart quoted.

  Isabelle’s fingers fluttered within his palm. She was looking at him with a distressingly distant curiosity.

  “I didn’t suspect you knew so much scripture,” she finally said, then disengaged her hand from his and curled it over the warped iron railing. “Well. Perhaps I prefer to burn.”

  Maillart felt no need to say anything further. In fact he was more surprised by his own question than her answer.

  “I am much sought after,” Isabelle said brightly. “Captain Daspir made the same offer, and not long ago.”

  “The pup!” said Maillart. “I should spank him with the flat of my sword.”

  “He meant well by it,” Isabelle said. She turned and looked up into his face.

  “I don’t want a husband,” she said. “I want a friend.”

  “Yes,” said Maillart. “I suppose I understand that.”

  She raised herself on her toes to kiss him very lightly on the cheek. “You’ve been a good friend to me,” she said. “Don’t stop.”

  A little before noon of the following day, Maillart was summoned by none other than Daspir to wait upon the Captain-General Leclerc. They walked together from the barracks of the Carénage, where Maillart was now billeted, up the slow rise to the gate of Government House. Maillart led them close along the house walls, to take advantage of whatever thin patches of shade could be found at that hour. Daspir stumped along behind him, uncharacteristically glum, and eyed Maillart with a certain suspicion whenever he thought the major was not looking.

  Of course, Maillart thought, he supposes I will win the prize we have both missed. He grinned at Daspir and stepped toward the middle of the street, throwing back his shoulders and expanding his chest, letting the full sun pour all over him, and glancing back from time to time to see if Daspir was appreciating the implications of his display. But after all he found small pleasure in this teasing. The truth was he’d gone home alone himself last night, unsatisfied as the younger man, though he hadn’t felt the sharpness of frustration that came steaming off of Daspir.

  Maillart slackened his pace, letting Daspir overtake him, and dropped his hand on the captain’s shoulder, giving it an amiable squeeze. Daspir recoiled at the gesture, at first. But his humor seemed to lighten as they walked on. The courtship of a woman such as Isabelle would render a man philosophical, Maillart thought, and that was what he wanted his attitude to convey, though he could not have phrased the words aloud.

  When they had been admitted at the gate of the Government compound, Maillart saw the heavy, tight-knit figure of Dessalines preceding them along the avenue of scorched palm trunks. The black general climbed the steps, slapping his thigh with his plumed hat, and disappeared into the shadows of the doorway. Once they got into the corridor themselves, it was a little cooler, though not calm, for the hall echoed with the clattering of hammers of laborers still busy replacing sections of the roof. Dessalines went into the Governor’s antechamber, and a moment later Christophe emerged, passing the two white officers with the barest flicker of acknowledgment. Maillart caught a wisp of his mustache in the corner of his mouth and chewed it as he pondered.

  Dessalines had already been admitted to the inner chamber, and the door was shut. Daspir would have knocked to announce their arrival, but Maillart shook his head and motioned him to one of the chairs that lined the wall, under the long casements where shards of glass shattered in the fire still hung in the melted leading. Maillart had no desire to disturb Dessalines—would rather not cross his path at all, though that looked unavoidable. And surely there was no love lost between Christophe and Dessalines these days.

  They waited. Daspir was restless, crossing and uncrossing his legs, leaning forward, leaning back. His movements kept him well heated, kept the sweat rolling from his plump cheeks to the hollow of his throat. Maillart, whose years in Saint Domingue had taught him better, kept perfectly still, except for his breath, not even troubling to wipe his face or forehead. He watched Dessalines’s hat, which hung from a peg; every so often a faint hint of breeze passed through the broken casements and stirred the plume that ornamented it. With the breeze, a few small golden bees hummed in and out of the comb of crazed lead. Presently Maillart’s sweat had dried and he was cool enough that it scarcely bothered him when Dessalines came glowering out.

  The black general did not seem to notice the two white officers either. His face was knotted; one hand gripped his ornate snuffbox as if he meant to crush it. He turned and snarled into the inner chamber
:

  “Mwen di—depi nan Ginen, li magouyé.”

  There was no reply from within. Daspir was staring frankly when Dessalines swung forward and locked eyes with him until he quailed. Then he snatched his hat down from the peg and stalked out of the antechamber.

  I say—since Africa, he has been a treacherous man.

  Maillart weighed the statement in his mind. Toussaint had not come from Africa; he was born here, in Saint Domingue, but Maillart knew the expression was figurative, and had little doubt it was Toussaint that Dessalines meant so to denounce. Leclerc did not understand much Creole, though, and if he did not have a translator with him, Dessalines’s parting shot would have been more on the order of a ritual curse.

  Now Leclerc himself appeared in the doorway, gripping a sheet of paper in his hand.

  “Gentlemen,” he said. “I have mastered them. I have mastered them all, and Dessalines especially.”

  “All?” Maillart got up to shut the outer door of the anteroom, which Dessalines had left ajar, and which Leclerc had not at all seemed to notice.

  “Christophe, Maurepas, Dessalines—they have each come to me separately to warn me of the threat Toussaint presents—to ask, as privately as they may, for his removal. So cunningly I have played them one against the other.”

  “But Toussaint has already been removed,” Maillart said. “What threat can he offer, retired at Ennery?”

  His reaction was a little too quick, he saw. It had, in fact, been spontaneous. Leclerc was looking at him a little sharply, and Maillart, remarking the glitter of his eyes, realized that at least a portion of his elevation came from fever.

  “I wanted you, Major Maillart,” he said, as if he had forgotten until now. “I sent for you—and you too—come in, Captain Daspir.” He gestured with the paper in his hand, which he had crumpled to a fan shape.

  Maillart went slowly into the inner room, which was small and narrow, windowless, mostly filled with a long chart table, lined with shelves whose blank lines were occasionally broken by this or that old wormholed book. Even during Toussaint’s rule he had not much frequented this place, whose closeness, must, and darkness now oppressed him. The clatter of hammers on the roof was audible here, though distant.

  “You see,” Leclerc nodded to them both. “As I am placed . . . it is the only way . . .”

  This would not be yellow fever, Maillart reflected, for that would have laid the Captain-General low immediately; it must be one of the lesser malaises, which might derange the senses no more than a glass too many of rum. Daspir, where he stood next to the door, looked quite uncomfortable, but maybe that was only the queer light of the oil lamp flickering on his face. After all, there was some sense in Leclerc’s muttering. The black troops who’d lately submitted outnumbered the French by a factor Maillart didn’t care to calculate. To play one leader against another might be the only feasible diplomacy. Maillart pictured Dessalines and Christophe and Maurepas sitting in this shadowed room, together or separately, with the oily yellow lamplight playing over the sweat-sheen of their indecipherable jet features. It was quite as likely that these three had got up a cabal to manipulate Leclerc as the other way around, and what would be their end? All three had reason to fret about Toussaint. Dessalines because he hoped to supplant him—because Dessalines had not been willing to suspend the fight. Maurepas and Christophe because their surrenders to the French would put them out of favor if Toussaint should ever return to any place of power. Maillart knew that Toussaint had refused Christophe’s most recent overture, and he had even rebuked his own brother Paul, for surrendering Santo Domingo City on the strength of a false order Toussaint had composed himself as a ruse.

  “You were close to Toussaint yourself at one time, I believe,” Leclerc was saying.

  Maillart stopped the windmill of his thoughts. Best to go carefully now, but he shouldn’t take too long to reply. “Faute de mieux!” he said brightly. For want of anything better! He scratched his head, for the aspect of innocent puzzlement the gesture might convey, and then went on, “We were all brothers in arms for a time, as you know, when Toussaint left the Spanish to join Laveaux in ninety-four.”

  “I understand you,” Leclerc said. “Do sit down.” He took a seat himself, between the dusty shelves and the table. Apparently he was satisfied by Maillart’s response, and Maillart himself felt pleased with it—true as far as it went, though it omitted that Maillart had commanded under Toussaint well before the latter had switched sides to the French. It was the sort of answer that Toussaint himself might have devised.

  “And your friend Doctor Hébert—he has been very, very thick with Toussaint, I believe?”

  “What?” said Maillart, now really alarmed—he remembered Pascal and Borghella and several other Frenchmen whom Leclerc had ordered deported to France as collaborators with the rebel regime. “In a way, but generally under duress—you know he survived at La Crête à Pierrot only because Dessalines wanted his services as a doctor, and from ninety-one on it has been the same. He met Toussaint as a prisoner in the camps of Grande Rivière.” This reply was probably more in the doctor’s interest than the one he would have given if he had been present to speak for himself. Leclerc was smiling, Maillart saw with some relief. The fever sweat shone on his forehead.

  “No, no,” he said, smoothing his damp hand over the dark mahogany surface of the table. “I mean no accusation. I only thought—” He looked up, his illness shining through his eyes. “. . . your friend might sound Toussaint for us. Discreetly. If he were to go down to Ennery, where I understand he has some connection.”

  “Of course, if you desire it,” Maillart said automatically. “But is he not more urgently needed here, with the cases of fever increasing?”

  “It seems no doctor can do any more than nurse our men along to their deaths,” Leclerc snapped, then lowered his voice. “I am sure Doctor Hébert is more knowledgeable than most, yet it might be a greater service to France . . .”

  “And do you believe Toussaint so dangerous?” Maillart said. “When he has so lately sworn his loyalty, and laid down his arms.”

  “No oath of his is worth the breath it takes to utter it,” Leclerc said, pushing back and knocking his shoulders into the shelves in exasperation. “He would rejoin the battle again at the first opportunity—well, if you doubt it, read this.” He pushed the sheet of paper toward Maillart, who hesitated for a moment, then spread it smooth. The letter was addressed to Adjutant-General Fontaine, not long since one of Toussaint’s staff officers.

  You don’t give me enough news, citizen. Try to stay in Le Cap for as long as you can. At La Tortue they said that General Leclerc’s health was poor, and you must take great care to keep me informed of it. We must look to North America for a . . .

  Arms, the writer must have meant; though he had not written out the word, it was plain enough. Maillart read on, silently. The drumming of the distant hammers ceased a moment, then resumed.

  I ask you if it might not be possible to win over someone close to the Captain-General, so as to set D . . . free—he would be most useful to me in North America. And get the message to Gengembre that he must not leave Borgne, where the field hands must not return to work. Write to me at Habitation Najac. Signed TOUSSAINT LOUVERTURE

  “I don’t recognize the hand,” Maillart said eventually. He was thinking: that D . . . would likely refer to Dommage, the commander who’d surrendered Jérémie and was now a prisoner at Le Cap.

  Leclerc sniffed. “Toussaint is unlettered, as is well enough known. He has no hand—his missives are the work of others.”

  But Toussaint was far from illiterate, as Maillart knew. On the contrary, he was widely and roundly read, though Leclerc was right that his correspondence was an amalgam of the styles of his several secretaries. This letter, roughly written and uncertainly, phonetically spelled, might actually be the product of Toussaint’s own hand—Toussaint deprived of his detachment of scribes. Or it might not. The signature looked much as it ou
ght, with a curlicue of the final e returning to enclose the usual three dots below the name.

  “I wonder,” Maillart said. “If there are so many whose interest is against Toussaint, might not this letter be a forgery?”

  “One might take you for one of his partisans still,” said Leclerc.

  “Not at all,” Maillart said. “But surely, you must consider that any action against Toussaint would provoke all manner of popular disturbances.”

  “Of the sort that plague us even now, Major—the sort which Toussaint is covertly encouraging.” Leclerc flicked the edge of the letter with the nail of his forefinger, then slid it across the table to Captain Daspir.

  “Besides, another letter has been intercepted,” Leclerc went on. Daspir looked up from the wrinkled sheet that had been passed to him.

  “In the second letter,” Leclerc said acidly, “Toussaint desires the citizen Fontaine to inform him how frequently the death carts go to La Fossette.”

  Maillart kept silent. In these last weeks, Le Cap had become a charnel house. Each night more bodies were stacked at the gates of the barracks and hospitals to be carted to the cemetery at dawn.

  “I will speak to Doctor Hébert today,” he said. “If it is your order.”

  Leclerc inclined his head, and Maillart rose from his seat. Daspir followed him, blinking, into the brilliant sunlight of the Government courtyard. Maillart turned to face the captain before he took his leave, though he was not quite sure what he wanted to say.

  “There is a rumor that Leclerc’s secret program, or that of the First Consul, is to arrest and deport all of the black officers one by one.”

  Daspir’s eyes were steady on Maillart. There was sometimes a hardness in his eyes which the major would not have expected from the concupiscent contours of his face. The contrast would appeal to Isabelle, he thought.