Master of the Crossroads

by Madison Smartt Bell

  “Listen.” Maillart’s throat worked; he swallowed a portion of his shame. Below the rampart he saw Alsé holding his own horse: French uniform in the left saddlebag, Spanish in the right. Himself in mufti, uncommitted. The horse itself was a stunted specimen, raised on short commons and hard work. Maillart had turned his coat for the death of a king. It seemed foolish now, unconvincing. His connections to the aristocracy of the ancien régime were far more tenuous than those of Laveaux, who looked at him now, attentively.

  “When I—when I . . . left Le Cap,” Maillart swallowed again with some difficulty.

  “Yes, man, go on.”

  “I entered Spanish service.” It was said. The words came more readily now. “Since then I have been under orders of one of the black chiefs, he who is known generally as Toussaint Louverture—perhaps you may have heard of him.”

  Laveaux looked peculiarly interested. “Not only that, but I have tried to send him various messages—through l’Abbé Delahaye. Tell me, do you bring an answer?”

  “No—I don’t know—not exactly,” Maillart stuttered. “I don’t know anything about that . . . but it would be like him to open communication on several lines at once. I am to tell you that he would be . . . receptive.”

  “Receptive.” Laveaux’s regard was fixed.

  “He now commands four thousand troops, or a little more—not the largest force in the interior, yet others might join him were he to change sides. His men are well trained and well disciplined. I myself—”

  “Of course, of course,” Laveaux said. “What does he ask?”

  Maillart looked over the rampart. Tocquet stood smoking, beside the horse, a tendril of smoke curling up from his straw hat. How painful the sight, the odor, must be to Laveaux in his deprivation. Maillart was grateful that he himself had never really taken to the habit.

  “I can only convey him your proposals,” Maillart said. “But . . .”

  “In your opinion?”

  “He would wish to retain his rank.”

  “Which is?”

  “In the Spanish service, maréchal du camp.”

  “But certainly, or no, a promotion even,” Laveaux said. “Beyond that? You understand there is no money to be offered . . .”

  “I believe that none would be asked. Only liberty—general liberty, for all the former slaves.”

  “My friend—” Laveaux seized Maillart’s hand in both his own. “C’est assuré.”

  Suddenly the two men were hugging and thumping each other on the back. Maillart’s throat constricted, his eyes pricked, he felt himself relieved of his guilt, pardoned for the news he’d brought. He had always liked Laveaux, in spite of politics. But for a moment he broke the embrace and leaned over the wall, frightening the lizard, to call down to Tocquet.

  “Xavier, come up quickly, and if you please, bring your cigars.”

  Tocquet and Laveaux struck an amiable acquaintance, which rather surprised Maillart, who had known his traveling companion to be altogether wary of regular army officers. Perhaps it was the cigars, the almost humble gratitude of Laveaux’s acceptance, that eased their meeting. But Laveaux was generally without any pretension which might have been associated either with his former title of nobility or his present military rank. A Jacobin? Perhaps at the least he was a truly convinced republican. Maillart mused on the thought, listening to the others talk. Tocquet had become unusually voluble, for him.

  “My ancestral home,” he announced, gesturing with the tip of his cheroot at Tortuga off beyond the breakers.

  “Then you must be a flibustier,” Laveaux said.

  Tocquet shucked up his shirt sleeve and pumped his arm to raise a vein. “The blood of pirates, Spaniards, Frenchmen, Indians . . .” He traced the blue line on his inner forearm. “Possibly Africans. Certainly whores.” He laughed and dropped his arm, looking toward the jungled island. “My grandfathers came out of there, it’s true. Buccaneers to the bone, I can testify.”

  “Then it was they who won this colony for France,” Laveaux said with a thoughtful air.

  Tocquet’s face shadowed. “As you prefer.” He tipped ash over the parapet, frowning, reached for a drink that wasn’t there. For the moment, no one spoke. A dark cloud hovered over Morne des Pères, behind and above the fort, and in the opposite direction the sea purpled with the approach of night. Someone shouted from below the wall. Tocquet leaned over, called an answer, then turned to Laveaux with his crocodile smile.

  “Order them up,” he said. “They’ve been requisitioning.”

  Presently Bazau and Gros-jean appeared, carrying a stalk of plantains, green-skinned oranges, a rough-surfaced ceramic jug of tafia, and two live chickens.

  “I’m overwhelmed,” Laveaux confessed. He sent one of his barefoot soldiers to find cups.

  Tocquet took one of the speckled hens and whipped off its head with a practiced twirl, then handed it to Gros-jean to pluck.

  “I’ll cook for you,” he said. “Façon boucanière.”

  They ate together, the six black soldiers and the three white men, seated on chunks of masonry from the old fallen walls. Tocquet had built his fire in the lee of some few stones still mortared together. He cooked the chickens spitted on a green stick, roasted the plantains in their skins. As they ate, Laveaux quizzed the black soldiers about details of their service with Toussaint. Afterward, they drank rum flavored with chunks of the oranges. The wind had shifted, bringing a swamp smell and clouds of mosquitoes from l’étang du Coq. Maillart accepted one of Tocquet’s cigars, hoping the smoke would discourage the insects.

  Slapping mosquitoes and staring at the fire, they discussed the dispositions of the enemy. The English were well established at Môle Saint Nicolas, though the port was mostly garrisoned by formerly French troops—the Dillon regiment, much distrusted (and justly, it now seemed) by Commissioner Sonthonax. Laveaux had intelligence that Major O’Farrel, Dillon’s commander, had turned over the post without a shot.

  “I know him,” Maillart said.

  “Ah,” said Laveaux. “A convicted royalist?”

  “Merely a bloody Irishman, I should say,” Maillart said. “What if I rode that way, tomorrow?”

  Laveaux looked at him narrowly across the flames. “What indeed?”

  Maillart nodded thoughtfully. Perhaps one success would breed another. If one has turned his coat the first time, why not again? Though this was a thought he kept to himself.

  Let Tocquet, then, carry the news to Toussaint at Ennery, Laveaux proposed.

  Tocquet looked down into the fire. “Yes,” he said, but his pause was noticeable.

  “You hesitate,” Laveaux observed.

  “Hardly.” Tocquet roped his long hair between thumb and forefinger and flipped it over his left shoulder. “I had thought to travel east along the coast . . . to Fort Dauphin, perhaps. But your mission is of more importance.” He smiled crookedly, tilting his face to the coals. “For the good of France.”

  “Assuredly,” Laveaux said. “You have known Toussaint for a long time.”

  It was not a question, though Maillart did not understand Laveaux’s confidence in presenting it as a fact. Unless perhaps Tocquet’s activities as a border smuggler had been reported to the French general. Tocquet looked up, his eyes narrowing as they would do when he had been piqued.

  “Horsemen have sought to know him, since his days at Bréda,” Tocquet said. “He knows all there is to know of how to school a horse and treat its ailments.”

  “I see,” said Laveaux. “And do you know his mind?”

  Tocquet lowered his eyes to the dwindling fire. “No,” he said, and then, in a softer murmur, “I don’t suppose there’s anyone who knows his mind.”

  The subject fell away in silence. The flames had settled into coals. With his boot toe, Tocquet pushed an ember farther toward the center.

  Maillart wondered a little that Laveaux had not pursued his question further. Of course, he was in no position to refuse Toussaint’s proffer by reason of mis
trust, and perhaps that explanation ought to be sufficient. But he wondered enough to remain wakeful after he and Tocquet had retired to the fort and stretched out on their bedding.

  “Why would you go toward Fort Dauphin?” Maillart finally asked the darkness. “You would be at risk from the Spanish along that road.”

  “I don’t expect any difficulty from the Spanish,” Tocquet said. “In fact, I meant to cross the border as far as Dajabón, or farther, though I didn’t like to tell your general that. You see the shortage of tobacco here—there’s money to be made.”

  Another question balanced on Maillart’s tongue, but he did not ask it, for Tocquet had begun to feign a snore.

  In the morning they brewed coffee requistioned and ground by Bazau. Maillart’s head was heavy from the rum he’d drunk the night before, but as the coffee clarified him, the elation of his success began to return, along with hopes of what he might accomplish when he reached Le Môle.

  With Tocquet and four of Toussaint’s men he rode to the principal crossroads at the edge of town. There they drew up their horses before parting. Maillart’s horse was restive, shying at a red rag bundle tied in a tree near the intersection—the mark of superstition, someone’s ouanga.

  “There’s something I wonder,” Maillart said.

  “Oh?” Tocquet looked down the road he meant to take.

  “Why should Toussaint choose this moment to join the French Republic? When their forces are at their very weakest. When their chance to win seems nil. And I was struck that Laveaux did not inquire further into the matter.”

  “Perhaps your general has sense enough not to ask questions without an answer,” Tocquet said, and then, quickly, “Sorry! I don’t mean to offend.”

  But Maillart was only struggling with his horse, which had again begun dancing; he sawed on its mouth and turned its head out of view of the red cloth bundle trembling in the tree.

  “I’ll give you a thought on the subject,” Tocquet said. “I don’t say it’s my own opinion.”

  Maillart had brought his mount under control. He raised his eyes to meet Tocquet’s.

  “Suppose that Toussaint has already concluded that he himself is going to win,” Tocquet said, with his crocodile smile. “Then he would have only to choose which of the other parties will win with him.”

  With that, Tocquet tugged down the brim of his hat and quirted his horse down the road toward Ennery, his retainers bringing up his rear. Maillart swung in the opposite direction. For the moment it seemed to him better to ride than think. But he had gone only a few dozen yards when his horse spooked again at another rag in the branches, and turned white-eyed and rearing in a half-circle.

  Tocquet had disappeared with no trace of his going. A single tall young woman, balancing a basket of charcoal on her head, traversed the crossroads. She walked slowly, gracefully erect, and sang a song Maillart could not understand. When she had passed, she left the crossroads empty. His horse calm now, Maillart rode for Le Môle.

  6

  Doctor Hébert woke a little before dawn. He did not know when he had learned this—to assign the moment of his waking before he slept at night—but now the procedure never failed, and he no longer needed anyone to rouse him. Cocks were crowing up and down the mountain gorges surrounding Habitation Thibodet, and he could hear the chink of harness and the snuffling of horses being assembled in the yard outside the grand’case.

  Nanon slept half turned toward him, her leg hitched up across his hip. The movement of her breath on the bare skin of his shoulder felt very sweet to him. He disengaged carefully, not wanting to wake her. He had laid out what he needed the night before so that now he could find it all by touch and dress quickly and quietly in the dark.

  Someone lit a lamp at the table on the gallery beyond their bedroom, and a little light leaked through the slits of the jalousies. The doctor padded across the room and looked at Paul, in the cradle positioned near the window. The little boy slept on his back, lips parted and snoring delicately. He had long black eyelashes, like his mother’s. A mosquito whined and lit on the back of the boy’s plump hand; Doctor Hébert reached down and extinguished it with a pinch.

  Nanon murmured and turned in the bed; her arm flung out heavily across the pillow where the doctor’s head had lain. He felt himself quicken and rise, involuntarily. Perhaps she was only feigning sleep, but it was better so; they had no skill for partings. He holstered his two pistols, picked up his rifle and his boots, and went softly out onto the gallery.

  The air was cool, misty; there was the green smell of morning and the odor of fresh coffee. Toussaint’s hat lay on the table by the lamp and coffee pot; the black general’s face was withdrawn in shadow. Hébert’s sister, Elise, sat across from him, a shawl wrapped around her shoulder over the cotton shift she wore, both hands curled around the steaming cup she sipped from. The doctor sat down beside her and pulled on his boots. Elise poured him coffee and generously stirred in sugar. Toussaint inclined his head, as if listening, but no one spoke.

  The doctor drained the small coffee cup in three rapid gulps. Daylight was beginning to come up now, paling the glow of the lamp. Now they could see each other’s faces. Still no one spoke. Elise’s face was puffy, comfortable from sleep. The doctor wondered where Tocquet was at this moment, and if she might be thinking the same thing, and where he might be himself in two weeks’ time. Toussaint rose, put on his hat. The doctor laid his palm briefly over the warm back of his sister’s hand, then followed the black general down the steps. His absence ought to be a brief one, but in fact it was impossible to calculate or predict. He felt a fluttering in his own stomach as he tightened the girth on the brown gelding he would ride. Who knew indeed when he might return, or if . . .

  The feeling dissipated once he was mounted and riding with the others up through the coffee plantings toward the backbone of the ridge above. Now and then a thought of Nanon or the child would flick toward him, but he would simply let it pass; such thoughts were painful if allowed to linger. The morning mist was lifting from the trees and the more the light brightened and turned yellow, the louder and more often the little cocks crowed in the jungle on every side. Their party was a strong one: one hundred crack cavalrymen all well-mounted, and the doctor the only blanc among them—Toussaint had brought none of his white officers this time. Instead the black officers he most esteemed were present: Moyse, Maurepas, Dessalines. In the middle of the file of riders were several little donkeys loaded with packs and one blue mule whose only burden was an empty saddle.

  Coffee and sugar prickled in the doctor’s blood, yet at the same time he grew drowsy as the sun grew warmer. The column kept an easy pace, winding over the stone road into the mountains. He scarcely needed to mind his mount; the brown gelding merely followed the horse ahead. The doctor swayed easily in the saddle as if on a wave, the stock of his rifle, sheathed in a woven scabbard, stroking against his knee.

  At the height of Morne Pilboreau the doctor twisted in the saddle and looked back in the direction they had come. A twinge touched him as he thought of Nanon and the child. Habitation Thibodet and all the canton of Ennery were hidden by the involutions of the mountains, though beyond the view was clear to the blue haze above the ocean and the coastal town of Gonaives. By now it was very warm and the doctor envied the shirtless soldiers who surrounded him. Immediately ahead of him, riding double behind Quamba, was that new man named Guiaou, his torso bare but for the cross-strap of his cartridge case and the tissue of scars which covered him like a garment. The doctor recalled bits of the man’s story, which he had scrawled down at Toussaint’s behest, and tried to match them with the scars: there the deep wounds from coutelas blows across the forearm, shoulder, and neck, and lower on the rib cage and across the lower spine a crazily mangled area bordered by what suggested the print of a shark’s jaw. Still Guiaou carried himself straight and limber, unheedful of the healed tatters of his flesh, as if he were not made of meat at all, but something stronger.

  Thr
ee men farther up the line, Jean-Jacques Dessalines announced in Creole that it was very hot indeed, then took off his uniform coat and shirt and folded them neatly across his saddle’s pommel. The whole of his broad back was a web of cicatrix, thick scars of old whippings crisscrossed, standing raised and pale against the black of his skin, white and wormy as the bellies of fat snakes. The doctor stared with a dull fascination, but when Dessalines sensed his regard and began to turn, he let his gaze go drifting over the jungle. Just at the edge of the narrow path began a long, steep defile which turned stony at the bottom, where a stream belled gently over the rocks. The doctor would have liked to remove his own shirt, but he knew if he did, his weak skin would be broiled raw by the sun.

  The trail twisted, corkscrewed upward; on the mountain above them the belly of a blue-white cloud had lowered. Now they were riding up into the sky itself, it seemed; the foliage turned a darker, damper green; a thick, cold fog blanketed the trail. Those who had divested themselves of their coats now put them on again. For periods the fog was so heavy the doctor could see no farther than the tail of Quamba’s horse ahead of him. The cries of invisible birds surrounded them, and the purling of streams they could not see. When they stopped to drink and water the horses, the water the doctor scooped into his palms was warmer than he would have expected, and had a slightly sulfurous taste.

  They rode on, now down a declining grade, out of the cloud and the rain forest, emerging into the light of the westering sun. Once again it was very hot, so that the doctor felt sweat start immediately, under the layer of cold dampness he’d accrued on the mountain’s height. Fleetingly he thought of fever, then abandoned the thought as useless. He checked the priming of his rifle and pistols to be sure that the fog had not dampened the powder. They were riding down the wrinkles of the mountain into a lush green valley below. A cloud detached itself from the mountain behind and darkened and spread over them till all the sky had turned slate gray, but before the evening rain flooded down they had reached the valley floor and taken shelter in the town of Marmelade.