Two hundred and fifty horses rode westward from Dondon at a quick trot that soon broke into a canter. Doctor Hébert had come to believe that both Toussaint and his white charger must have the night vision of a pair of bats. At times the trails wound clear of cover and their way was lit by wheeling constellations, Bear and Eagle, the Northern Cross, but mostly their way lay under the tight-knit ceiling of tree branches and was dark and tortured and treacherous as the slick bloody twistings of a dragon’s entrails. For all that, Toussaint never set a pace slower than a brisk trot, and often enough they seemed to be riding a full gallop through the pitch black of the night.
Twenty minutes were sufficient to secure Gros Morne for the French Republic. It was still full night even when they reached Limbé, did away with a couple of Spaniards hustled from their cots to meet their fate, and informed the black garrison that they had just become French. Toussaint sent a detachment of twenty-five riders to carry the news up the mountain to Port Margot, then on to Borgne, on the north coast, while his main force rode south again, climbing the mountains on trails so steep the doctor had to lie full length across his horse’s back to help the balance. At Plaisance, Toussaint left Paparel in charge of the newly republican post, and they rode on with hardly a pause. The stars were just fading when they had reached the height of Morne Pilboreau.
Toussaint called a halt, mysteriously, for there was no settlement, only a goat path running down the precipice, then forking toward Marmelade in one direction and Ennery in the other. Perhaps the kalfou had some meaning for him here. At any rate Toussaint got down from Bel Argent and walked backward down the line, murmuring a word or two to different riders, laying a hand of the flank of a horse to be sure it had not overheated. The scabbard of his sword snicked over stones in the path as he walked.
Several of the men had begun taking out bread and cold meat from their saddlebags. The doctor saw he would have time to dismount. His legs were rubbery after such a long time in the saddle, and the inseams of his trousers chafed him painfully as he walked. He stood at the trail-head and looked down the dark gulf. It seemed impossible that they should have come so far—full circle or nearly—in the space of a single night. No one could succeed in such a ride; surely he must be dreaming it all. Indeed he did feel half asleep. But somewhere down there in the darkness were Nanon and Paul and Elise and Sophie, as safe as they could be in such a country, he supposed, now that Toussaint had redrawn the lines to surround them. The peaks of the eastern mountains were just discernible against the sky as it gradually lightened into a blue—this was the Cordon de l’Ouest, French now, suddenly, all the way back to the Spanish frontier. All the passways and crossroads along the distance they had come were now charged with the power of Toussaint Louverture.
The doctor walked on his unsteady legs toward the head of the column. After his long riding, the ground seemed to rock up at him in waves. The dragging edge of his boot knocked a stone over the rim and it fell down the dark gorge with no sound of a landing. The doctor came to a halt beside Bel Argent and cocked his head in the starlight. Toussaint stood on the lee side of his horse’s shoulder; he was so short that only the white feathers of his hat showed over Bel Argent’s mane, but the doctor could hear him muttering, and he heard the click of beads. After a puzzled moment he realized that Toussaint was saying the rosary, murmuring scraps of Latin in a throttled whisper: Pater Noster, Ave Maria. A repetition as each wooden bead clicked down the string. The doctor withdrew and walked back to his own horse. Maillart, who had already mounted, looked at him curiously, but the doctor only shook his head and stood staring out over the well of darkness that was the gorge.
Let God save all whom I love from harm, he thought. It was the only prayer he could bring to his mind, and it did not seem to have much authority.
They rode down from Morne Pilboreau through the switchbacks of the dry scrub-covered mountains, silent but for the slap of stirrup leathers and the occasional farting of a horse. The coastal plain was a white-dust-covered desert dotted with small shaley white collines, and at the height of one of these had been raised three spindly wooden crosses outside a rectangular frame of poles, whether for a church or hûnfor was uncertain. A woman in a white dress stood at the crest of the hill, looking no bigger than a toothpick doll; she turned her black face to track their descent, her white skirt whipping in the steady wind that came from the sea.
The morning mist had just fully lifted when they rode into Gonaives. A plume of white dust lay over half a mile’s worth of their back trail, and a trio of buzzards hung above the column as well, but the Spanish of the garrison were sluggish and off their guard, and in any case knew of nothing to fear from Toussaint Louverture, who found them entertaining a handful of French émigrés over a late breakfast of jerked beef and coffee. He and a number of his officers strode into the mess hall, their spurs jingling. the doctor and Maillart bringing up the rear.
There were six or seven of the French, costumed much in the manner of fugitive-slave hunters from the old maréchaussée, except for one who wore a black clerk’s coat and appeared vaguely familiar to the doctor. The recognition was mutual, for the man winked at him; when his eyes shifted uneasily to Toussaint, the doctor recognized Bruno Pinchon.
Peremptorily for him, Toussaint instructed Belair and Clervaux to escort the French émigrés from the room. Six of them rose with studiedly empty expressions; only Pinchon’s face betrayed obvious fear. He caught the doctor’s sleeve as he passed and drew him out of the room with the group.
In the sunlight outside the barracks, a squad of black soldiers fell in beside the French; the latter had not been disarmed, and now walked with their hands cocked over their pistol grips, except for Pinchon, who appeared to be unarmed, and who whispered urgently in the doctor’s ear.
“The pistol will be charged this time—will it not? But I know it.”
“What are you talking about?” the doctor said, distracted. The salt smell became stronger as they walked down toward the port, and the light was so bright and hot that he was forced to squint.
“It will be murder, man . . .” Pinchon clawed at the doctor’s forearm with both hands. “Help me, do something, can’t you? I haven’t even a pen knife.”
They had just come against the breakwater. There were no real ships at the moorings, only a few small coastal sloops. Charles Belair turned, cleared his throat, and addressed the doctor politely.
“It would be best for you to return to the casernes.”
At that, Pinchon ducked behind the doctor, seized his collar and with surprising strength began to drag him backward. “Au secours!” he kept screaming. “Sauvez-moi!”
The doctor was too startled to resist; the other Frenchmen had already fallen—not one had had time to get off a shot or even draw his weapon. He let himself be dragged along the harbor front, his muscles slack, stumbling in his backward steps. Several firearms were aimed their way, but Pinchon had shielded himself too well behind the doctor’s body. Belair clucked his tongue regretfully, and tapped his finger on his sword hilt. A couple of the black soldiers took his meaning, drew their knives and began to advance.
Pinchon suddenly released the doctor, pushing him sharply forward. With a frog-like leap, Pinchon cleared the breakwater; a crackle of gunfire from the sloops came almost simultaneously with the splash. The doctor fell on his hands and knees, skinning the butts of his palms as he pitched down. The others of Belair’s squad had also taken cover behind the knee-high wall. The doctor peeped over and saw two sloops putting out on the still water, manned by more Frenchmen, some of whom were firing muskets at the shore, while others reached out to haul the water-logged Pinchon aboard their vessels. There were a few moments of cursing and wild rounds whining, but soon enough the little sailboats were out of range and the shooting stopped.
Somewhat belatedly, the doctor followed Belair’s advice and walked back up to the casernes. Maillart was sitting alone in the mess hall, sipping the dregs of a cup of coffee with a s
our expression on his face.
“What’s become of the Spaniards?” the doctor inquired.
“It appears that Toussaint has ordered them shot,” Maillart said.
The doctor sat down heavily and began rubbing his scalp, where a sunburn was peeling.
“It appears that our compatriots had come up from Saint Marc as emissaries of the English,” Maillart said, “who are expected in force here sometime before noon. The English mean to take over Gonaives in order to control the Upper Artibonite valley more effectively—this with the consent of the Spanish, I might add. There was some compact concluded at Santo Domingo City. Toussaint finds himself in a very bad humor about all these developments—his Spanish commanders, if you can imagine it, did not take him into their complete confidence.”
“Ah,” the doctor said glumly.
“This coffee is cold—ill brewed as well.” Maillart drew back the cup as if he meant to dash it against the wall, then changed his mind and set it on the table. He stood up. “No use to brood,” he said. “We are good republicans now, after all.” He dropped his hand on the doctor’s shoulder as he moved toward the door. “Bon courage—aux armes—vive la France.”
Outside, men were clearing away the bodies of the Spaniards, who had been shot against the side wall of the casernes. Toussaint had ordered the cannon of the fort dragged out and brought to bear on the road from the south.
The English arrived in the forenoon, also followed by a flight of vultures. “Trahison,” Toussaint hissed between his teeth, when he saw the redcoats coming into focus through the dust, apparently still resentful that his Spanish superiors had not let him into their new compact with the English. All in all, there had been betrayal enough to go round everywhere, the doctor thought, but was prudent enough to keep this notion to himself. Besides, his own glands were humming, and he doubted he could speak without a tremble in his voice.
He sat his horse between Maillart and Vaublanc, who both held their hands grimly on their saber hilts. The smell of horse sweat was sharp and acrid, and the light and the color seemed brighter than was usual. The English kept coming, so near the doctor could see their faces. He had no plan. When he looked over his shoulder he saw the Spanish colors still flying over Toussaint’s line. At that moment Toussaint dropped his arm and a volley of grapeshot raked the front line of the English.
“Vive la France!” Many voices took up the cry when Toussaint uttered it, as the cavalry charge swept out from behind the cannon. The doctor’s horse moved out with the others, which he had somehow not foreseen. He had no saber, though his pistols were primed—but he did not mean to harm anyone, unless he came under direct attack. Both his hands were knotted in his horse’s mane. He watched Maillart, a half-length ahead, chop down a British grenadier who’d raised a bayonet to him. The British were in great disarray, but they were also very numerous. Toussaint called a retreat, and again the doctor’s horse followed the general movement with small direction from the rider. As the cavalry swept back behind the cannon, another round of grapeshot lashed the British line. The redcoats scrambled back out of range, then slowly began to regroup.
The doctor hitched his horse to a gun carriage and began to attend to such of the wounded who were unable to keep their feet. Toussaint was pacing and grinding his jaws, in a very high state of excitement; the doctor had never seen him so agitated. A runner came out from the town and whispered something in his ear. Toussaint grinned as he took off his hat and adjusted the knot of his scarlet headcloth. “Thanks be to God,” he said. “They have sent no warships.”
But Gonaives had been lightly garrisoned—Toussaint had found few men there to add to his two hundred-odd riders, so the British had them seriously outnumbered. Now they remounted a couple of longer cannons they had been towing backslung behind mules. Presently shells began to fall on Toussaint’s force, and the vultures who had settled on the dead between the lines rose and flapped away, troubled by the racket. Meanwhile, the British began a flanking maneuver across the flat open country on the coastal side.
Throughout the next disagreeable hour, the doctor crawled on hands and knees behind the gun carriages, his face pouring sweat, stanching wounds as best he could or sawing off limbs too mangled to be saved. Guiaou helped drag the injured to him, and afterward hauled them farther to the rear. Everything stank of blood and gun powder, and quite often a British cannonball sailed over their heads and plopped down on the dry cracked earth behind them. At one point Maillart came to borrow the doctor’s horse, crying that his own had been shot out from under him; the doctor didn’t know what became of him after that. Toussaint kept leading sorties to break up the British infantry squares moving in on his right, but the main British line could not be broken.
The cannon balls mostly missed the mark, but the shells exploded after they had fallen and did considerable damage. Wounded men began to drop faster than Guiaou could ferry them. The doctor was half deafened from the explosions, but he did hear a great general shout when it came, and then, farther off, the skirling of conchs and the eerie drone of an African war cry springing at once from a great many throats. He stood up recklessly and shaded his eyes. Two thousand men were coming down from the dry northern hills at a dog trot, led by Jean-Jacques Dessalines. They must have held the same gait for half the night, coming the straightest possible way from Dondon to Gonaives.
The British were even more dismayed than Toussaint’s men were heartened. They broke ranks and bolted down the road toward Saint Marc. Dessalines swept over their line, capturing both their cannon. All at once the British were in full flight, tumbling pell-mell across the salt flats and through the cactus of the Savane Désolée, harried by Toussaint’s cavalry and pursued at a greater distance by the infantry Dessalines had brought, the horde of men loping along like a pack of dark wolves after the redcoats.
Doctor Hébert tied off a final bandage on the stump of a severed leg; the patient whimpered a little, his eyes glazed with shock, as Guiaou and another man gathered him up and carried him to the rear. The doctor stood up and shaded his eyes to watch the dust of the receding battle. Now the vultures felt enough at ease to settle again on the nearby corpses. Guiaou came up again, leading a big speckled gray pony by a rope bridle.
Guiaou pointed at the dust cloud. No saddle on the pony, the doctor noted. He checked his pistols and looked for his rifle, then remembered that it had gone with Maillart and his own horse. Winding his fingers in the pony’s mane, he swung himself astride. Guiaou, with considerably less confidence, scrambled up behind him. The pony tried a buck but the weight was too great, so that he only skittered sideways, cramping his haunches. Guaiou caught the doctor around the waist with one arm and the throat with the other, threatening to strangle him. The doctor broke the choke hold and rejoined Guiaou’s hand to the other at his waist. It had been fifteen years since he had ridden bareback, but he gripped with his knees as best he could, and they set off southward at an queasy jog trot.
Even doubled on such a mount, they had soon outdistanced the black foot soldiers. As for the British, their heels had been very much lightened by fear, but after the first couple of miles many began to drop in the white alkaline dust, prostrate from heat and dehydration. Vultures hunched on the ground nearby, waiting for the black infantry to come up and dispatch these victims with thrusts of bayonet or coutelas—they were not worth a cartridge. The rout was perfect all the way to Pont d’Ester, but there the British had left a reserve force, which was able to draw up cannon on the south side of the river to cover the crossing of the fleeing redcoats.
Toussaint rode up and down the river bank, in as near to a rage as the doctor had ever seen him. From across the river, the British began firing grape. The doctor was glad enough to slip down from the pony; he covered himself behind the shoulder of his overtaxed mount. Bel Argent reared, and a moment later the doctor saw that Toussaint had been hit, though he himself seemed unaware of it; he gave part of his attention to controlling his horse and the rest to the u
nfolding of the battle. But red gashes ran backward across his hip as if he’d been raked by the claws of a beast. The doctor ducked under the pony’s neck and ran to grab at Toussaint’s boot heel.
“Sir! you are wounded!”
Toussaint looked at him without recognition and kicked himself free. Bel Argent wheeled, and the doctor got a mouthful of horse tail for his pains. His palm had come away blood-slick from the boot leather. For a moment he tried to imagine the situation without Toussaint Louverture in command of it. A sour bubble burst in the back of his mouth and spread an evil taste across his tongue.
Maillart and Clervaux came riding up on the other side of Bel Argent. “For the love of—” Maillart began, while Clervaux talked through him, “Attention, parrain, au blessé . . .” From a further distance, the mulatto officer called Blanc Cassenave watched with a hooded expression. Another volley of grapeshot flared out, and all the horses laid back their ears and scrambled. The doctor fell in the white alkali dust, finding himself eye to eye with Guiaou for an instant, then rolled to avoid lashing hooves and came up onto his feet. Maillart had drawn his rifle from the scabbard and was thrusting it toward him, at the same time jerking his jaw across the river. The doctor took the weapon and while Guiaou calmed his horse he steadied the octagon barrel across the animal’s back and drew his aim on one of the British cannoniers. Blowback from the priming pan stung his cheek when he squeezed the trigger, and kept him from seeing if he had hit his mark, but the British cannon did go silent for a moment, and in the window of quiet the doctor called out to Toussaint.
Master of the Crossroads Page 18