Master of the Crossroads

by Madison Smartt Bell

  Las Cahobas was taken. Riau had rejoined his regular troops and was organizing a house-to-house search for any enemy soldiers who might have gone to earth. Gasping, the doctor limped through the settling dust to the town square, still crading his long gun, which he had not once fired. Below the overhanging roof of a tavern opposite the church, Captains Maillart and Vaublanc sat with a bottle of rum between them; with them was Xavier Tocquet.

  Vaublanc half-rose to drag another chair to the table, into which the doctor collapsed with a sigh and a puff of dust from his trousers. He balanced the barrel of his long gun against the table’s edge.

  “Hóla,” Tocquet offered.

  “Bonsoir,” said the doctor, looking about himself in a daze. Tocquet pushed the rum bottle in his direction.

  “Is there water?” the doctor inquired.

  In his racing march among the Dockos he had drained the quart canteen he carried, though Riau had counseled him to drink less. The more you drank, the more you sweated, was Riau’s idea of the thing, and that was waste. True enough, the doctor had been able to observe that his maroon companions seemed to perspire a great deal less than he did.

  “Look inside,” said Maillart. “The servants seem to have run away.”

  The doctor pushed through the slatted door and stood blinking in the dull, dust-swirling light of the tavern’s large common room. Five or six of the Dockos were tossing a sizable cask back and forth—each man who succeeded in catching it without letting it fall rewarded himself with a long draught direct from the bunghole. Their hair and faces and shoulders were streaked and shining with spilled rum. One of Toussaint’s uniformed officers stuck his head in at the back door and called out a crisp order. Reluctantly the maroons quit their game and filed out, leaving the cask on its side, leaking slightly from the ill-fitted bung.

  The doctor investigated behind the counter. Spillage was considerable; his blistered feet sucked in a swamp of rum and sour wine, and flies were coming in at every door and window and crack in the wall. Finally he found a waist-high clay vessel which had survived, upright and covered with damp banana leaves and mostly full of water still cool from river or a well. He dipped a cupful and drank, hiccuping in his haste to swallow. Then he filled a smaller jug with the water, and gathering four cups by their handles, he went back outdoors to the table facing the square.

  “Dlo,” he announced, passing the cups, and began pouring a tot of rum into his own.

  But the mood round the table had gone gelid in his absence.

  Across the pack saddles of a string of mules, Jean-Jacques Dessalines was looking their way, immobilizing them in a glowering stare. Tocquet’s man Bazau stood holding the lead animal of the pack train by its rope hackamore. Bazau was impassive, still as a tree, but at thirty yards distance the doctor felt his fear.

  Dessalines whistled up a grenadier and unscrewed the bayonet from the man’s musket barrel. With this implement he loosened a square of sailcloth and drew it back from the packsaddle; beneath the cloth were muskets stacked like firewood. Dessalines moved on to the next mule, and the next, his glare at the white men hardening as he unveiled each load. When he came to the lead mule, he reached around Bazau’s shoulders from behind; the movement seemed gentle, almost affectionate, but it pulled Bazau up and back on his heels, with the bayonet point piercing the slack skin under his jaw. Collapsing away from the blade, Bazau gave up his weight to Dessalines. His arms made a trembling movement, but he did not call out. A little blood seeped down the runnel of the bayonet.

  The doctor’s eye was caught by another movement: Riau, with a couple of his men, crossing the far corner of the square. Riau stopped and studied the details of the scene, and, with no apparent reaction, walked on, behind the church and out of view. Dessalines began to drag Bazau away in the direction of the caserne, his eyes always on the white men at the table.

  “C’est moi le responsable.” Tocquet’s voice carried well as he stood up, though it was neither too loud nor especially strained. “The mules and muskets are mine.”

  At once Dessalines unwound his arm from Bazau and let him reel away. He walked toward the white men, unconsciously wiping the bayonet with his thumb, then licking his thumb clean. Tocquet had moved, clearing the corner of the table; his hands were hidden beneath the loose tail of his shirt. Cautiously the doctor glanced at the barrel of his long gun, in easy reach as it leaned against the table. His pistols too were still primed on his belt. He could smell the bitter, stinging sweat that pulsed from Vaublanc and Maillart. Raising a weapon against Dessalines would precipitate unimaginable disaster. And Dessalines was near enough for the doctor to hear his breathing. The bayonet was reversed in his hand, lying against his coat sleeve. With his free hand he absently touched the spot beside his neck, hidden beneath the gold braid on his coat, where the first raised band of scar tissue commenced, etched there by a stray curl of the whiplash. Tocquet stepped, very softly, to the right, and Dessalines’s head tracked him like a beacon.

  Dust and hoofbeats in the square. Abruptly Tocquet raised his voice.

  “General Toussaint?”

  In fact Toussaint was just riding into the square, flanked by Morriset and two dragoons of his honor guard. He looked at Tocquet curiously, and more searchingly at Dessalines.

  “Mon général, s’il vous pláit . . .” Tocquet performed the deepest of bows, both his hat and his hair sweeping the dust. As he rose up, he gestured at the mule train with his hat. “Accept these weapons as a gift to your soldiers. Victory to the French Republic!”

  The cheer collapsed on its own echo. Toussaint said nothing. His mouth covered by his hand, he rode the length of the mule train, studying the loads. He signaled to Bazau, who’d remained standing by the lead mule, to loosen a musket and hand it up. Solid in the saddle, Toussaint aimed the musket toward the church door with both hands, pulled back the hammer and dry-fired the gun, then turned it around to squint into the bore. With half a smile, he gave the weapon back to Bazau.

  “With pleasure,” Toussaint said. “May these new guns lend us new strength.”

  Tocquet swallowed. “Allow my man to help you with unloading,” he said. “Bazau knows all those pack mules as if they were his kin.”

  “But of course,” said Toussaint. He signaled to his guardsman, and they rode out of the square at a slow trot. Dessalines was drawn after them like iron to a magnet. Leading the mule train, Bazau brought up the rear. As they all departed, Tocquet crossed himself, surreptitiously; the doctor was the only one to see.

  “Nom du diable,” Maillart said.

  The doctor belted the rum he’d poured and served himself another measure.

  “Of course you were selling guns to the British, one assumes,” Vaublanc snapped. “And to the émigrés, of course.”

  “To the highest bidder,” Tocquet said, without inflection, and resumed his seat behind the table.

  “To be sure,” Maillart noted. “I hope you are satisfied with your price today.”

  “Oh, absolutely.” Tocquet pulled a square of yellow madras from beneath his shirt, dried his palms and assiduously wiped his forehead and temples. “And aside from that, there remains still hope of a better profit,” he said. “I can furnish a large supply of beef, still on the hoof. Also tobacco—some rather nice Spanish cigars, which I can make available to you gentlemen at very friendly prices.”

  Maillart glanced at Vaublanc, one eyebrow cocked.

  “Excellent,” Vaublanc said, and Maillart added, with perhaps a whisper of irony, “Victory to the French Republic.”

  Next day Toussaint threw his entire force against the surrounded town of Mirebalais, beginning with a brisk cannonade from the heights he had occupied. By noon the town was on fire in four different places, and the Vicomte de Bruges began evacuating his men along the line of retreat that Toussaint had thoughtfully left open, via the fortified camps of Grand Bois and Trou d’Eau. But the British and their émigré allies had no time to regroup, for Toussaint’s men overran
those camps as well, and quickly. De Bruges and his command were obliged to retreat, in great disorder, all the way to Croix des Bouquets, leaving Toussaint in control of the interior. In their flight they abandoned several cannon and other munitions which Toussaint was more than happy to appropriate.

  On the day of the battle Toussaint had detached enough men to douse the fires in Mirebalais before very much damage was done. That evening he moved his headquarters into the house of the former colonial administrator—the same house he had taken the last time he’d occupied the town—and set about organizing his dispatches and composing his reports.

  Casualties had been less than usual in this campaign so far, so the doctor was not medically occupied for more than a couple of days. He found Guiaou among the troops and put him in charge of the field hospital; Riau also took part in its supervision, and several old women with the status and knowledge of doktè-fey had come out of the hills to lend their aid. With those matters well in hand, the doctor was free to attend Toussaint, and to help in the constant review of his correspondence.

  Headquarters house was an old building for the colony, mostly of mahogany, under the shade of ancient trees, enclosed by a wall of crumbling, rose-colored brick and surrounded by an elaborate garden which had managed to survive all the wars undamaged. The gallery wrapped around all four sides of the house and was a pleasant place to sit and await one’s appointment within. Maillart and Vaublanc were often to be found there, sunk to a less than military posture in fan-backed, rattan chairs. They had abandoned their card game for the time being, as the black subalterns who were constantly in their company here would certainly not have been amused (and some of them were doubtless numbered among the assets staked in the game). Besides, gambling did not suit the mood of that oasis; it was better to sit quietly, not moving a hair, watching the hummingbirds suspended above the blooms of flowers, or listening to the once-tame parrots chattering in the trees. Those parrots spoke several languages: French, Spanish, Creole, English (mostly curses) and perhaps a smattering of Taino (though no one could verify the latter). It was always shady and cool on the gallery, even at the hottest hour of the day, and almost always calm except at evening, when the rains rolled in and the wind swelled up through the leaves of the garden to inspire everyone with the same delicious agitation.

  In theory, Toussaint’s offensive had been the lower half of a pincer movement; to the north, General Desfourneaux was expected to subdue all the rebellious factions in the valley of the Grande Rivière, occupy Vallière and then move south to the town of Banica, joining Toussaint either in that town or at Las Cahobas, which was not much farther south. Desfourneaux was to conduct these operations in concert with Moyse—perhaps an unfortunate arrangement, as the white and black officers had formed a relationship of mutual dislike, mistrust, and contempt. Whatever the cause, when Toussaint’s men reached Banica, they learned that Desfourneaux’s force had not managed to win its way so far. Perhaps the northern advance had been turned back outside Banica, or perhaps it had failed before Grande Rivière; the rumors all conflicted, and no one could say for certain what was true. Having nothing better to do and not much resistance to stop them, Toussaint’s men took over Banica themselves, but the offensive would penetrate no farther.

  Still the success was very considerable, so much so that Toussaint took the trouble to write a proud account to Laveaux in France—or perhaps it was his old habit of reporting always to Laveaux, rather than to Sonthonax, who was now his sole superior in the colony—I’m letting you know of the happy success of my last enterprise in the region of Mirebalais, The Mountain of Grand Bois, Las Cahobas, Banica, Saint Jean and Niebel, which are all entirely in our possession . . . And Mirebalais was a rich valley, scarcely damaged by half a decade of riot, war, and revolution. Plantations continued to prosper, mostly under mulatto proprietorship but with some white owners and managers who had hung on, producing mostly coffee, but also some sugar—cash crops for the war effort (though getting the harvests to a port remained a problem, while the British still occupied Port-au-Prince and Saint Marc). Better still, Toussaint had cut the line through which the Spanish had been covertly supplying the English on the coast, or rather he had diverted the supply line to himself. It might have looked odd (as Maillart and Vaublanc were still sometimes heard to mutter to their fellows on the gallery) that Toussaint had chosen to adopt Tocquet as his principal quartermaster rather than ordering him shot—but it was a practical decision, which guaranteed a steady flow of beef and grain and guns and powder and rum and even a little wine from the Spanish half of the island. Moreover, everyone rather liked Tocquet, as well as being a little afraid of him; better yet, Tocquet was supplying all the Republican officers—black, white or colored—with a decent trickle of free cigars. . . .

  Toussaint was almost always calm, wherever one found him, no matter the circumstances—the same calm like the eye of a hurricane. But during those days at Mirebalais he seemed to have moved toward a deeper tranquillity. Most nights he dined with his staff officers, and he let them tell stories of past triumphs, even encouraged them ever so slightly (though usually he frowned on such anecdotes as boastful, and reproved them with scriptural pieties). Now he seemed to enjoy hearing some junior officer tell how, two years before at Mirebalais, he had astonished the Marquis d’Espinville by showing him the full courtesies of European warfare, d’Espinville who had intended to fight to the death, trapped in the fort with his last eight hundred men, believing that if he surrendered they would all be slain with barbaric African tortures—another French nobleman humiliated not only by Toussaint’s greater skill on the battlefield but by his magnaminity after he’d won—some of d’Espinville’s men from that campaign were now serving under Toussaint in this one.

  Still tastier: the tale of General Brandicourt, whom Toussaint and Moyse had trapped in a ravine in the north. Toussaint had spurred Bel Argent up shaley, near-vertical terrain that would have stopped a Norman knight, crossed the ridge and dropped into Brandicourt’s neatly hemmed position—alone—so as to make the general his prisoner, personally. He compelled Brandicourt, near tears or apoplexy from frustration, to write an order to his second officer commanding him to surrender the balance of his men. With this stratagem, Toussaint had captured a French force twice the size of his own at the time, and by sheer ingenuity of maneuver, without a shot being fired, as if it had all been a chess game. And then, that time at Petite Rivière, when Toussaint had marched his men across a hillside in view of the enemy, then around the back of the hill, and around again, and again until his apparent force was doubled, tripled, quintupled, and the false show of strength won him another improbable victory.

  This idyll abruptly came to an end when word came from the west that General Simcoe was marching to Mirebalais with the better part of his thirty thousand fresh British troops. The doctor was present when the dispatch arrived, in council with Toussaint and other aides and scribes in the salon of the headquarters house. There was no ripple in Toussaint’s outward composure, yet the quality of his calm altered instantly, returning to that storm-center concentration. No movement, only a slight flaring of the nostrils. Minutes passed, ticked off by the pendulum clock in the hall, while the parrots swore at one another outside in the garden.

  “Gentleman, strike the camp,” Toussaint said, raising his head as he laid his palms on the table in a smooth gliding movement. “We depart Mirebalais in one hour.”

  Riau and Vaublanc and the other officers left immediately to execute the order, but Maillart lingered for a moment.

  “But General—”

  Toussaint, who was gathering his papers and arranging them in his portable writing desk, did not give any sign of having heard.

  “Will we not give him any battle?”

  “Sir, we will not,” Toussaint said brusquely, and then he did look up, with that weirdly ingratiating smile which uncovered only his bottom teeth. “We will march to the coast and capture Saint Marc.”

  Maill
art’s eyes widened for just half a second. He snapped a salute and left the house at a run.

  Half an hour was more than sufficient for the doctor to roll up his little hospital. Most patients had already taken up their bedding and departed, and the few who remained were fit to travel. There was hardly work enough to be distracting. His mind buzzed annoyingly: would Vallière ever be taken? would he ever see Nanon again? and what did Tocquet mean to do about Elise and Sophie? His saddlebags packed and loaded, his guns in good order, the doctor rode back to headquarters and hitched his horse outside the wall, meaning to spend his last few minutes in Mirebalais overlooking the pleasant garden.

  Outside the pale and dusty brick wall came hoofbeats and boot thumps and voices crying orders or complaints. The inside of the house was all abustle too. The doctor sat on the gallery. It was midafternoon and very hot, but if he did not move at all, his sweat would cool him as it dried. Stillness, perfect stillness. He watched faint currents of air stir the leaves, almost imperceptibly, feeling his self move out of his body toward them.

  Fey-yo, sauvé lavi mwen . . . That was the herb doctor’s sacred song. Leaves o Leaves Oh save my life. . . .

  Xavier Tocquet came out of the house with a distracted look, adjusting something on his belt beneath his shirt tail. When he noticed the doctor, he stopped and clicked his tongue.