Master of the Crossroads

by Madison Smartt Bell

  “Nice while it lasted, no?” With a sigh he fell into the adjacent fan-backed chair.

  The parrots quarreled—Son of a whore! Va t’en faire foutre! The doctor drew out one of his pistols and laid it on the table between himself and Tocquet and withdrew his hand. This action came from the stillness he had attained; he had not consciously intended to perform it.

  Tocquet narrowed one eye at the pistol barrel, which was pointed his way. The doctor produced the other pistol and set it symmetrically alongside the first, its grip presented to his companion. He put his hands in his coat pockets. Mirror. Snuffbox.

  “You can’t be serious.” Tocquet bugged his eyes at the weapons. “This? From you?”

  “I should like to know your intentions,” the doctor heard himself say.

  “My—” Tocquet twisted his hair over his shoulder. “My intentions regarding exactly what?”

  The doctor gripped the talismans in his pockets and thought, in silence, of his forlorn sister, while Tocquet looked across the garden, massaging his brows with one hand as if he’d taken a headache.

  “I don’t suppose I had any intentions,” Tocquet finally said. “Only there was such a stench of propriety round that place of a sudden, one could not breathe. So I got out of it.” He looked at the doctor. “You do understand what she had done?”

  The doctor nodded without turning his head, his eyes still on the leaves.

  “One might even say I acted on your behalf, my friend,” Tocquet said. “It was your arrangements she destroyed, was it not?”

  “One might,” the doctor said. “But that was then, and now . . . I should like to know your intentions.”

  Tocquet made a wry face, rocked in his seat. “Things have changed, I know,” he said. “I’ve had word the boy has been brought back to Ennery. One supposes the mother would also be accepted, at this point?”

  He looked at the doctor, who said nothing.

  “By Christ,” Tocquet said, turning his head toward the garden once more. “All the world thinks me an outlandish fellow, but I’ll swear that you are still stranger than I. They say you can pick up any man’s pistol and hit a skylark on the wing. I don’t doubt it. But you must know, there’s more than one man who has worked for my death, and I am still walking, while some of them are not. You do not care for killing, you. I would wager you disapprove of dueling—as a matter of principle, no?”

  “I should simply like to—”

  Tocquet threw up the flat of his hand. “Assez—m’emmerde plus.” He twisted in his chair, looked out at the leaves, then back at the doctor. “Tell me, if I were to return, would I be received at Habitation Thibodet?”

  “Enthusiastically,” the doctor said. “By both your wife and your daughter.” He paused. “By the entire household, certainly.”

  “Ah,” said Tocquet. “In that case, if you should happen to arrive there before I do, please tell them to expect me very soon.”

  “That will be my pleasure,” the doctor said.

  For some minutes neither of them said anything more. Indoors, the clock chimed the quarter-hour. Riau and Maillart came in at the gate of the enclosure and trotted up the steps into the house.

  “You did not think you could force me to return,” Tocquet said, glancing at the doctor. “No, and you did not mean to fight me either.”

  “Oh, I don’t quite know what I meant,” the doctor said. “I only wanted to—”

  Tocquet stopped him with a hand on his forearm. “Don’t say it, my friend.” He leaned a little closer and kissed the doctor on the cheek.

  Flanked by Maillart and Riau, Toussaint came quickly out of the house, his hat in one hand, the writing desk clasped under his elbow, a red mouchwa têt tied over his head. The red cloth gave the doctor a blunt jab of foreboding. On the gallery Toussaint stopped, laid down his burdens for a moment, and fumbled with something else in his hands. Sparks and the smell of smoke. He was holding up three torches, handing one each to Maillart and Riau. The doctor was up and out of his chair, his jaw clicking down. Toussaint turned and with a ceremonious sweep of his arm flung the torch into the foyer.

  “But yes,” he said, as he collected the desk and put his hat upon his head. “Burn it.” His voice was suddenly loud enough to be heard beyond the wall and all the way to the town square. “Boulé tout kay yo!” Burn down the town.

  Riau moved at once, using his torch to set fire to the house at several promising places. Maillart was not so quick to follow suit, but he did obey. The wood, well seasoned, went up quickly.

  “Alors, quoi faire?” Tocquet asked rhetorically. He stood up, struck a light, set fire to the chair he’d been sitting in and hurled it through the nearest window into the house. Standing back, he pointed to the pistols still on the table—the doctor hurried to snatch them up.

  The heat was sudden and immense, parching the pores on the doctor’s face. He and Tocquet left the enclosure quickly. Outside, the troops were all drawn up for their departure. The doctor went at once to quiet his horse; alarmed at the fire, the animal was fighting its tether. Tocquet touched the doctor on the shoulder; they embraced. Already the flames were shooting high above the brick wall, and the parrots were circling out of the smoke.

  “I won’t go on this adventure to Saint Marc,” Tocquet said. “I still have four hundred head of cattle grazing on the central plateau. It’s finished here, as I needn’t tell you—I’ll drive my beef to Dajabón, and then we’ll see. Give all my love if you’re there before me.”

  “That I shall.” The doctor swung his leg over the saddle and caught up the reins. Looking after Tocquet, he waved and touched his hat brim. But Tocquet had not looked back; he was just breaking into a jog as he turned the corner of the wall.

  They rode out, Toussaint at the head of his troops, holding high another torch which was by then mostly symbolic, since the town was well ablaze in all its quarters and the inhabitants had evacuated with much cursing and wailing. Toussaint had made reasonably sure that no human life was sacrificed to the flames, but the householders had had little time to salvage their belongings. As they went westward along the Artibonite Valley, the doctor pictured the old garden of the headquarters house, its leaves and blossoms withering in the heat. Finally the mortar must crack in the outer wall, and all the bricks come toppling down. Two hours yet till the evening rain, and by then Mirebalais would be a field of charcoal.

  When the rain did come, the river swelled brown with earth washed out from the cultivated fields, but Toussaint’s army marched on, scarcely slackening its pace, the men and horses slip-sliding in the mud. Those with blankets shrouded themselves against the downpour. The doctor was equipped with a long oilcloth duster and the tight weave of his straw hat shed water for the first half hour, but after that everything soaked through and he was as wet as any man among them. When the rain stopped, they halted for two hours, building fires to dry their clothes and blankets, eating light rations, resting as they might, while the rainforest continued to shed water all around them. Then by moonlight or through the dense darkness under the trees, they pressed on in the direction of Saint Marc.

  Toussaint had damaged no plantations on the way to Mirebalais—such had never been his policy, and on this occasion his haste was great. But the destruction of the town was sufficient warning to the surrounding planters that it might be better not to become too cozy with the British, with the result that Simcoe found the locals surprisingly aloof when he marched through en route to the pit of sodden ashes which had been Mirebalais, and it took him longer than it otherwise might to gather the intelligence that Toussaint had spiraled around his advance and would soon be threatening Saint Marc, which Simcoe had left mostly exposed, lightly defended by Dessources and his colonial Chasseurs.

  By then, Toussaint had already put Dessources to flight any number of times, and probably could have killed or captured him more than once, but it was becoming apparent to some observers (Maillart and the doctor, for example) that Toussaint preferred to leav
e incompetent enemy commanders in the field, that they might fight and lose again another day. By the time Simcoe managed to reverse his advance and rush back to the defense of Saint Marc, Dessources and the Chasseurs had been cut to pieces one more time, their remnants holed up in the town. Once Simcoe had brought his army back, Toussaint faded his own troops toward Gonaives and the Cordon de l’Ouest; he did not mean to fight a full engagement with such a large force on the Artibonite plain. A chess player’s victory of position: Simcoe would not risk another sally toward the interior, and all his fresh men would remain pinned down on the coast. Let fever take them.

  In the wake of his uncertain campaign in the valley of Grande Rivière, General Desfourneaux (who got on with Sonthonax no better than with Moyse) was arrested and relieved of his command. Soon after, Toussaint Louverture was notified of his promotion to General-in-Chief of the French army in Saint Domingue. At Le Cap, Sonthonax arranged an elaborate ceremony for the promotion, at which Toussaint was presented with a pair of beautifully chased pistols and, also a gift from the French Directoire, an ornate saber whose blade was engraved with a statement of thanks for the part he’d played in saving Laveaux from the schemes of Villatte.

  Throughout this affair, Toussaint was courteous, humble, and curiously withdrawn. There was none of the exaltation he had displayed when Laveaux proclaimed him Lieutenant-Governor. With his new rank conferred upon him, he addressed the crowd in a low tone, saying only that his elevation did him too much honor, that his sole desire was to drive the remaining enemies from the colony and work for the happiness of its true citizens. At the state dinner which followed, he was taciturn, ate nothing but bread and cheese and part of a piece of fruit, refused the wine in favor of cold water.

  That night, on the veranda of the officers’ quarters in the casernes, Toussaint sat late in the company of a few of the black subordinates to whom he was closest: Dessalines, Christophe, Moyse, Maurepas and a few others. The doctor, who’d heard from Maillart that Toussaint seemed indisposed to entertain his white officers that evening, would not have approached, but he was walking with Riau and found that they’d drifted in that direction before he knew it. The chairs were all occupied, so Riau remained standing, while Doctor Hébert sat down on the stone coping at the edge of the veranda with his heels stretched out in the dirt of the yard and his face gazing out into the darkness. If he turned his head, he could see the high, shiny boots of the black officers under the table, shining faintly in refracted candlelight. Though Toussaint still abstained, the rest of them were drinking rum, and when Moyse passed him down a glassful, the doctor accepted it gratefully.

  A sputter of conversation in Creole flared up and faded; the doctor paid little mind. He nursed his rum and looked into the dark. Presently a touch on his shoulder roused him; Moyse was showing him Toussaint’s saber and pistols for his admiration. The doctor pulled the saber a few inches from its scabbard and glanced at the inscription, then resheathed it. He had no facility with any blade larger than a scalpel. The pistols were another matter. They were beautifully decorated but far from merely ornamental—Manufacture of Versailles, they would shoot true. The doctor aimed each one of them into the dark, held them both together in each hand and grunted in satisfaction at their balance and their weight.

  Some further response was clearly called for. “These are handsome weapons,” the doctor said, standing up to set the pistols on the table.

  “They ought to be,” Toussaint said, gathering the sheathed saber against his thigh, “if I have given my sons for them.”

  The doctor, who thought it best to construe this comment as addressed to the company at large, resumed his seat on the stone curb, recovering his glass which was now almost empty and withdrawing his face from the light.

  “Have I not struggled unceasingly against the Spanish? and the English? against all enemies of the French Republic? I have brought victories, and brought order to the countryside, and I have even given my boys into the care of France. Is it possible, after I have offered so much, that my loyalty should be in doubt?”

  This plaint ought to have seemed odd, on such a day, but somehow it did not. For no explicable reason, the doctor found himself thinking of how Toussaint had defeated Simcoe by refusing to engage him, so that the British general was constantly unbalanced because he found no resistance anywhere he threw his weight. He tilted his glass and waited for the last few drops of rum to trickle toward his tongue. Dessalines leaned forward to try his palm against the candle flame for a moment, then sat back. Toussaint’s words still hung in the air without reply.

  “Nou pa konnen.” Riau’s voice, speaking from the shadow of the pillar where he stood. We don’t know. Several of the black officers were murmuring softly, as if they found his words to be apt.

  26

  August, and the sweltering heat was so overpowering that even the dogs of Le Cap were faint with lassitude, lying under stationary wagons or stretched over baking curbs. Doctor Hébert glanced wearily down at the dogs as he passed them. He and Captain Maillart were climbing the grade from the port; they had tried a promenade along the waterfront, but at this moment no breath of air was stirring even from the sea. Crossing the Place d’Armes at a diagonal, they struggled for a few more sweaty blocks, then paused on the corner of the Rue Saint Louis to let their lather dry before they went on to the Cigny house, where both were invited to dine.

  They had come before the appointed hour, but the doctor was still occupying a bedroom in that house, and Maillart seemed sure enough of his reception. As they approached, they saw Isabelle Cigny standing on the second-floor balcony, fluttering a handkerchief in their direction. When they’d reached the portal, she furled the handkerchief around a large brass key and let it drop to the captain’s deft catch. Servants were in short supply, and those she had were busy in the kitchen; they must let themselves in, she explained, and she swung her skirts from the filigreed iron railing, through the double doors and into the house.

  Maillart unlocked the door and held it for the doctor. Once they had entered, he laid the key in a slightly tarnished tray on the hall stand, retaining the handkerchief bunched in his left hand like a posy. The parlor was empty; they found Isabelle in the kitchen, bullying the cook. Claudine Arnaud sat at the center table, polishing silver knives and forks, with the help of a couple of négrillons. She smiled at the doctor’s greeting, and went on with her task. One of the little boys went out for water, and on his way he paused to lay his cheek against Claudine’s skirt, wrapping one arm around her waist for a moment before he skipped out.

  “Remarkable,” Isabelle said, turning from the stove to whisper to the doctor. “Her way with them?”

  “Quite,” the doctor said. He watched Claudine. The boy who had remained was offering a fork for her inspection. She turned it this way and that, peering between the tines, then smiled her approval and set it with the already polished pieces.

  “This mania for teaching them to read—who knows where that will end, I wonder . . . but those little ones will do anything for her, do it patiently and well, when no one else can get them to do anything at all. And she is specially invited to their dances, you know, those Negro calenda—” Isabelle looked up at him, her lips parted and her face flushed from heat, which was still more intense in the kitchen. Dances indeed, the doctor thought; Isabelle probably knew or suspected something more than that. He felt probed, but said nothing, knowing she’d not let a silence linger.

  “Eccentricity, one might call it,” she said brightly, “but—” All at once she affected to notice, for the first time, the captain standing in the doorway. “My handkerchief, if you please,” she said to him.

  Maillart moved toward the middle of the room, flourishing his cloth posy. “Would I relinquish my lady’s favor?” he said teasingly.

  “Oh, give it me,” Isabelle said, and reached, but Maillart held the pale drape of cloth just an inch or two above her grasping fingers. She stretched out prettily on tiptoe, but the doctor tho
ught her smile was worn a little thin. He ducked his head, slipped out the door and went up the stairs to his garret.

  Half a jug of tepid water was on the washstand. The doctor washed his face and hands and torso, then stood by the round porthole, letting the humid air do what it could to dry him as he peered down at the street. He put on a fresh shirt and went down to the second-floor balcony where Isabelle had been standing. Presently Captain Maillart came out through the double doors to join him.

  “Well, who captured the handkerchief in the end?” the doctor said.

  Maillart contrived a cough. “That game’s not worth the candle,” he said shortly. The doctor gave him a curious glance, but Maillart was looking the other way down the street.

  “Why, here comes our host, I do believe,” said the captain. “This affair must have a certain weight, if he’s attending.”

  The doctor leaned out, the iron rail hot against his palms. The burly, bearded figure of Monsieur Cigny was just coming to his door, head lowered and features concealed by his hat brim. Cigny was known for avoiding his wife’s entertainments as, in more halcyon days before the insurrection, he’d turned a blind eye to her amours.

  “It is the commissioner, after all,” the doctor said.

  “And General Toussaint?”

  “I saw him at Bréda, this morning.”

  Maillart was looking at him sharply.

  “Well,” said the doctor, “I cannot say if he will come.”

  Pale dust swirled up at either corner, from the horse and cart and foot traffic of the day’s end. Farther off to the south, the noise of the market at the Place Clugny was a distant, monotonous hum. Now, gratefully, they felt a breeze, swiftly rising till it was truly a gust of wind. The clouds were boiling over from Morne du Cap, and people called urgently to one another as they scurried from the street. Maillart’s hair whipped around his head. The doctor squinted, one eye tearing around a dust particle that had blown up from the street. The sky was bulging over the mountain, slate blue and gray and purple and black, scored here and there with a rake of lightning. Then it opened, and the rain came down.