Master of the Crossroads

by Madison Smartt Bell

  “Your fears are unfounded,” he said, looking at his own indistinct reflection, rippling in the water. “These are no savages as you fear, but as well-disciplined an army as I have ever seen. As you might know.”

  “They would have killed me at Gonaives!”

  “In war, men kill their enemies,” the doctor said. He squinted up. “Why ever did you come to this country, I wonder.”

  Pinchon looked away, sucking his thin lips in. “My wife has a property in the plain of Cul de Sac.”

  “Your wife is a Creole?” The doctor straightened up and shook out his cramped legs.

  “No,” said Pinchon. “The daughter of a négociant of Nantes, who took the land in payment of a debt—the miser! Neither he nor she had ever laid eyes on the property, but I was sent out to make it profitable.”

  “And?”

  “Oh, it was all a field of ashes by the time I found it.”

  “Have you children?”

  “One, a daughter.” Pinchon continued to look thoughtful. “I have not seen her—she was born after I embarked.”

  The doctor was moved to a certain sympathy. He said nothing, and turned slightly, facing into a very faint breeze which barely lifted the leaves of the trees around them. At the end of the boulevard was Government House, a fairly handsome pile of stone, and the most significant building in Port-au-Prince.

  “Don’t give up hope,” the doctor said, as the breeze faded.

  He was thinking that Pinchon might really have a better chance of restoring his plantation under Toussaint’s administration rather than that of the English. But before he could voice this idea, he was distracted by someone signaling him from the steps of Government House at the lower end of the boulevard.

  The siesta had been interrupted—brusquely, though no one announced the reason why. With Maitland, Huin, and few others, the doctor was hurried to the port and into a longboat which rowed them out to a British warship in the harbor. Following Huin, he climbed the rope ladder to the deck of the warship. Maitland, however, remained in the boat and was conveyed to a smaller coastal vessel which was anchored nearby.

  “What do you suppose?” the doctor began.

  Huin turned up his empty palms. “They told me nothing.”

  “Well,” said the doctor, “So long as we are not to have our throats slit, and be fed to the sharks . . .”

  Huin let out a dry grating laugh. “Fortunately,” he said, “we are dealing with English gentlemen . . . rather than our own colonial countrymen.”

  He reached under his coat and produced a small brass spyglass. After scanning the horizon for a few minutes, he offered it to the doctor. Resting his elbows on the rail, the doctor looked at the small adjacent island, with its half-moon battery protecting the harbor, or at the clouds gathering above the great mountain behind the town . . .

  Huin plucked his elbow and reached for the glass, and when the doctor had given it over, trained it on the deck of the coaster where Maitland had gone. The doctor looked in the same direction—Maitland was recognizable to his naked eye, among several others he could not make out.

  “That is Lapointe,” Huin mused aloud. “But . . . now who is that by him? I have seen the face.”

  He passed the glass to the doctor. In the circle of the lens the tall figure of a mulatto in British uniform came clear. This must be Lapointe, who commanded for the invaders at Arcahaye, though the doctor did not know him by sight.

  “The black, beside him.” Huin gaved the doctor a nudge.

  “Why, it is Capdebosque,” said the doctor, having refocused the glass. “Of Toussaint’s troop, and you do know him—he was sent out to Arcahaye before we came here.”

  “Now what does that suggest to you?” Huin said.

  If the doctor was meant to know the answer, he did not. But Maitland had descended to the longboat and was being rowed to the warship. Soon enough he had climbed the ladder and swung his long legs onto the deck.

  “Gentlemen,” he said. “There is another of your party on that ship”—he gestured with his chin—“who says there are twenty-six thousand brigands—uh, revolutionary troops—prepared to fall upon Arcahaye. Of your own knowledge, can this be true?”

  “It is the very truth,” said Huin, without a beat of hesitation.

  The doctor looked toward the bulk of the mountain above Port-au-Prince, thinking. The number was exaggerated by perhaps ten thousand. Still, if the British wished to believe themselves outnumbered, such was in fact the case. Also, the attack planned on Arcahaye was commanded by Dessalines and would likely turn into a massacre.

  “This messenger’s name is Capdebosque,” said Maitland. “A Negro, but intelligent, and well spoken, I admit. If you know him, can you vouch for his fidelity?”

  “Absolutely,” said the doctor, sensing his role.

  “This Capdebosque tells me there is a like number of bri—revolutionary troops, massing on the Cul de Sac plain to attack Port-au-Prince.”

  “Port Républicain,” Huin corrected him smoothly. “Of a certainty, it is true.”

  Maitland looked from Huin to the doctor, then back at Huin. “Furthermore, this Capdebosque maintains that the population of the town is secretly in league with the republicans and will turn out as soon as the attack begins.”

  Huin nodded, with an air of sadness (for such a conspiracy would not be entirely creditable to his side), and made a slight gesture toward a bow. Maitland turned his face to the doctor. His forehead was high, with an upswept crest of graying hair. The complementary curve of his beard swept down toward the dimple of his chin. Slowly, solemnly, the doctor nodded his confirmation (though he knew nothing of any such conspiracy and was reasonably confident that it did not exist). Maitland’s features seemed to take on extra weight.

  Again they descended into the longboat and were rowed back to the town, the men laying on hard at the oars, for the clouds above the mountain were already forked with lightning. As they reached the shelter of the casernes, the rain began, and Maitland summoned a council of war to the neighboring government house. From this, the doctor and Huin were excluded. But by the time the rain had stopped and the moon showed its horns above the yard of the casernes, one of Maitland’s staff came to tell them that next day they would sail to Toussaint at Gonaives, escorting a British emissary with the power to offer an immediate cease-fire and to arrange terms for the British evacuation of Arcahaye, Saint Marc, and Port-au-Prince.

  They enjoyed a smooth sail up the coast to Gonaives and docked in the late afternoon, when the town was just beginning to stir from the midday retreat from the fire of the sun. Doctor Hébert fell to the rear of the party that landed, trudging up to headquarters in the center of the town. As he entered the shadowy foyer of the building, Captain Maillart got up from a stool near the door and drew him away from the rest of the group. Huin, after a brief conference with the sentry, took the British officer Nightingal directly in to meet Toussaint.

  “Our general has taken an ill humor,” Maillart said.

  “Oh?” said the doctor. “I think we may have brought him better cheer. But what is the matter?”

  “Another agent of the Directoire has landed, in Santo Domingo,” Maillart told him. “But let that wait.” He grinned. “There is someone else with news for you.”

  The doctor followed him through the building out into the bright, white-dusted square of the barracks behind. Maillart stopped and let out a short whistle. From an open doorway across the yard, Riau emerged, checking the buttons of his uniform coat; when he saw the doctor, his face split into a brilliant smile and his step doubled.

  “She is found,” Riau said as he joined them. “After all she was at Vallière just as we thought.”

  “Nanon?”

  “Yes, of course Nanon, monchè!” Riau slammed the doctor on the back.

  “She is . . . where is she now?” the doctor said. “At Ennery?”

  “No,” said Riau. “But she is with your brother. With Tocquet—she went with him fr
om Vallière to Le Cap.”

  “She is not with Choufleur any longer, then?”

  Riau’s expression grew elusive. “No, she is at Le Cap now.”

  “But where did she mean to go in Le Cap?”

  Riau frowned—it did not seem that he had thought to ascertain this information. Then he brightened. “But Tocquet will know.”

  Someone called his name from the doorway he’d come out of across the yard. Riau slapped the doctor on the shoulder once more and trotted away. The doctor stared after him, half stupefied.

  “You had better sit down,” said the captain.

  “I had thought of going on to Ennery,” the doctor muttered.

  “You’ll never get there before the rain. Don’t be a fool, but come with me.”

  Maillart led the way into the cubicle he occupied. The doctor sat down on the edge of his cot. Maillart passed him a clay vase of water, and he sipped, set the vase on the floor and pulled off one of his boots. His mind was floundering . . . Nanon was found! yet not within his reach. Tocquet would know where she had gone. But Tocquet was as unfindable as Nanon. And she might be anywhere in Le Cap. It had been almost impossible to discover where Paul had got to. But Nanon would be easier to find than Paul, because he knew her ways, and knew a lot of her acquaintances.

  He stretched out his leg and flexed his liberated toes. Maillart pretended to flinch from the odor. He poured some rum into a cracked cup and passed it to the doctor, who took a grateful draught, feeling the warmth explode within him. He took off his other boot and rubbed the arch of his foot. There was no use talking to Maillart about Nanon, for the captain did not really understand the extent of his attachment to someone he saw as only a colored harlot.

  “Well, and the new agent,” he said.

  “It is General Hédouville,” Maillart told him. “Pacifier of the Vendée, as he is now known.”

  “Indeed.”

  “So they describe him.” Maillart rocked his head against the rough plaster wall. “But let us go outside, it will be cooler.”

  He stood and picked up his stool and gestured to the doctor to bring the other. Just outside the door they arranged their seats beneath the shade of the overhanging roof. A breeze was beginning to stir, and several other officers had come out from rooms down the way to take the air. The doctor returned their waves of greeting. His bare feet spread pleasantly on the flagstone floor. He sat down and leaned back against a post. The captain, who had thoughtfully brought out the rum bottle, splashed another measure into his cup.

  “He has brought fresh troops, this Hédouville?”

  Maillart turned his head to spit into the yard. “His honor guard, no more than that,” he said with a flicker of disgust.

  “What can they be thinking in Paris?”

  “Apparently,” said the captain, “they are thinking that Hédouville turned all the factions of the Vendée against each other, so that they defeated themselves.”

  “And thus Toussaint’s displeasure, I suppose,” the doctor said.

  Maillart did not respond immediately. The doctor chewed over the thought in silence. For the time being, Rigaud and Toussaint were acting in concert, if not in perfect harmony, against the British. It was not exactly a relationship of trust. Outlawed by Sonthonax, Rigaud had been in open rebellion against the French agent, if not France itself, at the time of Sonthonax’s departure, while Toussaint continued to profess his loyalty to the French government.

  Maillart shifted and scratched his head. “But now it is the whole stupid dispute of the grand blancs and émigrés all over again. Hédouville has proclaimed—from Santo Domingo, of course—that they are not to be tolerated.”

  “Oh, I see,” said the doctor. “While Maitland will certainly insist that they be amnestied.”

  “Maitland?” The captain sat up straight.

  “Yes, he has sent this Nightingal to set terms for the British withdrawal—from all of the Western Department, my friend.”

  “The devil,” Maillart said. “Why must we treat with them? Now, when we are finally in position to defeat them in battle, drive the lot of them into the sea.”

  “That might be an expensive pleasure,” the doctor said. “The British are finished here, I agree. And Maitland is certainly commissioned to get them out with as little loss as possible. But he has still a few teeth in his jaw. If they fight, we will have losses on our side, and the British can leave every place they now occupy in ruins.”

  “Still they are in no position to dictate terms to us.”

  The wind quickened, skirling up dust all over the yard. The doctor looked across and saw the first fat raindrops beginning to pat down.

  “Leave that to Toussaint,” he said.

  “Well, yes.” Maillart leaned forward and reached down to collect the rum bottle from between his feet. “He is a wicked old fox, Toussaint, and no one knows for certain what is in his mind.”

  Next day, the doctor asked leave to travel to Le Cap, but when he was refused, he did not press the point. He did not give his personal reason, for Toussaint was in a humor to preach of duty, and the doctor did not want to hear the sermon. He got permission to go to Ennery for two days, which he passed agreeably enough with Paul and Sophie and Elise. Yet everything hung over them, still. Elise had recovered her morale, but if she had heard anything from Tocquet she did not say so, and for his part the doctor did not mean to upset her with news that the man might be as nearby as Le Cap. Nor did he know what to say to Paul about his mother. In fact the boy no longer asked for her, and yet the doctor felt the question in his look.

  While at Ennery he got word that Hédouville was traveling from Santo Domingo to Le Cap, so he returned to Gonaives in the happy expectation that Toussaint would certainly be going north to pay his respects to the French agent. But it was not so. Instead, the doctor and the other available scribes were put to drafting a letter of apology (of sorts): Toussaint regretted that he must deny himself the pleasure of meeting General Hédouville, for the time being, as crucial military matters kept him at his post. Though the letter was infused with unction, the scribes were hard put to disguise the aloofness at the heart of the message. On the other hand, it was quite true that military matters were moving rapidly toward a crisis: Huin had gone south again to Port au Prince, where, aboard the British ship Abergavenny, he signed an accord with Nightingal which defined the terms of British withdrawal from all of the west coast . . . and by that time, as Huin reported back later, the sailors of the British fleet had already begun loading up supplies and ammunition from the town, under Maitland’s orders to prepare for departure.

  Generals Maitland and Toussaint Louverture both ratified the treaty, and only then did Toussaint notify Hédouville of what had taken place. In his reply, Hédouville warned Toussaint not to accept the submission of any émigrés, but by then the treaty had already gone into effect. By its terms, a three-month cease-fire would be observed between the British and the forces commanded by Toussaint, and during this period Toussaint engaged not to attack the posts that the British would still hold in the south at Jérémie, and at Môle Saint Nicolas on the northwest peninsula. In particular, he pledged, for the period of the cease-fire, not to support Rigaud, who was energetically besieging Jérémie (though Toussaint had grumbled over that clause, pointing out that no difference ought to be made between himself and Rigaud when both of them were loyal officers of the French Republic). The British would return the coast towns and their fortifications intact, and with the same armament they’d found when they first took possession of them. Toussaint, for his part, would guarantee the lives and the property of those colonists currently under British protection who chose to stay on when the British had left.

  Captain Maillart shook his head gloomily over that last proposal, when the doctor had described it to him over another round of rum on the gallery of the house at Habitation Thibodet. “The agent will not like it,” Maillart muttered. “How, indeed, can Hédouville accept it?”

 
; He passed the bottle to the doctor, who served himself and handed it on to Riau, who was sitting with them in the moist dark. Elise and the children had long since gone to bed, but the mood of excitement that ran through the camp prevented the men from sleeping.

  “As a fait accompli.” The doctor shrugged. “He gains by it. France gains.”

  “What we gain,” said Maillart, “is enemies snuggled to our bosom in the guise of friends. The British will withdraw their officers but leave us all our traitors who fought under their flag—transformed into property holders we are sworn to protect.”

  “Well,” said the doctor, “I had not recognized you for such an inveterate Jacobin.”

  Maillart choked. “Never mind the politics, but it is too much—all I know is that we have been fighting these people for two or three years, and though we have defeated them—or might have—we are now required to embrace them.” He looked at Riau. “They are slave masters too, these new citizens we are to gain. What will become of the slaves they have held all this while under British rule?”

  “They will be freed,” said the doctor, “according to French law.”

  Riau rolled his glass from one hand to the other, looking at the inch of amber rum in the bottom of it. He said nothing.

  “Embracing one’s enemies is a queer sensation,” the doctor said. “The taste for it may be difficult to acquire.” He drank, and glanced at Maillart’s flushed face. “You yourself have crossed a border more than once, and worn the coat of more than one service—oh, it does you no dishonor. It was the ground itself that shifted beneath your feet.”

  “So.” Maillart grunted and leaned back, withdrawing his face from the lamplight. Struggling to recover the thread of his thought, the doctor realized he was considerably more drunk than he’d given himself credit for.