The Emerald Storm

by William Dietrich

  I liked this man’s realism. But rarely are the most sensible in charge.

  “You must keep this conversation secret, of course,” Aucoin went on. “I am a soldier and will do what I am told, but I try to tell the truth to protect the innocent.”

  I hadn’t been called that in some time.

  “By the same token, you must not tell the truth about me to him,” the colonel added.

  “But of course. I appreciate your trust.”

  He shrugged. “I’m afraid, too. It puts me in the mood to confess.”

  While the city’s eastern boundaries were flat and seemed to invite invasion, the French had used the terrain as best they could. At a low rise just to the right of the major trunk road, Rochambeau had ordered the construction of a sturdy fort of stone, earth, and logs that had just enough altitude to command the approaches. It was anchored to a much steeper mountain so precipitous that no sizable body of men could flank it from that direction. This fort, I judged, would be the key.

  Aucoin led me up a causeway to the top of the bastion.

  No enemy could be seen. The flat plantation country beyond seemed deserted, and with the loan of his spyglass I could make out the blackened shells of destroyed houses and sugar mills. Abandoned cane waved in the wind, a sea of ten-foot-high stalks hiding whatever was out there. Once-harvested fields had grown back wild, and smoke hazed the horizon.

  “Where’s Dessalines?”

  “Watching us as we watch him, and hoping disease finishes his campaign for him. He’s tried some assaults on our redoubts, and we’ve taught his men that voodoo doesn’t protect them from bullets. They charge fanatically, even the women, and it only adds to the carnage. You can smell the dead.”

  Yes, there was a hint of the sickly sweet rot of abandoned corpses out there in the grass, apparently too close to French guns to be retrieved.

  “So now he waits, licking his wounds. I’d like to go after him, but the general doesn’t believe we have the strength to retain any ground we capture.”

  “So it’s stalemate.”

  “Yes. He cannot conquer us, and we cannot capture him. Without siege artillery and the expertise to dig the proper approach trenches, I don’t see how he can take our fort here at Vertiers. He must wait for us to sicken or starve.”

  I nodded. The French had splendid fields of fire, several batteries of cannon, and magazines crammed with powder. It might still be a long war. “I admire your engineers.”

  “You were at Acre, so we respect your opinion.”

  My expertise was exaggerated, but I’d developed an artilleryman’s eye in the Holy Land. I saw a crease in the terrain that could be seen from up high but was probably invisible to Dessalines. The ravine was a negligible ditch snaking into the cane, but it pointed at the French walls like a siege trench, and it was hard to see its bottom. It might provide cover in darkness. Well, that was something. “Do you have enough artillery to cover every approach?”

  “Not if surprised. The key is that we learn what the blacks are going to do before they decide themselves. We can see them coming when they move; the sugarcane shakes to betray their march.”

  “Kleber and Napoleon used the movement of wheat to their advantage in the Holy Land at the battle of Mount Tabor,” I said. “What about flanking you?”

  “The mountains are too treacherous for more than a small patrol. A regiment would bog in mud and snakebite. Things will be decided here, in the open, on flat, firm ground. If a French naval squadron arrives, we might still hold out.”

  I looked at the mountains, most so steep that attackers would fall at the French as much as charge them. Organization goes to pieces in terrain like that.

  But I also saw a stream that sprang from a jungle canyon in those same mountains, emptying into a little pond right behind the French batteries. “You have a water supply, too.”

  “Yes. Wells are brackish here, and while we can haul barrels from Cap-François, it’s laborious. Our engineers diverted that creek closer to our lines. On a hot day, that rivulet is a real asset. There’s no water on the rebel side, except the brackish river, which keeps them from camping too close.”

  I saw a track in the ruddy soil led along the stream into the jungle. “Is there a vantage point up there?”

  “It provides a view like a map. Come. We’ll have a swig of wine.”

  We left our horses and climbed up along the stream, sweating in the heat. A brow of hill several hundred feet above the French lines finally gave me a clear vista. Here up high, the stream leveled briefly in a hollow, hills cupping either side of the rivulet before it disappeared into jungle. The waterway ran over the lip where we stood and down to the French camp below. I could see the snake of the defensive lines, the ominously quiet sugarcane fields, the sprawl of Cap-François, and tangled mountain ranges.

  “What will you tell your government, Gage?” Aucoin wanted reassurance, even though my opinion was no better than his.

  “It depends on the size and expertise of the opposing army, I suppose,” I said neutrally. “Perhaps I’ll tell them that either side can still win.”

  “I called you honest. Now I’m not so sure.” He offered me a flask.

  I sipped and glanced about, and an idea occurred. Perhaps I did have a scheme to offer Jubal, who in turn could take me to Dessalines, his mambo priestess, and legends of Montezuma’s treasure.

  “Your engineers have expertise,” I went on. That was true enough. “It’s possible you could hold out forever with enough food and powder.” So an idea had tickled my brain, an idea inspired by my son Harry. I looked uphill. “You’ve used geography to great advantage. In America, we call terrain this steep ‘land that stands on end.’ ”

  He smiled. “An apt description.”

  “I think I’ll congratulate your general on your position. I’m just as happy being on this side of your guns, not charging them.”

  The colonel smiled wryly. “I hope Dessalines shares your caution.”

  I strode to the stream, scooped up water, and washed my hot face, taking in the geography and trying to memorize it. “But your real enemy has always been the fevers, hasn’t it?”

  “Disease demoralizes everyone.”

  “More armies have been conquered by plague than artillery.”

  “The mal de Siam lingers because our men are weak.”

  “And your doctors are baffled?”

  “Our doctors are dead.”

  I thought of slavery. “Do you see God’s hand in all this carnage?”

  “When fortune is against you, you see the devil.”

  I nodded. “I’m a card player, you know. I ponder luck.”

  “All of life is a throw of the dice, Monsieur Gage.”

  “Yes. God. Satan. Fate. Fortune. My wife ponders the imponderable.”

  “Your wife, sir, is in as much danger from fever as from General Rochambeau. Come. I’ll show you a hospital for what the British call the yellow jack. It will hurry you on your way back to your marriage, and your home.”

  Chapter 21

  As expected, Astiza returned to me with virtue intact.

  “I told him I was shy and feared the return of my husband,” she related, “but that perhaps we could explore his quarters when you were distracted during the ball. That was enough to reassure him of his own charm and get him to postpone advances. Of his army, he told me nothing. Of treasure, I’m fairly certain he knows nothing, or he’d be seeking it. I also asked about lone children in this city, and he said there are too many orphans to count. It clearly wasn’t what he’s interested in.”

  “This city is a death trap, Astiza. I saw men dissolving from yellow fever. If Harry is here, I fear for him. If he isn’t, it’s almost a blessing.”

  “He is. It’s a mother’s instinct.”

  “But wouldn’t a man like Martel draw comment with a lad at his side? He’s hardly the fatherly type. Surely we’d hear of it.”

  “If Horus is at his side. What if he’s hidden a
way somewhere? Locked in a cellar, or sold to some monster?”

  “Not sold. Martel took Harry to keep control of us. He’s waiting for me to find the treasure, discover the secret of flight, give him the key to conquering England, and then swap for my boy.”

  She grimaced. “We hope. Or he’s so tired of waiting that he kills.”

  “He’s too calculating.”

  “Just be sure you don’t care about treasure more than your son.” It was a mean statement, said in haste as partners sometimes do. But it was also revealing, and it stung. I’d gotten us free from the Barbary pirates, but she gave me no credit, and losing Harry while hocking the emerald would always rankle. If children can bond couples together, their loss can strain them irreversibly apart.

  “I care about the treasure because of my son.”

  She nodded glumly, knowing I loved our boy, but also knowing how I wanted ordinary success. She’d be content in a nun’s cell, while I dreamed of mansions. But I wanted both boy and jewel, each linked to the other and tied up in Aztec ransom. I also wanted to best male rivals like Leon Martel and the Vicomte Rochambeau, and to impress strategists like Napoleon and Smith. Yes, I wasn’t as single-minded as her, but wasn’t that a good thing?

  “The way to Harry might be through Dessalines.”

  She remained reluctant. “But if we leave Cap-François, we can’t get back in.”

  “We can if the city falls, and I think I know how to take it.”

  “You’ll provoke a massacre with our son in the middle of it.”

  “It’s riskier to linger here, hoping Rochambeau will let something slip as you flirt. They know the agreement on Louisiana is completed. Why then do we stay? If they learn our diplomatic papers are a forgery, or that we really came from Antigua, we’ll be hanged, shot, or guillotined.”

  Astiza went to a window to regard the mountains beyond. “Do you really think the blacks know about this mythical treasure?”

  “I’ve no idea, but I’ve met one chap I like, a great big one named Jubal. He thinks a priestess might help.” This mention of a priestess was calculated to get her intrigued by the other side. “And I don’t like the idea of that lecher having another go at you.”

  “I can handle Rochambeau.”

  “If he promises you your son in return for favors, what would you do?” Now I was the one being mean in the heat and tension of this besieged place, and my jealousy was silly. Yet people will do extraordinary things to get what they want. Astiza seemed desperate, Rochambeau seemed reckless, Cap-François felt doomed, and my instinct was to get us out and seek alliance with the rebels.

  “I’d hold the point of a knife to whatever part of his body he holds most dear to get Harry back,” she retorted. “I’m not leaving Cap-François until I’m certain that either our child isn’t here, or I have him to take with me.”

  I sighed, hardly surprised. “All right. How about this? We attend this ball. You flirt with Rochambeau and learn what you can. If you discover where Harry is held, we free him, somehow. If there’s no word, we go to Dessalines. After the blacks take the city we turn it upside down for evidence of our son.”

  “If you give me enough time.”

  “I lingered in Paris, and now you want to linger in Cap-François.”

  “But for better reason.”

  “The blacks have spies, you know. They might be more use than trying to pry information out of Rochambeau.”

  She considered this point, and offered a concession to patch over our differences on strategy. “The blacks have their holy spirits; their women have been instructing me. When we go to Dessalines, I’ll call on the gods of Haiti to help us. I hear them whispering from the jungle beyond the walls.”

  Astiza believed in the supernatural as firmly as I believe in money and luck, and as I’ve said she was rather inclusive of which gods she’d call on. My wife thought all religions were a manifestation of the same central idea, and this world a mere dream of a more tangible realm somewhere beyond. I knew better than to call her wrong. We’d seen strange things together in the Great Pyramid and the City of Ghosts.

  “My escort today said their gods give the blacks extraordinary courage,” I said, agreeing to patch our testiness. “They put their arms in cannon muzzles.”

  “All political change requires belief.”

  “Unfortunately, their arms are then blown off.”

  Now she smiled, knowing the habitual skepticism that was a gift from Benjamin Franklin. “And yet the French are losing,” she said. “I’ve been learning more about the history here. This war started, I’m told, in a gathering of African religion called voodoo held in a sacred wood. Their gods told them to rise. They have a supreme god, Mawu, but then personal spirits. There is Damballah, the serpent god; Legba, who brings change; Ogu of fire and war; Baron Samedi from the Land of Death; and Ezeli, the goddess of beauty.”

  “Jubal suggested I consult the latter.”

  “You most certainly will not. Your gods should be Sogbo, god of lightning, and Agau, the god of storms and earthquakes. You’ve called down the lightning before, my American electrician.”

  Indeed I had, and I’d no desire to repeat the experience. It was terrifying. “If gods really worked,” I reasoned, “the slaves would have triumphed a decade ago.”

  “And if they didn’t, the French would have triumphed a decade ago.”

  When you marry a smart woman, she’ll answer all your best arguments with her own. I was filled with desire for my clever wife, and not just for her mind. Rochambeau’s slobbering reinforced my own husbandly lust; we all want most whatever someone else covets. But I also never tired of her face, the lilt of her fingers as they moved, the nape of her neck, the swell of her bosom, and glory of her rump, the narrowness of her waist, the . . .

  “Ethan, every race believes the spirit helps the flesh.”

  “And the flesh is fortified by spirits.” I poured us a measure of punch. “It’s getting dark, and I think religion is best discussed in bed.”

  “Or is bed your religion?”

  “I daresay such a religion would be more practical, or at least more comfortable, than the more conventional ones. I’ll also suggest that if people napped more, the world would be a calmer place. One problem with Napoleon is that he never gets enough sleep. I’ll bet Rochambeau and Dessalines have the same problem. A colonel told me the general has nightmares.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “So are the Haitian loa like the Catholic saints?”

  “To a degree. But I think Ezeli is the black Isis, the equivalent of Mary, Venus, Aphrodite, or Freya.” Astiza moved to where we slept and lay down as if posing for a painting, bare shoulder in candlelight and the rest undulating like a serpent, making me think of anything but religion. I not only wanted to find my boy, I wanted to make another one. Or girl. Get back the emerald, retire in peace, and protect them all.

  “And I think Ezeli is you.”

  The Government House was transformed for Rochambeau’s ball.

  Gone were the slovenly belongings of tired officers, replaced with pungent cascades of tropical flowers and garlands of oleander, a plant imported from Africa that I’d smelled in the ravines of the Holy Land. The marble was mopped bright, and the hardwood floors gleamed from fresh oiling. The reception hall, where the dancing would take place, dazzled from what seemed a thousand candles. Crystal and armor caught the light. Battle standards reminded us of martial glory. Rochambeau clearly put more energy into festivity than war.

  The guests were equally radiant. The officers were in full dress uniform, swords clinking as they turned so the sheaths bumped and rattled like discordant chimes. Their uniforms were blue, their sashes red, their frogging silver or gold, their breeches white, and their boots polished to almost shave by. Civilian gentlemen wore fashionable tailed jackets, and servants sweated in embroidered French waistcoats, their woolly hair powdered white under tricorn hats.

  The women outshone all. There are love
ly ladies everywhere, but that night in Cap-François embedded pulchritude in memory, if only because the beauty seemed ephemeral and the gaiety forced, given the desperate military situation. Impending fever, the bayonet, and rape were the unspoken, uninvited guests to our party, and gave the ball poignancy.

  The women’s gowns were as sumptuous as they were daring, décolletage picked out by brilliant necklaces. Necks were highlighted by hair piled high. Skin tones ranged from the carefully protected alabaster of ladies recently arrived from Europe to the tan of the creoles to the dusk of the mulattos; no truly black women were in attendance except servants. Such were the color castes of Saint-Domingue. The mixed-race damsels had special beauty, I thought, as if the gods rewarded the sin of master and slave with heavenly grace. Their complexions were flawless, lips full, and their eyes offered the dark depths and promises of a houri. Astiza was still special, but here she had true competition. The swirl of fabric, skin, perfume, and dazzling smiles put all of us men in something of a fever. We were hot and constricted in our uniforms and suit coats, while the women seemed as bright and light as woodland nymphs.

  Astiza and I began to circulate, and I saw Rochambeau in the center, greeting each couple and assessing each woman as boldly as if he were in a whorehouse. I was amazed some husband hadn’t already shot him, but of course murder would mean a firing squad.

  I also remembered something Franklin had written in his books of aphorisms. He that displays too often his wife and his wallet is in danger of having them both borrowed. Once again, I feared he was speaking of me.

  Astiza saw me scowling and squeezed my forearm, radiating her own smile like a beam of light. “Remember, we’re here to learn about Harry,” she whispered. “You’re a diplomat, in control of every expression.”

  “Just don’t be alone with the general. Soldiers shield him from answering for his appetites.”

  “Then stay with me.”

  But I couldn’t, entirely. There was a regimental orchestra, and as the music started there was a roulette of changing partners as we danced. Three officers in turn twirled Astiza on the floor, and then Rochambeau swooped to grasp her arm, quickstepping with surprising grace for such a squat posture. He got firm hold of her in the waltz, that dance the older generation views as scandalous. His right hand drifted down to the swell of her hip and buttocks and gripped for purchase, and his nose aimed at her bosom. Grinning like a conquistador with Inca loot, he danced past with skill I couldn’t match. The bastard was probably a good fencer, too, so I disliked him even more, deciding his stature was distinctly toadlike.