The War of Knives

by Broos Campbell

  “If it’s only an acting appointment,” he said, “how come you’re wearing a sword like a gentleman?”

  “Regulations, sir.” The same regulations forbad my skewering him for insolence.

  “Ah,” he said, packing the single syllable with a bucket of resentment. “Captain Trimble approves of this, I gather?”

  “I ain’t the faintest, Mr. Blair.”

  “Captain William Trimble is your commanding officer as well as your cousin. Tell me, pray, how it is you neither know nor apparently care if he approves.”

  “He’s dead, sir.”

  “Dead!” He put his fingers to his mouth. “How can this be?”

  “Peter Wickett put a ball through his lungs up in Le Cap. Ain’t you heard?” I wiped my curls with my kerchief and wrung it out where I stood. “No, I guess not. It ain’t been but a week or so.” I twisted the kerchief tighter to hide the shaking of my hands.

  “Dead!” said Blair again. He groped in the air behind him. “Wickett— that terrible man! Philadelphia shall hear of this!”

  I thrust a chair under his skinny legs and he collapsed into it, fanning himself with his robe and breathing whiskey fumes into my face.

  “I guess the commodore’s already informed the Navy Department, Mr. Blair,” said I, hoping maybe he had the apoplexy. “It was an affair of honor. I calculate Secretary Stoddert will keep the president apprised.” Much either one of them would care. Sea officers fought duels so often that you could read your newspaper by the light of the pistol shots. At any rate, I didn’t see any need to air Navy laundry in front of Blair—nor to tell him I’d been Peter’s second instead of Billy’s. The memory still gave me the wicked horrors, but I’d be dogged before I’d let Blair know it.

  I sloshed whiskey into a tumbler from the decanter on the sideboard. From the smell of it I guessed it was some of Billy’s private store: Monongahela rye made by my father’s own hand. I thirsted for it so bad I could feel it in my bones, but I wouldn’t humble myself by asking for any. I dropped the glass stopper back into the decanter and carried the tumbler at arm’s length over to Blair. “As you can see, sir,” I said, pointing at my orders, “I’m to make my way overland to Jacmel and deliver myself to Captain Block, who’s blockading the port. I’m to see what I can see on the way. Of course that’s entirely unofficial, but I’ll still need a local escort—”

  “Spy work is rather poaching on my territory, Mr. Graves.” He narrowed his eyes as he slurped his drink.

  “I ain’t no spy,” I said. “How you talk. The commodore just wants someone to scout out possible landing sites near the city. It might be helpful to Toussaint’s efforts was we to put a contingent of Marines ashore, or maybe some large guns and the crews to work ’em. It’s right there on page two, sir. All above board and plain as plain.”

  I also had a letter in my pocket from the rogue François Villon Deloges, a French major in Rigaud’s service that Captain Oxford in the Choptank frigate had hanged out of hand as a pirate. It was a personal letter to Villon’s wife in Jacmel. Naturally I hadn’t read it, much less mentioned it to anyone.

  Blair smiled, just a slight upturn of his thin lips, as he looked again at my orders. “It would not go well with you to have this in your pocket, was you to fall in with Rigaud’s faction,” he said, extracting the page detailing the help I was to give to Toussaint. “I think perhaps I’d best keep it in my safe—for your own protection, of course.”

  “Hold on there—what’ll I have to show to General Dessalines, should he get suspicious of me? You know how he hates whites.”

  “Commodore Gaswell has a copy of it, I’m sure, and has sent another copy off to the Navy Department. He’ll be able to vouch for you if need be.” He held the page toward the candle. “Or perhaps I should just burn it.”

  “You can’t do that!”

  “Can’t I, though? My word against yours, you know. A careless young officer loses a vital page of his orders and then blames his troubles on a poor hardworking civil servant. Now, how would that go over, I wonder.”

  I took a step back. “See here, Mr. Blair! A good word from Gaswell won’t help me worth a damn if I already been shot.”

  He laughed at the thought. It sounded like a lizard choking. “Oh, you’d be safe enough, probably.” He put the page back among the others. “Even Dessalines knows the value of keeping on an ally’s good side, unlike yourself.”

  I squinted at him. “What ally? You?”

  “We do in theory work for the same government, and surely you ain’t as stupid as you look. But in case you are, I’ll spell it out for you. Captain Block is capable of talking with the nigger generals about any assistance they might require. So, why send a jumped-up acting-lieutenant to do what Block could do better and more easily?” Behind the mask of his smile, he was pure snake. “Information is a commodity like any other, Mr. Graves. If you want my help, I suggest you start dishing some up.”

  “I ain’t under orders to tell you. In fact, I’m under orders to keep it under my hat, which means you got to keep it quiet, too. That means no writing it down.”

  “The most valuable information ain’t never wrote down. It’s true on its face. That’s what gives it currency.” He sat back with his hands folded over my papers. “So, spill.”

  “I’m supposed to find out if it’s true that Toussaint aims to transport the slave rebellion to the Southern states.”

  He slapped my papers down on the table. “Oh, what a lie! He wouldn’t never do such a thing. Rigaud might, as a feint to draw us away and give him time to remove Toussaint, but . . . Feh.” He snatched up my papers and shook them at me. “I should tear these up and have done with it.”

  “Do that.” I looked around, wondering where that fartcatcher had gone off to with my hat and cloak. “I’ll have to go back to Gaswell and tell him you thwarted him. He’ll assign me some other duty and look for a way of crossing you later. Don’t think he won’t do it, neither.”

  He stroked his chin, what there was of it. “Hee hee! Maybe you know how to play this game after all. But, but—where was it?” He located a paragraph in my papers and stabbed it with his finger. “Ah yes: it says here that you are to lend me whatever assistance I might need or desire.”

  “That’s just pro forma, Mr. Blair. The commodore don’t expect me to be your errand boy while I’m doing his business.”

  He gave me a wicked grin. “It’s all above board and plain as plain, as you so charmingly put it. However, you want a plausible excuse to be at Jacmel. I’ll give you one.” He returned my papers to me with two fingers and raised his voice. “Mr. Connor! Mr. Connor there! I think I have found a solution to your problem.”

  An elegant fellow in a blazingly white shirt and azure britches under a peacock-green silk dressing gown stuck his head out from the lamp-lit back room. In one hand he dangled a glass of ruby port and in the other he clasped a fragrant black cigar. He was about thirty, and handsome in the sort of way that makes ladies giggle with each other behind their fans.

  “Mr. Connor,” said Blair, “allow me to present Mr. Matthew Graves, a malapert young acting-lieutenant who needs to be delivered to Jacmel. Mr. Graves, this is Mr. Alonzo Connor. Mr. Connor is a . . . how shall I put this . . . a gentleman of color with a special commission from the War Department.”

  Blair pinched out the candle, and we went into the back room. It was a well-appointed parlor, with silver candle stands and silk-upholstered chairs and sofas. A black-draped portrait of Washington— rotting in his crypt these two months now—hung over the mantel, and yet another sideboard with glasses and decanters stood off to one side. “Don’t bother to sit yourself, Mr. Graves,” sniffed Blair, heading for the sideboard. “You won’t be here long, I dare say.”

  Connor stood in the middle of the room with one hand on his hip and his cigar between his teeth. He studied me, tilting his head away from the smoke. “I believe I’ve heard of you, Mr. Graves,” said he. “Ain’t you the fire-eater that recaptu
red the Jane in the Bight of Léogâne five, six weeks ago?”

  Blair stiffened, and I looked at Connor with sudden liking. “Well, for about an hour, sir, before I was captured myself. But it’s good of you to say, Mr. Connor.”

  “Yet you must’ve escaped captivity somehow, as you stand here before us. That shows fortitude, sir. Fortitude! Your superiors must think very well of you, Mr. Graves.”

  We exchanged bows, and he offered his hand. It was as smooth and hard as floured marble. I had to take Blair’s word for it that he was a mulatto, for his skin was lighter than my own. Now that I looked at him closer I supposed that his hair was on the crinkly side, and his nose was kind of flat and broad. But his hair had a red tinge to it, nearly blond, and his eyes were green. Despite that, he’d be considered no whiter than the blackest field hand back home, was anyone to tumble to his ancestry. Since Blair knew about it I didn’t guess Connor kept it a secret. I wondered how he’d gotten an appointment from the War Department.

  “Percy,” he said, turning to Blair, “does the gentleman speak French?”

  The assistant consul tucked his chin in and blinked at me: “A question is put to you, Mr. Graves. Do you speak French?”

  “You know very well I do.”

  “I do, yes, but I ain’t the one that asked. And how are you with the Creole patter?”

  “I can bargain well enough in the market and whorehouses. I got a phrase or two, here and there.” I knew a little more than that, but hell if I’d tell him.

  The elegant mulatto chuckled, half-raising his encumbered hands in mock surrender. “Well, it’s the closest I’ve come yet to finding a French and Creole speaker who’s white and can be trusted.”

  I clasped my hands behind my back the way Peter Wickett would’ve done, and looked up at him. “Now that’s an odd thing to say, sir.” Even then, in the spring of the year zero, as the armies of Toussaint L’Ouverture and André Rigaud rampaged across San Domingo in a savage civil war, there were still plenty of white men in the colony. Them that could afford it had sent their families off to Jamaica or to New Orleans in Spanish Louisiana, but many of the men had remained behind. “Ain’t there plenty of grand blancs around? Surely some of them speak Creole.”

  Connor cocked his head. “What’s a grand blanc?”

  “The white Frenchmen that were formerly in the sugar and coffee trade.”

  “Oh, them,” said he. “It ain’t genteel to earn your keep, you know. They are more interested in escape than they are in throwing in with one side or the other. Some of them who ain’t out-and-out Royalists have taken sides, of course. A few of Toussaint’s most trusted advisers are white, as are some of Rigaud’s. But that means all the good ones are taken, d’ye see.”

  “Then what about the petit blancs? The mechanics, the overseers— surely one of them would do.”

  He waved his cigar in a graceful semicircle. “They’re all off in one army or another. Toussaint’s blacks fight for freedom and Rigaud’s mulattoes fight for equality. Don’t know why those goals should be at odds, but they are. And so they will remain until first Consul Napoleon can gather enough ships and men to retake the colony. In the meantime, here we are, helping out the niggers. Who’d have thought it?” He sat down on a sofa, crossing his legs just so at the ankles, and sent a little half-smile toward the back of Blair’s head. “The consul thinks I’m a good man for a nigger. Ain’t that right, Percy?”

  Blair swallowed his mouthful of whiskey a little faster than he’d intended. “Yes!” He coughed. “Yes—um, a good man, an agent of the government, come here direct from the capital in Philadelphia.” He still stood by the sideboard, and poured himself another dram while he framed his words. “Best of credentials, but nary a lick of French. So happens he’s headed where you are, Mr. Graves. You agree to go along as his translator, and I shall sign your passport.” Under his breath he added, “Yes . . . that will do a treat, now won’t it?” A bit louder, he said, “I understand his guides don’t admit to speaking English. With you along, that’s one lie they won’t be able to pull off—eh, Alonzo?”

  “But Mr. Connor,” I said, “I was just saying that I don’t understand—”

  “Tish tish,” said he. “A soldier’s job ain’t to understand but to obey! Who said that? Well, never mind, I suppose I said it. How, sir, do you propose we arrive at our destination?”

  Because I couldn’t sit, I paced. It seemed to me that Alonzo Connor was carrying me along faster than I liked—but he seemed to be heading in a direction that was favorable to me. “First by sea, sir, to Léogâne. I calculate to strike inland from there. It should save a day at the least. Assuming tide and wind are right, which they are at the moment. We ought to be off this minute, sir, if we’re to be gone by first light.”

  “What’s first light got to do with any—” began Blair, but the handsome mulatto was already on the move.

  “Good and good!” said he, springing up from the sofa. “I am to rendezvous with my guides at a certain place in the hills above Léogâne, as it happens, and I was wondering how I might safely arrive there. Percy, ’twas a pleasure.” He extinguished the stub of his cigar in his port and pumped the consul’s hand. “You’ll sign the boy’s papers and give us an indent for horses? Good and good again! I’ll have Franklin pack m’ kit at once.” He strode off down the corridor toward the stairs, shouting, “Franklin! Rouse yourself, you black rascal, we’re off to the wars at last!”

  Blair hoisted himself out of his chair and perched his specs on the tip of his nose. “Wait here, Graves. I have a last word to say to Mr. Connor.”

  Samuels took Connor’s bag as we emerged from the assistant consul’s house. Brodie passed me the shuttered lantern he’d been holding. No one moved to help Franklin, Connor’s bespectacled black secretary, who was encumbered by a carryall, a portable writing table, and a thick packet of papers wrapped in oilskin. He didn’t seem to expect any help, anyway. Throwing our cloaks around ourselves, we splashed across the yard and through the gate. Blair’s fartcatcher slammed it behind us.

  “Keep a weather eye out for bravos,” I said to the sailors. I glanced up and down the street. “You too, Mr. Connor, if you please.”

  “I doubt the gangs’ll be out in this torrent,” he said over the roar of the rain. “But I don’t figure on being found in some filthy alley tomorrow morning with my throat and pockets cut.”

  I loosened my sword in its scabbard, and we set off. The seamen walked on either side with naked cutlasses in their hands. Connor took the rear, with Franklin huddling over his baggage between us.

  It was a good half-mile down to the waterfront, past shattered buildings and tumbled-down walls that loomed out of the darkness, with now and then a torch sputtering in an archway or a lamp limning the bars across a window. We slipped and stumbled as we went. The cobblestones had been dug up for missiles in the late riots, and the streets were greasy with mud and turds. More than once we stopped to retrieve a shoe or boot from the sucking filth.

  “Serves you right, mate,” said Samuels, as Brodie groped around for one of his shore-going pumps. “Goin’ around shod like a gent instead of barefoot like a sailor-man.”

  “Is it the naked feet I’m to be havin’,” said Brodie, upending his shoe and letting the gobs dribble out of it, “like a chawbacon boobie just come in this moment from the bogs?” He swished his shoe out in a puddle and crammed his foot into it.

  The rain had lessened and the gibbous moon had begun to show through rips in the clouds when we at last reached the broad marketplace. Here we walked easier. Most of the paving had been left untouched or had been replaced, and the stones were carpeted by sodden remnants of the sugar cane that blacks in San Domingo chewed constantly. The crushed cane stalks filled the air with a sweet perfume.

  Soldiers wandered around in twos and threes, looking for rum or doxies and unmindful of us; but a pair left off annoying a woman and blocked our way. They both reeked of tafia, the cheap island rum. The short one shou
ted at me in Creole, then muttered something to the tall one out of the side of his mouth. The tall one clutched his musket, but he hadn’t cocked it. He kept running his tongue over his lips and then spitting.

  “What do they want?” said Connor.

  “I calculate they want to rob us.”

  “Well, tell them something. They seem like pretty rough fellows.”

  I unshuttered the lantern and put the light in their eyes. “Mwen meriken,” I said. “M’okipé—ralé ko-w!” I hoped it meant, “I’m an American. I’m busy—get away!”

  The shorter one set the butt of his musket on the paving stones and leaned on it. His eyes darted from me to the sailors and back again. In French he said, “We leave as soon as you pay the toll.” He held out a hand. “It is two silver coins. Each!”

  Samuels and Brodie edged around either side of the soldiers. I eased back my cloak to clear my sword and pistols. “We are glad to pay you in lead and steel,” I said.

  The soldiers both took an uncertain step back. Then the short one grinned. “But I forget,” he said. “We are off duty tonight!” He gave the tall one an elbow in the ribs. They reeled away, laughing.

  There was a click as Connor set his pistol back on half cock. He slipped it away inside his cloak and gave me a sad look, as if he’d caught a friend in some mild deceit. “And here you said you spoke no Creole.”

  “No, sir, I didn’t. I said I know some useful phrases. But if the short one hadn’t spoke French, might be somebody’d be dead by now.”

  I led the way down a maze of broken streets and narrow alleys toward the waterfront. The rain lessened and the wind turned gusty, tangling our cloaks around our legs and arms. Then we turned into a narrow passage where the wind died and the shadows crawled with rats.

  “Ain’t much farther now, Mr. Connor,” I said. I turned to look at him, but he was hard to make out in the gloom. He drifted along like a black cloud.