The War of Knives

by Broos Campbell

  With Ugly and Uglier clearing the way, Pétion and I marched through the front gate and along the edge of the city’s main street, passing between Fort Beliotte and the blockhouse and on toward the forward defenses. Here, on the high ground above the battle plain, lay hidden redoubts packed with men and guns.

  I could see how misconceived it had been to try to take the fortress by storm without sapping toward it first. The blockhouse standing before Fort Beliotte and the other blockhouse on the left, across the ravine through which the River of Orange Trees flowed, provided the crossfire that had punched holes in the waves of Negro infantry advancing across the open ground. Pétion’s men had lain in wait here in these trenches and redoubts, out of sight and out of the line of fire, until Dessalines’ brigades had marched within pistol shot. Then the mulattoes had stopped the black soldiers with a fury of grape and musket balls. The bodies lay out there yet, reduced to bones by the vultures that lurched and hissed among them.

  But it was equally clear that Toussaint, with his greater numbers, would slaughter the mulatto army if he could catch it in the open— which Captain Block could bring about if he chose. I tucked that thought away as Pétion stopped before a pit sunk behind an earthen breastwork.

  “Here is what I have brought you to see,” he said.

  I had been mistaken to think he had no artillery but light fieldpieces. A pair of huge mortars squatted in the pit.

  “Ah, I see the delight in your eyes,” said Pétion, although my expression hadn’t changed that I was aware of. “As a military man, you will find this procedure of great interest. Know you anything of mortars?”

  “A little, sir.” I eyed a group of black men, naked but for their chains, who huddled together to one side of the battery. Beyond them a group in remnants of uniforms clanked with hammer and chisel at something I couldn’t see.

  “Captain!” cried Pétion, as a scabby white man in a filthy white uniform approached. “Le capitaine Fontenot, n’est-ce pas?”

  “Oui, mon général, it is I, loyal Fontenot, busy as always!”

  Fontenot’s clothes were sun-bleached homespun rather than the white Bourbon uniform, but the sight among the blue coats and red vests of the revolution was jarring. I guessed that, like Treadwell, he had been marooned years ago and had found it necessary to change masters. He grinned like a monkey on a leash as he swept off his faded bicorn and said, “How may I serve your Excellency?”

  “Explain for my guest, please, what you do here.”

  “Well, m’sieur . . .” Fontenot licked his lips, not meeting my eye.

  “Forgive me,” said Pétion. “Where are my manners? Captain Fontenot, this is Monsieur Graves, an American lieutenant of vessels. I have no doubt he shares your interest in gunnery. Now go on, loyal Fontenot! Explain everything there is to know about these infernal machines of yours.”

  “Ah yes! Well. These mortars are probably the only bronze pieces in the entire island, Monsieur Graves. By themselves—aside from their mounts, you will understand—they weigh an astonishing four thousand one hundred and thirty-five kilograms apiece.”

  “Astonishing indeed,” I murmured, calculating in my head. That was eighty-one hundredweight and a bit over, nearly twice the weight of one of our long twenty-fours.

  Fontenot hooked his thumbs in his lapels. “They are in caliber three hundred and thirty-two millimeters and a fraction.”

  “A fraction? Why the odd size?”

  “Because it is thirteen English inches, to be exact.” He grinned. “We stole them from his Britannic Majesty, you understand.”

  “That must make finding shot for them difficult.”

  “Not shot, shells.” He held up a finger, like a schoolmaster. “But we stole those, too, so we’re content. Each projectile weighs eighty-seven and half kilograms. That’s a hundred and ninety-three pounds, by the English system.”

  “Yes, yes,” broke in Pétion. “We are conversant with mathematics. And they require how much powder?”

  “As much as thirty-two pounds,” said Fontenot, abandoning the French system of measurement, “which, at a fixed elevation of forty-five degrees, gives us a maximum range of forty-two hundred yards.”

  “Two miles and a third,” I said.

  “And a little over, yes, but that is academic for now. At this range we use much less powder.”

  “I am glad to hear it,” said Pétion. “You will understand, Monsieur Graves, why we have been reluctant to fire these fellows before. But an amusing use for them has been brought to my attention. Proceed if you please, loyal Fontenot.”

  “C’est bien, mon général.”

  Fontenot’s crew poured powder into the mortars’ gaping maws, first from kilogram bags, then from smaller bags, and then a few ladles from a keg. Fontenot added a final pinch to each.

  “Just for luck, really,” he said, patting off his hands. “Otherwise it is like a kiss without a mustache, as the girls say: something is missing without it.”

  Then two crews, of four burly men apiece, each picked up a shell where it had been laid on a sort of iron stretcher with a cradle in the middle and rolled the shells into the mortars. The shells had a band around their centerlines that rested on a shelf inside the barrel.

  “Now, sir, as a naval officer,” said Fontenot, “you are accustomed to round shot, and chain shot, and grape shot and all sorts of shot, but not to shells. Too dangerous except in ships especially equipped to handle them, no?”

  “Bomb vessels, we call them,” I said. “Or just bombs for short.”

  “Bombs! Yes, I like that. Bombs, in case the gunners mishandle their shells and the whole ship blows up, hee hee! But of all your various types of projectiles, I will bet you have never seen this new type we have developed.”

  A squad of gore-spattered grenadiers confirmed my notions of Fontenot’s new type of projectile when they dragged a pair of the naked black men, kicking and screaming, down into the mortar pit and chained them across the muzzles.

  Fontenot selected a pair of fuses—powder-filled wooden cones with the times marked on the sides—trimmed them to length with a small folding saw that he took from his pocket, and tapped them into the touchholes with a little hammer. He gave no litany of commands, but merely stepped out of the way, stuck his fingers in his ears, and nodded to the men with the linstocks. They touched the glowing match ends to the fuses. As the fuses sparked and fumed, one of the prisoners shrieked prayers and the other expelled the contents of his bladder and bowels. Then the guns roared, a fine red mist tinted the smoke, and the grenadiers tossed the smoking remnants of the murdered men onto a pile, where the prisoners with the hammers and chisels pounded the twisted irons off the mangled hands and feet.

  Only Fontenot had watched the fall of the shells. “Short and to the left,” he said.

  Pétion had kept his eyes on me. “Your beloved Father Toussaint, Monsieur Graves, from whom we got the idea, no longer uses this method of execution. He has begun instead to take boatloads of prisoners out to sea. He has them tied in pairs, with weights attached to their feet. They are skewered on bayonets and then thrown overboard, like so much hay on the end of a pitchfork. What do you think of that, hmm? Are you still glad you came to meddle in our little war?”

  I leaned over the breastwork of the mortar pit so I wouldn’t puke on my boots. “Bay kou blié, poté mak sojé,” I gasped, reciting one of Juge’s aphorisms: He who strikes the blow forgets, he who bears the mark remembers.

  “Pepin is dead and I have been accused of spying,” I said to Juge when the grenadiers had returned me to the cell. His head was still ugly, but he was alert. I filled him in on what I had seen.

  “Who has accused you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But Pétion told me it was ‘two friends,’ and Franklin and the Parson are in a room upstairs. They obviously know each other, although Franklin pretended not to recognize him when first we saw him. I think you were wrong about Franklin. I think he’s mixed up in some sort of a
plot and has used me as his stalking-horse.”

  “You have spoken with him?”

  “I have not. He’s with the Parson, as I told you, and the Parson has his sword to his hand.”

  “They let him keep his sword?”

  “Odd, isn’t it?”

  “But what if you are mistaken? Surely you will not murder them.”

  “I can’t do anything about them at the moment.” Murder was coming it a bit high, I thought, but that’s just what I’d have done if I’d been armed. “Juge,” I said, “they have furniture—a bed! And cushions, and mosquito nets! Very strange if they are prisoners, isn’t it?”

  “Perhaps he has given his parole . . .” He closed his eyes and drifted off.

  “Must you always talk to the nigger first?” said Treadwell. “As a white man I find it rather insulting, I must say.”

  “He’s the ranking officer.”

  “So he says.”

  I cared even less what Treadwell had to say than I had earlier in the afternoon, but courtesy demanded I speak to him. “Now look’ee here,” I said. “Pepin’s been broken on the wheel. He got caught trying to get his warning out to Toussaint. That means it’s up to us to finish the job, see?”

  “A great lot of use I’ll be, as you said so eloquently. You can jolly well count me out of any capers, thanks all the same.” He had tossed his sheet off again, and the sweat glimmered on him in streams.

  “I’ve just come from seeing Pétion. He says you should’ve been exchanged already. You’ll be out of here soon enough.”

  “Oh, right. And with Pepin dead, what will happen to me?”

  “Hang it, man, I don’t know. I can’t take you over the wall with me.” I’d been willing to carry Juge, I remembered, but dog me if I’d risk my neck for Treadwell.

  “Sergeant Cahoon can do it. He’s strong as an ox and almost as smart.”

  “Here, sir, none o’ that, if ya please!”

  “Hush, Sergeant. You’ll have to stay here and nurse Mr. Treadwell as best you can till I come back.”

  “Ya will be comin’ back is it, sir?” said Cahoon.

  “Of course, Sergeant. You don’t think I’d abandon you, do you?”

  “Oh aye, never in life, sir.”

  But damn me for a dog, I calculated on doing just that. If I made it down the wall and out to the Rattle-Snake, bugger me with a belaying pin if I’d set foot in that prison again. A broken nose was soon forgotten, but I had no intention of getting myself strapped across one of Fontenot’s mortars.

  I lay on my belly and peered over the edge of the roof. The last of the daylight cast shadows along the wall, throwing the bumps and crannies in the sandstone blocks into high relief. The holes on the side facing Toussaint’s artillery were tempting, but it was already dark on that side, making it impossible to plan a route, and besides there was that damn trench guarding the gate to the lane.

  But there was nary a soul on the narrow strip of rocky beach. When the sunlight had winked out, I tucked my socks into my boots and dropped them over the edge. They hit the ground with a soft thump.

  As I waited to see if the small noise would attract any unwanted company, I watched the Croatoan and the Rattle-Snake. The sun still cast its rays out beyond the point, picking out their sails and sides in a ruddy glow. The Rattle-Snake had taken up station just beyond the mouth of the bay, where with her nimbleness and shallow draft she could snatch up any small fry trying to slip into the anchorage; the Croatoan stood on the horizon, ready to engage any French force of strength that might make an appearance.

  A skiff rode to a painter down at the far end of the jetty. I could see it bobbing on the lesser dark of the water and hear it as the wavelets thumped it against the pilings.

  Below me in the corridor a light wavered and wobbled, casting moving shadows on the stones. I heard footsteps and a mutter of conversation.

  “I tell you, I heard someone moving about down here earlier today,” Franklin’s voice said.

  “There is no reason to suppose we are Pétion’s only honored guests,” said another voice. It was a raspy but full-chested whisper that carried easily down the passageway. The hair stood up on my neck, and I knew it was the Parson who spoke. I backed away from the hole and stretched out flat.

  “I see no reason for levity,” said Franklin. As the light drew closer he said, “Here is the opening I mentioned. The upper wall is entirely caved in. If you are not yet ready to walk out the front gate, perhaps you will be good enough to lower me down the wall by means of a rope contrived of bed sheets knotted together.”

  “What, and let you out of my sight? Not a chance, Mr. Franklin.”

  “Are we not allied in a common cause?”

  “Merely an alliance of convenience, Mr. Franklin, fated to expire as soon as we have left this place.”

  The light played across the stones. “It is hardly my fault that Connor abandoned us.”

  “He’s got nothing to do with it. I’ll deal with him separate.”

  I hugged the roof, breathing slowly and easily so as not to be heard. They were so close beneath me that I could’ve bounced a sword off their heads, if I’d had a sword.

  “Do you hold the light for me,” said Franklin. The shadows moved, and then his head and shoulders appeared as he clambered up onto the broken wall and looked over the edge. “The light is insufficient to reveal any handholds, and we dare not shine the lantern about. I see soldiers moving around down there.”

  “Come back down, then,” rasped the Parson. “We shall see what the Lord has in store for us in the morning.”

  If Franklin had leaned out any further I’d have been able to topple him off to his certain death. But Juge’s word murder had stuck in my craw. I had no doubt that Franklin was one of the traitors Pétion had mentioned, but I had no proof. And if you’re going to claim the side of righteousness, you have to play by the rules. Besides which, if I did for Franklin I’d then have to face an unpleasant interview with the Parson and his sword.

  The light retreated back the way it had come. There came a squeal of hinges as a door closed, and the corridor went dark.

  I swung around and felt with my bare feet for the first of the toeholds I’d fixed in my mind. I began inching down the wall. The legs were the hardest, for when I reached down with one the bent knee of the other threatened to shove me off into space, and my legs were unaccountably trembly.

  I’d made it as far as the story below when the shouting began.

  Fourteen

  I ran my bare foot down the wall and felt for another toehold. The shouting didn’t have a thing to do with me. I could’ve ignored it. I was a mite preoccupied to want any truck with people who shout—the wall couldn’t hold a candle to a topgallant mast in a January gale, but it was all-fired steep and crumbly.

  The breeze began to kick up, and a sheet of rain splashed across the wall and slicked it up pretty good as I clambered down. Before long I couldn’t see where I was going next, except maybe straight down in a hurry. I hunched at the bottom of the long fissure that ran down from the top of the wall, cussing under my breath at a freshet that poured down the back of my collar. I looked out at Rattle-Snake’s and Croatoan’s stern lanterns sparkling through the rain, and then down at the stones below. And as I crouched there I thought that the law of gravity is all very good when you’ve got both feet on the ground—it brings comfort to a man in an uncertain world, to have a scrap of dead-certain reality to hug to his breast and know that it applies to all men equal—but I thought that a suspension of it would be only fair at certain junctures in one’s life. While I was thinking this, I noticed that the shouting was coming from a window a few yards to my left.

  My rattlesnake banner hung from the bars, with Treadwell’s shoes dangling below. I clearly heard Treadwell bleating, “Oh mind what you’re about, you horrid bumpkin!” and Cahoon swearing aloft and alow in Irish. I guessed he was swearing, I mean—it’s hard to tell with an Ulsterman. But then the sergeant holle
red, “Mr. Graves! For Dear’s sake, gi’e us a hand!”

  I had just about figured that wall couldn’t be climbed any farther, not by me in the shape I was in, and I confess I was that weak and maybe scared that my legs might mutiny. But even more than that, somebody was bound to miss me sooner than was convenient if I didn’t shut those two fools’ mouths for them. I swarmed up that wall a heap faster than I’d come down it.

  When I crested the top I saw Franklin down the corridor to my left, holding a lantern aloft and peering out from his door. Then the Parson pushed him through the doorway and followed him out, his black cloak over his shoulders and naked steel in his hand. I didn’t wait around to say hello. I slid down the loose stones and lit out for our cell.

  The guards never bothered to leave a lantern on our floor. I scampered along with one hand trailing on the wall to keep my bearings and the other out in front of me in case of obstacles, but I didn’t think to slow down when I got to the cell. Cahoon was wailing like a banshee and Treadwell was doing his damnedest to outshout him, though John Bull ain’t got a patch on Paddy when it comes to lamentation, you hear me. All a-quiver to help or hinder, depending on who was getting the worst of it, I ran full tilt through the dark and took a flying tumble over someone lying on the floor.

  “Bon sang! You have trodden on me,” said Juge.

  I had just time enough to wonder at the mildness of his tone before I clonked my noggin against the far wall. I staggered back a step or two and sprawled on something soft.

  “Merde! Am I now the chaise longue, that you should sit upon me?”

  “What the tarnal hell is going on here?”

  “Oh, Mr. Graves, yer puir man in his despondency has gone and threwn himself dine the bog-hole!”

  “Down the bog-hole?”

  “I shall have no more of your gum, you fen-watered turnip,” came Treadwell’s voice. “Surely even a blockhead such as you can understand why I took my breeches down.”

  “Someone strike a light, for chrissake.” I rubbed my head.