HF - 04 - Black Dawn

by Christopher Nicole

'But

  'I supposed it was your wish, Richard Hilton. You have never asked to have your family informed. That is strange. But my agents also tell me that you are disgraced in Jamaica, sought for a crime, perhaps.'

  'A crime?'

  'An assault upon a young girl. A white man's crime, Richard. I do not inquire. Perhaps it was the cause of your leaving Jamaica, perhaps not. I will inform your family that you are alive and well, should you wish it.'

  Dick hesitated. Judith had told her mother, and Harriet, in her anger, had brought a charge. No doubt Richard Hilton, of Hilltop in Jamaica, would survive such a scandal, and even a court case, by payment of a fine. But did he wish to be Richard Hilton of Hilltop? Could he ever be Richard Hilton of Hilltop again? Ellen would never forgive him. Poor Ellen. She had travelled four thousand miles to meet disaster, and must travel four thousand miles back again.

  Well, then, what of the plantation? No doubt it would be sold. Or managed by Tony. There was the answer. It would be managed by Tony. But he had ordered Tony from the plantation. Only Josh, and Boscawen knew that. No doubt Tony would be able to come to some arrangement with both Josh and Boscawen. And Tony was much more of a planter, in spirit, than himself.

  Because he had never wanted to rule, and even less wanted to rule now. Was even less able to rule, now. Having seen what his slaves could become, were they given the chance.

  Christophe was smiling. 'You do not choose to inform them.'

  'I have been happy here, these last few months,' Dick confessed. 'Happier than I can recall. I was never happy as a planter. Or even before.'

  'Why is that?'

  Dick hesitated. 'I think I have always been too aware of my name. I have always felt I was not acting the part. Here, I cannot act the part, and therefore I am not perpetually worried about it.'

  'Honestly said,' Christophe remarked. 'But I have no doubt that you are a Hilton. What of your mother? Do you not wish to inform her that you are still alive?'

  'Yes. But not now. I would like to wait a while.'

  Christophe nodded. 'Yet will there be inquiries about this white man who is my friend, once the fact is widely known. They will ask who you are. What will I tell them?'

  'Whatever you like. So long as they do not learn my name.'

  'Ah. Yet they will want a name.' Christophe leaned back and gave a bellow of laughter. 'I will tell them you are an English soldier of fortune, by name Matthew Warner. There is a name, Richard Hilton.'

  'You know of the Warners?'

  'I know a great deal. And you will tell me more.' He got up, and the humour faded from his face. 'But I said the truth, when I described you as a Warner, an English soldier of fortune come to fight at my side. We are going on a journey, you and I. You are well enough to travel, my surgeons tell me. You are as well, or better, than ever in your life.'

  'Except for my face.' But his heart was pounding. How long had he waited, to leave Sans Souci?

  'Where no one knows you with any other face, Matthew Warner—for your name comes into being as of now—no one will find anything to remark on. Come. Our escort is waiting.'

  Dick wondered if he should ask permission to say goodbye to Aimee. The girl had become part of him during the past few weeks. But he did not suppose Christophe would be interested, or appreciative, of such a tender emotion. The Emperor did not delay to say farewell to his wife, was already striding through the halls and down the stairs, huge cocked hat on his head, sword slapping his thigh, with all Ins tremendous energy.

  And Richard Hilton, alias Matthew Warner, followed, a sword slapping hios thigh. A sword he did not know how to use. What would Christophe say when he discovered that?

  But it was a good alias.

  Their horses waited in the courtyard of the palace, and with them an escort of fifty dragoons, in blue jackets with yellow facings and dusty white breeches, blue tricornes, and armed with muskets and cutlasses. Dick realized for the first time that he was dressed as an officer in the Imperial Guard, and therefore had presumably been granted that rank.

  The gates were swinging open, and he looked outside the palace. Beyond was a beaten earth roadway, typical of any in Jamaica, although he would have expected paving stones, thus close to the palace itself, and in such a kingdom. Christophe cantered through, Dick at his heels, the guards behind. And Dick all but drew rein. For beyond the palace there was a town. If it could be so called. A scattered accumulation of wooden lean-tos—they could not even be described as slave logies— amidst which naked children, thin and emaciated, and almost naked women, hastily and wearily rose to their feet to stand to attention as the imperial entourage went by, kicking dust into their faces. And the faces did not smile.

  Christophe had glanced at him. It was necessary to say something. 'There are no men.'

  'Those of fighting age are in my armies,' Christophe explained. 'The old men and the boys must till the fields. We are a nation of workers, Matt.'

  A slave nation, slaving, Dick thought, and wondered why. Perhaps these people were being punished. Perhaps they were just lazy. He could see the houses of a city ahead.

  'Cap Haitien,' Christophe explained. 'The French called it Cap Francois, but we renamed it.'

  Cap Francois. ‘I have been here, with my mother,' Dick said.

  'Of course.' But Christophe was preoccupied, returning the salutes of the people who lined the street. Because this was a street. Or perhaps, Dick thought, it would be more accurate to say, this had been a street. Now grass grew through the cracked paving stones; the giant trees had not been pruned in ten years, he calculated, and their branches dropped low and had to be pushed aside as the cavalcade rode by. And beyond the trees were the palaces. He remembered the houses of Cap Francois, not because they were imprinted on his mind, but because Mama had told him so much about them. But she had not told him about these. She had spoken of turrets and porticoes, of brilliant colours and sheltered gardens, of massed flowers and smiling, beautiful women. Well, there were still turrets, windows gaping holes in the masonry. And there were still porticoes, in which naked decrepit old men squatted to pass the time of day, being pushed and prodded by military boots and gun butts to stand and do obeisance to their emperor. There were no flowers, there were no beautiful women, and there was no scent, but rather a stench, of unwashed bodies and untreated sewage.

  And once again, there were no smiles. The streets were lined with soldiers, and these stood to attention, muskets at the present. They would not have been expected to smile. But the women and old men and children behind them did not smile either. They stared at their emperor, some with apathy, more with hatred, Dick thought.

  They passed the cathedral. The doors had been wrenched, or had fallen, from their hinges, the great bell tower was cracked. Inside he could see overturned, rotting pews, a derelict altar. So no doubt few of these people were Christians. But he was glad to be out of the city, and taking the road through deserted canefields, with the forest looming in the distance.

  'It is not as you remember,' Christophe remarked.

  'I do not remember it at all,' Dick said. 'It is not as my mother described it.'

  'Ah. Then it was the capital of the French culture in the West Indies.'

  'And now it is not your capital?'

  Christophe glanced at him, and then looked ahead. 'You know the history of my people?' 'A little.'

  'It can be briefly told,' Christophe said. 'As elsewhere in the West Indies, we were brought here as slaves. I was brought here from St Kitts. The Warners' island, Matt. There is a remarkable quirk of fate. And once here, we were ill-treated, on a scale and in a detail that even you cannot consider. Yet, being a supine people, and being too, composed of so many nationalities, we might have suffered for centuries, had not there been a revolution in France. Even then we were not the first to act. It was the mulattoes, who were free, but without social or political power, who sought their rights. In their revolt the authorities became preoccupied, and we saw our chance and rose. Oh, we mu
rdered and we burned and we looted and we raped. We had much to avenge. We have still, much to avenge on the French. And we found ourselves a great man to be our leader.'

  'Toussaint.'

  They had passed through the canefields now, and were entering the cool of the trees.

  'Aye,' Christophe said. 'Toussaint. He beat the French, and he beat the English who would help them as well. I was proud to be one of his men. But then the English and the French signed a peace treaty, thirteen years ago, and Bonaparte was able to send an army against us. An army which had conquered Europe, Matt. They could not conquer us. In the field. But they tricked Toussaint into attending a parley, and sent him captive to France, to die in a prison cell. They thought that without our leader we would surrender. But we found ourselves another leader, in Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and we beat the French again. So what was left of them sailed away, evacuated by your British fleet, Matt. And we were a nation. On paper. For the mulattoes, who had fought with us, now sought power of their own. They murdered the emperor, and Petion declared his independence. I was chosen to take Jean-Jacques's place. I have ruled this country for eight years, and throughout that time I have fought Petion, and I have fought the dissident elements in my own nation, and I have tried to make my people work, and I have tried to make a nation. So sometimes I am very tired. It is difficult to see the end.' 'Yes,' Dick said.

  Another glance. The trees had grown thicker, and their path was climbing.

  'You do not approve of my methods? They must be driven, Matt. When people have been slaves, and then are suddenly given their freedom, all they wish to do is enjoy that freedom. They do not understand that freedom carries with it the responsibility to work harder than a slave, to protect it.'

  'I was thinking that they are poorer now, than when they were slaves.'

  'Haiti is a poor country.'

  Dick spoke without thinking. 'Perhaps they wonder how much Sans Souci cost to build, costs to maintain.' 'Are there no palaces in England?' 'Yes, but . . .'

  'You would bow to your king did he live in a cottage in Suffolk?'

  'A cottage in Suffolk is closer to Buckingham Palace, than are these people's huts to Sans Souci.'

  'The huts of the Saxons were not closer to William the Conqueror's Tower of London,' Christophe pointed out. 'A ruler must not merely rule, or he is a tyrant. And a transient tyrant, at best. A ruler must be surrounded not only by the evidence of his power, but by the evidence of the permanence of his power. Sans Souci will stand forever. And my people know that, therefore my authority will stand forever. And more. Sans Souci is an achievement for them to seek, for them to dream of. It cost a fortune, money the nation could ill afford. But had I handed that money to these people, they would have squandered it in seconds. Now it is standing for all to see. For ambassadors to see, to admire, to understand that here is no casual, savage community of outlaws, but a nation of men, determined to last. They need to know that, Matt. We are surrounded by dangers. Not only from Petion. He is nothing. But from Europe. From Bonaparte, now that he has returned. The first thing he will do, once he has again defeated the allied powers, is despatch an expeditionary force to Haiti.' Another sidelong glance. 'You do not agree with me?'

  'I would say Bonaparte abandoned his ambitions in the Western Hemisphere when he sold Louisiana to the Americans.'

  'I do not think so. And if not Bonaparte, then some other European ruler. Perhaps your own English, Matt. The Europeans cannot tolerate the existence of Haiti. We are a scar across their ordered, white, slave-supported world. Oh, they will come. In greater force than ever before, because they know how difficult we are to conquer. But when they come, Matt, they will find us impossible to conquer.' He rode out of the trees and into the brightness of the afternoon sunlight, pointed up the hills that stretched in front of them, reaching all the way to the mountains. 'La Ferriere.'

  Dick followed the direction of the pointing finger, up and up, through valleys and above escarpments, rising ever higher into the tree-shrouded mountains, to discover what at first sight appeared to be the prow of a battleship, peering out from a rocky crag five hundred feet farther up. And even at this distance he could tell that the stone buttress rose some hundred feet above the rock at its base.

  'Come,' Christophe said. 'It is still distant.'

  And indeed it was. They camped for that night in a valley, and listened to the wind soughing in the trees. And sat around the camp fire, while Dick listened to the Emperor.

  'We shall fight the invader every inch of the way, of course,' Christophe said. 'Ours is a difficult country to traverse, especially for a white man's army. Your English, as well as the French, discovered that during the war. Yet I will never make the mistake of Toussaint, and underestimate the white man's genius, any more than I would ever trust his word. It is possible, with their ability at warfare, their experience and their skill and their superior weapons, that they may defeat us, and capture our cities, and force us back. But this time, Matt, we shall not merely retreat to the forest, and dissipate our numbers along trackless paths. This time we shall retreat to La Ferriere. There is no force in the world can follow us up here, and assault that bastion. It is not just a fortress, Matt. It is the heart of a nation. It is a military city, within the jungle. It is at all times armed and provisioned to enable a thousand men to withstand a siege of a hundred days, and that, Matt, is far longer than any army could maintain a siege, with the guns of the citadel playing upon them, day and night, with my jungle fighters preying on their skirmishers, with my jungle itself bringing fever into their tents. La Ferriere is a dream I have long held. It surely is a dream that every military commander, every emperor, must always have held, the unassailable fortress, the ultimate retreat. But only I have managed to achieve the dream, here in the mountains of Haiti.' His eyes glowed in the firelight. 'You know of another?'

  'I was wondering,' Dick said, 'how much that cost. Forgive me, sire, and remember that I spent seven years of my life in a bank.'

  'You think too much in terms of money,' Christophe remarked. 'La Ferriere cost more than Sans Souci, to be sure. But if I consider Sans Souci, which is only for show, important, try to calculate how much more important I consider La Ferriere.'

  'And suppose the European invaders never come?'

  'They will come, eventually,' Christophe said. 'They came before. They will come again. It does not matter when. La Ferriere will stand forever. And who knows, as a last retreat for an emperor, it may not need to wait for invaders of my country.'

  Saying which he wrapped himself in his blanket and went to sleep, for when on the march he lived like the soldier he had been for so long, slept on the ground, disdained the use of a tent. It was a wholly admirable characteristic, Dick thought, in a wholly admirable man. Well, down to two days ago, he would have said wholly admirable. And indeed, where did he discover the right to criticize? Christophe knew only extremes; that most of his people should starve that the other few might impress, would not seem out of the ordinary to him. And he knew only the dominant, aggressive will of the white man. That he should retain an everlasting fear of them, an everlasting determination never to be conquered again, was entirely natural.

  Only the last, unguarded remark, that the Citadel of La Ferriere might possibly have been built as a last refuge, not of an heroic defender rallying the remnants of his people around him, but for a tyrant to retreat from the rightful wrath of his subjects, was less than wholly admirable.

  Besides, whatever the motive, the mere fact of the creation of such a fortress in so impregnable a natural bastion, was wholly admirable. Except perhaps for the lives it must have cost.

  Dick appreciated this more the following day, when they completed the climb. Christophc told him that every block of masonry, not to mention every cannon, every ball, every sack of corn, had been carried up these slopes on the back of a man; and often enough they had to dismount, in order to be sure of not being thrown by their mounts as the horses slipped and tripped on t
he bare rock.

  And always the enormous buttress loomed above them, coming steadily closer, growing in size as it did so, while soon they could make out the mouths of the cannon protruding through the embrasures, and the heads of the men looking down. Certainly it was indisputable that had those men decided to refuse them entry, they could not have proceeded.

  But even the buttress soon lost its importance, as they at last gained the plateau, and entered the huge wooden gateway, crossing the drawbridge over a rushing mountain stream. From the outside Dick had gaped at the walls, twelve feet thick at their bases, rising fifty and more feet above the rock into which they had been embedded, every embrasure boasting a cannon. Inside he could only gape again, at the sweep of the parade ground, at the stretch of barracks, at the presidential quarters, a small palace in itself, at the hoists for the munitions, the sheltered wells sunk deep in to the rock. Here was engineering on a scale Europe had never even sought to approach. It made him think of what he had read of the Pyramids.

  But there was yet more gaping to be done. Without being told by his host, he dismounted, and ran for the steps leading to the great bastion, hurried to the embrasures, and looked out, at Haiti. The mountains rose in the east behind him, the highest peaks in the entire Caribbean, stretching upwards even beyond the tree-line, to become empty, jagged rock; it was possible to suppose they occasionally knew the kiss of snow. Immediately beneath him commenced the forest through winch they had climbed, stretching far, far to the south and west, green, thick, a defensive bastion in itself. To the north he could make out Cap Haitien, and even, he supposed the magnificent scar on the green that was Sans Souci. And beyond even them, the beach, and the endless Atlantic rollers, blue topped with white, which pounded ceaselessly on the sand.