Master of the Crossroads (10 page)

Slapping mosquitoes and staring at the fire, they discussed the dispositions of the enemy. The English were well established at Môle Saint Nicolas, though the port was mostly garrisoned by formerly French troops—the Dillon regiment, much distrusted (and justly, it now seemed) by Commissioner Sonthonax. Laveaux had intelligence that Major O’Farrel, Dillon’s commander, had turned over the post without a shot.

“I know him,” Maillart said.

“Ah,” said Laveaux. “A convicted royalist?”

“Merely a bloody Irishman, I should say,” Maillart said. “What if I rode that way, tomorrow?”

Laveaux looked at him narrowly across the flames. “What indeed?”

Maillart nodded thoughtfully. Perhaps one success would breed another. If one has turned his coat the first time, why not again? Though this was a thought he kept to himself.

Let Tocquet, then, carry the news to Toussaint at Ennery, Laveaux proposed.

Tocquet looked down into the fire. “Yes,” he said, but his pause was noticeable.

“You hesitate,” Laveaux observed.

“Hardly.” Tocquet roped his long hair between thumb and forefinger and flipped it over his left shoulder. “I had thought to travel east along the coast . . . to Fort Dauphin, perhaps. But your mission is of more importance.” He smiled crookedly, tilting his face to the coals. “For the good of France.”

“Assuredly,” Laveaux said. “You have known Toussaint for a long time.”

It was not a question, though Maillart did not understand Laveaux’s confidence in presenting it as a fact. Unless perhaps Tocquet’s activities as a border smuggler had been reported to the French general. Tocquet looked up, his eyes narrowing as they would do when he had been piqued.

“Horsemen have sought to know him, since his days at Bréda,” Tocquet said. “He knows all there is to know of how to school a horse and treat its ailments.”

“I see,” said Laveaux. “And do you know his mind?”

Tocquet lowered his eyes to the dwindling fire. “No,” he said, and then, in a softer murmur, “I don’t suppose there’s anyone who knows his mind.”

The subject fell away in silence. The flames had settled into coals. With his boot toe, Tocquet pushed an ember farther toward the center.

Maillart wondered a little that Laveaux had not pursued his question further. Of course, he was in no position to refuse Toussaint’s proffer by reason of mistrust, and perhaps that explanation ought to be sufficient. But he wondered enough to remain wakeful after he and Tocquet had retired to the fort and stretched out on their bedding.

“Why would you go toward Fort Dauphin?” Maillart finally asked the darkness. “You would be at risk from the Spanish along that road.”

“I don’t expect any difficulty from the Spanish,” Tocquet said. “In fact, I meant to cross the border as far as Dajabón, or farther, though I didn’t like to tell your general that. You see the shortage of tobacco here—there’s money to be made.”

Another question balanced on Maillart’s tongue, but he did not ask it, for Tocquet had begun to feign a snore.

In the morning they brewed coffee requistioned and ground by Bazau. Maillart’s head was heavy from the rum he’d drunk the night before, but as the coffee clarified him, the elation of his success began to return, along with hopes of what he might accomplish when he reached Le Môle.

With Tocquet and four of Toussaint’s men he rode to the principal crossroads at the edge of town. There they drew up their horses before parting. Maillart’s horse was restive, shying at a red rag bundle tied in a tree near the intersection—the mark of superstition, someone’s
ouanga.

“There’s something I wonder,” Maillart said.

“Oh?” Tocquet looked down the road he meant to take.

“Why should Toussaint choose
this
moment to join the French Republic? When their forces are at their very weakest. When their chance to win seems nil. And I was struck that Laveaux did not inquire further into the matter.”

“Perhaps your general has sense enough not to ask questions without an answer,” Tocquet said, and then, quickly, “Sorry! I don’t mean to offend.”

But Maillart was only struggling with his horse, which had again begun dancing; he sawed on its mouth and turned its head out of view of the red cloth bundle trembling in the tree.

“I’ll give you a thought on the subject,” Tocquet said. “I don’t say it’s my own opinion.”

Maillart had brought his mount under control. He raised his eyes to meet Tocquet’s.

“Suppose that Toussaint has already concluded that he himself is going to win,” Tocquet said, with his crocodile smile. “Then he would have only to choose which of the other parties will win with him.”

With that, Tocquet tugged down the brim of his hat and quirted his horse down the road toward Ennery, his retainers bringing up his rear. Maillart swung in the opposite direction. For the moment it seemed to him better to ride than think. But he had gone only a few dozen yards when his horse spooked again at another rag in the branches, and turned white-eyed and rearing in a half-circle.

Tocquet had disappeared with no trace of his going. A single tall young woman, balancing a basket of charcoal on her head, traversed the crossroads. She walked slowly, gracefully erect, and sang a song Maillart could not understand. When she had passed, she left the crossroads empty. His horse calm now, Maillart rode for Le Môle.

6

Doctor Hébert woke a little before dawn. He did not know when he had learned this—to assign the moment of his waking before he slept at night—but now the procedure never failed, and he no longer needed anyone to rouse him. Cocks were crowing up and down the mountain gorges surrounding Habitation Thibodet, and he could hear the chink of harness and the snuffling of horses being assembled in the yard outside the
grand’case.

Nanon slept half turned toward him, her leg hitched up across his hip. The movement of her breath on the bare skin of his shoulder felt very sweet to him. He disengaged carefully, not wanting to wake her. He had laid out what he needed the night before so that now he could find it all by touch and dress quickly and quietly in the dark.

Someone lit a lamp at the table on the gallery beyond their bedroom, and a little light leaked through the slits of the jalousies. The doctor padded across the room and looked at Paul, in the cradle positioned near the window. The little boy slept on his back, lips parted and snoring delicately. He had long black eyelashes, like his mother’s. A mosquito whined and lit on the back of the boy’s plump hand; Doctor Hébert reached down and extinguished it with a pinch.

Nanon murmured and turned in the bed; her arm flung out heavily across the pillow where the doctor’s head had lain. He felt himself quicken and rise, involuntarily. Perhaps she was only feigning sleep, but it was better so; they had no skill for partings. He holstered his two pistols, picked up his rifle and his boots, and went softly out onto the gallery.

The air was cool, misty; there was the green smell of morning and the odor of fresh coffee. Toussaint’s hat lay on the table by the lamp and coffee pot; the black general’s face was withdrawn in shadow. Hébert’s sister, Elise, sat across from him, a shawl wrapped around her shoulder over the cotton shift she wore, both hands curled around the steaming cup she sipped from. The doctor sat down beside her and pulled on his boots. Elise poured him coffee and generously stirred in sugar. Toussaint inclined his head, as if listening, but no one spoke.

The doctor drained the small coffee cup in three rapid gulps. Daylight was beginning to come up now, paling the glow of the lamp. Now they could see each other’s faces. Still no one spoke. Elise’s face was puffy, comfortable from sleep. The doctor wondered where Tocquet was at this moment, and if she might be thinking the same thing, and where he might be himself in two weeks’ time. Toussaint rose, put on his hat. The doctor laid his palm briefly over the warm back of his sister’s hand, then followed the black general down the steps. His absence ought to be a brief one, but in fact it was impossible to calculate or predict. He felt a fluttering in his own stomach as he tightened the girth on the brown gelding he would ride. Who knew indeed when he might return, or if . . .

The feeling dissipated once he was mounted and riding with the others up through the coffee plantings toward the backbone of the ridge above. Now and then a thought of Nanon or the child would flick toward him, but he would simply let it pass; such thoughts were painful if allowed to linger. The morning mist was lifting from the trees and the more the light brightened and turned yellow, the louder and more often the little cocks crowed in the jungle on every side. Their party was a strong one: one hundred crack cavalrymen all well-mounted, and the doctor the only
blanc
among them—Toussaint had brought none of his white officers this time. Instead the black officers he most esteemed were present: Moyse, Maurepas, Dessalines. In the middle of the file of riders were several little donkeys loaded with packs and one blue mule whose only burden was an empty saddle.

Coffee and sugar prickled in the doctor’s blood, yet at the same time he grew drowsy as the sun grew warmer. The column kept an easy pace, winding over the stone road into the mountains. He scarcely needed to mind his mount; the brown gelding merely followed the horse ahead. The doctor swayed easily in the saddle as if on a wave, the stock of his rifle, sheathed in a woven scabbard, stroking against his knee.

At the height of Morne Pilboreau the doctor twisted in the saddle and looked back in the direction they had come. A twinge touched him as he thought of Nanon and the child. Habitation Thibodet and all the canton of Ennery were hidden by the involutions of the mountains, though beyond the view was clear to the blue haze above the ocean and the coastal town of Gonaives. By now it was very warm and the doctor envied the shirtless soldiers who surrounded him. Immediately ahead of him, riding double behind Quamba, was that new man named Guiaou, his torso bare but for the cross-strap of his cartridge case and the tissue of scars which covered him like a garment. The doctor recalled bits of the man’s story, which he had scrawled down at Toussaint’s behest, and tried to match them with the scars: there the deep wounds from
coutelas
blows across the forearm, shoulder, and neck, and lower on the rib cage and across the lower spine a crazily mangled area bordered by what suggested the print of a shark’s jaw. Still Guiaou carried himself straight and limber, unheedful of the healed tatters of his flesh, as if he were not made of meat at all, but something stronger.

Three men farther up the line, Jean-Jacques Dessalines announced in Creole that it was very hot indeed, then took off his uniform coat and shirt and folded them neatly across his saddle’s pommel. The whole of his broad back was a web of cicatrix, thick scars of old whippings crisscrossed, standing raised and pale against the black of his skin, white and wormy as the bellies of fat snakes. The doctor stared with a dull fascination, but when Dessalines sensed his regard and began to turn, he let his gaze go drifting over the jungle. Just at the edge of the narrow path began a long, steep defile which turned stony at the bottom, where a stream belled gently over the rocks. The doctor would have liked to remove his own shirt, but he knew if he did, his weak skin would be broiled raw by the sun.

The trail twisted, corkscrewed upward; on the mountain above them the belly of a blue-white cloud had lowered. Now they were riding up into the sky itself, it seemed; the foliage turned a darker, damper green; a thick, cold fog blanketed the trail. Those who had divested themselves of their coats now put them on again. For periods the fog was so heavy the doctor could see no farther than the tail of Quamba’s horse ahead of him. The cries of invisible birds surrounded them, and the purling of streams they could not see. When they stopped to drink and water the horses, the water the doctor scooped into his palms was warmer than he would have expected, and had a slightly sulfurous taste.

They rode on, now down a declining grade, out of the cloud and the rain forest, emerging into the light of the westering sun. Once again it was very hot, so that the doctor felt sweat start immediately, under the layer of cold dampness he’d accrued on the mountain’s height. Fleetingly he thought of fever, then abandoned the thought as useless. He checked the priming of his rifle and pistols to be sure that the fog had not dampened the powder. They were riding down the wrinkles of the mountain into a lush green valley below. A cloud detached itself from the mountain behind and darkened and spread over them till all the sky had turned slate gray, but before the evening rain flooded down they had reached the valley floor and taken shelter in the town of Marmelade.

Two thousand of Toussaint’s men were quartered here, approximately half his whole command—Marmelade he had also established as a
quartier général.
In the small wooden church, Toussaint took counsel with his officers, while the rainstorm beat the roof above their heads. The doctor sat on a backless pew and noted down their reports on a paper spread across his knee, writing in the smallest characters he could manage, for paper was scarce. When the rain had ended, the men cooked their evening meal out of doors, but after supper Toussaint returned to the church, where he prayed for a long time, kneeling before the altar, and then reconvened his council.

The doctor again served him as secretary, noting what he thought important or whatever Toussaint signaled him to record. He was numb with fatigue, from the long day in the saddle followed by a substantial meal, but Toussaint, who ate little enough at any time, also seemed to need little sleep: three hours possibly, not more than four . . .

They were in the saddle again at dawn, riding down the river valley in a generally southerly direction. As the sun approached its height they began climbing another range of mountains. The doctor, half-drowsing, was startled by the sudden yapping of a gang of snaggle-toothed, vicious-looking little dogs; then around a bend of the trail appeared a little boy two or three years old and stark naked save for a plaited cord around his waist. He stared at them round-eyed, then his teeth flashed and he leapt in the air crying,
“Solda’ nèg! Solda’ nèg!”
Some other children appeared, running and capering alongside the horses and carrying the same cry forward, “Black soldiers! Black soldiers!” The brown gelding shied at the twirling of a little girl’s skirt, and the doctor leaned down to stroke the horse’s trembling shoulder. Adult voices called the children harshly away from the trail, and the children disappeared at once, but the barking of the dogs continued, and the doctor was aware of the movement of considerable numbers of people on either side of the trail, though they were obscured by the jungle. There seemed to be a maze of trails running up the western slope, and through gaps in the undergrowth the doctor caught glimpses of zigzag corn plantings and the roofs of
ajoupas,
also sections of wooden palisades and even trenches fortified by angled sharpened stakes.

“Where did these people come from?” he said, not realizing he’d spoken aloud until Guiaou turned back to answer him.

“Sé marron yo yé.”

They were maroons then, runaway slaves . . . though the children were likely born in freedom here. Maybe also some of the adults. The doctor knew that large bands of maroons had held out in these hills for several generations. He had himself known such a one, a man named Riau who could read and write and for a time had served Toussaint both as scribe and officer, until finally he had deserted or simply disappeared. He would be with the maroons again now, the doctor thought, if he still lived. The whooping and barking and sounds of running feet on the hidden trails diminished as they rode on. Then there was silence, followed by the singing of the birds.

At a broad and shallow spring-fed pool they stopped to drink and water the animals. Stooping over the ruffled water, the doctor was startled to meet his own visage, blurry and pale among the ripples. His pallor shocked and almost repelled him—he had forgotten that he was
blanc,
had come near to forgetting himself entirely. Now he pictured the little maroon boy they’d surprised on the trail, and felt a twinge of guilt, for it had been more than twenty hours since he’d remembered Nanon or the child.

The flash of pain was brief, and left him entirely once they’d all remounted. As he rode, the doctor quietly took from his pocket a shard of broken mirror which he always carried. The fragment was trapezoidal and fit the creases of his palm; it was too small to return him his whole face, but by turning it this way and that he could glimpse an eye, an ear, a bit of whiskered lip, like pieces of a puzzle that no longer fit together. Riau had called the mirror piece his
ouanga,
but if it really were a charm for magic, the doctor felt that he was ignorant of its use. It was long since he had seen Riau, who had evaporated from Toussaint’s forces months ago, most likely to return to
marronage;
yet as the mirror shard returned to him a wheeling vision of the sky, he felt in the same spirit with him.
In the same spirit
was the phrase that Riau would have used.

He fixed his eyes on the plumes of Toussaint’s general’s hat, tossing at the head of the column. So high in the mountains, so deep in the jungle, direction could no longer be determined, logic failed, it was useless to think; therefore the doctor’s mind became vacant. The white plumes floating ahead of him were no longer connected to military rank or political faction or to a man or even to a hat. They were simply there, drifting through the twistings of the trail.

In the afternoon they came out of a cleft of rock onto a wide savannah that stretched almost as far as the eye could see. At the limit of the horizon, the turquoise verdure of the Cibao mountain range was covered by the smoky blue of clouds. The broad plateau rolled gently and smoothly toward the mountains, covered everywhere with tall brindled grasses. Very infrequently there appeared a small contorted tree. Great herds of long-horned cattle roamed the plateau, sometimes tended by one or two herdsmen wearing Spanish flat-brimmed hats, sometimes tended by no one at all.

After an hour or more of riding over the plateau, the doctor’s eye was caught by something in the neighborhood of a flamboyant tree, there in the middle distance, near the mouth of a shallow, grassy gulch. But there was nothing, only half a dozen cattle grazing toward the meager shade. Perhaps it was only the tossing of the tree’s orange blossoms that had captured his attention, but he kept looking until, when the cattle had drifted nearer, a near-naked black man sprang up from below the tree, made a short determined run and thrust a spear between the ribs of the nearest cow. As the other cows bolted, the one which had been speared let out a moaning bellow and slumped down over its buckling forelegs. Several other men appeared from the tall grass, whirling
coutelas.
One cut the cow’s throat immediately while the others whooped and cackled. The sound carried plainly across the quarter-mile distance; a couple of men in Toussaint’s column cheered in reply. Guiaou turned toward the doctor again.

“Those are still
maroons,
those people.”

The doctor nodded and said nothing. There was no need of a reply. The plain continued; they rode on.

That evening there was no rain, only a rising of the wind with ragged clouds passing swiftly overhead, and then clear sky, with the stars beginning to emerge. Just before darkness had fallen completely, they rode into the town of San Miguel.