All Souls' Rising (26 page)

It was the
gérant’s
family who’d tendered the invitation to Marguerite, and the daughters quickly bustled the girl away to the rear of the house to freshen herself and arrange her things. She’d brought them letters from friends at Le Cap. The doctor stayed, with Maillart and the junior officers, to dine with the family. The food was plentiful and well prepared. Maillart had requisitioned a share of the crabs caught that morning, which were served stuffed, and had a pleasant flavor.

All was in good order at Paparel, they learned. The
gérant
remained optimistic about his situation, though many neighboring plantations had been razed. Of Paparel’s one hundred and fifty slaves only some thirty had defected, the others remaining loyal to the master. Mouzon’s worst complaint was that the whites from the hill forts were as likely to murder a loyal black as a rebel, indeed they killed whatever blacks they found at large.

But the plantation had suffered no depredations. There were three white men on the place, besides the family, all well armed, and Mouzon had also furnished guns to some of the most trusted slaves. Captain Maillart grumbled a little at this, but Mouzon declared that he had more faith in his best blacks than he could summon for the whites in the camps, and Maillart was bound to agree that these latter were a most uneven lot.

The doctor retired early and slept without dreaming, exhausted from the days of riding. It was pleasantly cool, a healthier climate than Le Cap; in fact the night air was almost chill. Captain Maillart awakened him next morning by kicking the soles of his feet. After a hasty breakfast they were back in the saddle once more, bound for another of the hill forts.

This next camp was tucked in a
crête
of the mountains beyond the Perigourdin gorge from Paparel plantation. Only half a day’s ride distant, this was one of the strongest positions in all the Cordon de L’Ouest. The
gérant
had been willing enough to acknowledge that its proximity meant a good deal to their safety at Paparel, however much he might dislike the details of the militiamen’s conduct. Maillart’s party expected to reach the fort shortly before noon.

They entered the gorge and rode for half an hour along its narrow stream, then began climbing a vestigial trail that rose along one side. Here the doctor’s horse picked up a stone, and he had to dismount to pick it loose from the hoof. A cool drizzle fell on the back of his neck as he stooped to the task. There was a cloud on the mountain raining down on them gently, while from another quarter the sunshine picked out a gilded aureole of mist. The doctor dislodged the stone from the frog and tossed it over the trail’s bank. He set the foot down so the horse could try its weight, then straightened, stretching his stiff back. Half the column had halted behind him, because there was no room to pass. From this elevation he had an excellent view back across the fields of Habitation Paparel, even despite the haze. It was not only haze, however, there was smoke. Buildings in the main compound were burning.

The doctor pointed and uttered a great shout. Captain Maillart heard him immediately, and saw the smoke stain on the misty sky, but he was at the head of the column and it was not a simple matter to reverse direction on the narrow trail. The cannon, traveling a third of the way from the column’s end, now became an obstacle. Meanwhile, six of the young Creoles who were bringing up the rear now quickly regained the floor of the gorge and began galloping pell-mell back to the plantation, with a dozen of the mulattoes following at a slightly more cautious canter.

Shouting orders and curses, Captain Maillart harassed the cannoneers until at last the gun carriage reached the bottom of the gorge. From here the remainder of the column gave chase to those who’d gone before, leaving the guns to follow as they might. The doctor rode half a length behind the captain. He had drawn the heavy pistol and its weight and awkwardness were interfering with his management of the reins.

At his left, one of the Creoles flinched and slapped a hand to his left shoulder. He rocked back in the saddle, as though his horse had stumbled, but then the doctor saw the bloom of blood across his chest. Helplessly, he passed the man by, still following Maillart at a gallop. Somehow he had heard neither shot. It was queer that the attack had begun in silence, without the usual preparatory shrieking and skirling on conchs. Behind Maillart, he reached the point where the gorge made a final twist before issuing into the outmost of Paparel’s fields. Here they were immediately taken by highly organized and professional enfilading fire.

Four of the Creoles who’d been at the head of the stampede had fallen in this place; one lay half in the stream with threads of his blood flowing into the water. Several of the mulattoes had abandoned their mounts and taken cover among large boulders around the stream bed, returning fire which came not only from the mouth of the gorge but out of the dense jungle above on either side, where those of the hundreds of blacks who lacked weapons were simply hurling down huge stones. Captain Maillart wheeled his mount, crashing shoulder to shoulder into the doctor’s horse. Straggling in the rear, the cannon had been overrun by swarms of blacks who now bore the guns away like ants carrying outsized clumps of sugar.

One of the young Creoles galloped past, stretched out to the length of his horse’s neck like a Cossack trick rider. Behind him came another, riding erect. Doctor Hébert saw one of the mulattoes hiding in the rocks take careful aim at the second young man and fire, at such near range that the youth was carried backward out of the saddle. He looked to Captain Maillart to see if he had witnessed this treachery, but the captain had rallied those of his men still in the saddle and was ordering a charge down the gorge toward the plantation.

Maillart spurred his horse and led the charge with his saber drawn. A black popped up from directly in front of him and took a hip shot with a musket, missing in spite of the point-blank range. Maillart dealt him a crooked saber cut and rode him down. To the doctor’s left another man was shot out from his horse. He saw the sudden vacancy from the corner of his eye, and then a big Ibo scrambled up in the white man’s place. The doctor gasped, the Ibo grinned. Another black swung up behind him. The doctor turned his pistol to cover this pair, but numerous hands reached from the ground to drag down his arm. He struck out wildly with his other fist, and broke free, still holding the unfired pistol, cantering into the open field. He felt a small pulse of jubilation at having carried through the ambush, but just then a bullet creased his horse, and the animal bucked and ran away with him. He was carried off from the other survivors, headed into the burning cane.

A swirl of smoke from the cane field swept through a gap in the citron hedge across the road. A heavy, thick, sweet smell like a pastry afire in the oven. The doctor coughed. The heat was terrible, and flame laced through the tightly woven branches of the hedge. Parts of the hedge itself were also catching alight, consuming. The doctor had just managed to pull in his horse, but at the fire’s crackling it shied under him, reared and tried to run again. Doctor Hébert held it with great difficulty, tightening the reins and twisting the horse’s head down and to the left, its blubbery lips foaming on the bit, its white eye rolling. The doctor was choking and the smoke stung his eyes so he could hardly see.

But then the wind shifted and the billow of smoke swung off ahead of it and that was when the doctor saw them riding almost directly out of the fire itself. For an instant he thought it was a regular cavalry column because the leader wore an officer’s shako, but it was set backward on his head and the man was naked but for that, bare skin all purple black like tar except for the whitened weals from his old whippings, everywhere across his back and arms and legs. Two human heads were slung across the shoulders of his horse, the man’s queue tied to the woman’s long blood-matted hair, in balance like a pair of saddle bags. Seeing the doctor he smiled in a brotherly way and whirled a long cane knife around his head. His teeth were filed to points after the occasional Congo fashion. He rode with confidence and skill. The next man behind him was dressed in a tattered blue ball gown with lace trim at the low-cut bodice and long slits ripped on either side to free his legs to straddle the horse. He had let the reins go dangling and hung on by the pommel of the saddle, grinning and looking foolishly about. A third rider waved a long crazy-looking fowling piece, the barrel bound to the splintered stock with bits of wire and string. Behind these three were more on foot, armed with knives or staves or carpenter’s tools. Out of the smoke and fire reached a severed forearm, impaled on a lance, fingers still wriggling and clutching at the vapors.

So it looked to the doctor, an illusion perhaps. He had his pistol cocked and ready, but the horse kept shying and lunging, spoiling his aim. He gave the horse its head and let it run, full tilt and out of control, holding hard with his knees, his hands tangled in the reins and mane and the pistol pinched awkwardly there too. A stench of scorched blood mixed with the burning sugar; the smell could madden horses, the doctor knew. At the end of the lane he gathered the reins and guided the horse across the corner of the cane field, galloping wildly across the provision grounds. No fire here, only a mat of potato vines and worked earth, where the hooves threw up great clots of dirt as the horse went by. The slope of the provision ground was steep and bordered on two sides with the jungle winning its way back over it again. The smoke had cleared but the doctor didn’t look behind him. His eyes were streaming and still it was hard to see, but he got fractured glimpses, down the hill, of hundreds of the rebel slaves bearing torches to the buildings all around the
grand’case
. They had flushed the
gérant
out of the sugar mill and were swarming around him like ants on a spill of syrup. The
gérant
held his fists by his ears, ducking. They had hemmed him in and were prodding him with the long poles used on the ladles. Thrust and poke, then one man swung a pole far back and let it come down with an awful languor across the white man’s shoulders.

The
gérant
fell, got up again, hunching his shoulders. The doctor saw another pole rise high. Then a wild ululation and blowing of conch shells seemed to rise up just at his feet, and he turned the horse frantically into the trees. A long loop of vine dropped over his chest and snatched him halfway out of the saddle, then it gave way, leaving him clinging to the side of the horse, one knee crooked where his seat should have been. Coarse hair of the mane scrubbed across his face. With a furious effort he got back astride. Something whipped at his cheek, opening a cut, and a bare rise of shale cleared out ahead. Then he was lying on his back, a crushing pain all through his ribs. The horse had rolled over him completely and lay on its side with two legs broken, screaming in a voice that was worse than human.

No sign of immediate pursuit, but the noise the horse was making could be heard for miles around, no doubt. Who would run toward such a howling? Hair lifted on the back of the doctor’s neck. He was still pinned by one leg under the horse’s shoulder and he couldn’t free himself. For a minute or two he ceased to be a conscious human being; there was nothing left of him at all but a blur of frantic struggle. Then his bare foot popped loose from the boot and he was up and running instantly, although the pain of his exposed ankle was almost incapacitating. Impossible for him to cover any ground like this. He went slipping over the shale, biting his lips against the pain. The moans of the horse seemed a proxy for his own. He looked back once and saw beyond the horse’s flailing shattered legs a single black, old and hunchbacked, his wrinkled face indented with old tribal scarification, carrying a carpenter’s saw. He didn’t seem to see the doctor, who rested, panting, behind a mapou tree, thinking how unusual it was to see a slave of that age in the colony, where most did not survive so long. The conch shell sounded again, very near, and there was crashing in the brush nearby. The doctor took a few more agonized staggering steps and then shot fifteen feet up a tree without knowing how he had conceived or accomplished the action.

Some kind of palm it probably was, with shiny grayish bark laid in triangular wedges, like snakeskin or scales, all pointing up. The doctor had cut his hands and his bare foot on the scales of bark while he was climbing. Still, the bark was the only thing that helped him hold his perch. There were no branches. He had thrust himself waist high into the long serrated fronds that sprang from the crown of the tree. They seemed to rattle with his breathing. There was a particolored patch on one that proved to be a giant katydid when the doctor nudged it with his thumb. Through its artifices it had turned itself the precise color of the palm leaf and mimicked veins and fibers, even a few patches of leaf rust, to make itself more completely frondlike. The doctor wished he had some similar ability.

His eyes went out of focus. He was tired, dazed. Thirsty too. It was uncomfortable to cling there in the tree and still less comfortable to speculate on what might be his chances if and when he ever came down. Supposing he escaped discovery by the blacks, he still had no way to get out of the area. The horse was still screaming in the shale. He imagined from what he had seen that the rebel slaves would be looting or destroying all the provisions on the plantation. Though one could live on the country here. There were fruit trees, other edibles too if he had known how to identify them. He licked a little blood from the heel of his hand, sliced in parallel lines as tidily as a razor could have done it, and peered down at his naked ankle. It hadn’t swollen so very much, and he hoped it was only sprained, not broken, but it couldn’t carry him very far or fast. The horse kept on screaming; he wished someone would shoot it. The pain in his ribs was soft, dull, not the sharp-edged sensation of a break, so maybe only bruising, though he didn’t know what internal damage he might have sustained. He laid his cheek against a shiny wedge of bark and as his eyes glazed over and slid shut he saw again the severed heads swinging across that lead rider’s lap. The woman’s head, he now recognized, belonged to the girl Marguerite; those slack lips pulling off the teeth had been her petal mouth, that matted bloody rope her wealth and treasure of long flaxen hair.