All Souls' Rising (43 page)

Chapter Twenty-Six

L
ÉGER
F
ÉLICITÉ
S
ONTHONAX
stood on the afterdeck of the ship
America
, tight curls of his black hair whipping around his long, pale and anxious face. His co-commissioner Polverel was with him; Ailhaud was somewhere belowdecks, ill or indisposed. They were watching the light ship sent out in advance of the commissioners’ small fleet to assay conditions and attitudes in Saint Domingue—which ship had just lately returned and was standing a way off from them, tacking against the stiff wind that carried them all westward toward the colony.

They were lowering a boat from the smaller ship into the chop. Sonthonax guessed by his uniform that the officer scrambling awkwardly down the rope ladder was Lieutenant-Colonel Etienne Laveaux, though the distance was too far for his features to be legible. The sound of the boat knocking against the ship’s hull came to them hollowly across the rough water. The boat plunged and as Laveaux (it must have been he) stepped backward off the ladder he lost his balance and fell hard upon the seat of his trousers. They threw a despatch bag down to him from the ship; in leaning out to catch it, Laveaux almost fell out of the boat. Sonthonax’s stomach rolled. He glanced sidelong at the gray and balding Polverel, who did not seem so much perturbed.

Two sailors were laying into the oars. As the boat drew near, Sonthonax threw down the ladder with his own hands, shouldering aside the sailors of the
America
who’d have managed the affair. A burst of salt spray filmed over his face; he blinked away the sting and scarcely noticed it. It was Laveaux, indeed, coming up, swinging the despatch case by a strap. Sonthonax was squeezing his upper arm and slapping him on the shoulder with his left hand while clawing into the despatch bag with his right. A roll of paper uncurled and blew; Polverel, suddenly alert, moved to intercept it.

“
De la patience
,” he said to Sonthonax. “Come, we’ll go below. For shelter.” He gave a speaking look. “And for
privacy
…”

Sonthonax bit his lip and went after Polverel, despatch case gathered under one arm, drawing Laveaux along by the cuff of his uniform coat. They followed the older man toward the hatches.

In his cabin, Sonthonax pushed back from the small round table where the documents were spread, wedging his back against the bulkhead that straightened the curve of the ship’s outer hull. A lantern rocked with the ship’s motion, swinging a scythelike shadow over the papers and the three men’s faces, while a glass prism set in the deck above let in a little greenish daylight. Sonthonax was reading and simultaneously asking questions of Laveaux, then interrupting before the other could answer him.

It was all enthusiasm, Polverel understood. Each day of their two-month-long voyage, Sonthonax would array himself in the formal dress of his office—the tricolor sash and engraved gold medal (
Civil Commissaires
on one face,
Nation, Law and the King
on the reverse)—though in truth there was hardly anyone, in the middle of the Atlantic, for so much grandeur to impress. But Sonthonax had been, would have always been, a small provincial lawyer. The Revolution had dizzied him by shooting him so rapidly to his present height. He was just twenty-nine years old. Laveaux was even some few years his junior.

“Yes, I believe it is all sincere,” Laveaux was saying. “No, not sincere, but genuine. I mean—it is politic, it is only practical. Of course there is race prejudice. But they do accept the law of
quatre Avril!
At least, in practicality…after all it is their common cause against the rebel blacks…”

“Yes, of course,” Sonthonax said, half attending as he shuffled papers. “So far as it is in their interest…but when the elections must be held?”

Still, he was broadly smiling, thoroughly elated. Polverel knew him to be quick and canny, never mind his youth, or his occasional excesses. He shifted in his seat so as to be able to read over Sonthonax’s shoulder, a longish letter from Governor Blanchelande.

“In July, the white men even gave a dinner for
les gens de couleur
,” Laveaux was saying. “And shortly afterward the colored men returned the compliment…Of course they would not ordinarily mingle, but…”

“They do accept the law,” Sonthonax said. “In time, will they accept the spirit of the law?” He chewed his fingernail.

Polverel leaned toward Blanchelande’s despatch. He could not greatly trust the author, long suspected of royalist dispositions, but still the news seemed good. Of the four thousand French troops already in the colony, nearly half were in hospital or otherwise incapacitated, but that might be a blessing in disguise, for the commissioners could better depend on the loyalty of the six thousand soldiers they’d brought with their own fleet. By Blanchelande’s account, this force would be warmly welcomed, and he urged that they be put into the field against the insurgent blacks as soon as possible. If the civil war between the whites and mulattoes had truly been resolved, there might be real hope of suppressing the slave insurrection once for all…

Polverel covered a belch with his hand and stretched out his legs beneath the table. He too had been troubled by doubts and anxieties which he took more care than his younger colleague to conceal. On April 4, the king had made law a decree of the French National Assembly that henceforth
all
free mulattoes of Saint Domingue regardless of birth should enjoy equal rights with the whites of the colony. The mission of the second Civil Commission was to enforce this law and to hold new elections in which the newly enfranchised
gens de couleur
could participate. It was a worthy work, certainly, but they had all misdoubted whether or not they might be received with cannon fire, discover themselves at open war with the colonists when they arrived.

So Polverel was also warm with relief. He watched Sonthonax, who had calmed himself now, and was reading more slowly, silently, ignoring the continuing stream of Laveaux’s speculations. It might be that the news was too good to be entirely true. Sonthonax would be trying to read between the lines…

…and leave the colonists, perhaps, to do the same. On September 18, the commissioners debarked at Cap Français, following a mild controversy with the expedition’s military commander, the elderly General Desparbés, about the proper movement of the troops. But there was no resistance, no immediate sign that resistance would come. The attitude of the colonists seemed uneasy but submissive, as Daugy, president of the Colonial Assembly, described it:

“Gentlemen, we are in your hands as a jar of clay, which you may break at will. This is, then, perhaps the last moment vouchsafed us to warn you of a vital truth ill understood by your predecessors. This truth, already recognized by the Constituent Assembly in its closing moments, is that there can be no agriculture in Saint Domingue without slavery, that five hundred thousand savages cannot be brought from the coast of Africa to enter this country as French citizens; lastly, that their existence here as free citizens would be physically incompatible with the coexistence of our European brethren.”

Sonthonax, resplendent in his sash and its gold medal, was immediately on his feet. His words were persuasive, perhaps even to himself; Polverel (who’d had previous opportunity to study his oratorical performances) suspected that the momentum of his discourse might sometimes carry him where he had not meant to go…

“We declare, in the presence of the Supreme Being, in the name of the mother country, before the people and amid its present representatives, that from this time forth we recognize but two classes of men in Sainte Domingue—the free, without distinction of color, and the slaves.” He paused, significantly; the medallion winked in the area of his navel. “We declare that to the Colonial Assemblies alone belongs the right to pronounce upon the fate of the slaves. We declare that slavery is necessary to the cultivation and prosperity of the colonies; that it is neither in the principles nor the will of the National Assembly of France to touch these prerogatives of the colonists; and that if the Assembly should ever be so far misled as to provoke their abolition, we swear to oppose such action with all our power.” He drew in a large breath and stretched out his arms. “Such are our principles. Such are those given us by the National Assembly and the king. We will die, if need be, that they may triumph!”

A flutter of applause ran round the chamber when he had thus concluded; it grew stronger as the import of his remarks began to sink in. There was even an isolated cheer. Michel Arnaud, however, was sitting on his hands. He turned partway toward Doctor Hébert, who’d also come along as a spectator, and muttered out of the side of his mouth.

“See how winningly he lies,” Arnaud said, “this godless Jacobin—one shade of a nigger is as good as another to him, I’ll wager.” He caught himself short and inspected the doctor for reaction, but the other’s face was studiously blank.

W
HEN THE INSTALLATION
of the new commissioners had been perfected, Doctor Hébert returned—home, as he might come to think of it at last. Nanon’s two rooms near the Place d’Armes had been restored and refurnished, the doctor drawing on the Thibodet accounts at the house of Bourgois to cover the expense. It was better so. Since the declaration of the law of
quatre Avril
, Nanon’s situation had become more strained than ever
chez Cigny
. Curious how the law had changed things. Such casual friendliness as might sometimes (rarely) have obtained between whites and
les gens de couleur
was fairly stifled by it. All became a matter of rule—open hostilities were repressed, but so was any genuine goodwill. In this climate, the charity of Isabelle Cigny had withered, shriveled in the dry heat of other aspects of her character. No doubt there had been additional pressure from her husband too. Doctor Hébert understood as well that the presence of the infant did nothing to ease matters, although of course he had never gone so far as to acknowledge that the child was his.

It was twilight, and the air was cool and damp when he turned into the last street. The forked shadow of a bird flashed over him; he looked up, but it was gone. A pitch apple tree bloomed in the dooryard, a ring of dusty red circling the round white petals of the flower. Nanon had scratched the child’s name—Paul—and his birthdate on one of the waxy green leaves; the impression had remained legible these last six months. The doctor blinked at the token. He took the key from his watch chain, unlocked the door and went in.

A gray cat rose from the rug over the boards, arched his back and rubbed against his leg. The doctor had acquired it to replace the dead monkey; he’d suggested another monkey, but Nanon said it would not do. He bent and ran his fingers over the cat’s fur, then walked to the cabinet and poured himself a glass of red wine from the counter. On the cabinet’s highest shelf were two loaded pistols in a case; he took them down and checked their priming and replaced them, then did the same with the long octagon-barreled rifle that hung over the door. There had been no more insurgencies from the
petit blancs
of the town since the riots of winter and spring, for Colonel Cambefort and the Regiment Le Cap were keeping them under virtual martial law, but still the doctor had thought well to arm himself, and had even bullied Nanon into learning the use of the weapons.

The girl Paulette was playing with the baby in a corner; she would raise him up, his plump hands wrapped around her fingers, but each time she did it he’d let go and thump back solidly onto his bottom. Each time it happened, the baby gave a sort of soundless laugh, his mouth working itself into a perfect round O of pleasure.

“
Paul et Paulette
,” the doctor grinned, and the priest’s daughter looked up with a smile. He tilted his glass, rolling the red fluid around the transparent bell, then moved to a table and lit a lamp, for the dark had now shut down outside the closing door.

“
Et maman?
” he said.

Paulette pointed to the back room, and the doctor carried his wineglass through the curtain. Nanon was stretched on the bed, propped up on cushions, a rug spread over her bare feet. The doctor smiled at her and sat on the edge of the bed. She accepted the glass of wine from his hand, took a sip and returned his smile. Doctor Hébert scraped off his shoes and swung his legs up onto the bed beside her.

They lay in the darkening room and talked for a time, sharing the one glass between them. She told him of all the child had done that day, while he rehearsed for her the events he’d witnessed in the town. Presently Paulette brought in the baby, and Nanon took him to her breast. As she went, Paulette paused to light a candle.

The child nursed with a snuffling sound, and soon enough had fallen asleep. The doctor picked him up and held him to his shirt; the baby molded there like warm, soft, living clay. His lashes were long, and his loose cheek mashed against the doctor’s buttons, taking their imprint, while his mouth pulled partly open. The doctor held him for a few rapt minutes, automatically rocking from foot to foot. Nanon got up, closing her bodice, put on slippers and went out to see to the meal. The doctor laid the child in his cradle and came to table when she called for him.

They dined on the legs of the big
grenouille
—mountain chicken as they called it here. There was rice cooked with peppers and a dish of greens, afterward a bowl of chopped fruit and some flat sweet cakes. Fontelle had helped in the preparation. She and her children had found lodging in a building across the courtyard and the doctor gave them work and money as he could manage it.

He and Nanon took no coffee and went early to bed. For the look of the thing the doctor had taken rooms for himself in a building nearby, but he spent so little time there he had scarcely troubled himself to furnish them. One chamber was set up as a crude medical laboratory; he received his mail there, and that was all.