All Souls' Rising (51 page)

The whiteman priest Sulpice told to us then that the Marquis d’Hermona promised these things only, that we who would fight for the Spanish whitemen against the French would be free forever after. They would give ribbons and coins and new uniforms to wear and bigger louder names for our officers to call themselves. Also some money they would give. But Père Sulpice did not say anything about freeing
all
the children of Guinée. He did not even say anything about our women, or the children we had with us in that place. I did not like the way he played with the skulls on his bead-chain while he talked. But I did think Toussaint would do the thing he said.

All this time Tocquet the whiteman gunrunner sat with his wide hat still on his head, so his eyes were in shadow, but I saw his eyes missed nothing. They were quick and bright and black as the eyes of a crow. Sometimes Toussaint would stop the Père Sulpice from talking and look very hard into the black eyes of Tocquet and ask him if what that
père
said was true and if he, Tocquet, had heard it with his ears from the Marquis d’Hermona. Tocquet would hold his eyes steady when Toussaint asked him a question, while the eyes of the priest went sliding all the ways around the tent walls when he spoke. But Tocquet said it was all true, what the priest told. He never took his hat off and except when Toussaint asked a question he did not want to say anything at all.

All this time at the cook fires outside the tent they were making flat breads from the flour Tocquet brought. I smelled the bread frying on the iron and the juices started in my stomach, and in my mouth the juices came hard and sharp enough to sting. I knew we would not be staying in those wet mountains for much longer.

So we came down then, to the Spanish town of San Raphael, all we six hundred men and the women and children too. It was not Marquis d’Hermona at that place, but one called General Cabrera of the Spanish army. Here Toussaint was made a general and a
maréchal du camp
and a knight of the order of Isabella who was the queen of the King In Spain. He had a fine new uniform to wear, the uniform of a general, with a general’s hat. They gave to me, Riau, this louder name of
capitain
. They gave me a uniform and also boots, only I would not wear the boots because they pinched my feet. Also they gave money to the pocket of my uniform, because these whitemen pay to kill each other, instead of doing it from their desire.

All at once when we had come to San Raphael, Toussaint wanted to hear prayers to jesus, which he had not heard for a long time, since the little fat whiteman priest had gone away from our camp. The Spanish whitemen were all very happy that Toussaint wanted to have their god in his head and so many of them went inside this church with Toussaint. Then Père Sulpice was a long time talking to jesus and all in a language no one could understand, all the time counting his words on his string of skulls. When he was finished talking, he put a piece of jesus meat into Toussaint’s mouth and gave some blood of jesus to Toussaint to drink. All these things were done before the uniforms and the new names were given.

Now
Capitain Riau
had an army tent for himself, instead of building an
ajoupa
like before. I saw the Spanish soldiermen did not like to see me keeping Merbillay and Caco in my tent. They did not like to see me sit outside the tent to play on the
banza
. But while Toussaint was General, it did not matter much what those whitemen liked.

In those days Madame Suzanne and Toussaint’s children came back to the camp. I think they had been hiding on the Spanish side all this time since we first began burning and killing whitemen. Of his sons, only Placide remembered Riau from Bréda. But sometimes I would take Placide and Isaac riding out onto the Spanish plain, bringing Aiguy along with me. The Spanish whitemen did not much like us to go away from camp, but these were General Toussaint’s sons, and Riau, who was Toussaint’s
aide de camp
, I was more free.

After the first hundred cows were a hundred more and then more hundreds. They all did run wild on the plains, the way Aiguy had told it. We did not see very many cane fields. These Spanish whitemen were not like the French. No matter how many cows they had, they did not seem to know that they were rich. They would not grow anything out of the ground, only provisions, and these they grew poorly. When they were hungry, they would kill a cow and make a
boucan
. If they were not too lazy, they might cure the skin.

Now we all of us had plenty meat to eat. These whitemen on the plain did not know how many cows they had, I thought. But they were selling cows to the army, and if a cow was stolen, they would somehow know it, and sometimes I saw bad trouble over this.

These Spanish
colons
lived in cabins not much better than
ajoupas
, except they used planks of wood instead of sticks to make them. They had not many slaves, and the slaves they had slept in the cabins by the whitemen, and how a slave lived was not so different from a whiteman. They were not very like the French
colons
. But if a slave would run away, they hunted him with dogs and when they caught him they might give him alive to the dogs to eat. I saw that the whitemen who were on the plains were not happy to see us in the Spanish soldier uniform. But because I was near to Toussaint, our general, no one ever troubled me.

So I brought the children back, to Toussaint’s tent again. Soon it was going to be time to go and fight and kill more of the French whitemen. Toussaint was not anymore speaking to me of Abbé Raynal, or showing the book that came from that man’s head. I did not much know what was in his mind. He was glad to have his wife with him again, and his sons I know, so maybe he was not thinking of much else all through those days.

But on a day he called me into his tent alone. From a little wooden writing desk he was keeping there, he took out a paper. The General Cabrera gave him this little desk for a present, and it had much work of carving in it like the priest’s beads, but it was made here, by a slave. When I looked at the paper I saw Toussaint had written it himself. I could not understand it well at first. His letters all had a bad shape and he did not put the right letters in the words. It was hard for me to make this paper speak.

Then I saw that the Toussaint he had put into my head had learned more about writing down words than the Toussaint who sat across the tent from me. I felt strange inside myself to think this. But Toussaint took the paper from my hand and read to me in his own voice.

“
I am Toussaint
…” He stopped here, holding out one empty hand while he held the paper high before his face, in his other hand. “
Upon a day, you will hear my name. I am coming to fight for you and your people
…”

He stopped again. These were the only words that were on the paper. I saw these words had not satisfied him.

“I am Toussaint…” he said again. He held out the empty hand like he was feeling for a weight to balance the word that he was speaking. But I did not know what to say to him. Of course I knew he was Toussaint.

“It wants something,” Toussaint said. “More—another name.”

“Toussaint Bréda,” I said then.

“
No
,” he said. “Not that.” He was even angry I had said this. But he had been called Bréda forty years. I was not sorry though, if this name was finished for him then.

“Who is the letter going to?” I said. “Who is it for?”

“Of course it is for you,” Toussaint said, smiling on the far side of his mouth. “For you and for all the world also.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. And I did not. We had never before written a letter to
everyone
. I would not know how to start doing that. Always we knew who would read the letter and so we shaped the words to fit into the ear of this one man.

Toussaint put the paper back into the desk and shut the wooden lid and tapped it with his fingernail. The nail was thick and cracked and yellow like old cowhorn.

“Maybe I don’t understand it either,” he said then. “The letter is not finished yet. But you will help me finish it, Riau. When it is done, not long from now, then we will both know all that there is to know about it.”

Chapter Thirty-One

A
CURTAIN OF RAIN PARTED BEFORE
Captain Maillart as he walked across the Le Cap quay in the direction of the fountain, and continued withdrawing a pace or two ahead of him, shimmering like a waterfall, stippling the stone pavement with pinpoints of damp. As the cloud tore and lifted off completely, that last faint misty sheet of rain was all at once spangled through with sunlight. The captain had not bothered to cover his head, but walked gaily swinging his hat at his side. The fitful shower had scarcely dampened the stiff newish cloth of his uniform.

He strolled up to the fountain’s rim. A pace away from the lip of the basin, an old white-haired
affranchi
sat cross-legged on the ground. Perched on his shoulder was an enormous green parrot, head as large as a small dog’s. The old man was feeding the bird with fibrous pinches of soursop from a fruit that lay divided in his lap. The parrot looked askance at each, turning its head sideways, and harshly croaked,
cela m’emmerde, c’la m’emmerde
, but still accepted every proffer from the crooked black fingers.

Maillart smiled, turning to face the opposite direction down the quay. From a knot of cloud above the southern mountains there arced three bands of brilliant rainbow color driving down into the water of the harbor. It was very still. A French merchantman had negotiated the channel and was drifting silently toward a mooring. The hour was still very early and though a couple of men had come out to catch the lines tossed down from the ship’s upper deck to be made fast, the quay was not very busy as yet.

The parrot clicked, repeated its phrase, turned its head for a sidewise inspection of another fingerful of soursop. Its beak was curved and black, irregularly marked with paler cracks and chips, strong and sharp enough to sever a man’s finger, Maillart knew. There was a short slapping sound of a small-bore cannon firing over the flat water, and he quickly turned his head in that direction. The ship at the mooring had fired a gun from a starboard port; a wreath of blue-gray smoke lazed away from the square trapdoor high in the hull. Now the noise of confused shouting came to Maillart down the quay, as more and more men came out of the buildings to see what was the issue. He could not make out what anyone was saying, but the smoke seemed to darken as it dissipated over the still water, and the brilliance of the day turned chill. Maillart jammed his hat on his head and hurried over the pavement toward the strange ship.

Several men had emerged from the warehouses nearer him and were hastening along in the same direction. Maillart was not acquainted with any. He saw his brother officer Vaublanc speeding up toward him and toward them all, raking unhappily at his hair with one hand and clutching a Paris newspaper in the other. His spurs made a harsh rattling sound with each jolt of his boot heels against the stone
pavés
. As he came farther within earshot Maillart heard him calling out in a hoarse voice that the king was dead, that Louis and Marie Antoinette had both been slain on the guillotine, and that the French monarchy was now altogether fallen.

“What does it mean,” Maillart said, hardly conscious of his words. He snatched the paper from Vaublanc’s hands and scanned the columns blindly; the words tangled on the page and he could make no sense of them. Two other men stood by looking curiously on while a third had run deeper into the town to cry this news.

“It means that we are finished.” Vaublanc seemed unaware that he was weeping, though his pale face was all in sheets of tears. “Done for in this country, done for in France. There
is
no France. Well, I shall sell my sword to the Spanish, I suppose, and that straight away—will you come too?”

“Yes,” Maillart said, mechanically. “What are you saying? Do you really mean to go?”

“I do,” said Vaublanc. “Only imagine the demonic joy the monster Sonthonax will have of this intelligence. I would not serve that man another hour. No, but if the Spanish win this island, there may be some refuge here—some order and some decency. Only tell me, will you come?”

“Yes,” Maillart said. He knew, of course, that he’d find friends among the Spanish forces now, for many officers had deserted in the aftermath of that unlucky skirmish between the mulatto Sixth and the Regiment Le Cap. All this he knew, but when he spoke his tongue felt numb between his lips.

He arranged to meet Vaublanc by noon, on the road out of the city that passed by La Fossette. Vaublanc had an affair or two of business to terminate in the town; he believed he might be able to raise some small amount of money. For Maillart there were no such considerations. He went back to Les Casernes in the wake of the riot that ran through the city ahead of him. In the barracks all was equally in turmoil. Laveaux was organizing patrols to quell the confusion in the city, but only the National Guards seemed much disposed to obey his orders.

The captain moved through the courtyard unnoticed, as he thought, and went into the room to pack his gear. The task would not occupy him long, as he had only his linen, a change of uniform, a book or two and a slack purse containing the few coins left of his last pay. When he came into the courtyard again carrying his light saddlebags across his shoulders, Laveaux caught his eye and called out a quick command for him to go with a detachment of ten men to settle a disturbance that had arisen near the Place de Clugny. But Laveaux turned quickly away once he had spoken, allowing no time to observe the captain’s response. So Captain Maillart would not need to openly display his insubordination. All the same, the ten men followed him once he had mounted and ridden through the barracks gate. He looked blankly at them, over his shoulder, touched up his horse and rode away, leaving them there.

Now he might have wept himself, but he would not give way to the impulse. He controlled himself, forcefully emptying his mind. It being unseasonably warm, he was sweating a little under his tunic. Some blocks ahead he heard shouting and the snap of small arms fire; he took his way into a different street.

It was early yet, still short of eleven, and the captain did not want to wait long for Vaublanc under the broiling sun in the open country round La Fossette. The mosquitoes were very bad in that place. It was this distaste, more than the thought he owed her some farewell, that prompted him to call on Madame Cigny. She had been demonstrably cool to him since his return from Ennery, and there’d been no renewal of their trysts.

The parlor was empty when the footman escorted him into it. Shortly afterward, Major O’Farrel of the Dillon regiment came in—from some inner recess of the house, the captain was convinced, because his clothes were definitely rumpled and he was blinking as if he’d come from darkness into light. They had time to pass a word or too before their hostess interrupted them. Today her
déshabillé
was such as to leave few secrets of her trim light body unsuggested. The captain was inclined to take this as a personal affront. He rose from his seat and moved very near her; yes, he could smell it on her—she was hot and wild as a little cat. A loud throat-clearing from the major helped him suppress his impulse to slap her insolent face. Then Isabelle took his hand in both of hers and when she spoke her voice was kind, atypically sincere.

“Grim news today, my friend.”

“Yes,” the captain said. “It is grim indeed.”

She held his hand a moment longer, neither squeezing nor caressing but only sheltering it in the cage of her own fingers. Then she let it go and walked to the window.

“What will you do?” she said, staring into the street. “I have heard the intentions of Major O’Farrel.”

“I’m going over to the Spanish, I believe,” the captain said, “and so it is I’m come to take my leave of you.”

Isabelle turned from the window, her pretty fingers still on her bare throat. “I would away to the mountains myself, had I the power.”

“You have more power than many suspect,” the captain said, but with no rancor. He had not even meant to say it. And he had no reply of her, except her somewhat wistful smile.

After all it was no hour for embraces. He and the major left the house together, O’Farrel preceding Maillart out the door. Looking at the other man’s broad back, the captain felt his resentment flare again. He toyed with a pair of gloves in his pocket and with the notion of snapping them across the major’s russet beard.

O’Farrel turned smartly as if he’d read the captain’s mind. “No,” he said. “We shan’t quarrel over her.”

The captain started back a pace, as the street door clicked shut behind him. “No?” he said.

“I think it unlikely.” O’Farrel smiled, yellowish teeth foxy in his beard, as he glanced up at the windows above them. “Of course she is an extraordinary woman, but you cannot believe she takes us very seriously. If we were to be so foolish as to fight a duel, say, why she would be laughing in her sleeve at both of us all the while.”

“
Bien
, I never offered you any quarrel, did I?” Maillart said somewhat irritably.

“Of course not,” the major said. “You are a sensible fellow. You might come in with me to the Dillon regiment—I will be going to La Môle in six days time.”

“Thank you, I am resolved to forswear any further service to these Jacobins,” the captain said.

Major O’Farrel cut his eyes quickly along the street and stepped a little nearer to the captain. “No more than I,” he said. “And no more than many of us with Dillon. There may be something to be hoped of the English, before long…”

“The
English
.” Maillart twisted his lips in the form to spit.

“Well, if you are so much fonder of the
Spanish
,” O’Farrel remarked. “Do you recall how half Le Cap put on the black cockade when the Englishman Bryan Edwards sailed into the port?”

The captain shook his head—though he did remember well enough. “At any rate, we shall not quarrel over that,” he said. “I wish you joy of whatever course you take.”

“Yes, and the same to you,” Major O’Farrel said. He slapped the captain on the shoulder, just below the fringe of his epaulette. “
Bon voyage et bonne chance
.”

H
E HAD DELAYED LONG ENOUGH THAT
Vaublanc was already awaiting him in the barren field by La Fossette. Their horses fell automatically into step with each other, going along the hard-packed road, which had only a surface layer of damp this day, had not yet gone to mud and ruts. Captain Maillart was gloomy and dour, thinking of acquaintances who had been killed in this place the last September, during the skirmish with the Sixth. At a distance of a hundred yards they passed the hut of the
hûngan
who was established at the cemetery’s end. Drums were beating there and there were white-clothed celebrants dancing in the
hûnfor
.

“
Vodûn
,” Vaublanc said, contemplatively.

“Are they so overjoyed to learn the murder of the king?” said Maillart.

“I don’t think it probable,” Vaublanc said. “After all most of our black brigands appear to be of a royalist bent.”

Maillart snorted.

“You were there at Habitation Saint Michel, recovering the prisoners,” Vaublanc said. “Do you not remember that green silk flag the brigands round Jean-François were displaying?
Ancien régime
it said on one side—I forget what it said on the other.”

“
Vive l’ancien régime
,” Maillart said, surprised to hear the bitterness of his own voice.

They passed through the earthwork defenses, riding out beyond them in the direction of Morne du Cap. As they went through, a mulatto officer hailed them with some ironic salutation and fired a musket into the air. The shot’s echo faded behind them in the empty land and they rode on.

They went from fort to fort of the
cordon de l’ouest
spreading their ill tidings on their way. At some of these white encampments the garrison was Jacobin and their news was greeted with scarce-suppressed pleasure, but elsewhere the despair it engendered was black as their own, and some of these latter forts emptied out behind them, the defenders scattering for the Spanish border or south to Les Cayes and Jérémie, which were reputed still to be
émigré
strongholds.

As they came nearer to the River Massacre there were no more forts at all and they sought shelter for the night at the house of a free mulatto coffee planter on the lower slopes of the mountains there. He received them gladly enough notwithstanding their color, and told them that despite the burning and looting on the plain, he was carrying on his work without molestation, still harvesting and roasting coffee beans. He was helped by his wife and two young sons and there were a dozen workers in that place, both black and colored; if these were slaves or
affranchis
it was not clear.

Next day they came down to the bank of the river itself, where in the midst of the razed cane fields the little church and
ajoupa
were still standing. Someone had planted two
carrés
with provisions, so that now the ash-blackened land was beginning to brighten with the green of banana shoots and potato vines. There were children working those provision grounds with sticks, but it was not until the tall angular woman in the turban came out to join their labor that Captain Maillart recognized the place from the tales which Arnaud and the doctor had told him.

He left his horse for Vaublanc to hold and walked into the field afoot to speak with Fontelle, whom he remembered seeing once or twice around Le Cap, and at the last in the Place de Clugny, when they had executed the little priest. She did not know him, but seemed pleased when he explained himself. He was curious to learn how she had made her way back to this place with all her children, but she would make no definite answer to his questions. She did tell him how to find a ford without going too riskily near the town of Ouanaminthe, and gave him a sack of yams to carry on their way. She seemed reluctant to accept the coins he offered in exchange, but he pressed the money on her, though his purse was light.