Master of the Crossroads (44 page)

I had not thought to sacrifice to Agwé. One must prepare Agwé’s meal, his meat and drink and his cake, and put it on a little boat and sail it away on the ocean, with no one tending it. When no one is looking, Agwé will take the boat down under the waves and eat his food in his palace beneath the sea. But I had not made this sacrifice, and now I thought, what if Agwé takes
La Liberté
to be his own boatload of food? On land I did not think so very much about Agwé, unless he came to a ceremony. Now I was sorry I had not paid more attention.

Behind my closed lips and teeth I sang the song of Agwé.

Maît’ Agwé, koté ou yé?
Ou pa wé moin nan récif?
Maît’ Agwé, koté ou yé?
Ou pa wé moin nan lamè?

Master Agwé, where are you?
Don’t you see me on the reef?
Master Agwé, where are you?
Don’t you see me on the sea?

The men sailing the ship and arming the cannons did not hear, but Agwé must have heard, beneath the sea.

M’gagne zaviro nan main moin
Moin pa kab tounen déyé . . .

I have the rudder in my hand
I am not able to turn back . . .

Guiaou, who had been huddled on the floor of the boat, jumped up to his feet and stretched out his arms toward the two horizons. Then his eyes turned white and he fell backward, with his heels kicking the boards of the deck.

I put my body across his till he was quiet. My chest against his chest, holding him down. When he was calm enough to sit up, Agwé was in his head. I let go, but watched him carefully, because sometimes Agwé will jump into the water from a boat, and take the body of the one who carries him.

The sailors and gunners were looking at us out of the sides of their heads. They had despised us a little before because we were not sailors, the way our men with muskets and pistols, who were soldiers, despised the men who only worked in the fields with their hoes. The men behind the cannons were especially proud and haughty when we first got onto the boat, but now none of them wanted to offend Agwé.

Agwé spoke aloud only once, in words no one could understand. The voice was like water running over rocks, or water in a pot just as it boils. His face was grave and beautiful, and a little sad. The whole way, he sat very still in the front of the boat and looked down at the prow dividing the waters. All the way that we had to go the ocean was calm and still.

Along the Côte des Arcadins the water was pale bluish-green above the reef, and so clear that we could see the fish darting over the white sand. Men came out from the shore in dugout canoes to catch the fish on spears. Toward the ocean side was the island, La Gonave, coming up from the water like La Balène, the back-hump of a giant whale. At first we could see the white flashes of sail from the small
voiliers
of those people who lived there. Then nothing. La Gonave disappeared. The sailors said it was a mist, but Riau could not see any mist. It was like the sky or the sea had eaten the land and everything that had been on it.

We passed near enough to Port-au-Prince to see the low rooflines of buildings on the shore, and the tall masts of English ships, stripped of their sails, at anchor. None of those ships came after us,
Grâce à
BonDyé. As we went by Port-au-Prince, the sky came clear and the sun was yellow and warm again and the air all around was sparkling.

Dolphin were jumping on both sides of the boat, and Riau remembered seeing that before, at dawn when the ship of slaves from Dahomey sailed into the harbor at Le Cap. It was just sunrise, and the dolphins seemed to be bringing the ship in like pilots, while Riau stood watching, fingering the sore places the iron collar had worn around his neck. Some said the spirits of men were in the dolphins.

Then the ship docked, and they took Riau to the barracoons among the other slaves out of Guinée, and after a few days Bayon de Libertat came from Bréda to look at Riau where he stood on the block. I could not understand anything he said because I had not yet learned any French or Creole. But Bayon showed me how to turn and move by touching me here and there with the tip of his cane. He clucked his tongue over the sores which the irons had left, and he pulled out my lower lip to look at my teeth and gums, and he leaned close to smell my breath. All these things he did with the gentleness one uses with an animal. Then he paid my price in money and took me away to Bréda, where I found Toussaint waiting.

I had not thought of any of those things for a long time.

At the end of the day,
La Liberté
came to shore south of Port-au-Prince. A little before, Agwé had lain down and closed his eyes, and when Guiaou sat up, he was himself again, except he did not seem to be afraid. Some of Rigaud’s men had come out to meet us, in case the English would try to capture us from Port-au-Prince. They took us up toward the mountains where Dieudonné stayed, but when they had come a little way into the hills, they turned back to Léogane, saying that Dieudonné would not want to see them with us. This did not matter, because Riau already knew the way.

We came into the camp by moonlight. Riau could even calm the dogs, because I knew their names. People came out to greet us in friendship. I saw many that I knew from before, and even the one called Bienvenu, who had run away from the plantation of Arnaud, before the first risings. Guiaou also found certain people that he knew from other times, though he had never traveled this country with Halaou or Dieudonné.

Dieudonné was not there that night, but his second men, Pompey and Laplume, said that he would come next day. I lay in an
ajoupa
near Bienvenu, and in the darkness we talked of a long-ago time, when Bienvenu had run from Arnaud and had got the horns of the headstall he was forced to wear all tangled in the vines and bush of the jungle, so that he would have been caught by the
maréchaussée.
But Riau came and cut away the headstall with his
coutelas,
so that Bienvenu was free to keep running until he reached the maroons in the mountains. I thought of this and I thought of Bouquart and his
nabots,
and I was pleased to remember what Riau had done. And then I slept.

In the morning Dieudonné was there, smiling and pulling on my biggest toe, shaking my foot and leg to wake me. I got up and we went together to bathe in the cold stream of the mountain, so that our heads would be bright and clear. From my memory, I told him what was in the letter of Toussaint to him, and Dieudonné agreed to call his people together to hear the letter read, as Toussaint had wished.

After we had eaten something, the people all came to where they could listen. Dieudonné explained to them what it was about, and I, Riau, began reading in a big, proud voice, and slowly so that everyone could understand.

Could it be possible, my dear friend, that at the very moment when France has triumphed over all the royalists and has recognized us for her children by her wonderworking decree of 9th Thermidor, when she has granted us all the rights for which we have been fighting, that you would allow yourself to be deceived by our former tyrants, who are only using part of our unfortunate brothers to load the others with chains? The Spanish, for a while, had hypnotized me in the same way, but I was not slow to recognize their rascality; I abandoned them, and beat them well; I returned to my own fatherland, which received me with open arms and was more than willing to reward my services. I advise you, my dear brother, to follow my example . . .

All these words were sent from Toussaint to Dieudonné, but they were meant to be heard by all—Toussaint had said so. Dieudonné pulled himself up very tall and filled up his whole chest with air, out of pride that such words were sent to him from the black general in the north. But his face did not show what he was thinking.

If some special reason should prevent you from trusting the brigadier generals Rigaud and Beauvais, Governor Laveaux, who is a good father to all of us, and with whom our motherland has placed all her confidence, should deserve your own. I also think that you will not withhold that confidence from me, who am a black man like yourself, and who assure you that I want nothing else in the world than to see you happy—you and all our brothers. For myself, I believe that we can only be happy in serving the French Republic; only under her flags are we truly free and equal. That’s the way I see it, my dear friend, and I don’t believe I am fooling myself . . .

Each time I stopped to take my breaths, I looked about. There was Guiaou, standing between Pompey and Laplume. At the other side of the circle was Bienvenu. The faces of the women were quiet and sober beneath their colored headcloths, and even the little children without clothes were still and listening, though they would not understand the meaning of French words.

In spite of everything I have been told about you, I do not doubt that you would be a good republican: and so you must join with Generals Rigaud and Beauvais, who are good republicans, since our fatherland has recognized their services. And even if you have some trivial troubles between you, you ought not to be fighting, because the Republic, who is mother to us all, does not want us to fight our brothers. Furthermore, it is always the unfortunate people who suffer the most in such cases . . .

When it was finished, the circle scattered. I went with Dieudonné, but we did not speak of what the letter had said. I ate a meal together with his woman and his children, and I saw a new girl baby who was born to him during that year.

After we had eaten, we slept through the heat of the day. When we woke, Dieudonné asked me many questions about how it was in the north, under Toussaint. All that he asked I answered truthfully, even when the truth was not pleasing. True that the French of France had made a stronger freedom paper than any other whitemen. True that the governor Laveaux seemed to respect what this paper said. True that Toussaint fought everywhere for black people to be free, and that, although there were some white officers serving him, there were many more black, and the white officers were not set over them. At the same time it was also true that men were made to work in the fields by the word of Toussaint and Laveaux, and that when Joseph Flaville rose up against this, he was beaten down.

I told Dieudonné what I had heard Toussaint say many times, in his close councils when the letters were written—that there must be cane, and sugar to sell for money, for only money would buy guns, and only guns would win and keep our freedom. But saying this was not enough to take the cloud from Dieudonné’s face, or from the mind of Riau, either.

That night was a
bamboche,
but Dieudonné did not go for long. He was there to show himself, and stayed to dance only one dance, and then he went away. I, Riau, went with him. Dieudonné did not want to speak anymore then. He lay down to sleep, saying that he would look at his dream to learn what he would do.

I lay down also, but it seemed a long time before I slept. I did not think that Dieudonné would find it in his dream to join with Rigaud, or even with Toussaint. He did not want to be under a colored officer, and he did not want to leave his own country to go be with Toussaint in the north, though I did not think he wanted to join with the English either.

But I must have slept at the end, and heavily, because when I woke I was confused and frightened and at first I did not know where I was—shouting was everywhere and muskets firing like the whole camp was under attack, and Dieudonné’s woman was screaming and crying, as if she had already seen what would happen. Before anyone else could think, the men rushed into the
ajoupa
and fell on Dieudonné. They pointed their guns at him and pricked him with their bayonets, and they tied him up like a chicken for the
boucan.

All this while Riau kept still. I tried to make myself invisible so that none of those men would think of me. It was then that I remembered Guiaou. I had not thought of what he had been doing during the day and the night, after Toussaint’s letter was read. Later I learned that Toussaint had spoken to Guiaou alone to tell him that he must speak to Dieudonné’s second men, and persuade them apart from Dieudonné, in case Dieudonné was already sold to the English.

And so Laplume, when he heard this, got the men to rise against Dieudonné to make him prisoner. This was not so hard to do because Toussaint’s letter had already worked on the heads of the men who had listened to it that day. Laplume said he did so because Dieudonné meant all along to go with the English, but I did not think that was true, but that maybe Laplume saw this chance to throw down Dieudonné and take his place.

Laplume gave Dieudonné to Rigaud, but afterward he gave himself and those three thousand men to Toussaint, never to Rigaud or Beauvais. Of course Rigaud was very angry about this, but he had no one to punish except Dieudonné. I did not see it, but I heard that Rigaud loaded Dieudonné with so many chains that the weight of the iron crushed the breath out of him, and so he died. This happened at the prison of Saint Louis.

I, Riau, said nothing when all this began to happen. There was nothing I could say or do to make it different. And when Guiaou and I went back to the north, Toussaint was very pleased when he heard what we had done.

One could not blame Guiaou, because he had only done what Toussaint asked of him, and he believed in Toussaint with his whole heart. One could not even blame Toussaint, even though it had been very tricky, because Toussaint was right that we must all fight together as one to hold our freedom. Also it would have been a bad thing if all those men had gone with the English. But I could never forget the eyes of Dieudonné fastened on me while they were taking him away, even though BonDyé and all the spirits knew that Riau had not meant to betray him.

20

In the central courtyard of the Governor’s House was a rectangular stone tank which was home to a dozen turtles, one of which had climbed up out of the murky green water onto a stone and balanced there, turning its long, snake-like neck one way and another. When Laveaux’s shadow fell across the tank, the turtle became very still for a moment but did not plunge. Presently it relaxed and began to probe the air again with the soft, fleshy bulb of its head.

Laveaux smiled absently down into the tank, turning a cup of coffee in his hands. He was drowsy and was still wearing slippers, though otherwise he was dressed for the day. Last night he had stayed late in his cabinet, working on correspondence with the Minister of Marine in France—so much to report, so much to request. Hostilities with the Spanish along the interior border had ceased. Indeed, by the terms of a treaty between France and Spain, signed in Europe the previous July, the entire Spanish side of the island was ceded to French rule, though Laveaux did not have men enough even to think of occupying that territory. The British invasion on the coasts remained a serious threat, despite Toussaint’s campaigns in the Artibonite and Rigaud’s efforts in the Southern Department. Laveaux still had next to no European troops to oppose to the British and their renegade French cohorts, and due in part to the power of the British navy, the reinforcements he asked for were unlikely to arrive.

This morning he had risen early to continue his clerical chores, before the heat became too paralyzing, before the outer rooms of his office were crowded with petitioners and plaintiffs. He yawned.

The turtle turned its head, aiming the flat black dots of its near-sighted eyes at him. Its damp shell was drying, patchily, to a lighter shade of gray; the shell was about the size of a dinner plate. Laveaux smiled sleepily, beneficently. When he had first taken up residence in Governor’s House, the turtles had all ducked underwater whenever he leaned over the tank—or whenever his foot fell in the courtyard, for that matter. But now they were not afraid to look at him. Indeed, several other turtles besides the one sunning on the rock had craned their necks out of the water as if to greet him. Their confidence was perhaps misplaced, for in theory all the turtles were destined for soup. On the other hand, Laveaux had become rather fond of observing them, and did not order turtle soup.

He sipped his coffee, then turned from the tank and left the courtyard. There was the splash of the turtle falling from the rock, and he smiled again as he mounted the steps, his slippers shuffling slightly at the heels. In the antechamber were half a dozen colored men apparently waiting for an audience; he nodded to them as he passed through, but no one responded. The feeling of uneasiness passed when he closed the door.

Suppressing a sigh, Laveaux sat down at his writing table, put the dregs of his coffee aside, and began to sort through his various papers. It was close in the small room, and a veil of sweat had already covered his forehead. Where to begin? To request: more men, more money. To report, the spreading tension in the town, which had constituted itself a little mulatto principality (in effect) during the months Laveaux had been sealed up at Port-de-Paix. Since then, he had enjoyed small success in collecting the rents owed on the houses of French colonists now restored and occupied by the more prominent colored families, yet he must press them, for there must be revenue from somewhere. He had not been so gladly received when he had established his administration at Le Cap. Villatte, the highest-ranking officer of the colored contingency, had not been pleased to be superseded in the town, and indeed seemed to disregard Laveaux’s authority, though he stopped short of outright insubordination.

Or perhaps Laveaux might try to tally up the small exportations of brown sugar that had lately been achieved—into what gaping financial cavity should those tiny profits best be dribbled? He dipped a pen.
30
Ventose,
he inscribed at the top left corner of his sheet, and paused, tilting his head toward a hubbub coming from the antechamber.

The door of the cabinet flung open, rebounding from the wall, and six or eight colored men crushed into the little room, all in a state of high excitement, all talking at once in loud conflicting voices, so that Laveaux could not make out what any one of them was saying.

“Citizens, what do you want?” Laveaux was on his feet, conscious that without his boots he lacked authoritative height, and that the worn slippers doubtless looked silly and weak.

Someone swung a fist at him by way of reply, but Laveaux reflexively slipped under the blow, caught and twisted his assailant’s arm and threw him back among his fellows. No one had presented a firearm or blade, but Laveaux now took in that all of them carried canes, or else peeled sticks which they brandished like clubs.

“Assassins!” he shouted, hoping to be heard elsewhere in the building (where was the guard?). “I am unarmed.”

He thought he heard the voice of his aide-de-camp, calling in another room, but soon cut off—there were only more mulattoes swarming in at the door and surging toward him. Laveaux kicked over the writing table to tangle their feet, and made for the other door, which gave onto a large salon. In this direction he might reach his sword and pistols. The inkwell toppled with the table, and rolled, spoiling his papers. Let them be ruined, Laveaux thought; it was all futile anyway.

In the salon he encountered a hundred-odd more colored men, enough to fill the room to the walls, moving to encircle him. The smaller group pressed out of the cabinet, cutting off all retreat. Laveaux brushed at his weaponless belt, then raised his hands and cocked them. He turned in the circle like a bear at bay. No one seemed quite prepared to strike across the space dividing him from the crowd.

“In the name of the people,” said the man who had missed his first blow, “we arrest you.”

“But you are not the people,” Laveaux spat, turning and searching among their faces. “I see no black citizens, no white citizens—no, you are assassins.”

There was no one he recognized by sight. Villatte himself was conspicuously (deliberately?) absent at this moment, and no one was in uniform. But he did notice, in the shifting rear, the smirking, freckled face of that colored officer, Maltrot . . . but he was in civilian attire, foppish, swinging a gold-headed cane. Laveaux mistrusted him still more than Villatte, if that were possible. He had no help, but also felt no fear, only an odd relief, as at the lancing of a boil. He turned, silent now, daring all approaches, but from behind someone came down on his shoulder with a stick. The blow itself was nothing, a painless tap, but it released the crowd to rush upon him. Laveaux crouched, parrying sticks and fists, his hands high to protect his face, and his elbows protecting his midsection, at least partially.

It was critical to keep his feet, he thought. But someone caught the back of his hair and snatched him off balance and down to the floor. He felt his slippers falling off as he was dragged over the threshold. Shiny boots kicked at him, though with no great accuracy; the faces swirling above him were nothing but teeth. When they had hauled him out into the dust of the street, the blows began to land more frequently, and harder, and he felt the visceral responses of an animal confronting its own death. But he was not killed, only tossed into a cell of the town prison, the door slammed tight and locked behind him.

He was hurt, but not mortally. His face was bruised, bleeding from the nose and from superficial scrapes. He threw his head back, swallowing blood, inhaling. Real pain, sharp, from his battered rib cage, came with the breath. That much was serious. There was a small square grille in the left wall and Laveaux approached it, meaning to call out in protest, to summon help, a doctor. But the aperture gave onto another cell, in which he recognized the
ordonnateur,
Perroud, who seemed to have been similarly mistreated and whose face was pale with terror.

Near sunset, Toussaint Louverture and the captains Riau and Maillart were concluding their own secretarial work. Toussaint had sent for sealing wax and, a few minutes later, for rum to offer his subalterns; he himself would take only a glass of water. Maillart softened the wax above a candle flame, then turned his hand to drip it onto the closure of the first letter. There was a scuffling outside the door. Maillart expected the refreshments, but intead Henri Christophe was announced, with an urgent message from Le Cap.

Christophe entered, his hat in his hands. His coat and boots were caked with dust from hard riding, but he was perfectly composed, his movements slow and dignified. (“Manners of a head waiter,” someone had said, to mock him, for Christophe, a free black before the Revolution, had formerly served in such a capacity at a hotel in Le Cap.)

Now Christophe saluted Toussaint, waited permission and then began to speak. Laveaux had been arrested, he said, at the instigation of a cabal of mulattoes. Villatte had effectively proclaimed himself governor . . .

Toussaint listened, stooped forward in his chair, chin tucked in and head inclined so that he seemed to be studying the floor. Christophe’s voice was even, rounded, as if he had planned and memorized his speech during the journey and was now delivering it from a podium in an assembly hall. As he spoke, he looked at Toussaint for some reaction and, finding none, continued.

The mulatto officers had all thrown in with Villatte, he said, but two of the black officers had not been corrupted. One of these had undertaken to rally all the blacks of the plain, with their chiefs, to Laveaux’s support. He had also intercepted a messenger from Villatte who proved to be carrying a list of certain persons at Marmelade, Gros Morne and Gonaives.

“Kite’m oué sa.”
Toussaint lifted his head and stretched out his hand. Let me see that. Christophe produced the paper from his breast pocket. Toussaint scanned it for a moment, his free hand covering his mouth, then turned to Riau and gave him the paper.

“Deliver these . . . persons to me.”

Riau snapped to attention, clicking his heels smartly (Maillart had painstakingly taught him this gesture). He took the paper and left the room without a word. A woman carrying the tray of rum and water stepped out of his way, then entered through the open door and set the tray down on the table.

Toussaint gave Christophe a contemplative look and unfolded his long fingers toward the empty chair at his right.

“Well done,
mon fils,
” he murmured.

Christophe sat down. Toussaint poured some rum into the glass meant for Riau and passed it to Christophe. With a glance he indicated that Maillart might serve himself. The captain did so, but the flush of warmth in his gullet only increased his agitation. He watched Toussaint pour two fingers of rum into a glass and take a conservative sip. This was strange. It was almost unknown for Toussaint to take spirits.

Maillart could not stop his pacing, he could not, at last, stop his own tongue. Toussaint and Christophe sat motionless as figures in a painting. The captain thought his head would burst.

“My general,” he said. “Shall I call for the horses? Make ready the cavalry?”

Toussaint stirred from his reverie and looked up at him interrogatively.

“Will we not ride at once?”

Laboriously, Toussaint drew out his watch and opened the case, took note of the time and put the watch away again.

“It will soon be night,” Toussaint said.

“Yes, but—” Maillart spluttered. Save for his most insouciant enemies, the whole colony knew by now Toussaint’s capacity for moving his forces long distances at great speed by either day or night.

“Control yourself!” Toussaint said, the sharpness of his tone a rebuke. “I know of your affection for the Governor-General. He has not been harmed—he will not be.”

Maillart stood rigid with embarrassed anger. From the corner of his eye he saw, through the window, the reddened sun lowering over the sea. Toussaint pushed his left palm toward the floor.

“Doucement,”
he said, nearly a whisper.
“Doucement alé loin.”

Toussaint’s favorite proverb. The softest way goes farthest. Maillart had heard it many times. He watched Toussaint’s hovering hand. The fingers flexed, drifting like feathers over the humid air. The captain exhaled and felt part of the pressure drain from him.

“Before we strike with the sword,” Toussaint said, “let us see what the pen may accomplish.” He glanced from Maillart’s face to the writing implements. The captain sat down heavily and picked up a pen.

“We write,” Toussaint pronounced carefully, “to the municipality
au
Cap.
” He tilted back, lacing his fingers behind his cloth-wrapped head, and drew in his breath to begin dictation. But of a sudden he rocked forward and looked at Maillart keenly.

“La patience,”
he said. “If you have patience, my captain, you will deliver this letter yourself.”

Reclining on the litter of thatch palm that covered the floor of his cell, Laveaux listened to the rasp and whistle of his breathing. Each inhalation was a shaft of pain. When he had his wind back, he went to the slot in the door and demanded to see his doctor, but no one responded. He had had no contact with anyone except when a single, surly presentation of stale water, cold ham and dried-out cornbread was brought to him.

Through the grille which communicated with the next cell, there was only Perroud, transfixed with fear. Even in his fitful sleep he moaned and pled with phantom executioners. Laveaux, whose own mental clarity was disrupted by pain and the initial symptoms of a fever, began to consider that the other man’s terror might be rationally founded. False charges had been bruited about, that Laveaux, in his favor toward the newly freed blacks of the colony, had turned against all the
gens de
couleur
and perhaps even planned their extermination. All this was untrue, a very tissue of lies, but if he should be brought before a mulatto court . . . To perfect his usurpation of power, Villatte must do away with Laveaux altogether, with anyone who might contradict his version of events. That much was logical.