Master of the Crossroads (87 page)

“Fé pyè yo sauté tè.”

They began to move across the plain toward the camp, the hospital, leaving a squad behind with the prisoners. Presently there was another quick rattle of musketry, then the firing squad rejoined them at a brisk, energetic trot. Make their feet jump off the earth, Dessalines had said. It was certainly a vivid expression.

Red, the sun cracked against the horizon like the yolk of a spoiled egg. They were walking into the hot blaze of it. Now and then the doctor stumbled over something he did not especially want to identify. Riau’s hand would come under his elbow to steady him. Already the smell of putrescence was general—decay ran so rapidly in this country. The first plump raindrop smashed into his face. Let it rain, he thought, let it all be washed away; he did not care if his pistols were wet nor even if he took fever.

The image of Choufleur’s impaled, eviscerated body was ever present to his mind. Whether he opened or closed his eyes, he went on seeing it. There was nothing to do about it or to think about it. It was simply there, a part of himself, forever. A person must be composed of such moments—all he had seen, all he had known. Without knowing why he thought of Madame Fortier, wished that he could be in her presence and hear her voice. But for the moment he was alone, shoulder to shoulder with his speechless friends. They’d all seen such sights before, he thought, and doubtless they would go on seeing them.

Colonel Vincent, with the cheerful insouciance which caused so many of his acquaintances to love him, volunteered to go on a conciliatory mission to Rigaud. Toussaint concurred and the agent Roume wrote a safe-conduct for him. With this document as his only defense, Vincent debarked from a schooner off the south coast and rowed himself into the harbor at Les Cayes.

The safe-conduct did no more than inspire his immediate arrest. He was brought before Rigaud. When the colored general had grasped the essence of his message—that France continued to support Toussaint’s authority over him, and that Toussaint’s current order relieved him of his command—he produced a dagger from his clothes and made to stab Vincent on the spot.

Vincent, whose confidence in the safe-conduct had not been very great, had provided himself with another instrument: a letter from one of Rigaud’s sons, who was being educated in France on a program similar to that of Toussaint’s children. In this letter, the young Rigaud addressed Vincent as his “second father.” When he had read this far, Rigaud reversed the dagger in his hand and offered the pommel to Vincent, crying, “Take my blood!—it belongs to you!” As Vincent declined the honor, Rigaud tried to stab himself. His subalterns disarmed him and hauled him away.

The Rigaudins were sick of war and knew they could not win it. Much of their property had been ruined by the general’s scorched-earth tactic. When the content of Vincent’s missives became known, Rigaud’s last supporters fell away. The next time he rang the tocsin to summon his troops, next to no one responded to the alarm. Rigaud slipped out of Les Cayes by sea, meaning to make his way to France to plead his case. Shortly thereafter, Toussaint marched into Les Cayes without a battle and proclaimed a general amnesty for all the rebels who survived.

37

In dream he heard birdsong, and the purling of water; he was half asleep, half waking, turning on the bed. A harsh green voice spoke near his ear,
Ba’m manjé,
then after a moment,
M’ap prié pou’w.
The sound of the stream was a filament of dream that sought to draw him down again, but he shifted, opened his eyes with a start. For a moment he was unsure where he was. Paul stood at the end of the bed watching him soberly. The great green parrot, perched with its claws wrapped round the boy’s forearm, gave him the air of some tiny antique falconer.

“Ba’m manjé,”
the parrot repeated. Give me food.

The doctor shook his head and pushed himself up against the headboard, rubbing the point of his beard with his thumb. He spread his arms, and as Paul came forward into his embrace, the parrot flopped down onto the floor. Tocquet had acquired the bird from a trapper in the mountains, complete with clipped wings and a few Creole phrases, to amuse the children—though Elise affected to detest this pet. The doctor inhaled the warm scent that rose from his son’s neck. Sophie hung in the doorway, dark curls flung across her face, putting her head into the room and then withdrawing it with a giggle. The doctor opened his right arm to invite her to him also, but she blushed and darted out into the hall. Paul followed. The parrot hopped across the board floor after the children.

Barefoot, his shirt hanging loose over his trousers, the doctor walked out onto the gallery with a yawn. Whatever he’d dreamed was lost to him now . . . Elise, already seated at the table, poured out a cup of coffee as he approached. A pack train of charcoal burners was just circling the pool toward the rear of the house, their ash-powdered donkeys bearing the fuel for the day. The doctor plucked a small
banane-figue
from the stalk in the center of the table and cut into the peel with his thumbnail.

Elise drew back slightly as the parrot lofted itself onto the table with a pump of its trimmed wings.

“Oh, the brute,” she said, exasperated. Her face was full and flush, for she was three months pregnant. The parrot twisted its head to the side, riveting one eye on the banana stalk, which Elise pulled away. The children pressed against the table, giggling.

“Ba’m manjé,”
the parrot said, and Paul extended a scrap of sweet cassava bread.

“Child, your fingers,” Elise hissed at him. But the parrot accepted the bread quite decorously as Paul snatched back his hand. He and Sophie collapsed together, round-eyed.

“What was Xavier thinking?” Elise complained. “To introduce this creature to my house. Look. That beak is like a razor. And with a child to come.”

“M’ap prié pou’w,”
the parrot said, having finished the morsel of cassava. I will pray for you.

“After all, it is very devout,” the doctor said, “especially for a parrot.” He drained his cup and reached for the pot. “Most other parrots I have known have no such refinement—their conversation would be quite unsuitable for children.”

“Oh,” said Elise, withdrawing the banana stalk onto her lap as the parrot sidestepped toward it. “You may have the benefit of that thing’s prayers all the way to Vallière. And leave it in the jungle if you like. Xavier,” she said, for Tocquet was just then mounting the gallery steps. “Would you
kindly
get your harpy off the table?”

The parrot beat its wings again, and landed on the top of Tocquet’s head. Grimacing, Tocquet disengaged its talons from his long hair, and shifted the bird down onto his shoulder, where it settled and began to preen.

Zabeth came out from the kitchen and set down a platter of fried eggs. Elise, with a resentful glare at the parrot, began to serve.

“Paul,” she called. “Sophie, come—Paul, at least
you
must eat something before you go.”

But the children had already run down the stairs and were splashing around the border of the pool.

“It is the excitement,” the doctor said, wiping up egg yolk with a piece of cassava. “Of course, I’ll carry something for him.”

“You must,” Elise said. She laid down her spoon, and straightened, poised. “Be careful—both of you.”

“Of course, we take all precautions,” the doctor said. “For the moment there seems to be nothing to fear.”

A splintered sunbeam fell through the tossing fronds of coconut to warm them where they sat around the table. The doctor took more coffee, stirred in sugar. The trickle of water feeding the pool was the same sound he had been hearing through his dream. He yawned, abruptly covering his mouth. Tocquet served the parrot a bit of frizzled egg white from the tines of his fork. Elise glowered at him.

“M’ap prié pou’w,”
the parrot said. The round eye glittered.

“As you know, my dear, and have often told me,” Tocquet said, “I need all the prayers I can get.”

“Oh, he is a little green-feathered Tartuffe, your parrot,” Elise snapped, but she was smiling.

With a clink of harness, Bazau and Gros-jean led the doctor’s mare and Tocquet’s gelding into the yard below the pool. Paul and Sophie stopped their play and looked at the horses, suddenly solemn. Behind, a groom held Paul’s donkey, which wore a small saddle of red Spanish leather which Tocquet had obtained during one of his obscure missions over the mountains.

The doctor excused himself and went into the house. He drew on his boots and, with a certain weariness, strapped on his pistols. Trailing the long gun, his saddlebags slung across his shoulder, he crossed the gallery and went down to his mare.

“Take these,” Elise said, holding up the remaining bananas and a whole round of cassava. “For Paul.”

The doctor climbed back to the porch rail to accept the food. The mare jibbed a little at the irregular shape of the banana stalk. The doctor put it into his saddlebag and stroked the mare’s nose, murmuring. Tocquet broke from a long, slow hug with Elise, and trotted down the steps. With an unlit cheroot screwed into his mouth, he swung a leg over his horse. The parrot was still riding on his shoulder.

“Come, Paul,” the doctor called. “We’re going to say good-bye to your cousin.”

Paul stopped his play and straightened, facing Sophie and touching her shoulder. He gave her two kisses, one on each cheek. They were still small enough that embarrassment did not prevent such demonstrations of affection. Paul marched to his donkey, brushing away the groom’s attempt to help him up. With a firm grip on the mane, he mounted on his own, then leaned down to adjust the stirrups on the red saddle.

The doctor ran his finger under the girth that encircled his mare. She jibbed a little, again, as he got on. He stroked her withers absently. Sophie stood solemnly by the pool, a finger laid across her cheek, watching. Zabeth and Elise were at the top of the gallery steps, the black woman a bit more apparently pregnant than the white. Tocquet wheeled his horse in their direction. He touched his fingers to his hat brim, then, less obviously, to his lips.

They rode out, through the thickening coffee groves. Tocquet and Elise and the doctor had more or less abandoned sugarcane at Habitation Thibodet. In these times, when the armies ceaselessly requisitioned both men and nourishment, it was easier to turn a profit on the coffee. They’d put the low ground into yams and beans. Now, now that things were calmer, it might be possible to shift again to sugar.

A party of five, with Gros-jean and Bazau—they took no other escort, though the grown men were all armed. The doctor had been in the colony for eight years now, but this was the first time that no war was being waged anywhere within its boundaries, that he knew. Wherever they rode that day, it was warm and sunny and peaceful, with men and women working in the fields.

They had made a slightly late departure and, because of the boy, they did not press too hard, eager as the doctor was to reach their destination. In the afternoon they stopped at Marmelade. The doctor spent the evening exchanging botanical notes with l’Abbé Delahaye. He also learned that Moustique had been there not so long before, to return the stole and the silver chalice, and to claim Marie-Noelle and her child. Beyond these scraps of information, Delahaye had no remark to make on the subject of his rebel protégé.

At first light they saddled their horses and reloaded the short pack train; Tocquet had three donkeys, bearing coffee and some panniers of indigo he had scouted out somewhere, for trade across the Spanish border. They rode out through the morning mists and up into the mountains. Toward noon they were stopped on a high narrow trail by a patrol of Moyse’s men, running out from Dondon. The officer, unknown to any of them, made a close inspection of Tocquet’s goods, and asked him a number of narrow questions about where he was going with his wares and what he meant to do when he got there—they were not headed in the direction of a port.

Dismounted by the head of his mare, the doctor waited, irritated at the delay. He took off his straw hat and untied his sweat-drenched headcloth, then began to massage his peeling scalp with his fingers. One of the black soldiers looked at him closely, then went to whisper to his superior, who was interrogating Tocquet. The officer listened, then seemed to put a question; Tocquet nodded his assent.

“Ou mèt alé,”
the officer said. You may go on. He closed the packs which had been opened for inspection, and ordered his men to clear the trail.

They rode on. Tocquet was leading, the parrot rocking on his shoulder. Paul followed directly behind, then the doctor, finally Bazau and Gros-jean, flanking the pack animals. An hour later, when they stopped for water, the doctor asked Tocquet what he had said to the patrol.

“Nothing,” Tocquet told him. “It was you. You are a person of influence—Toussaint’s doctor. It may be that you are even a wizard of some kind. In any case you are not be impeded on your way.”

Though he supposed he ought to have been pleased, the doctor had a rather uncomfortable feeling of exposure. He had come to prize the anonymity of his passages. Tocquet rinsed out his mouth and spat.

“Everything is very regulated nowadays,” he said. He flipped his long hair back over his shoulder; the parrot squawked and shifted its claws. “I suppose that for a family man, and a man of property, it is a good thing.”

They rode on. Tocquet would now meet both of those qualifications, the doctor reflected, though he did not seem to have been speaking of himself.

Toward evening they came into Dondon. There was an air of tension in the town, as if some action were in the offing, but no one interfered with them, and they found lodging for the night without difficulty. The doctor called upon Moyse at his headquarters, and put a question about the Fortiers.

“Caché,”
Moyse said briefly. Hidden.

“Oh?” said the doctor. “At their place near here, or at Vallière?”

“Pa konnen,”
Moyse said. He did not know, or would not say. His good eye was fixed firmly on the doctor’s face; the loose lids wrinkled round the gray socket of the missing one. Moyse was not inclined to wear a patch.

“No one will harm them,” Moyse finally said. “They are safe enough, wherever they are.”

Accepting this statement, the doctor withdrew. He knew that the amnesty Toussaint had declared for the mulattoes was observed with less than perfect fidelity. In fact, there were rumors of massacres, though these were more likely to happen in the south, or along the coast. The Fortiers were remote from those troubles, and unlikely to be involved in conspiracy either. But to seek them out at their plantation near Dondon would amount to a day’s delay. He would not make the detour, he concluded.

From Dondon to Vallière the road was more difficult (when it existed) and the route less evident. At one vexatious crossroads the four men argued over which way to go. The doctor, who was confident, persuaded the others; Tocquet assented with a shrug. Forty minutes later, when they emerged on the road he had predicted, Tocquet gave him a brief curious glance over his shoulder, but said nothing. The doctor was equally surprised at his own assurance. Formerly he might be lost for days at a stretch, whenever he rode out the gate of some plantation. Now it seemed that he had every peak and crevice, every crossroads firmly fastened in his memory.

Though the distance was negligible, the way was slow, and sometimes they had to stop and cut brush, or jack away fallen trees that blocked their passage. Today they kept going at the best pace they could manage, unwilling to spend the night in the jungle. Paul, who had soldiered on with great fortitude, finally grew too weary to keep riding. Bazau tied his donkey into the pack train, and the doctor took him aboard the mare. Paul collapsed against him, sleeping profoundly, his arms hanging slack and his loose mouth warm and damp against the doctor’s shirt front. That afternoon there was no rain. At last they came riding up the rim of Trou Vilain under the light of a sickle moon.

Isabelle was all astir when she saw them come in, a whirlwind of hostess activity. She called the servants to bring more plates, stoke the kitchen fire again, wring the neck of another chicken. Paul had run to Nanon’s skirts, before the doctor had a chance to greet her. He could not quite fix on his emotion. Instead of joy or relief, he felt an odd foreboding. Something was a little off-center—Isabelle too effervescent, Nanon too quietly reserved. No more than his fatigue, perhaps. Certainly his legs were watery beneath him, after that long day’s ride. A chair was drawn up for him; there would be fruit, while they waited for chicken.

“Ehm,” the doctor said awkwardly, glancing at Nanon’s slim waist, still on his feet. “I believe . . . apparently . . . there has been an event.”

“But of course,” Isabelle cried cheerily. Was there something especially pointed in the look she gave Nanon? “Of course, you must see your children.”

Lowering her head, Nanon turned from the table; she was not exactly beckoning, but the doctor followed. As they crossed the threshold, he took hold of her hand. Paul was nudging up behind them, alert now after his nap in the saddle, curious and eager. The doctor felt a flutter of nerves in his belly and throat. He’d noticed the plural, and thought now of a damaged twin, illness or some deformity. Nanon’s hand was warm and firm in his own, and yet it expressed nothing. He stopped her for a moment.