Master of the Crossroads (93 page)

She reached his side. He could feel her warmth, and her scent was natural—again he regretted the splash of perfume. It all went very quickly: the vows, a bit of fumbling with the ring. Moustique raised a hand above them.

“Now we see through a glass darkly,” he pronounced, “but then face to face; now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known.”

It was finished. At any rate, people were leaving the church. Tocquet had gone to join Elise, and the doctor and Nanon were bringing up the rear. Her hand on his elbow steadied him, for after all he was a little drunk. They emerged into the open air and paused on the first step below the doorsill, above the wedding guests, who had fanned out over the apron of ground before the church. There was Paul, observing Paulette in her transformation, with a certain covert admiration. Farther on, François rode Elise’s hip, while Isabelle cradled Gabriel in her arms.

The breeze had freshened from the harbor, and the three crosses on the brow of the hill leaned into the wind. The doctor felt the hum in the hollow at the back of his neck, and with that the dead began to appear; intermingled with the living: nearest the crosses the Père Bonne-chance with his genial, slightly sheepish smile, and Moyse, the loose lid sagging over his missing eye, standing near Riau, and between Isabelle and Captain Maillart the figure of Joseph Flaville, and Choufleur was there too, looking more amiable than had been his custom, and the spirits of slaughtered children and those of the many men who had died under the doctor’s hands when his skill was not sufficient to save them and those of other men he had killed with his weapons at moments of necessity or rage or fear. So many of them had been unwilling to share the world with one another—they had rather die—but after all, they had not left the world; they were still here, unseen among the living, the Invisible Ones,
les Morts et les Mystères,
and now, if for this moment only, they seemed disposed to harmony.

It occurred to Doctor Hébert that he had not yet kissed his bride. If not for her solid weight balancing his own and the warm touch of her hand in the crook of his elbow, he might have drifted away among the shades surrounding him. But he was happy now, and grateful, glad to be alive. He turned to her, and loosened the veil from the pins in her hair, and began to raise it from her face. As she lifted her face toward him, there was a sigh from their friends who were watching, and the wind caught the veil and tugged it free, light, airy, floating from the crown of the hill above the red roofs of the town.

Fort de Joux, France September 1802

“You are unwell,” Toussaint observed.

Caffarelli, who sat diagonally across the table from him, removed his handkerchief from his nostril to reply. Toussaint had placed himself with his back to the fire. Caffarelli was farther from the meager heat, nearer to that raw stone wall with its constant, dreary seepage.

“It is nothing,” he said, honking slightly. “A cold.”

“Take care lest it become more serious.” Toussaint smiled. “You must take every care.”

An unfolding movement of his hand seemed to indicate for Caffarelli’s benefit all of the frosty, insalubrious conditions beyond the walls, surrounding the mountaintop and the Fort de Joux. To be patronized so, by the prisoner! It was outrageous. Caffarelli blew his nose, delicately, for his nostrils were chafed, and folded the handkerchief into his pocket.

“Oh,” he said casually. “Once I have returned to the lowlands, I shall recover easily enough.”

Toussaint said nothing.

“It is still warm there, below these heights,” Caffarelli said. “You understand, it is only autumn, and a mild one too, once one has left these mountaintops.”
As you can never hope to do,
he added with a silent smirk.

“Allow me to wish you a safe and pleasant journey,” Toussaint said.

An unpleasant pressure spread beneath Caffarelli’s cheekbones, behind his eyes and the bones of his forehead. He sniffed, swallowed the disagreeable slime.

“I shall not see you again, General,” he said.

“No,” Toussaint agreed. “I regret the loss of your company.” He reached inside his coat and drew out two folded papers sealed with wax. “I ask you to deliver two letters for me,” he said. “One to the First Consul. The other to my wife. If you would render me this small service . . .”

“Of course,” said Caffarelli, in a milder tone than before. He glanced at the letters, then pocketed them. “I shall send you news of your family, as soon as I may. But even now I can assure you that they are treated with all consideration.”

“Thank you,” Toussaint said. “I will be glad of any news of them.” He pressed the madras cloth to the side of his jaw.

“As we shall not meet again,” Caffarelli repeated, “I wonder, General, that you do not take the opportunity to tell me something more substantial.”

“But I have nothing more to tell,” said Toussaint. “You have my memoir.” He dipped his chin. “My letters.”

“Yes, of course,” Caffarelli said, and added in a flash of irritation, “for what little they may be worth.”

But Toussaint only looked at him with his slightly rheumy brown eyes.

“Your secret pact with the English,” Caffarelli said wearily.

“There is no such secret, as I have told you many times,” Toussaint said. “You know all my dealings with the English, and they are clear as glass.”

“Your treasure,” Caffarelli said.

Toussaint blew out a fluttering, contemptuous breath, which made the flame of the candle waver.

“I have no wealth, in money,” he said.

“But in your own memoir you record that at the outbreak of the revolt you possessed six hundred and forty-eight thousand francs.”

“Sir, that was more than ten years ago, and surely you know the costs of war. That sum was all spent on the army, down to the very last sou.”

“But what of the profits of your commerce since? Your exportations, the sugar and the coffee?”

“Commerce?” Toussaint’s eyebrows lifted. “I was a planter, not a
commerçant.
What property I enjoy is not in money, but in land.” He paused, considering. “In fact, I owe money which for the moment I am not able to pay. For purchase of those lands of which I have told you. For one plantation I still owe four hundred
portugaises,
and on another, seven hundred and fifty, I believe.”

“And what of Habitation Sancey?” Caffarelli said quickly.

“Pardon?” said Toussaint. “What, indeed?”

“It was there that your chests of treasure were buried, is it not so?” Caffarelli lunged. “
Fifteen million francs,
General—and the Negroes who buried it were afterward shot.”

Toussaint drew himself up. “I am long since exhausted with responding to that atrocious lie.”

“Fifteen million francs, General,” Caffarelli said again. “The sum which was voted by your central Assembly and paid into your treasury and of which no trace has been found since.”

“You are bleeding,” Toussaint informed him.

A tickle on his upper lip. Caffarelli tasted a thread of blood. He touched the area below his nose, and his finger came away stickily red. He smothered a curse as he reached for his handkerchief.

“The altitude,” Toussaint said silkily. “And of course, your cold. But you will do better, as you say, when you have left the mountain.”

Caffarelli, his whole face muffled in his handkerchief, made no reply.

“White people,” Toussaint said, tilting an ear toward the grinding lock. “You
blancs
always believe that there is a gold mine hidden from you somewhere.”

Outside, the castle bell began to toll. Under cover of the sound, Baille entered the cell, a long cloth bag slung over his shoulder, and relocked the door with his clattering key ring. He turned and faced the table and the fireplace. Caffarelli greeted him with a lift of his chin, swallowing blood as he did so.

“I have brought you fresh clothing,” Baille told Toussaint, laying out garments on the table as he spoke. Civilian clothes, coarse woolens, brown trousers and a long, loose shirt such as a peasant would wear in his field.

“New orders have come, for your maintenance,” Baille said. “If you please, put on this clothes at once, and I will take away the others. Also, I must take your watch.”

Toussaint glanced up at him, then lowered his eyes to the rough clothing. “As you prefer,” he said. He detached his watch chain from a buttonhole and laid the instrument on the table.

Baille cleared his throat. “I must also ask you for your razor,” he said.

Toussaint was on his feet and trembling from head to heel. “Who is it who dares suspect I lack the courage to bear my misfortune? And even if I had no courage, I have a family, and my religion—which forbids me any attempt on my own life.”

Baille’s mouth came open and worked in a moist silence.

“Please leave me,” Toussaint said. Baille obeyed.

Cautiously Caffarelli lowered his blood-stained handkerchief. If he kept his head tilted back, the bleeding did not resume, but he must strain his eyes against the lower rim of their sockets to see Toussaint, who had thrown his coat on the bed and was tearing off his linen. His upper body was taut and wiry, the black skin punctuated with a great many grayish white puckers and slashes.

“How many times have I been wounded in the service of my country?” Toussaint said. He touched his jaw. “A cannonball struck me full in my face, and yet it did not destroy me. The ball knocked out many of my teeth, and those that remain give me great pain to this day—although I have never complained of it before.” He turned out his palm. “This hand was shattered in the siege of Saint Marc, but still it will draw a sword and fire a pistol.”

Cafarelli stuttered without achieving a word. A gout of blood splashed out on his face; again he snatched up the handkerchief. Toussaint unbuttoned his trousers and let them fall. “Enough metal to fill a coffee cup was taken out just here, from my right hip,” he said, “and still, several pieces remain in my flesh. That was when I was struck by
mitraille
—I did not leave the battle that day till I had won it.” He flicked his finger here and there, from one scar to another on his torso and thighs. “From seventeen wounds in all (if I have not miscounted), my blood has flowed on the battlefield—and all of it spilled for France. You may so inform the First Consul.”

Caffarelli found no answer. With a jerk, Toussaint pulled on the brown trousers Baille had provided. He shrugged into the shirt and sat down with a thump, leaning with his palms braced on the table top.

“Tell my jailer he may come for my possessions,” Toussaint said. “One day there will be an accounting of all that has been taken from me, and of how my service has been repaid.” He sat back, wrapping his arms around his chest. “You may go or remain—you are free to choose. Our conversation is at an end.”

Caffarelli departed, though he had no heart to travel, that afternoon, even so far as Pontarlier. He stopped at the postal relay station at the mountain’s foot. His nosebleed had dried and clotted unpleasantly, his head ached, he had a touch of ague, and he was unable to taste his food. It was a cold, no more than a cold. In a matter of days he would regain full health and vigor, but for the moment he could not shake off the oppressive sense of his own mortality.

Of course he had taken the best private room the post hotel had to offer, which was not, however, so very fine or luxurious. Still there was a good fire in the grate, and the alpine chill of the Fort de Joux was already at a distance. By candle and the light of the fire, he struggled to finish his written report. His accounting to Napoleon would not be an agreeable one as, from almost any angle, it was a report of failure. The First Consul would not fail to recognize it as such. Caffarelli had come away without the information he’d been sent to obtain, and the Consul’s sympathy for any failed effort, however strenuous, was notoriously low.

But after all, one must remember who was victorious and who defeated, who was master now, and who was in chains. Caffarelli dipped his pen for the final paragraph.

His prison is cold, sound, and very secure.
He looked at the paper, and added, with next to no enjoyment of the irony:
He does not communicate
with anyone.

In the evening Toussaint’s fever had returned, although he was not bothered by it. On the contrary, he had come almost to enjoy the sensation, as another man might enjoy the effects of wine or rum—pleasures which Toussaint had almost always denied himself. If this were weakness, it was weakness of the flesh. His body, faithful mount that it had been, had carried him a long way now, and he thought that it would not have to carry him much farther.

The fever repelled the cold of the damp cell. It was always succeeded by bouts of chills during which he must shudder and tremble, clutching the thin blanket to himself, while his loose teeth chattered painfully. The rattling of his teeth became the sound of the drums, and he heard the thin, high keening voice of a woman, calling upon Attibon Legba to open the road, to open the gate.

I am Toussaint of the Opening . . .

His arms spread expansively, in the form of the cross, and then regathered themselves around him. Now he was warm and still all over. The fire was still burning at his back (Baille, who grew more stingy by the hour, had complained again that he used too much wood) but the warmth came from within the molten core of fever. The damp wall opposite caught red glints of firelight, shimmered and ran before his eyes. Sometimes it seemed insubstantial as the laced roots of a
mapou
tree, or a curtain of vines or a hanging veil of water.

In the coziness of his fever, Toussaint chuckled at the thought of Caffarelli, his dumb persistence toward the buried gold he and his master imagined. He would have done better to look for buried iron. Toussaint had spent every coin he could scrape together packing the hills of Saint Domingue with iron—great caches of guns and the bullets to feed them. But as he had claimed to Caffarelli, there was no secret anymore. The weapons were all uncovered now; they were in active use.

The wall opened and the men began to emerge through the veil as from a cane field at the long day’s end, pouring out in their hundreds, their thousands, through the corridors they had cut in the cane. Their skin was black and their chests and faces were marked with brands of ownership or punishment and also by the random slashes of the cane leaves. Some of them he knew by name and others were unknown to him except in the potency of their spirits, but to each alike he gave a musket, with the same words repeated, every time:
Take this, hold it,
keep it always—This! This is your liberty.