Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [100]
By afternoon more soldiers had come into the camp at Habitation Thibodet, though not Toussaint himself, and not all of his army. From the ajoupa I heard the voice of the whiteman Captain Maillart and the voice of Moyse calling out orders, they who had been brother captains with Riau before. All day I stayed in the ajoupa, silent, though Caco called me from outside, and I was glad of the woven walls which hid me.
After darkness came and the camp was quiet, I lay beside Merbillay again, but this night we did not touch. It seemed a long time before she slept. Then I got up quietly and took the small macoute, which I had made ready before. The moon had not yet risen so it was very dark, but before I had gone many steps from the ajoupa, Bouquart rose out of his sleeping place, whispering.
“You are going.”
“Yes,” I said, “but you can stay.” I told him he had only to go to Moyse or the blanc Maillart to be made one of Toussaint’s soldiers. I had seen his eyes admiring the soldiers in the camp.
“But you.” Even in the dark I saw Bouquart’s eyes turn to the ajoupa.
“Gegne problèm,” I said. There was a problem, more than one. Merbillay’s new man would be coming back, if he was not killed in the fighting. Riau knew this, though she had not said it. Perhaps I would not have left only for that, but there was another thing I knew. Toussaint would kill a man for running from his army, desertion as it was called by whitemen and Toussaint. Riau had felt his pistol barrel against my head one time before, and that was only petit marronage, two or three days of hunting in the hills. A year in Bahoruco was grand marronage.
I followed Bouquart’s eyes toward the ajoupa. “Say I will come back,” I told him.
Bouquart’s head moved toward me through the darkness. “When?”
“M’ap tounen pi ta,” I said. I will come back later.
The brown horse Ti Bonhomme had been turned out into a paddock. He came to the fence when I clicked my tongue, and I gave him salt from the bag I had gathered, and made a bridle of a long piece of rope. Holding his mane with my left hand, I swung up onto his bare back. I did not steal a saddle or a leather bridle, though I knew where they were kept, and I would not have taken the horse either except that I needed him to carry me quickly far away.
When the moon did rise, it filled the forest with the light of bones. By moonlight it was easy to ride faster. My spirit led me to a tree where hung the skull and bones of a long-horned goat and the cross of Baron Samedi. Here I reined up my horse, and looked at the ground, the fallen leaves piled under moonlight. The grave had long ago filled in or washed away, but still I felt a hollow. In this place Riau had helped Biassou to take the flesh of Chacha Godard from the ground and make it breathe and walk again, a zombi.
I felt fear in my horse’s heart, between my knees. I let the reins out and rode quickly on. The night was warm, but a cold straight line was down my back, like death. I took a lump of the desert salt from the sack and held it on my tongue, my jaws shut tight.
11
Cool, and the calm was ruffled only by the wind, shivering the heavy blades of the tall old palms. Above the bunches of their tops, the stars of morning faded, as the cocks took up their cry. A last mosquito, his namesake, whined round his ear, then stung. Moustique, whose hands were both engaged in balancing the priest’s slop jar, could not slap it. He let it feed, then fly, and felt his way forward through the warm wet darkness, his ivory toes splaying in the dirt.
L’Abbé Delahaye had assigned him the slop jar to teach him humility,