Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [136]
For that, Riau did not pass one night in Marmelade. At Plaisance, it was the same, and at Dondon. Beyond Dondon was Jean-François, still serving the Spanish whitemen with his camps around Grande Rivière, or in the other direction the colored men held Le Cap in the name of the French whitemen Toussaint now served. In the mountains were still bitasyons from the time of marronage, and new villages had sprung up as well, but the people were mistrustful of a stranger, because the whole country was at war.
I rode into the mountains north of Dondon, and when I could not ride any higher, I tied Ti Bonhomme to a tree with the rope reins and went on with my own legs, until I climbed Bonnet d’Evêque. It was a peak we had passed many times before, when Riau had belonged to the maroon band Achille led, who had been killed in the first fighting on the plain down there. They called it so because the mountain was pointed and split at the top, like a bishop’s hat, and to climb it to the highest place I had to use my hands. From the top of it I could see very far in each direction. Behind was Morne La Ferrière, with a new bitasyon sprouting below the cliff, and smoke from charcoal burning. Below, Dondon, and Limonade, and the Plaine du Nord rolling out to the sea, and far to the west was Morne du Cap above the town, and the mountains near Limbé. Some of the plain was still fire-blackened from when we burned the plantations with Boukman, but parts of it were growing green again. Beyond the plain the line where the sea met the sky was curving to become a circle, so that I, Riau, must see and understand that wherever I went anymore I would meet myself coming again, out of all that had been done before. At every kalfou I would meet my own past actions, even if I went back to Bahoruco.
When I had climbed down from the top of the Bishop’s Hat, I took the straw saddle off Ti Bonhomme and fastened it to a tree branch where the leaves would hide it. I untied the bridle I had made so it became a rope again, and with the rope’s end I drove the horse away into the bush. When I could not hear him moving anymore, I took up the macoute with the smoked meat which was left, my pistols and watch and the bundle of letters, and with the rope coil on my other shoulder, I began walking to Dondon, where Moyse commanded for Toussaint.
There was a long climb to make up the twist of the reddish mud road to the notch in the mountains where Dondon was, in the pass to the plateau and the high savannah. Market women were coming down the road with baskets carried on their heads, and children leading goats or cows to forage. When the sun and heat were highest, I rested with my back against a tree, eyes half closed, my ti-bon-ange half out of my body. Then I climbed some more and came into the town near the end of the day. The road leveled off and I walked the curve of it among the houses and then the road rose again, only a little, to an open hump of clear land by the church. On the other side of the cleared bare earth Moyse sat beneath a canvas, with a pen and paper on the table before him.
When Moyse saw me coming toward the table, a smile came out on his face like a flower. Moyse and Riau had crept together into the camps of whitemen in these same mountains, to cut their throats by night along with Dessalines and Charles Belair, and also we had known each other at Bréda when each of us had Toussaint as his parrain. It was long since Riau had seen him, and in that time Moyse had lost one of his eyes in fighting with the blancs. Now Moyse passed his hand between his face and me, and when the hand fell to the table again, the smile was gone.
Moyse wore a uniform coat and tight trousers tucked into high boots like a blanc horse soldier. He looked at the paper on his table, and touched the quill pen with his fingertips.
“Sa ou vlé?” he said, and frowned at the paper like a whiteman. What do you want?
“M’vlé sevi,” I said. I want to serve. He would know how my meaning was twinned because Moyse also served the loa.
“Mmmmmm.” Moyse made