• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1144 0

that Noël Arthaud, dispatched by Villatte, had cut the road to Vallière to prevent any reinforcement coming to the enemy. But in the midst of the fighting at Charles-Sec it was discovered that Arthaud had failed in this maneuver—the eighth tentacle had been severed or at least had missed its mark, for Jean-François rushed out from Vallière with twenty-five hundred men to join the battle. At risk of being surrounded himself, Toussaint cut his way out of the trap and withdrew behind the cordon he had now extended as far as Montagne Noire. Then, having secured the outlying posts, he took his exhausted army to Marmelade, where the men could rest and he would compose his report of the campaign to Laveaux.

“All the valley of Grande Rivière is ours,” Toussaint claimed in the letter which Doctor Hébert, among others, helped to copy out fair.

But, in truth, the region had become a no-man’s-land which would be contested for many more weeks. The doctor hurled himself into fifteen solid hours of impenetrable pitch-black sleep, and finally woke to the dull apprehension that for his private purpose the campaign had been a failure—for the time being he had no hope at all of reaching Vallière.

17

Midmorning, Toussaint left Gonaives and rode, amid a half-dozen of his cavalry, toward the dry-bony mountains north of the town. But before beginning the scaly, lizard-backed ascent, he abruptly dismissed his escort and turned off toward Ennery. The other riders were puzzled, he could see—except for Riau, who straightaway suspected him of marronage. Toussaint smiled at the the thought of Riau’s lightly masked expression, and with a light pressure of his knee urged Bel Argent into a canter. It was flat and easy going here, and the white stallion could stretch his legs with small risk.

These sudden reversals of direction were common enough—a constant rupture of his pattern of movement, so that he always arrived without warning where he was least expected, so that his ways from crossroads to crossroads were unpredictable and unknown. But for months Toussaint had hardly gone anywhere unescorted; he must have a few of his best riders round him, trusted men who were gradually being shaped into a sort of personal guard of honor, as well as his surgeon, his secretaries . . . Well, let them wonder. He smiled again at the thought of Riau—as if he, the general Toussaint Louverture, would desert the army of thousands he had created.

He leaned forward in the saddle, the reins curling upward through his lightly closed hands, which hovered above the white mane of Bel Argent. A pleasant breeze stroked his face and pulled at the corners of his hat. Within the grip of his lean thighs, the muscles of the horse’s back flowed like water, a wave rolling ceaselessly forward without breaking. There was no need for any thought.

Such moments had become rare for him. Soon his mind began to work again. He reined in Bel Argent before the stallion could overheat himself, leaning forward to gently stroke the warm and slightly sweaty neck, and walked him slowly down the road. Already they had reached the gate of Habitation Thibodet, and Toussaint might have been tempted to enter to check on the progress of the cultivation and the status of the garrison there—but he did not. He would press on to Marmelade, which had been his original destination that morning, though he’d arrive there by a different route.

Beyond the gateposts, as the road began to rise, he turned from it and pressed the stallion up the steeper slopes toward the ridge, skirting the outermost coffee trees. He could hear the voices of women singing as they gathered the red berries—that was good—but he kept out of their sight behind a screen of trees, leaning still farther forward now as Bel Argent mounted the difficult grades. Then he felt himself brushed, along his right profile, by someone’s regard, and turned to lock eyes with that scarred one, he who had come out of the Savane Désolée with his tale of what had happened to the “Swiss.” An instant of recognition, and Toussaint was gone behind the trees,