Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [162]
Or perhaps he would not speak of it. The name came to him: Guiaou. Toussaint remembered now that there was some trouble between him and Riau. Something to do with a woman, certainly . . . he did not exactly remember, but whatever it was had moved him to post Riau away from Ennery. Perhaps no more than an inkling . . . But Riau could not be too tightly constrained or he might bolt again altogether, or try to. Riau had several useful skills, and Toussaint did not want to be obliged to order him shot. Besides, he was fond of Riau, whom he’d adopted long ago when the boy was first brought out of Guinée as a bossale to Habitation Bréda. Of course, he had been parrain to many others in those days of slavery. And to be the General Toussaint Louverture was to be father of sorts to four or five or six thousand men.
He took off his general’s hat, as if it were to blame for the direction of his thoughts, and fastened it to his stirrup leather. The hat rode by his left knee, its red and white plumes flexing with the motion of the horse. Bel Argent, shoulders straining slightly, broke out of the bamboo onto the trail at the top of the ridge. The mountain air was distinctly cooler, and Toussaint’s headcloth, sweat-soaked under the hat, began to dry.
He was deep inside his own lines here, and safe as safe could possibly be, in this country at this time. He let the white stallion choose the pace: a brisk, spring-loaded walk. Today for the first time in many days, there was no particular reason for haste. And solitude was most welcome to him. His mind ran empty, clear and light. There was nothing, only a global awareness of the damp smells of the jungle, shifting of shadows and ticking of insects in the leaves.
But here was a new bitasyon sprung up since he had last passed this way. A new clutch of wattled cabins half completed, corn plantings spiraling among boulders up the hillside to his right. And there above him on the trail, a naked boy of three or four stood gaping down at him, slack-jawed, eyes as round and white as hens’ eggs, then plunged into the bush. Toussaint heard his voice calling to the others. He followed the curve of the trail around the clustered houses. A young woman in a blue headcloth stood watching him from a doorway as he went by. His mind began to work again. This too was marronage, this sprouting of villages and gardens all through the hills, as if the liberated people had indeed gone back to Guinée, or invented their own Africa, here and now. At this he felt a twinge, almost of envy. A creole born in Saint Domingue, Toussaint had never seen Guinée.
Again he thought of Riau’s wandering spirit . . . which was far from unique. Then the jungle closed behind the horse’s tail, and the voices of the children died away, and his thought left him. He rode on. No, he would not go to Marmelade today, though the town was easily within his range. He clucked to Bel Argent and turned him down from the road, crossing a narrow rivulet at the bottom of a shallow gorge, then climbing to strike the red groove of another trail beyond.
The cactus fence had grown taller around the small square case, but this time the two little dogs did not bark. One came to the door and sniffed the air, then turned around and lay down with its tail hanging over the sill. The old woman stood in the bare-earth yard, pounding a pestle taller than herself into a mortar hollowed from a stump.
“Bonsoir, grann,” he said to her.
The old woman turned and bared her gums, her whole face wrinkling in pleasure, though she seemed unsurprised.
“Ou pa sezi,” Toussaint remarked.
“It was my spirit who told me you might come.”
Toussaint nodded as he swung down from the saddle and moved to tether Bel Argent to a tree. No doubt the spirit which informed her of his arrival was the same spirit that had moved him to come. He took