Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [175]
Next day they rode to Haut de Trou, Arnaud accompanied by Maillart and Flaville and the men they’d brought with them: a strong party, for the state of the countryside was uncertain. Bands of unorganized rebels and fugitives still roved about, and the blacks who’d returned to work the fields were restless, chafing under the new labor laws proclaimed by both Laveaux and Toussaint. Maillart had time to reflect on the matter during the day’s journey, for there was little conversation among the leaders of the group.
Toussaint’s edicts had been especially stern. He forbade any independent clearing of new land by the new-free slaves (Toussaint had no desire to see more maroon villages sprouting in the hills), indeed there should be no work of any sort for independent gain or sustenance—all efforts must be combined for plantation work and the restoration of export crops. Reasonable, Maillart knew well, given the troops’ constant need for munitions and other supplies which must be imported, but the strictness of the edict was sufficient to start murmurs of its resemblance to slavery . . . According to Laveaux’s parallel proclamations, this labor was not slavery because it was paid: the cultivators were meant to receive the fourth part of all they produced. Yet Toussaint himself was pleading that this clause of the program was unworkable, for the time being at least, with all the Plaisance Valley laid waste. Under such sharecropping the Cordon de l’Ouest might sustain itself, at best, but could bring in no money for guns or soldiers’ pay. And even on the Plaine du Nord, where the land itself recovered more easily from the devastation, Laveaux’s policy was honored most often in the breach.
“It is a lovely principle,” Isabelle Cigny jingled across her supper table that evening, “but in practice—well, my friends . . .” She spread her hands above the different platters. “For example, our repast. Perhaps I parrot my husband’s views—he will be desolate to have missed you yet again!” She inclined her head to Maillart and Arnaud in turn.
“Likewise,” said Arnaud.
“My regret is sharpened,” said the captain, “by the thought that we dine at the grace of his markmanship.” For the meat was wild dove, shot in the cornfields by Monsieur Cigny. The birds were sweet and tender . . . and worth about two bites apiece; Maillart could happily have eaten twice the number available for his consumption.
“Precisely,” said Isabelle. “One may imagine that wild game is free for the taking, yet as mon bonhomme would put it, game costs something in powder and shot—precious commodities in this difficult time, to be sequestered with difficulty—and with some small risk—from military requisitioning.”
This time she fired her glances at Maillart and Flaville. “Gentlemen, I presume we speak in confidence.”
“But of course,” said Maillart, while Flaville stretched in his chair, smiling with apparent pleasure at her performance.
“Well,” she went on, “as for the corn and the yams and the greens, they too have their price in labor. Labor diverted from the coffee and the cane. How is that ‘fourth share’ to be extracted from such a situation? Why, our cultivators do well to feed themselves twice daily! Am I unjust?” She fluttered her fingers at Arnaud.
“By no means, Madame.”
“And that is not all,” Isabelle said. “The gravity of the predicament is just this—oh, my husband would certainly say the same if he were present.” She smiled around the table, her eyes skimming their faces, all attentive but for Claudine, who maintained her customary air of trance.
“All very well for our . . . cultivators, that they should be free,” she said. “Oh, let me applaud their freedom . . . Vive la liberté!” She raised her arm dramatically, but the toast fell flat, as she had doubtless intended it should. “Yet those people did not come to us free of charge, and the merchants and brokers of the Bord de Mer, whether