Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [182]
But after many days of this fighting all around the banks and the mountains of Grande Rivière, Toussaint took Captain Riau away from his troops and sent him to work with the doctor. Riau was tired of the fighting by then anyway, but even when doctoring I was in man’s blood to my armpits, whether sopping or bandaging or sawing arms and legs. It was the doctor who had called me to this work, because we had done so together before, but he had also called Guiaou, who was the new man of Merbillay.
So we were kept together, Riau and Guiaou; only when the wounded were coming back quickly from the fights there was no time to think. In the mornings before the fighting had well begun, I and the doctor, or I and Guiaou, would go searching for leaves to make poultices that stopped torn flesh from rotting, and kept maggots from feeding on the wounds. But someone must always stay to care for the wounded. Riau saw that Guiaou was natural for this nursing. Although his scars were frightening to see, his voice was gentle and his hands had a gentle touch. Even his eyes were soft and warm if one looked past the scars to see them.
Sometimes when I lay down at night, I thought how Guiaou would bring this gentleness to a woman, and then my head would turn ugly inside. But I could not hate him. Sometimes at night we both awoke together when the wounded cried out in their fever, and we talked across the bodies of the men we nursed in the light of a little dry-wood fire. That way I learned the story of the Swiss, and of the sharks who tried to eat Guiaou. I learned how Guiaou was afraid of water, though his maît’têt was Agwé. I knew that he was afraid of horses too. He did not say so, but I could see him working to master the fear whenever he had to ride a horse or groom one. Giaou knew something of Riau also from those talks at night, but we did not ever talk about the woman.
Then Toussaint came near to losing a battle, and had to take his men away to keep them from being killed. That was at Camp Charles-Sec. Toussaint had expected men to come out from Le Cap, where the mulatto Villatte commanded, to help his side, but the men did not come. For two days afterward the air all around Toussaint was trembling like thunder, because he thought Villatte had held those men back on purpose to betray him.
Guiaou was sent back to Ennery after that. My heart went dark against him, because he was going to Merbillay, while Captain Riau must stay at Marmelade with the doctor and Toussaint. Even then the doctor was always thinking about Nanon and scheming ways to get to Vallière to look for her, but there was not any way for him to go there. Toussaint had taken many towns and camps round Grande Rivière, but he had not taken all that he meant to.
But still there was peace all across the mountains and the valleys, as far as Dondon and beyond, and so work began again on the plantations. In those days Toussaint and Laveaux spoke out new laws, that all must work, and men began tending the cane again, but many of us did not like it. Those men who were soldiers of the gun despised those men who worked with hoes, and so the men of the hoe became unhappy. Then too, Joseph Flaville was mistrustful, and Moyse, but Riau spoke only with Moyse, because we had known each other at Bréda, before the first rising. Moyse did not like it that Bayon de Libertat, who was master of Bréda, had come back to be with Toussaint, or any whites like him either, who were making work on their