Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [184]
I knew why Toussaint would choose Riau to go on this errand. After Riau returned to his duty of captain, Toussaint had picked all the story of Riau and Halaou and Dieudonné out of my head like a whiteman picking the meat out of a nut. Why he would send Guiaou was not so clear. Maybe he wanted to send us together, somewhere. Anywhere. I did not know if Toussaint knew about Riau and Merbillay and Guiaou, but it was possible that he did know, because he always looked into such affairs among his men as if he was their father.
But maybe it was the story of the Swiss that made him think of sending Guiaou. All that story began in the west, so Dieudonné would know of it already. After all that had happened, it meant something for Guiaou to trust anyone again, and Guiaou did trust Toussaint. And Dieudonné had known Riau from past time, so Toussaint hoped there was trust between us already.
He had already written a letter for us to carry and read to Dieudonné, and to his seconds and his men. It was a long letter, and it said what was usual for Toussaint to say in his letters then, that only he and Laveaux were fighting for freedom (or anyone who was on the side of those French whitemen), and that Laveaux could be believed in like a father, that the English were keeping and selling slaves still, as the Spanish were too. All of those things which I had heard before. I did not pay so much attention to the letter for Dieudonné because I could always read it later on. It was Guiaou who must take it into his memory from Toussaint’s mouth, because Guiaou did not know how to read.
We were supposed to persuade Dieudonné to join with Rigaud, because Rigaud was fighting for the French himself. He was even under the command of Laveaux, like Toussaint, although Laveaux was very far away, and I do not think they had ever met each other, except through letters. I saw that Toussaint had something else behind his head, all the time, but I did not see what it was because I was thinking of the journey and of going with Guiaou. The journey would be over water.
Toussaint had got a boat at Gonaives and had put cannons on it. This boat was meant to keep corsairs away from the harbor, and from the salt flats to the south. It would not have been any good against a real English warship, but it could frighten away the little sloops of pirates. The name of this boat was Liberté. Guiaou and Riau were supposed to get on this boat to cross the water of the bay to get to the place below Port-au-Prince where Dieudonné was.
Of course Guiaou did not want to get onto the boat at first. I had seen him hesitate before a horse, then master himself and mount. But before the boat, his fear was stronger. I, Riau, must take his hand and lead him, while his eyes were shut, and he stumbled like a blind man over the plank that went from the dock’s edge over the edge of the boat. Guiaou’s hand was trembling in mine. I thought how gentle this hand could be with the wounded men in Grande Rivière and thought too how the same hand had touched Merbillay in all her soft and secret places, and how the hand must have sometimes even touched Caco, whether in kindness or anger I could not know. Not all these thoughts were bad ones, but I was glad to let go of Guiaou once we were on the boat, and I did not feel sorry for his misery to be going over the water.
La Liberté slipped out across the surface of the sea. I, Riau, had traveled farther in Saint Domingue than we would go this day. To the south as far as Bahoruco,