Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [188]
And so Laplume, when he heard this, got the men to rise against Dieudonné to make him prisoner. This was not so hard to do because Toussaint’s letter had already worked on the heads of the men who had listened to it that day. Laplume said he did so because Dieudonné meant all along to go with the English, but I did not think that was true, but that maybe Laplume saw this chance to throw down Dieudonné and take his place.
Laplume gave Dieudonné to Rigaud, but afterward he gave himself and those three thousand men to Toussaint, never to Rigaud or Beauvais. Of course Rigaud was very angry about this, but he had no one to punish except Dieudonné. I did not see it, but I heard that Rigaud loaded Dieudonné with so many chains that the weight of the iron crushed the breath out of him, and so he died. This happened at the prison of Saint Louis.
I, Riau, said nothing when all this began to happen. There was nothing I could say or do to make it different. And when Guiaou and I went back to the north, Toussaint was very pleased when he heard what we had done.
One could not blame Guiaou, because he had only done what Toussaint asked of him, and he believed in Toussaint with his whole heart. One could not even blame Toussaint, even though it had been very tricky, because Toussaint was right that we must all fight together as one to hold our freedom. Also it would have been a bad thing if all those men had gone with the English. But I could never forget the eyes of Dieudonné fastened on me while they were taking him away, even though BonDyé and all the spirits knew that Riau had not meant to betray him.
20
In the central courtyard of the Governor’s House was a rectangular stone tank which was home to a dozen turtles, one of which had climbed up out of the murky green water onto a stone and balanced there, turning its long, snake-like neck one way and another. When Laveaux’s shadow fell across the tank, the turtle became very still for a moment but did not plunge. Presently it relaxed and began to probe the air again with the soft, fleshy bulb of its head.
Laveaux smiled absently down into the tank, turning a cup of coffee in his hands. He was drowsy and was still wearing slippers, though otherwise he was dressed for the day. Last night he had stayed late in his cabinet, working on correspondence with the Minister of Marine in France—so much to report, so much to request. Hostilities with the Spanish along the interior border had ceased. Indeed, by the terms of a treaty between France and Spain, signed in Europe the previous July, the entire Spanish side of the island was ceded to French rule, though Laveaux did not have men enough even to think of occupying that territory. The British invasion on the coasts remained a serious threat, despite Toussaint’s campaigns in the Artibonite and Rigaud’s efforts in the Southern Department. Laveaux still had next to no European troops to oppose to the British and their renegade French cohorts, and due in part to the power of the British navy, the reinforcements he asked for were unlikely to arrive.
This morning he had risen early to continue his clerical chores, before the heat became too paralyzing, before the outer rooms of his office were crowded with petitioners and plaintiffs. He yawned.
The turtle turned its head, aiming the flat black dots of its near-sighted eyes at him. Its damp shell was drying, patchily, to a lighter shade of gray; the shell was about the size of a dinner plate. Laveaux smiled sleepily, beneficently. When he had first taken up residence in Governor’s House, the turtles had all ducked underwater whenever he leaned over the tank—or whenever his foot fell in the courtyard, for that