Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [192]
Laveaux ought perhaps to have seen it all coming. Perhaps in a way he had. He had known Villatte’s ambition, seen his resentment of Toussaint’s advancement. Indeed, Villatte and the rest of the colored officer corps of the Le Cap contingent had borne the supervision by their French superiors with difficulty and distaste. In the days when Laveaux had been pinned down at Port-de-Paix, Le Cap and its environs had been their principality. No one in that mulatto faction had been overjoyed by Laveaux’s return. For that reason, in part, Laveaux had preferred Toussaint. In truth, he liked the black general better, and trusted him more. But where was Toussaint now?
Laveaux’s stomach made a queasy revolution. This was not fear, but impending dysentery. A consequence of tainted food, impure water. Coupled with fever, or even on its own, this illness might bring him death if he remained here for many more days. Such an outcome would be more convenient to his captors than a mock trial followed by an all-too-genuine execution.
Though he had managed to retain his watch throughout the struggles of his capture, the case had been dented, the crystal shattered, the works stopped by a boot or the blow of a baton. He could not divine the hour, for his touch of fever kept him from counting the bells of the church correctly. His cell had no window to the outdoors, but the wedge of daylight on the corridor floor had long since faded, so he knew that it was night.
Noise came to him indistinctly from the streets surrounding the prison, a batter of running feet and a crying out of voices. Force à la loi! Force à la loi! In his confusion Laveaux was not sure that he heard this right. And what law did the voices invoke? The just law of the French Republic, or something trumped up by Villatte’s faction for the occasion? From their timbre the voices seemed to be those of the blacks to whom he had sometimes referred as his own adopted children. At this thought, Laveaux was moved almost to tears.
The bells of the town were tolling eleven when Maillart rode through the gate into the Rue Espagnole, in the midst of his escort of twenty black cavalrymen. Crossing the mountains had molded his agitation into a grim-edged determination. He had been obliged to restrain his mount—it would have been idiotic to kill horses in the desperation of the ride—and also, as Toussaint had counseled him, to rein in his own responses.
It had taken no more than an hour to draft Toussaint’s letter to the municipal authorities and to make a fair copy. During that time Riau had returned with the Gonaives conspirators in his custody—those who were named on Villatte’s intercepted list. Riau was off again immediately to complete the same mission at Marmelade, while the arrested men went into the guard house, from which the captain doubted they would ever emerge. He was very much encouraged by the speed and efficiency of these measures. And Toussaint’s letter put it in absolute terms that if Governor-General Laveaux were not immediately released and restored to his normal functions, the most dire consequences would follow.
The moon hung over the sea like a scythe. Maillart admired it, his jaws tight. The stiff breeze sweeping in from the water dried the sweat his riding across the plain had raised. As he and his escort advanced toward the town center, they heard the sounds of a general disturbance and presently they were surrounded by many blacks who milled about shouting Force à la loi. These demonstrators recognized the men with Maillart as coming from Toussaint, and they were glad. Still chanting, they swirled around the captain’s mounted group all the way to the municipality.
Maillart had thought to roust the municipal authorities from their beds, but he found them already assembled, though it was near midnight when he entered the building, banging his bootheels deliberately on the stone floors. There was more than enough to keep them from sleep, for although Villatte’s faction held the town, they were surrounded by forces loyal