Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [255]
“But yes,” he said, as he collected the desk and put his hat upon his head. “Burn it.” His voice was suddenly loud enough to be heard beyond the wall and all the way to the town square. “Boulé tout kay yo!” Burn down the town.
Riau moved at once, using his torch to set fire to the house at several promising places. Maillart was not so quick to follow suit, but he did obey. The wood, well seasoned, went up quickly.
“Alors, quoi faire?” Tocquet asked rhetorically. He stood up, struck a light, set fire to the chair he’d been sitting in and hurled it through the nearest window into the house. Standing back, he pointed to the pistols still on the table—the doctor hurried to snatch them up.
The heat was sudden and immense, parching the pores on the doctor’s face. He and Tocquet left the enclosure quickly. Outside, the troops were all drawn up for their departure. The doctor went at once to quiet his horse; alarmed at the fire, the animal was fighting its tether. Tocquet touched the doctor on the shoulder; they embraced. Already the flames were shooting high above the brick wall, and the parrots were circling out of the smoke.
“I won’t go on this adventure to Saint Marc,” Tocquet said. “I still have four hundred head of cattle grazing on the central plateau. It’s finished here, as I needn’t tell you—I’ll drive my beef to Dajabón, and then we’ll see. Give all my love if you’re there before me.”
“That I shall.” The doctor swung his leg over the saddle and caught up the reins. Looking after Tocquet, he waved and touched his hat brim. But Tocquet had not looked back; he was just breaking into a jog as he turned the corner of the wall.
They rode out, Toussaint at the head of his troops, holding high another torch which was by then mostly symbolic, since the town was well ablaze in all its quarters and the inhabitants had evacuated with much cursing and wailing. Toussaint had made reasonably sure that no human life was sacrificed to the flames, but the householders had had little time to salvage their belongings. As they went westward along the Artibonite Valley, the doctor pictured the old garden of the headquarters house, its leaves and blossoms withering in the heat. Finally the mortar must crack in the outer wall, and all the bricks come toppling down. Two hours yet till the evening rain, and by then Mirebalais would be a field of charcoal.
When the rain did come, the river swelled brown with earth washed out from the cultivated fields, but Toussaint’s army marched on, scarcely slackening its pace, the men and horses slip-sliding in the mud. Those with blankets shrouded themselves against the downpour. The doctor was equipped with a long oilcloth duster and the tight weave of his straw hat shed water for the first half hour, but after that everything soaked through and he was as wet as any man among them. When the rain stopped, they halted for two hours, building fires to dry their clothes and blankets, eating light rations, resting as they might, while the rainforest continued to shed water all around them. Then by moonlight or through the dense darkness under the trees, they pressed on in the direction of Saint Marc.
Toussaint had damaged no plantations on the way to Mirebalais—such had never been his policy, and on this occasion his haste was great. But the destruction of the town was sufficient warning to the surrounding planters that it might be better not to become too cozy with the British, with the result that Simcoe found the locals surprisingly aloof when he marched through en route to the pit of sodden ashes which had been Mirebalais, and it took him longer than it otherwise might to gather the intelligence that Toussaint had spiraled around his advance and would soon be threatening Saint Marc, which Simcoe had left mostly exposed, lightly defended by Dessources and his colonial