Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [261]
“Gentlemen,” he said, reaching for his glass and raising it. “I give you—an absent friend.” He revolved the glass in his hand, looking at the amber swirl of rum. “He who has united all our forces for the defense of universal liberty, the General-in-Chief, Toussaint Louverture.”
As they drank, Cigny choked and spluttered. Commissioner Raimond turned to him with great solicitude and thumped him rhythmically on the back until his cough subsided. The doctor looked all around the the table, somewhat uncomfortably. The company was not designed for easy after-dinner conversation, no matter how well steeped in smoke and rum.
“I offer this glass to the Governor-General Laveaux,” Maurepas was saying, “who steadfastly defends our liberty against its enemies in France.”
They drank. Monsieur Cigny swallowed this toast more easily, the doctor noticed. But for all the tricolor cockade Isabelle had pinned to his lapel, he was a royalist at heart, more likely to have sided with Vaublanc than Laveaux, and if slavery were to be restored tomorrow, he would not be at all aggrieved. Then again it had probably required some effort for Sonthonax to propose the first toast to Toussaint, who had chosen to remain at Breda in the company of Bayon de Libertat—a branded royalist and aristocrat, slave holder, minor nobleman . . .
“To our good friend among us now,” Moyse declared. “The Commissioner Sonthonax. Let him remain with us always, to defend the Tree of Liberty he was the first to plant in Saint Domingue.”
The doctor drank, swallowed, left his head tilted back against the top rail of his chair. On the ceiling, three geckos were cautiously converging on a single mosquito, its shadow spread ominously large by the light from the candles. So far as the black officers were concerned, Isabelle’s invitations had been quite canny. Moyse, Clervaux and Maurepas were Sonthonax’s staunchest supporters among Toussaint’s cadre, while Moyse and Flaville were close as brothers, and Moyse was Toussaint’s nephew. There would have been a smooth liaison from Sonthonax to Toussaint across these men, who were Toussaint’s own—if only Toussaint had chosen to appear. Oh, the doctor, thought, it was a delicate game she played, and how gracefully she’d absorbed the disappointment, too. The widening rift between Toussaint and Sonthonax was well enough known to all, and if she’d facilitated a rapprochement between them, Isabelle’s position would have been improved with both. She might even have felt secure enough to bring her children back to the colony, which was, as the doctor knew from Maillart, her heart’s desire. He wished her well, but he’d served himself as message-bearer between commissioner and general for too long to be optimistic; he had not been surprised in the least that Toussaint kept away.
“Tomorrow’s festival,” Julien Raimond announced. “May every throne of tyranny be overturned, and all people rise to freedom.”
They drank. Of course it was the Republican holiday that had inspired Isabelle’s choice of dress for herself and Claudine—they’d wear the same costumes next day to salute the Tree of Liberty. But tonight the mood was something less than festive, despite the effort of all those toasts, and once the men had rejoined the ladies, the party was not much prolonged.
The doctor felt a little stuffy, after such an elaborate meal, and also he did not wish to linger for a post-mortem of the evening between Isabelle and her reluctant husband. He excused himself to walk Captain Maillart back to the casernes. The streets were quiet, sometimes a square or wedge of candlelight at windows which they passed, or someone standing silent in a doorway or under an eave. The captain walked with a wide swinging step, rolling his shoulders which had stiffened from too long sitting in a too-small chair. He nipped from his flask and offered it to the doctor, who took a small taste and handed it back.
“I am no great lover of Sonthonax,” Maillart said, “but I wonder, what does Toussaint want in a French agent? No one could have shown