Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [280]
Maillart shifted and scratched his head. “But now it is the whole stupid dispute of the grand blancs and émigrés all over again. Hédouville has proclaimed—from Santo Domingo, of course—that they are not to be tolerated.”
“Oh, I see,” said the doctor. “While Maitland will certainly insist that they be amnestied.”
“Maitland?” The captain sat up straight.
“Yes, he has sent this Nightingal to set terms for the British withdrawal—from all of the Western Department, my friend.”
“The devil,” Maillart said. “Why must we treat with them? Now, when we are finally in position to defeat them in battle, drive the lot of them into the sea.”
“That might be an expensive pleasure,” the doctor said. “The British are finished here, I agree. And Maitland is certainly commissioned to get them out with as little loss as possible. But he has still a few teeth in his jaw. If they fight, we will have losses on our side, and the British can leave every place they now occupy in ruins.”
“Still they are in no position to dictate terms to us.”
The wind quickened, skirling up dust all over the yard. The doctor looked across and saw the first fat raindrops beginning to pat down.
“Leave that to Toussaint,” he said.
“Well, yes.” Maillart leaned forward and reached down to collect the rum bottle from between his feet. “He is a wicked old fox, Toussaint, and no one knows for certain what is in his mind.”
Next day, the doctor asked leave to travel to Le Cap, but when he was refused, he did not press the point. He did not give his personal reason, for Toussaint was in a humor to preach of duty, and the doctor did not want to hear the sermon. He got permission to go to Ennery for two days, which he passed agreeably enough with Paul and Sophie and Elise. Yet everything hung over them, still. Elise had recovered her morale, but if she had heard anything from Tocquet she did not say so, and for his part the doctor did not mean to upset her with news that the man might be as nearby as Le Cap. Nor did he know what to say to Paul about his mother. In fact the boy no longer asked for her, and yet the doctor felt the question in his look.
While at Ennery he got word that Hédouville was traveling from Santo Domingo to Le Cap, so he returned to Gonaives in the happy expectation that Toussaint would certainly be going north to pay his respects to the French agent. But it was not so. Instead, the doctor and the other available scribes were put to drafting a letter of apology (of sorts): Toussaint regretted that he must deny himself the pleasure of meeting General Hédouville, for the time being, as crucial military matters kept him at his post. Though the letter was infused with unction, the scribes were hard put to disguise the aloofness at the heart of the message. On the other hand, it was quite true that military matters were moving rapidly toward a crisis: Huin had gone south again to Port au Prince, where, aboard the British ship Abergavenny, he signed an accord with Nightingal which defined the terms of British withdrawal from all of the west coast . . . and by that time, as Huin reported back later, the sailors of the British fleet had already begun loading up supplies and ammunition from the town, under Maitland’s orders to prepare for departure.
Generals Maitland and Toussaint Louverture both ratified the treaty, and only then did Toussaint notify Hédouville of what had taken place. In his reply, Hédouville warned Toussaint not to accept the submission of any émigrés, but by then the treaty had already gone into effect. By its terms, a three-month cease-fire would be observed between the British and the forces commanded by Toussaint, and during this period Toussaint engaged not to attack the posts that the British would still hold in the south at Jérémie, and at Môle Saint Nicolas on the northwest peninsula. In particular, he pledged, for the period of the cease-fire, not to support Rigaud,