Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [305]
What? Have I not given my word to the English general? How could you suppose that I would cover myself with infamy in violating that promise? The confidence which he has in my good faith engages him to deliver himself to me, and I would be dishonored forever, were I to follow your advice. I am wholly devoted to the cause of the Republic, but I shall never serve it at the expense of my conscience and my honor.
As Maitland concluded wonderingly, Toussaint uncovered his own smile from behind his hand.
“Sir,” Maitland told him. “Your sentiments are more than noble. One might call them . . . royal.”
Toussaint’s expression faded into watchfulness. He drew back the tent flap and beckoned Maitland within—alone. Before he went inside himself, he dismissed the sentry who’d been standing before the tent and called Riau to take his place.
“I’d give a good golden louis,” Maillart yawned from his hammock, strung next to the doctor’s, “to know what passed between them.”
“You haven’t got a gold louis,” the doctor said.
“Who’s to say I haven’t?”
“Who in this army has been paid, in recent memory? Even so much as a copper?”
“Oh,” said the captain, “but suppose the gentle Agathe should have given me a present . . .”
“You are intolerably smug.”
“Well, she didn’t,” the captain acknowledged. “At least, not a present of money.”
“Have your information for nothing then,” the doctor said. “Maitland proposed that Toussaint should make the colony independent and that England would recognize and support him as its king.”
Maillart sat up so suddenly that his hammock ejected him onto the dirt floor.
“How did you come by that piece of knowledge?”
“Riau,” said the doctor. “His scavenging, during marronage, has sharpened his hearing very much. He can hear a louse walking on the hair of a wild goat.”
“Listening at tent flaps is an excellent way to get shot.” Maillart got up and dusted off his knees.
The doctor pushed his heels against his hammock to set it gently swaying. “Oh, but perhaps Toussaint wishes the proposal to be known, together with his reply to it.”
“To wit?”
“He declined.”
“In high dudgeon, one imagines.” Maillart’s shoulders brushed the canvas as he turned in the low space of the tent. “As the faithful servant of France, and so forth.”
“No, it seems to have all been very cordial.” The doctor paused. “You may recall, at Gonaives, Toussaint took a special interest in the news from Egypt—Bonaparte’s landing there, I mean.”
“Which all the power of the British navy could not prevent.” Maillart ran his thumb down a seam of the tent. “I see. The point is well taken.”
“All very cordial, as I say, though Toussaint refused the crown,” said the doctor. “He and Maitland have signed a secret protocol—an addendum to the official accord for the withdrawal.”
“Riau deduced this from the scratching of the pen?”
“The British navy will leave the ports of Saint Domingue open to merchant ships of all nations,” the doctor went on, unperturbed. “England will have the right of trade, but not exclusively, in all ports of the colony controlled by Toussaint Louverture. Toussaint undertakes not to invade Jamaica and not to engage in subversion there. The English make the same undertaking with regard to Saint Domingue. Oh, and the lives and property of those French colonists lately allied with the British are to be fastidiously respected.”
“In all areas of the colony controlled by Toussaint Louverture.” Maillart exhaled, with a hint of a whistle. “Well, strike me dumb. Hédouville won’t like it. Not the part about the trade, and not the part about the landowners. Why, the very existence of such an agreement must offend him.”
“I don’t think he’s meant to know of it.”
“Christ—he’ll see it happening all around him.” Maillart gripped the edge of his hammock with both hands and carefully levered himself into it, settling his weight with a grunt. “There will be trouble.