Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [306]
“Aye,” said the doctor. “When was there not?”
As of October 10, 1798, there remained not one single foreign soldier on the soil of Saint Domingue—not in theory, at least, since the likes of Major O’Farrel had been integrated into the French forces under Toussaint Louverture. Toussaint sent an order throughout his entire command, that all his officers should call upon their men to pray twice daily, at evening and morn, wherever they might happen to find themselves—beginning with high mass, at which the Te Deum must be chanted in thanks to heaven for having facilitated the expulsion of the enemy without bloodshed, and with particular gratitude to Divine Providence for permitting several thousand persons of all colors to reenter the fold of French citizenship. Though these latter had been led astray, both the Lord and the state would receive them with open arms and without reproach or punishment. The religious rubric under which this formula unfolded would be difficult (the doctor reasoned with the captain) for Hédouville to reject.
Thanks to that same Divine Grace, some twenty thousand men would now be returned to labor in the coffee groves and cane fields. A good number of them would stand down from the army, turning in their muskets for hoes. If ever a new threat to liberty should arise, their weapons would be restored to them. Did Toussaint hope to placate Hédouville with this pronouncement? the doctor and Maillart asked one another. If so, he did not trouble himself to measure the success of his effort, but returned from Le Môle to Gonaives by way of Bombardopolis, with no detour to pay his respects to the French agent.
The doctor rode back to Le Cap with Captain Maillart and the cavalry troop in Riau’s command. Toussaint’s announcement of the labor program had cast a pall over the black soldiers, and Riau was silent and edgy throughout the trip. The doctor’s mood was also dark. Even his reunion with Paul did not lighten it; on the contrary, the child’s insouciance almost annoyed him, as did Isabelle’s brilliant good cheer. Her family fortunes seemed certain to be improved by Toussaint’s program, and she even talked of sending to Philadelphia for her own children, but the doctor was in no mood for other people’s happiness.
In Hédouville’s camp there was little rejoicing over the expulsion of the British. The sentiment seemed rather to be that Toussaint had stolen the credit for that event. Pascal had gone back to his nail-biting, poultice or no. The doctor stopped going to Government House. When he visited the casernes, he felt that Riau was avoiding him; Maillart said that Riau seemed to have gone off the white officers generally.
Then he met Riau as if by chance, behind the white church on the hill, where he had gone to collect Paul from his playmates of that lakou. Riau was out of uniform, barefoot, and seemed much more at his ease. He came to the doctor with his usual friendliness and a light touch on his arm.
“I see you have left your third eye in the hûnfor.”
He said no more, but the doctor felt his approval, and he felt lightened for the first time in three days. That night he dreamed of clouds passing over the mirror where it lay between the cairns of stone, cloud and blue sky flowing infinitely through that bright irregular window in the dust. This eye which remained open even while he slept, able always to learn and to know.
Next afternoon, he went, with a dreamer’s certainty, first to the casernes. He had meant to find Maillart, but when he found that the captain had gone off with O’Farrel, that too seemed inevitable. Riau presented himself, as if by prior appointment. Together they walked across to the Maltrot house in the Rue Vaudreuil.
The doctor took the bars of the gate with both hands and shook it till the locking chain danced up and down. Whether because of his own urgency or Riau’s uniformed presence, the servant scuttled up quickly and scraped the gate back for them to enter. Doctor Hébert walked through, slapping speckles of rust from his hands. The court was littered with broken glass,