Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [333]
Distracted, the captain cannoned into Isabelle before he saw her. They clutched each other by the shoulders to keep from falling down.
“It’s all right,” she said. “We’ve found friends.” She turned her chin toward the wagon. “Nanon knows this woman—so does Antoine. They will take us to Maltrot’s old property at Vallière.”
“But Choufleur!” Maillart blurted.
“You told me yourself he is with Rigaud—he will be otherwise engaged. And we will be protected. But you have orders—you must go.”
She raised herself on her toes to embrace him, laying her cheek to his. There was a dampness through the dust. Then her sharp fingers pushed him back.
“Go quickly.” She’d already turned away.
Maillart returned to his men and his horse. By the time he had mounted, the wagon had left the square. She was gone from him, into the unknown; he could not predict whether she’d emerge from it again. But it was no time for sentiment, and that, he reflected as Moyse led them down from Dondon, was doubtless a good thing.
33
Toussaint’s sweep south to Port-au-Prince was so rapid and relentless that there was no thought of a stop at Ennery; the doctor, welded to his saddle after twelve hours’ hard riding, congratulated himself on having sent Nanon and Paul out of the way . . . supposing they had safely arrived where they were meant to have gone. At any rate he was too exhausted to worry much when, in the train of Toussaint’s cavalry, he rode into Port-au-Prince. Toussaint went directly into a war council, but the doctor was given leave to retire. He found a billet in the casernes, and despite his weariness went for clean water and changed the dressing on his left arm. The wound from Choufleur’s pistol ball was slight, but slow to heal, and in this climate it could not be neglected. With the fresh bandage tightened, he stretched out and lay motionless as a plank. In the night he had fleeting dreams of Suzanne Louverture and her three sons, tucked safely away on the central plateau, across the Spanish border, during that period before Toussaint had entered French service; the lingering images of those dreams reassured him next morning when he woke to the rattle and clash of new arrivals.
Moyse had just brought in his regiment, and Captains Vaublanc and Maillart soon searched the doctor out. His question must have been plainly legible on his face, for Maillart was quick to tell him that all was well.
“They found a friend to take them to Vallière,” he said. “A tall mulattress—she seemed a person of substance. I had not time to learn her name, but Isabelle told me that you’d know her.”
“That would be Madame Fortier,” the doctor said, considerably relieved. He squeezed Maillart on the shoulders. “I’m in your debt.”
Maillart nodded dizzily, dragging the back of his wrist across his sweaty and dust-streaked face. He pulled off his boots and collapsed on the cot the doctor had just vacated.
At the well, where he went to wash his face, the doctor met Riau and got the news. Rigaud had attacked Laplume at Petit Goâve with a superior force and driven him back to Léogane—Laplume’s men were mostly scattered and he’d barely missed being captured himself. The whites of Grand and Petit Goâve had been massacred, and the invaders had taken special care to slit the throats of landowners of whatever color who were known to have accepted the grace and favor of Toussaint for the restoration of their plantations. The mulatto Pétion, who served under Laplume but was believed by Toussaint to be a more valuable officer than his commander, had gone over to Rigaud’s faction, whether out of loyalty to his caste or out of doubt that Toussaint