Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [335]
What was one to expect, indeed? The doctor worried and gnawed on the question in his mind, dreamy with exhaustion as they rode farther north day after day. The mention of Vallière in Toussaint’s letter had made him ill at ease, though he had a high regard for Christophe (who was also, fortunately, acquainted with Nanon). But what if the Fortiers were for Rigaud, or by some unhappy chance could falsely be connected to him? All over that region of the country, the Rigaudins were celebrating the fall of Toussaint, whose ruthlessless, when he reappeared, was meant to make them understand the extent of their prematurity. Wherever he advanced, Toussaint roused the field workers with the announcement that Rigaud and his partisans meant to restore slavery, and he gave them back the guns he’d promised to return whenever such an emergency arose. The whites of the areas Toussaint retook continued to be respected, and some were able to negotiate mercy for their colored children. But at the same time, all the white men fit to bear arms were drafted into the army on an emergency basis and sent south to report to Dessalines, while Toussaint continued his drive north.
Thus far, the campaign had presented itself to the doctor’s view more as a police action than a real war. There’d been no battles, properly speaking, only arrests and executions, except at Pont d’Ester, where they’d met with some resistance when they crossed the river. But on the western peninsula it would be war indeed. The Rigaudins, who had raised the rebellion at Môle Saint Nicolas, had mounted a full-bore attack on Port-de-Paix, where Maurepas commanded for Toussaint. Word was that Maurepas was badly outnumbered, and hard pressed to hold on.
At night in the tent they usually shared, the doctor was kept awake by Maillart’s uneasy fretting. The captain was not one to jump at shadows, but he was worried now that Toussaint might have made a strategic error in responding to the diversion in the north. The real threat, he proposed, came from Rigaud, who with sufficient resolve might break Dessalines’s cordon at Léogane and attack Toussaint from the rear.
“But Dessalines has ten thousand men between Léogane and the mountains of Jacmel,” the doctor objected. “Rigaud has not half that number.”
“No, but consider their quality,” the captain muttered. “Those are crack troops in Rigaud’s command, and the smaller force is more mobile too. Think what Toussaint was able to accomplish in the old days with only four thousand men. And Rigaud has more reason to be bold—if he hesitates now, he will be crushed.”
“I would not like the assignment of forcing a way through Dessalines,” the doctor said. “Dessalines is not to be underestimated.”
“That he certainly is not,” the captain said. “Only I fear that, just now, Rigaud is more in danger of underestimation.” He turned on his blanket, banged his elbow on a protruding root, cursed and went on grumbling while the doctor struggled to sleep. He was tired and ennervated by the constant state of alarm, and when he ought to have been sleeping, the ache and itch of his hurt arm annoyed him. He only hoped they would soon make their way to the seacoast, where he could bathe the wound in brine.
Often enough they moved at night. After the mass of the army had camped and cooked its provisions, Toussaint was apt to strike the tents of his immediate staff and move to some other location, away from the main bivouac. Sometimes he shifted his position more than once under cover of darkness; no one was ever quite sure where he slept—if he did sleep.
That night at Gros Morne, the doctor was unsurprised when Riau roused him by shaking his foot. He rose and poured himself into the habitual routines, saddling the mare, tying up the metal fittings of both saddle and bridle with