Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [342]
The doctor bowed wordlessly and turned to depart.
“I may tell you that there has been no trouble in the region of Vallière.” Toussaint passed a hand across his mouth and his lower jaw. “I have information which I trust—it is very calm there.”
At the Cigny house the doctor learned that Maillart had gone out, against his instructions to rest his injured thigh. He found the captain at a tavern on the Rue Espagnole, counting up his winnings from a card game. His companions in play had already left, disgusted with their luck.
“Your leg,” the doctor said, frowning.
“No more than a nuisance.” Maillart stacked coins, happily.
“I want you to take a sea bath daily.”
Maillart looked at him with total disbelief.
“Or fetch me my saw.” The doctor grinned.
“And what of your arm, O my physician?”
The doctor pushed back his sleeve to show the pink pucker of healed flesh. “It has mended, thanks to the same treatment I recommend to you.”
“Oh well, in that case . . .” Maillart muttered. “Well, where have you been all the day?”
The doctor told him.
“Have you any news of the south?”
“Little enough,” the doctor said. “Some fighting around the Goâves, but there has been no important change of position—as far as anyone knows here.”
“I do not understand Rigaud,” said the captain. “It’s all or nothing for him now—he ought to strike, and hang the risk! The risk has already been taken.”
“Well, as we are fighting on the other side, we must profit from his error, if error it be,” the doctor said. “Some say that Rigaud is waiting for help from France.”
“A fantasy,” said Maillart. “He has put too much trust in that letter of Hédouville’s.”
“Yes,” said the doctor. “I think you are right.”
“And meanwhile Toussaint passes his hours catechizing first communicants?”
The doctor shrugged. “He takes his religion seriously.”
Although Toussaint would not give him permission to leave town, he also made no call on the doctor’s services for the next two days. There was time enough for him to drag the captain to the sandy cove across the headland. Maillart, it turned out, did not know how to swim and was embarrassed by that failing, but the doctor pointed out that he would get the same benefit by standing waist-deep in the water, and after two days of this practice the wound did begin to improve.
On Sunday everyone was specially enjoined to attend the mass. Toussaint’s soldiers lined the roadways, filled in all four sides of the Place d’Armes. In the middle of the square, all the mulatto prisoners of the northwest had been collected, and those from the Le Cap region had been brought up from La Fossette. Each group seemed further disheartened to meet the other—it looked as if they had been summoned to their own execution.
From the steps of the church, Toussaint Louverture presided over the square. When the little phalanx of first communicants arrived, all bearing lighted candles in their hands for the occasion, he stopped them before they could enter, and in a voice which carried to all four corners of the Place d’Armes, addressed them on the duties of mercy and the blessings of compassion. He expounded on these central Christian virtues for nearly twenty minutes, while the doctor and the captain exchanged glances of perplexity, and the priest and his acolytes looked out the door with barely suppressed impatience, and candle wax dripped down on the hands of the mystified children.
Finally, Toussaint let it be known, as an example of his general precept, that the colored people had now been punished enough. According to the duty of mercy and forgiveness, they would now be released. They were to be given a change of clothes (for the captives from the northwest were by then in a state of abject near-nakedness) and allowed to return to their homes, be it even as far as Môle Saint Nicolas, without interference from black soldier or black citizen. Still more, they must be treated as brothers by all who met them along their way.
They left Le Cap at dawn next day, Toussaint and the better part of his army, in urgent haste for the southern front. That