Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [389]
Moyse was not happy about Toussaint’s Constitution. He heard what was in that paper from Riau, before it was printed and taken to France by Vincent, and after it was printed, the paper went on stinging him. This Constitution was a hard rule for the men of the hoe, because it bound them to stay working on the plantations for all of their lives under the hands of the army. The paper also said that Toussaint had power to bring more men into the country to work with the hoe, which meant that he would buy them as slaves. When they came here they must be made free, but it began to look like a strange kind of freedom.
From Toussaint’s councils I knew that he did not really mean to put those new people into the fields. That part of the paper was meant to fool the blancs in France. What Toussaint planned was to bring in twenty thousand new men and put them into the army, to replace all the men who had been killed by the war in the south, because he was afraid a new army would come against us out of France, or maybe he already knew this was going to happen. Still, it meant that he would be paying to steal more people out of Guinée, as Riau and many others had been stolen.
Moyse was at Bois Cayman that year, and Joseph Flaville, and other officers of the army of the north, though not all of them. Toussaint did not know that they had gone there. Toussaint was not in the spirit of Bois Cayman anymore, or he did not seem to be.
I did not know what I would do when the thing began. At that time I had much freedom to move around the north with my horse soldiers. Even though Captain Riau was under command of higher officers, with the favor of Toussaint and the friendship of Moyse, I could often choose where I would be, sometimes at Ennery, or Dondon, or Le Cap.
Until the last day I thought that maybe I would take off my uniform coat and draw out my coutelas and begin killing whitemen again like before. Moyse expected this of Riau, and of Flaville also. That last day, I still did not know for certain, until we had passed Limbé, where Flaville commanded. There my heart turned cold and shrunken, and I knew my spirit was going to move me in another direction from Moyse.
We were going down to Ennery that day. But when we had come to Pilboreau, I took Guiaou away from the others, and told him he must ride without stopping to find Toussaint at Verrettes—he must not stop even for a moment at Ennery to see Merbillay and the children. Nothing was going to happen at Ennery, but he must tell Toussaint that the ateliers had risen and were killing whites all across the mountains from Limbé to Dondon, and all across the northern plain as well.
Guiaou looked at me without understanding. We had passed Limbé some hours before, and there was not any killing there. Guiaou had been at Bois Cayman that year himself, but since Agwé was riding his head the whole time, he did not remember anything afterward, himself, about what had happened or what it had meant.
“They are killing the blancs,” I told him carefully. “But truly, it is a rising against Toussaint.”
Guiaou’s nose opened wider to breathe in my words.
“Go without stopping,” I told him again. “Remember to tell him you come from me.”
Guiaou nodded and turned his horse—I watched him canter down the slopes of Pilboreau. From Quamba I knew he had been afraid of horses when he first had joined Toussaint, but he was a good rider now, and his horse was strong. It would take death to stop him from reaching Verrettes. Toussaint had given him revenge for his scars and for the Swiss, and Guiaou was for Toussaint without any question.
With the rest of my men I rode east from Pilboreau to Marmelade. There was some confusion