Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [391]
“Shoot yourself,” Toussaint commanded.
Bouquart, standing very straight, picked up his pistol and blew his brains out through his ear. He fell down dead on the bloody stones. Toussaint walked on. Toussaint gave the same order many times. When it was enough for him, he ordered the ranks of soldiers to part. At one end of the square appeared three cannon. At the other came Joseph Flaville, bound among other prisoners Toussaint had taken on his way. All those cannon were loaded with grapeshot so that afterward no one could tell which scraps of meat and bone had belonged to one man or another.
In the echo of the shots I heard the high, shrill scream of a blanche. I turned to see Isabelle falling in a faint. The Captain Maillart caught her in his arms and carried her away. I did not know how she had managed to get herself there to see the killing, though I did know her reason. All the black people knew that she had borne a son of Flaville’s at Vallière and afterward given it to Nanon, though none of the white people seemed to know it.
I was sorry that Bouquart was killed, and that Zabeth would have to find another father for the child they had made together. In the days that followed, I sometimes thought of Chacha Godard’s head going down beneath the waters, and the same words in my mind— what they did to us, we have learned to do to ourselves. But I was not sorry that it had not been my time to go, that I could keep on breathing and living and sometimes kiss my children.
Moyse was not killed at once, even after so many others had died under Toussaint’s rage. Toussaint met with him once in a friendly way, and pretended to believe that Moyse was not to blame for the rebellion. He even sent Moyse out with a party of soldiers to put down small risings that were still going on in corners of the plain and to the west of Le Cap. I thought then that Toussaint really did love Moyse, as much as his sons who had been taken away to France, and that he wanted Moyse to go off and hide in the mountains and save his life. But Moyse did not do this, either because he did not understand, or because he did not care anymore what happened to him. Instead he went to Port-de-Paix with his patrol, and there Maurepas arrested him and put him into the guardhouse.
There was a trial for Moyse at Le Cap, but all that time Moyse was kept in the fort at Port-de-Paix. Toussaint did not go to see him die, as he had watched Flaville and the others be blown to little rags of flesh, but he sent Riau in his place to watch it. I had no choice but to go. It was a lucky thing that Toussaint did not order me to be one of the firing squad.
When Moyse stood facing the guns in the Port-de-Paix fort, he called out in a loud, strong voice. Maurepas heard him, everyone did, but I thought his words were meant for Riau.
“Tell my old uncle,” Moyse shouted. “Tell him my one eye has been looking into the other world for a long time. Tell him I see him walking there as well, among the shadows.”
Then Moyse called on the men to shoot. Feu! mes amis, feu! he said. The muskets spoke together, and Moyse was silent.
I did not bring this message to Toussaint, and no one else did either. But it fell to Riau to tell Toussaint that Moyse was dead, which I had seen with both my eyes. When he heard this news, Toussaint put his face in his hands and wept without sound, and the water ran out from between his fingers. He had given the order himself, as I knew, but this time his grief was real.
40
The doctor threw the back of his hand half consciously toward the other side of his bed, and woke completely with a start of alarm when he found it cool and empty. Where was he? He sat up, bracing his back on the headboard, collecting himself one scrap at a time. The Cigny house, but he was still unused to the larger room he and Nanon now occupied on the second floor.
She was not there, but not lost either. Elise, who was also staying in the house at the moment, had insisted that he not see her all that day. This seemed a fond notion, given all the circumstances,