Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [42]
“My ancestral home,” he announced, gesturing with the tip of his cheroot at Tortuga off beyond the breakers.
“Then you must be a flibustier,” Laveaux said.
Tocquet shucked up his shirt sleeve and pumped his arm to raise a vein. “The blood of pirates, Spaniards, Frenchmen, Indians . . .” He traced the blue line on his inner forearm. “Possibly Africans. Certainly whores.” He laughed and dropped his arm, looking toward the jungled island. “My grandfathers came out of there, it’s true. Buccaneers to the bone, I can testify.”
“Then it was they who won this colony for France,” Laveaux said with a thoughtful air.
Tocquet’s face shadowed. “As you prefer.” He tipped ash over the parapet, frowning, reached for a drink that wasn’t there. For the moment, no one spoke. A dark cloud hovered over Morne des Pères, behind and above the fort, and in the opposite direction the sea purpled with the approach of night. Someone shouted from below the wall. Tocquet leaned over, called an answer, then turned to Laveaux with his crocodile smile.
“Order them up,” he said. “They’ve been requisitioning.”
Presently Bazau and Gros-jean appeared, carrying a stalk of plantains, green-skinned oranges, a rough-surfaced ceramic jug of tafia, and two live chickens.
“I’m overwhelmed,” Laveaux confessed. He sent one of his barefoot soldiers to find cups.
Tocquet took one of the speckled hens and whipped off its head with a practiced twirl, then handed it to Gros-jean to pluck.
“I’ll cook for you,” he said. “Façon boucanière.”
They ate together, the six black soldiers and the three white men, seated on chunks of masonry from the old fallen walls. Tocquet had built his fire in the lee of some few stones still mortared together. He cooked the chickens spitted on a green stick, roasted the plantains in their skins. As they ate, Laveaux quizzed the black soldiers about details of their service with Toussaint. Afterward, they drank rum flavored with chunks of the oranges. The wind had shifted, bringing a swamp smell and clouds of mosquitoes from l’étang du Coq. Maillart accepted one of Tocquet’s cigars, hoping the smoke would discourage the insects.
Slapping mosquitoes and staring at the fire, they discussed the dispositions of the enemy. The English were well established at Môle Saint Nicolas, though the port was mostly garrisoned by formerly French troops—the Dillon regiment, much distrusted (and justly, it now seemed) by Commissioner Sonthonax. Laveaux had intelligence that Major O’Farrel, Dillon’s commander, had turned over the post without a shot.
“I know him,” Maillart said.
“Ah,” said Laveaux. “A convicted royalist?”
“Merely a bloody Irishman, I should say,” Maillart said. “What if I rode that way, tomorrow?”
Laveaux looked at him narrowly across the flames. “What indeed?”
Maillart nodded thoughtfully. Perhaps one success would breed another. If one has turned his coat the first time, why not again? Though this was a thought he kept to himself.
Let Tocquet, then, carry the news to Toussaint at Ennery, Laveaux proposed.
Tocquet looked down into the fire. “Yes,” he said, but his pause was noticeable.
“You hesitate,” Laveaux observed.
“Hardly.” Tocquet roped his long hair between thumb and forefinger and flipped it over his left shoulder. “I had thought to travel east along the coast . . . to Fort Dauphin, perhaps. But your mission is of more importance.” He smiled crookedly, tilting his face to the coals. “For the good of France.”
“Assuredly,” Laveaux said. “You have known Toussaint for a long time.”
It was not a question, though Maillart did not understand Laveaux