Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [46]
They were in the saddle again at dawn, riding down the river valley in a generally southerly direction. As the sun approached its height they began climbing another range of mountains. The doctor, half-drowsing, was startled by the sudden yapping of a gang of snaggle-toothed, vicious-looking little dogs; then around a bend of the trail appeared a little boy two or three years old and stark naked save for a plaited cord around his waist. He stared at them round-eyed, then his teeth flashed and he leapt in the air crying, “Solda’ nèg! Solda’ nèg!” Some other children appeared, running and capering alongside the horses and carrying the same cry forward, “Black soldiers! Black soldiers!” The brown gelding shied at the twirling of a little girl’s skirt, and the doctor leaned down to stroke the horse’s trembling shoulder. Adult voices called the children harshly away from the trail, and the children disappeared at once, but the barking of the dogs continued, and the doctor was aware of the movement of considerable numbers of people on either side of the trail, though they were obscured by the jungle. There seemed to be a maze of trails running up the western slope, and through gaps in the undergrowth the doctor caught glimpses of zigzag corn plantings and the roofs of ajoupas, also sections of wooden palisades and even trenches fortified by angled sharpened stakes.
“Where did these people come from?” he said, not realizing he’d spoken aloud until Guiaou turned back to answer him.
“Sé marron yo yé.”
They were maroons then, runaway slaves . . . though the children were likely born in freedom here. Maybe also some of the adults. The doctor knew that large bands of maroons had held out in these hills for several generations. He had himself known such a one, a man named Riau who could read and write and for a time had served Toussaint both as scribe and officer, until finally he had deserted or simply disappeared. He would be with the maroons again now, the doctor thought, if he still lived. The whooping and barking and sounds of running feet on the hidden trails diminished as they rode on. Then there was silence, followed by the singing of the birds.
At a broad and shallow spring-fed pool they stopped to drink and water the animals. Stooping over the ruffled water, the doctor was startled to meet his own visage, blurry and pale among the ripples. His pallor shocked and almost repelled him—he had forgotten that he was blanc, had come near to forgetting himself entirely. Now he pictured the little maroon boy they’d surprised on the trail, and felt a twinge of guilt, for it had been more than twenty hours since he’d remembered Nanon or the child.
The flash of pain was brief, and left him entirely once they’d all remounted. As he rode, the doctor quietly took from his pocket a shard of broken mirror which he always carried. The fragment was trapezoidal and fit the creases of his palm; it was too small to return him his whole face, but by turning it this way and that he could glimpse an eye, an ear, a bit of whiskered lip, like pieces of a puzzle that no longer fit together. Riau had called the mirror piece his ouanga, but if it really were a charm for magic, the doctor felt that he was ignorant of its use. It was long since he had seen Riau, who had evaporated from Toussaint’s forces months ago, most likely to return to marronage; yet as the mirror shard returned to him a wheeling vision of the sky, he felt in the same spirit with him. In the same spirit was the phrase that Riau would have used.
He fixed his eyes on the plumes of Toussaint’s general’s hat, tossing at the head of the column. So high in the mountains, so deep in the jungle, direction could no longer be determined, logic failed, it was useless to think; therefore the doctor’s mind became vacant. The white plumes floating ahead