Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [47]
In the afternoon they came out of a cleft of rock onto a wide savannah that stretched almost as far as the eye could see. At the limit of the horizon, the turquoise verdure of the Cibao mountain range was covered by the smoky blue of clouds. The broad plateau rolled gently and smoothly toward the mountains, covered everywhere with tall brindled grasses. Very infrequently there appeared a small contorted tree. Great herds of long-horned cattle roamed the plateau, sometimes tended by one or two herdsmen wearing Spanish flat-brimmed hats, sometimes tended by no one at all.
After an hour or more of riding over the plateau, the doctor’s eye was caught by something in the neighborhood of a flamboyant tree, there in the middle distance, near the mouth of a shallow, grassy gulch. But there was nothing, only half a dozen cattle grazing toward the meager shade. Perhaps it was only the tossing of the tree’s orange blossoms that had captured his attention, but he kept looking until, when the cattle had drifted nearer, a near-naked black man sprang up from below the tree, made a short determined run and thrust a spear between the ribs of the nearest cow. As the other cows bolted, the one which had been speared let out a moaning bellow and slumped down over its buckling forelegs. Several other men appeared from the tall grass, whirling coutelas. One cut the cow’s throat immediately while the others whooped and cackled. The sound carried plainly across the quarter-mile distance; a couple of men in Toussaint’s column cheered in reply. Guiaou turned toward the doctor again.
“Those are still maroons, those people.”
The doctor nodded and said nothing. There was no need of a reply. The plain continued; they rode on.
That evening there was no rain, only a rising of the wind with ragged clouds passing swiftly overhead, and then clear sky, with the stars beginning to emerge. Just before darkness had fallen completely, they rode into the town of San Miguel.
Severe Spanish women, sheathed in thick black dresses, regarded them impassively from the doorways as they went by. The town was small and thinly peopled. There were few slaves, few blacks at all in evidence. Some mestizos walked the street, and more of the hard-bitten herdsmen they’d seen on the plateau. The military garrison was light, no more than a handful of Spanish soldiers. Toussaint parlayed with them briefly, then rode to the house where his family was quartered.
By hearsay the doctor knew that Toussaint had a wife and three sons, but he had never met them. Sometime during the first insurrections of 1791, Toussaint had sent them to this place of safety, over the border and across the mountains from the fighting and the burning. The doctor was curious, but could see little through the arched doorway of the house. Toussaint dismounted and went in with Moyse and Dessalines. The doctor heard a child’s astonished cry, and thought he also heard the soft tones of a woman’s voice. Moyse and Dessalines came out and the door closed behind them. Dessalines detached five men to stand sentry around the house, then led the column to the edge of town.
They bivouacked on the savannah north of San Miguel, just below the crest of a gently rolling rise. The Spanish officer commanding the town issued them two beefs and a barrel of rum, then left them entirely to themselves. The butchers worked efficiently; soon meat was roasting over several fires. Foragers came in with bunches of brightly colored, wrinkly hot peppers and sheafs of lemon-scented leaves. The beef was fat from the rich grazing of the plateau. They’d made their journey so lightly provisioned that they’d eaten very little in two days, and now the doctor feasted with the others, greasing his chops with tallow. Afterward the meat he’d eaten in unaccustomed quantity lay a little heavily on his stomach. He rested on his elbows in the grass, nursing a clay ramekin of rum