Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [51]
“No one knows for certain,” Maurepas said, quite as if he’d asked out loud, “and so it is with Biassou, and Jean-François as well. They fear Toussaint because he is becoming stronger, and because he has blanc officers among us, and other blancs like you, and because his understanding with white people was very close before the rising. You have seen men come from Biassou and Jean-François to join with us instead.” Maurepas smiled thoughtfully. “Because things are better ordered with Toussaint—one’s life may be harder but it is more sure. I think that Biassou has sent a pwen upon Don García and Don Cabrera, to poison their minds against Toussaint.”
The doctor stopped in his tracks. “I did not know you were enrolled in such superstition,” he said.
“It is Biassou who works in that way,” Maurepas said, “and my opinion does not matter. Besides, a pwen may be sent as a letter or a message, nothing more—and something has worked on the head of Don Cabrera, at least, for this is what we see.”
The doctor fell into silence, stroking his short beard to a point as they continued strolling in the general direction of the town’s central square. When they turned the next corner, he was fairly astonished to encounter Suzanne, walking toward the market with a basket on her arm and holding the hand of her youngest, Saint-Jean. In his surprise he glanced at Maurepas, but the black officer was no longer there.
Suzanne was flanked by two Spanish soldiers, but they did not prevent the doctor from approaching her, although they did stand near enough to overhear their conversation. On the assumption that they understood both French and Creole, it was out of the question to speak freely. While exchanging banalities with Suzanne, the doctor felt a small hand tugging his trouser leg. He stooped and lifted Saint-Jean into his arms and kissed his cheeks. The boy’s fingers brushed his palm, and the doctor closed his hand over a sort of paper bullet, which he put discreetly into his trouser pocket.
As soon as he had turned the next corner, he unballed the paper. Toussaint’s crooked writing and phonetic spellings were instantly recognizable—as was his subtlety of mind. A shadow fell on the paper as he examined it; Maurepas had reappeared, or perhaps simply cast off the cloak of invisibility he had somehow assumed. He and the doctor exchanged a furtive smile and began walking briskly back toward the black encampment.
The letter, addressed to Don García, was part protest, part apology, part self-justification, and part assault on potential enemies. An apparently general thrust went straight to the heart of Biassou, for instance. But all the while Toussaint sustained a tone of humble, bemused, yet honorable simplicity.
At camp, the doctor found his own writing instruments and made a fair copy of the letter, correcting the spelling but leaving the style and argument intact. As a flourish, he managed a passable forgery of Toussaint’s signature, complete with the customary three dots closed within the extravagant curlicue of the last letter. He was just wondering where to send the missive when word came that Don García had in fact arrived at San Miguel.
All through the following day, the Spanish general took no apparent action, either on Toussaint’s letter or on any other arguments which might have been addressed to him. Toussaint’s men fretted, while their leader remained incommunicado, and the tension grew. The next afternoon, Don García rendered himself to the house where Toussaint was detained and stayed there for nearly four hours. That evening the Spanish guard was lifted and Toussaint’s officers went in to him, the doctor among them. In a clipped and neutral tone, Toussaint let them know that the following day they would return to