Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [126]
At the riverside before Limbé, he bade good-bye to his companions and urged them brusquely on. A gang of French infantry were still repairing the bridge that had been pulled down during the engagement here a few days before, and those who were going on were obliged to ride along the bank for a few hundred yards to find a place to ford. Arnaud watched till they’d crossed the stream, then turned his horse into the lane beside it.
Much burning here, either side of the way. Arnaud’s tongue thickened in his throat. It was possible that Claudine had survived, even if the plantation had been sacked. She might even have gone off with the rebels, as all Arnaud’s retainers had done the other time.
The bole of a fallen palm tree barred his way, and Arnaud got down to shift it. It was green wood and heavy, difficult to budge. He was puffing and sweaty when he scrambled back onto his horse. Around the next bend of the road was another. Arnaud dismounted, cursing aloud; the sound of his own voice rather startled him. This time he noticed the fresh ax marks on the stump of the felled tree.
Ambush. A bird shot twittering over the road. Arnaud looked back, and out of his fear there came a gang of blacks advancing on foot along the line of his retreat. He did not stop to number them, but gained the saddle with a vault, not troubling with a stirrup. His horse cleared the tree trunk with an excellent jump. Arnaud pressed into a gallop. There was another tree; they jumped that too. The ash-strewn fields went whizzing by. Arnaud felt a rush of sporting excitement. Around the next bend of the lane was a still more complicated barricade; tree trunks laid in a crisscross pattern, branches sticking up like spikes. With his eyes streaming from the wind, Arnaud could not clearly make it out. But his horse was refusing it. Too late to stop. Arnaud felt the hindquarters bunch beneath him. Then they were sliding, going down, then a flood of the dark.
An explosion roused him and he jerked his eyes open to see his horse’s ears twitching against the bark of a fallen tree. Blood was pouring out of the animal’s shattered skull. A skinny old black man stood by, blowing smoke from the barrel of his ancient musket.
“Li pa bon,” he said, referring apparently to the horse. He’s no good. He sat down on one of the trees of the barricade and began painstakingly to reload his weapon.
Arnaud struggled to rise and found his left leg pinned beneath the horse’s body. His hands went scrambling; one of them found a pistol which he drew and leveled at the old man, whose white eyes widened. He did not relinquish his musket, but he left off trying to load it. After a moment he stood up and shrugged and backed off, trailing the musket by the barrel, to join the others who were with him. There were about a dozen of them, all old men or boys, mostly armed only with coutelas, but some with other antique firearms bound together with bits of wire and string. One had a musket of more recent vintage, from Sonthonax’s arms distributions, Arnaud guessed. They all looked at him with neutral eyes, and then as if their minds were one they slipped quickly away through the trees that lined this section of the lane.
Arnaud felt safe enough to lay aside the pistol now. By pushing with both arms he was able to dislodge his left leg from beneath the saddle. At first he thought he was only bruised, but when he put weight on his left foot, a bolt of pain shot to the top of his head, and he sat down abruptly on a log of the barricade.
When he looked at his horse he wanted to weep. The waste of it—and good horses would be hard to come by now. Any kind of horses. Whatever the rebel blacks did not steal would certainly be requisitioned