Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [131]
Maybe he was carrying that anger from Toussaint, because half of Toussaint’s honor guard was with Dessalines that day, and those men had not been there when I left Saint Marc the day before. Almost a thousand men of the guard were there, though not Guiaou or Couachy, or a few others that I knew. Riau knew the commander, Morisset, and we spoke a little together while Lamartinière was alone with Dessalines. Morisset had seen Toussaint at Gonaives, and thought that he might now be in Ennery, though he could not be certain. He knew that Dessalines had come with Toussaint’s order, to see if there might still be a way to destroy Port-au-Prince.
I stayed with Morisset when Lamartinière came out of the room with Dessalines. There were some other officers there too, and the camp women brought us coffee and some bananas for us to eat. The officers were all talking about what it would be best to do; only I, Riau, kept silent, only listening. While all this talk was happening, a messenger came to say that General Boudet had come out of Port-au-Prince with a lot of soldiers to attack us here at Croix des Bouquets. He was not very far away at all, so he might reach us in one hour.
Lamartinière’s head grew very hot then. He wanted to go out at once and meet Boudet on the road. It seemed to me that his idea had reason, even if it came out of the heat of his head, because I thought Boudet might not know that Dessalines had come with all his men, and that would be a surprise to him, and one that he would not like very much.
But Dessalines said no. It was the order of Toussaint, he said, not to meet the French blanc soldiers in the open country. We must not give them a battle on the plain.
At this, Lamartinière grew even hotter. “Maybe Old Toussaint has lived too long,” he said. “Maybe his blood is thin, and he gives this counsel out of fear.”
At that, Dessalines stroked his snuffbox and smiled in the way I never liked to see. “I wonder if you would be speaking so if ‘Old Toussaint’ was near enough to hear you.” Dessalines looked at Morisset when he said this, and Lamartinière lost a little of the color from his face. I knew that Morisset would not carry any such tale back to Toussaint, but maybe Lamartinière was not certain of it.
Dessalines turned his snuffbox over and looked at something on the bottom of it. “Toussaint has not grown old for nothing,” he said. “Toussaint has outlived many of his enemies.” He clicked the snuffbox down on the table top. “It is not counsel that Toussaint gives,” he said, and made his voice a little stronger. “It is an order.”
I was thinking of the letter Dessalines had shown me in Saint Marc before, and I thought that Toussaint had not written this letter in weakness or fear. I thought too from what I had seen already that it was better not to fight these French blanc soldiers as they would choose to fight, and I thought Lamartinière ought to know this too, from the beating he had taken from them in their meetings so far. But I did not say anything about it then.
We moved quickly out of Croix des Bouquets and set the buildings of the town on fire as we were going, though it was not much more than a crossroads then. Dessalines’s men, and Toussaint’s guard, had been traveling fast through much of the night, and they had not rested for more than an hour at Croix des Bouquets, but they went quickly just the same. All that day we burned our path across the plain of Cul de Sac, which was rich country, setting afire the fields and houses. Riau felt pleasure in burning the cane and the big houses of the grand blancs that Toussaint had brought back to the country to work their land for him. But Dessalines also took care to burn the little houses of the field workers, those men who were made to work with the hoe. He did this