Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [135]
I went more slowly now, to spare my horse. To the south of Léogane there was no fighting, and none of the French blanc soldiers had come there yet. People had heard something of the fighting at Port-au-Prince, and they wanted to get news from me when they saw my captain’s uniform. At the end of that day, I got for myself a plate of rice and beans and boiled plantain, and a bed for that night in a clay case, by telling the people of that lakou part of what I knew. I told them Dessalines had destroyed Léogane, and that Papa Toussaint would be coming soon to drive all the blanc soldiers into the sea, but I did not say anything about the killing of the four hundred blancs in the riverbed.
In the light of morning I saw that my boot soles were sticky with the blood from the killing the day before. The blood was coated with dust from the roads, so it was not very plain what it was, but I knew. At the first stream I crossed that day, I got down and washed my boots until there was nothing left of that old blood, and went on with the leather damp against my feet. In the afternoon I found the camp of Lamour Dérance, which had moved from the place it had been before, but not too far. Lamour Dérance himself had gone away, maybe to parley with Lafortune, who had another band of maroons not too far off, or to see Laplume himself, or maybe he had even gone to Port-au-Prince, Jean-Pic said to me.
This I was surprised to hear, with all the French blanc soldiers there, and after all the fighting I had seen. But Jean-Pic told me then that the French general Boudet had stopped asking for the passports. That news surprised me even more, and made me wonder, and I saw it had done the same to Jean-Pic and all his people.
Since Toussaint had bound the men who were not soldiers to work on the plantations with the hoe, he had also ordered that any man must have a paper if he would leave his plantation to travel on the road, and especially to enter a big town like Port-au-Prince, each man must have such a passport paper to show. It had been the same in slavery time. No slave could travel without some piece of writing from his master, but in those days the rule was not very much respected. Under Toussaint it was much more strict, and truly it was hard for a man to go anywhere at all without a passport paper, unless he had a soldier’s uniform like Riau, or ran away to be with the maroons as Jean-Pic had done. It was such strictness that had made Moyse rise up, with a great many people pushing him from below. For a French general to do away with those passports was surprising, and I thought it might be some kind of trick. But Jean-Pic said one might go in and out of Port-au-Prince very freely now. He had not been there himself, but he knew some who had.
Next day I rode still further to the south, until I found Laplume at last, where he had stopped near Miragoâne. He did not have all his troops with him, only a few horsemen from the Twelfth Brigade, and he was coming out of Port-au-Prince himself. I was careful in my first words to him, because I knew he must have had some parley with the French. But I did let him know that I was carrying a message from Toussaint.
“Well, Captain Riau,” Laplume said. “It is not the first time you have come to us with something from Toussaint.” He folded his arms and looked at me then, and not in the friendliest way. But I did not have any great reason to lower my eyes before Laplume.
I had known Laplume from a long time before, when he was second in Dieudonné’s band, and before that too, when the three of us had all been in the band of Halalou. Later on, when I was with Toussaint again, and the English had taken Port-au-Prince and meant to take the rest of the country, Toussaint began to worry that Dieudonné might sell himself to the English. Then Toussaint sent both Riau and Guiaou to Dieudonné, with a letter which argued that he ought to come over to Toussaint instead of going to the English. But before Dieudonné could decide what to do, Laplume had made a plot against him. Laplume’s men jumped on