Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [136]
These things were true, but in all that history there was no more shame for Riau than for Laplume. In the end Laplume was the first to lower his eyes. He played with the braid on the cuff of his uniform coat, then moved his hand to cover the round Commissioner’s medal which once belonged to the blanc Sonthonax, who gave it to Laplume just before he left our country.
“Look well, Riau,” he said. “You see that we are both officers in the French army, do you not?”
“It is so,” I said. Though Laplume was a General of Brigade, and Riau only a captain.
“These new soldiers who have come out from France respect our ranks,” Laplume said. “Both mine and yours. If Toussaint fights them, it shows that Toussaint is trying to keep power for himself. Look around you—it is peaceful here, but in Le Cap, I hear, everything has been burned again, because Toussaint would not accept the French . . .”
“And at Léogane, too,” I said.
Laplume looked at me sharply then, and I guessed he had not yet known about Léogane.
“Burned for nothing,” Laplume said finally. “Nothing but the ambition of Toussaint. And his rule has been harder upon us than what the French would bring. They have not come to bring back slavery—I have this promise from themselves.”
“So it is done, then,” I said.
“Yes,” said Laplume. “It is done.”
I saw it would be a great blow to Toussaint, that Laplume was already sold to the French. Laplume had commanded more than three thousand men at Les Cayes, and he controlled the way into all of the Grande Anse, which was almost a third of the country. That was the old country of Rigaud. The French would have the use of that land now, with the sea-ports and all the goods, except maybe for Jérémie, where Dommage was for Toussaint.
“You see, I am now speaking for the French,” Laplume said. “It is no different than before, only that I accept the authority of the Captain-General Leclerc. Have I done you any harm, Riau? You may come along to Les Cayes with me, or go to Port-au-Prince to see for yourself.”
I chose to go to Port-au-Prince then, but after all I was not so sure that my uniform would be a good passport there. At a crossroads south of the town, I bought two of the big woven panniers the marchandes use to carry their goods on their donkeys—big enough to hide the leather saddle on my horse. I put my uniform coat and shirt and boots and my weapons and even the bridle of the horse into these panniers, and covered them up with green oranges. Only my pistols were just at the top, where I could reach them quickly. I went into Port-au-Prince on foot, leading the horse by a rope halter, as if I were going to market. There were French blanc soldiers at the gates, but no one asked for a passport paper or paid me any attention at all.
I walked around the town then, leading my horse. It had not been very much damaged in the fighting of a few days before, and everything seemed peaceful, as Laplume had said. I wondered if it was true that Le Cap was burned again. I felt lighter and cooler without my uniform coat to wear, and it was good to have my feet free of the pinch of those boots for a little while. Also, I sold some of my oranges for more than I had given for them, in a market under some trees in a corner of the Place Royale, not far from the government buildings. All those trees had nailed to them a proclamation of Napoleon Bonaparte. It was addressed to all the people of Saint Domingue, no matter what their color was, and it began by saying that all of us were equal before men and before God. This was the same paper the blanc had tried to read in the square of Léogane before he was shot.
I felt eyes on my back while I was reading this paper, and when I looked across the panniers, I saw the Captain Maillart, drinking with some other French officer at a table outside a tavern door. I stood mostly hidden from his view, but Maillart knew something about