Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [148]
“Let them be,” Daspir said, as Toussaint and the boys mounted the stairs. “What can half an hour hurt? As you have said, it is a mission of diplomacy. And I hardly think they’ll vanish from us now.” He glanced around the low-ceilinged room, where members of Toussaint’s guard were subtly checking the handles of their weapons.
“Come,” Daspir said. “Let us go out—it’s stuffy here.”
Together the two captains crossed the narrow street and stood under the eave of the house opposite. A smell of roasting coffee through the slatted door behind them set all of Daspir’s stomach juices working. The second story of the headquarters building had a little open porch overlooking the street, but from their angle they could see no more than the muted glow of one lone candle there.
“So when will you snatch him by the scruff of his neck and haul him to account before the Captain-General?” Cyprien said.
“If he concedes to come with us now,” Daspir said smoothly, “I think we may fairly claim to have won the bet.”
Cyprien stared at him for a second, then let out a snort of laughter. “By God! I hadn’t looked at it that way,” he said. “But I believe you’re right.”
Toussaint pointed the boys toward two chairs at a round table on the small second-story porch. He settled himself into a third. From an inner pocket he pulled out a stub of candle and struck fire to it. When the flame was warm, he tilted it and let a drop of wax fall on the table and fixed the candle there.
“My sons,” he said, as he leaned back. “What news do you bring?”
Placide looked at Isaac, who reached into his inner pocket and drew out Leclerc’s letter. Toussaint turned it over once before he broke the seal and spread the paper on the table, below the candle flame. No request that it be read aloud now, and yet he was a long time in the reading. The candle flame guttered, then steadied and bloomed upward; Placide felt that he and his brother had both suspended their breath. The cords of Toussaint’s neck stood out, and his eyes glared downward on the paper, so that Placide thought he might burst into a rage. Instead, he relaxed and sat back in his chair, covering the folded letter with his left hand and looking out to the west, where the ocean lay just out of sight beneath the fading disk of moon, where the black of the night sky was just bleeding a trace of blue.
“My children,” he said, “I would not blame your attachment to France—to her you owe your education. But between ourselves and France there is our color, and I will not put us at the mercy of an expedition that includes Rigaud, Pétion, Villatte, and others who are all my personal enemies. This order which the Captain-General mentions, not to stop fighting for negotiations, makes me believe that France has put more confidence in her arms than in her rights. It smacks of despotism. And if they will not deal with us while we have still some power, what do you suppose they will do when we have none?”
Placide looked at Isaac in the gaining daylight. Now it seemed to him that if they had never discussed the matter fully, it was not for lack of a private opportunity but because they had both somehow known that something of this sort would have to be said once the subject was opened. Isaac’s face was ashen, bloodless and ghostly in the dawning light, and Placide could feel his miserable uncertainty like a sickness, though he did not know yet what he felt himself.
“My children,” Toussaint said, even more softly than before. “I declare war upon General Leclerc, but not upon France—I want France to respect the constitution which the people of Saint Domingue have given to themselves. I cannot treat with the First Consul since he has torn up the act which guarantees all our liberties. My children, I would not go against your feelings, and I will use no violence nor trickery to keep you near me. Remorse would follow me all of my life if I were to become the author of your misfortunes. I leave you free to choose between the Captain-General and the liberty of your country.”
Between Placide and Isaac, an agonized