Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [152]
Just to the north, Christophe was fighting a French column, in the mountains around Marmelade, while Sans-Souci held off another, in the mountains of Grande Rivière. Across the Spanish border, the distance was greater and there was no news, but if all had gone according to intention, Clervaux and Paul Louverture would have destroyed the towns they commanded, Santiago and Santo Domingo City, and would be moving toward a junction on the Central Plateau near Saint Raphael without risking any engagement in the open field. Still further to the south, Toussaint had instructed Laplume to burn Les Cayes and the surrounding towns, and retreat into the interior. Laplume could not be fully trusted, but at Jérémie, on the Grande Anse beyond Les Cayes, Dommage commanded, whose loyalty and tenacity were strong.
His eyes still lidded, Toussaint allowed himself a half-smile, remembering the long-ago battle when, having heard that the other was wounded, he cried out, “Ah, c’est dommage!” His hearers had taken this French idiom as a proper name, which had stuck to Dommage from then until now. Dommage ought by now to have enacted the order Toussaint had sent him days before: The whites of France and of the colony have joined to take away our freedom. Mistrust the whites—they will betray you if they can. Their manifest desire is the return of slavery . . . and so by now all the towns and the plains of the Grande Anse must be ablaze.
So the spirit of war flew everywhere, with hot, dank wings and a breath of fire. Let everything on the coast and plains be razed to the bare stones. Leclerc and the invaders would be defeated by the barren land itself, if Toussaint’s men did not destroy them in the mountains.
16
Some years before, Doctor Hébert had given Maillart a bundle of herbs and advised him to carry it with him on every campaign, and on every journey which might present a risk of injury to himself, which included almost any journey at all in this country. Maillart had done as he was told, leaving the packet deep in his saddlebag, forgotten for the most part. By great good luck he had not suffered a serious wound for some years, though not for want of danger. Sometimes, with his loud bluff laugh, the major would joke that the efficacy of the packet must be magical, like the magic bags and amulets many of the black soldiers wore around their necks or wrists—a ouanga, a garde-corps. But the doctor replaced the herbs from time to time, whenever he remembered and thought that they’d gone stale enough to lose their virtue. They were fresh enough now to have a bright, slightly sweet scent, leaking out from the folds of the yellow paper packet tied up, like a small roast, with string.
Now Maillart presented the herbs to General Pamphile de Lacroix, who had been wounded during the engagement on the road from Léogane, at Fort Piémont, when the black garrison first claimed to have orders to receive the French, then opened fire on them as they advanced unguardedly. This treachery, if treachery it had been, had cost a hundred grenadiers slain in the opening volley, and twice as many wounded, though it was not sufficient to defend Port-au-Prince, nor to allow the black troops time to burn the city as they had threatened to do.
Pamphile de Lacroix had been hurt in that first volley, while Maillart was standing near. At the time he’d seen the general do no more than stumble, grimace, then move vigorously forward, encouraging his troops over the redoubt wall. Afterward, when his trouser leg was cut away, Lacroix scoffed at the wound, which indeed was not deep, though it looked rather complicated; grapeshot had torn the lower muscles of his thigh. At any rate Maillart had heard the doctor make such deductions when he examined similar wounds