Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [156]
Maillart moved toward the office’s sole small window, twisting an end of his mustache. His angle afforded him a view of a section of the Place du Gouvernement, with the roofs of the town’s low buildings receding down the slope toward the harbor. Port-au-Prince was mostly built of wood, and it would have gone up in a flash if the blacks had managed to set it alight—much faster than Le Cap. Maillart pushed down the thought of what it must have been like there.
“Major, you are long in choosing your words.”
“Excuse me,” Maillart said. “I am considering the question. Is it loyalty to France you mean, or to Toussaint Louverture?”
Boudet turned his head to the side, cupping his chin in one hand. “You may analyze the two.”
“Very well,” said Maillart, then paused again. Long since, though not without some difficulty, he had accepted the status of the competent black officers of Toussaint’s command, and Riau was certainly one of these, if not the most devoted. Maillart had in fact been instrumental in Riau’s first training in the European arts of war. Since then, Riau had vanished from Toussaint’s ranks from time to time, and had at least once been on the point of being shot for desertion. For himself, he liked the black man well enough and trusted him when he had to. Maillart was no politician, but he understood that Toussaint had sent himself and Riau together on the mission from Samana so that each might serve as a check on the other. Where Riau had been or what he had done since they’d been separated, Maillart was not at all sure. Riau’s much stronger friendship was with Doctor Hébert, and for that alone, Maillart wished him well.
“I would say that Captain Riau’s attachment to Toussaint is not so strong as to hinder his loyalty to France.”
“But how great can that loyalty be among any of them?” Boudet grumbled. “To a country they have never seen.”
“Why, I think most of them, if not all, attach their loyalty to the freedom of their kind. So long as they find their liberty best protected under the French flag, that is the flag they follow.” Maillart stopped and glanced again out the window. “One might say as much for Toussaint, indeed.”
“Then why in God’s name is he in rebellion?” Boudet shifted his weight and recrossed his tight-trousered legs from one side to the other. “The First Consul’s proclamation of eternal liberty has been tacked to every tree on this wretched island.”
To this Maillart made no answer. When he looked at the other two, he seemed to feel some muted tension between Boudet and Pamphile de Lacroix. It was the latter who broke the brief silence.
“Consider the example of Paul Lafrance.”
“Well,” said Boudet. “The name is evocative.”
“You know how unswervingly he came to our side,” Lacroix said. “How many services he has rendered us since, and with alacrity and diligence. And I have had it on good authority that, black as he may be, he has acted a hundred times to help and protect our color, since the troubles first began in this colony, and often at the risk of his own life.”
“Toussaint has done the same, you know,” Maillart put in. “When all the plantations of the north were laid to waste in ninety-one he preserved the lives of the white family of the manager of Bréda, where he’d been a slave, and he has been the savior of many French men and women since—including several of my dearest friends.”
“One hears much talk of this,” said General Boudet. “But it hardly agrees with his conduct now.”
Captain Paltre was no longer on the scene when Maillart and Lacroix emerged from the office (Maillart with the letterbox clutched to his chest), but they found Riau lingering on the steps of the Government. He came along with them as they went to dispose of the mementoes of Toussaint’s amours. If Lacroix was uncomfortable with his presence he did not show it, and Maillart was rather inclined to include him, after their conference with Boudet.
Lacroix had proposed going down to the harbor, but Maillart said they needn’t go so far; there was an irrigation canal much closer