Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [162]
Of Placide they saw comparatively little, for Toussaint seemed to have incorporated the older boy into his staff, and Toussaint was spending most of his time at the headquarters in Gonaives, though sometimes he did appear at Sancey with his entourage, late at night, long after the very quiet suppers the captains took with Madame Louverture, Saint-Jean, Isaac, and the handful of other relatives in residence. Placide had put aside the ornate uniform given to him by the First Consul, and now wore the outfit of Toussaint’s honor guard—a used one evidently, for the coat was slightly faded and the cuffs a little frayed. Still it fit him well enough that at passing glance he might be taken for one of Toussaint’s guardsmen.
At the end of three slow, chafing days, Toussaint summoned Cyprien and Daspir and gave them another letter full of tortured ambiguities and sent them back to Leclerc at Le Cap, escorted by just five of his guardsmen this time. When they reached the main road from Ennery, they were joined by a deputation of Gonaives merchants, both colored and white, whom Toussaint had given leave to call on Leclerc also, to implore him to hold back the violent advances of his troops for the sake of peace and prosperity in the colony. Combined, their party began the ascent from the Ennery crossroads. Toussaint’s guardsmen held such a brisk pace that they had reached the height of Morne Pilboreau before midmorning.
They stopped for a quarter-hour to cool their horses. The marchandes of that crossroads swarmed around them, waving their wares, but Daspir slipped away from that group and stood on the edge of the precipice looking over the broad Plaisance river valley and into the mountains beyond, the green, gray, misty blue recession in range upon range to the bow of the horizon.
“Deyè mòn gegne mòn,” a low voice said behind him. Daspir turned quickly, a little startled. One of the guardsmen stood behind him, his silver helmet caught under one elbow. Daspir did not know his name.
“Behind mountains,” he repeated, “are more mountains.”
“Yes,” said Daspir. “So it appears.” Despite the risk of vertigo he could not take his eyes away from the wild expanse. Because of the vertigo, possibly. He felt with a faint shiver that this sentence meant more than the sum of its words.
Yet after so many rapid transits, the mountain passages were beginning to make some kind of sense to him. He could pick out the key landmarks and the most important crossroads, though he always underestimated the peaks and defiles and swoops and curves between them. For Cyprien it must have been the same, or better, since he had some earlier experience of the country. But he and Daspir did not talk much, between themselves or to the merchants’ deputation, since Toussaint’s guardsmen were always near, and the one who’d addressed Daspir, at least, spoke some orthodox French as well as the strange patois of all the blacks.
Leclerc made short shrift of the Gonaives merchants when they were admitted to his presence late that afternoon. “You may tell Toussaint,” he snapped, “that I will answer him with bayonets.” He wheeled on Cyprien and Daspir, rattling the paper of Toussaint’s own written response. “And what nonsense have you brought me from his hand? He professes himself ready to obey my orders, but will not accept to be my second in command . . . Advises me to halt the march of my troops, indeed—let him know they will not halt before they have made him prisoner! He will learn the respect due to the brother-in-law of the First Consul!” Leclerc stooped and slapped his boot leather with his palm. “I am entering the campaign myself, ” he shouted, his face reddening. “And I will not take off these boots until I have captured Toussaint Louverture!”
The commander’s excitement communicated a tingle to Daspir. It looked likely that the two of them would be in the vanguard of the pursuit so hotly announced, though