Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [164]
“And the Grande Anse?” Placide said, remembering what Leclerc had rapped out, in front of him and Isaac, about the surrender of the Southern Peninsula. The weak smallness of his voice disgusted him.
“Yes,” said Toussaint, without moving or widening his eyes. “That is a real misfortune. I could not have believed that Dommage could ever have betrayed our cause. But he did not receive my letter, I am sure. If only Dessalines had not been absent from Port-au-Prince when the fleet appeared—so much misfortune comes from that.”
Placide was silent. He remembered his father’s aspect the day previous, when he’d received the certain news that Dommage had yielded Jérémie; Toussaint gave no obvious sign of shock, but stopped completely motionless for a few seconds, arresting all his movement like a startled snake. How that connected to Dessalines he did not understand.
“Lamartinière fought bravely to save Port-au-Prince,” Toussaint said. “But since he could not hold it, he was wrong. Dessalines would not have left a wall standing there, if he had been present. Then the blancs would not have established themselves so comfortably. Perhaps they would not have intercepted my letter to Dommage, and Laplume might not have dared to change sides either, if the Grand Anse held and Port-au-Prince was burned.”
Now Toussaint did open his eyes, and hitched his chair around to face Placide. “Nou pa dékourajé,” he said. We are not discouraged.
Why not, Placide thought silently, and waited for the answer. Toussaint was unrolling a map, weighting it on either side with his palms.
“Look here,” he said softly. “The Grande Anse will be a boon to the blancs, but they can be locked in there easily enough. Rigaud held all that country, in the time of his rebellion, but in the end I pushed him into the sea at Tiburon. If they cannot hold the rest of the land, they cannot last on the Grande Anse either.”
Toussaint tapped a different area of the map: Port-de-Paix, on the northwest peninsula. “Here is Maurepas,” he said with a clear satisfaction. “He commands the Ninth Demibrigade, and a good number of irregulars too. The French General Humbert has attacked him at Port-de-Paix, but Maurepas destroyed the town before he withdrew, and now he is well placed in the gorges of Trois Pavillons, where he has won every engagement since. Humbert cannot move him, and he must ask Leclerc for reinforcements, and all those are soldiers who cannot be sent to trouble us here. It ought to have been like that at Port-au-Prince. Maybe it yet will be.”
“And Dessalines?” Placide leaned over the map. “Where is Dessalines?”
“Ah,” Toussaint said and masked his smile. “There is the great danger to our enemy—no one knows where Dessalines is for certain from one moment to the next. You were present when Leclerc threatened us with General Boudet—well, let him march to the Artibonite. I will receive him there, when I am ready. But when Boudet has wandered far enough from Port-au-Prince, Dessalines will fall upon the town and destroy it.”
Placide looked down at the squiggling line of the Artibonite River and the hatch marks that stood for mountains. He could see it now, how Dessalines might burst out of the mountains at any point, to sweep down over Port-au-Prince.
“The blancs may take our territory,” Toussaint said. “They cannot hold it. Not for long. We are strong here, and in the northwest still, at Grande Rivière and in Santo Domingo too, where everything is entrusted to your uncle Paul. The French will find no comfort in our land. I know they mean to bring us some hard battles, but it’s we, in the end, who will win the war.”
For a moment there was silence under the moon, then it was broken by the sound of horses pulling up below, a sentry’s challenge, a bustle as the newcomers were admitted. Toussaint, with his eyes heavy-lidded, showed no sign he noticed the commotion, till there came a noise of boots on the stairs and Morisset walked out onto the porch.
“Governor-General, there is news from the north.”
“Di mwen,” Toussaint looked up expectantly. Tell