Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [216]
“So,” he said softly. “We must burn the town and abandon this place. Let Morisset go back to Granmorne, where he left a small guard for my family. You will join with General Christophe as he retreats from Bayonet, and we will all reunite at Pont d’Ester.”
“Oui, mon général,” Vernet said dismally. “It will be as you have ordered.”
“Bon courage,” Toussaint admonished him. “Certainly we have lost some terrain, but we will still have an army.”
He felt none of the encouragement he’d recommended to Vernet as he rode back toward the center of town. Rather, the black shade of doom gripped him even more tightly. It had filled the hollowness in his head with rage and a fear he could not yet name. Even the surge of the refreshed and rested Bel Argent between his knees did not raise his spirit. He had not slept these last three days, and he thought he could feel the onset of a fever, but none of that was enough to explain the despair that occupied the cavity at his center which had held his fire and strength as recently as that morning.
Despair was reflected in the faces of the Gonaives bourgeois who were now scurrying toward the south portals of the town, carrying whatever they could quickly bundle up or toss into a wheelbarrow, hurrying just a pace ahead of Vernet’s fire-starters, who spread among the buildings with torches and lances à feu. Toussaint snatched up a torch from one of them and held it high. In its red blur he saw the inevitable, obvious to him at last: With the loss of Gonaives, Maurepas would not only be out of communication, but perfectly surrounded by the French. After today—after he had won today—Leclerc would have large forces free to block Maurepas’s retreat by way of Gros Morne—indeed to encircle him by that route. Under such pressure Maurepas could only surrender or be destroyed, and now the black shadow that possessed Toussaint told him there was no hope or help for it.
The door of the church stood open, dark. Bel Argent, who could go up anything short of a sheer cliff, had no difficulty scrambling up the steps. Toussaint ducked his head to pass beneath the lintel. Inside his torch fumed smoke among the rafters. A sexton darted out a side door, but the priest, a white man, held his ground before the altar.
“The spirit of Jesus has abandoned me,” Toussaint announced. His voice boomed along the nave. The priest raised one shaky palm, said nothing.
“How faithfully I served him, but for nothing,” Toussaint hissed. “It is the servants of Jesus who make war upon me now.” He spurred the horse; the priest dodged away from the iron-shod hooves. With his left hand, Toussaint ripped the carved crucifix from the wall above the altar, whirled it once around his head, then slammed it down to the stone floor.
“Aba Jisit! Down with Jesus! I will not serve Jesus any more!”
But the priest had fled, and the church was empty. Toussaint held his torch among the drapes until they were well ablaze, then flung it away among the wooden benches. Bel Argent was trembling, eyes rolling in the smoke. Toussaint stroked his mane and pressed his flanks more gently with his heels. The crucifix splintered under the hooves, then horse and rider moved together out the door, into the larger conflagration.
It was the shortage of cavalry, Daspir kept telling himself, that held back the French outside Gonaives through most of that day. Before his staff posting, he had trained as a hussar, so he could appreciate the élan of the silver-helmed black cavalry squadron that swooped down on Leclerc’s troops and routed them, though but briefly, a long way up the road they’d come. The Leclerc-Desfourneaux column lacked horses enough to counter these maneuvers properly. Leclerc, beside himself at what he thought sluggishness, ran madly about, screaming exhortations as he stung men’s legs with the flat of his sword blade. The French troops regained their discipline soon enough and marched back into the line. After two more hours of stubborn fighting, the opposition