Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [227]
Dessalines was gone from Saint Marc by the time Boudet brought his soldiers in. He waited to start the fires until the blanc soldiers were in sight, and maybe he waited to cut the throats of all the blanc colons he had caught there too, so that the soldiers could hear the screaming from where they stood on the road, and know they could do nothing to stop what was happening, because they would not reach the town soon enough no matter how fast they ran. Saint Marc was surrounded by many strong forts and it was as good a place as any to give the blancs a battle in their own fashion, and better than most, but Dessalines did not mean to fight them so that day. He was following Toussaint’s order when he burned Saint Marc and left it, but he must have agreed with the order too, because Dessalines, the same as Moyse, was not certain to follow an order if he did not agree.
The blanc soldiers were angry at what they found at Saint Marc, but they did not hurry too much to chase Dessalines. Toussaint meant for them to find ashes and dead blanc bodies wherever they arrived, because that would throw down their hearts and discourage them. They stayed for a day on the ashes of Saint Marc, and while they had not yet raised up their spirits enough to march after him, Dessalines was coming quickly down toward Port-au-Prince again, in a circle that moved through the mountains at Fonds-Batiste and Les Matheux, at a speed that only Dessalines could manage in such territory. But I, Riau, knew nothing of these things until afterward, because I was already gone from Port-au-Prince.
I rode out alone, with my horse well fed, and two days’ dried beef in my straw macoute, and even a purse with some money given to me by the blancs. General Lacroix would have sent some blanc soldiers to protect me, perhaps, and to watch that Riau did not try to play any trick on the French this time, only Major Maillart persuaded him that I would be safer without any blanc soldiers with me, and more likely to be trusted by the people I was going to meet. Maillart looked happy enough to be staying in the town, when Lacroix would have sent him with Riau if he had sent anyone, and I was content to be away from all these blancs for a while, and to be out of Port-au-Prince also.
There were a few French soldiers watching Fort Piémont, and a few more in the town of Léogane. Some people who had lived in Léogane were shoveling ashes out of the holes where houses had been, or trying to raise roofs on what was left of the walls after Dessalines burned them. They did not work very quickly, and one could see that their hearts were low. South of Léogane, it was all quiet. Since Laplume had given his hand to the French, they had nothing to fear as far south as Les Cayes, except maybe from bands of maroons like the band of Lamour Dérance, but these had not taken either side yet, and they were waiting to see what they would do.
I, Riau, I was also waiting. I thought that when I left Port-au-Prince and the blancs behind, my spirits would return to guide me. Yet this too was only a thought I had made, and even in the plain of Léogane I could not stop my thoughts, but they went crawling everywhere all the time, like worms in cornmeal. The stillness of the plain seemed wrong, like the stillness in the hole between the winds of a hurricane.
I did not have to ride very long south of Léogane before I came upon some of Lamour Dérance’s people. This time they were full of smiles, because now they recognized Riau as a friend of Jean-Pic. I let them bring me to their camp, which had moved a little since the other time. They were in the low hills now below