Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [230]
He scooped the kitten up in his arms and went away through the gap in the bamboo he had come in by. The men who had come in advance of him followed. Jean-Pic and I went out in the other direction, and walked back down the trail. Now the sun was high and the mist all burned away, and hummingbirds were at the flowers growing by our pathway. Jean-Pic did not say anything about what had been told to Lamour Dérance, and soon the heat of the sun which was warming the whole plain of Léogane had warmed away the chill I had felt, under the bamboo and beside the stones.
We dug that morning in the gardens Jean-Pic had begun in this new camp, then ate a meal and slept away the hottest time of the afternoon, lying in the shade of the ajoupa. In the cool of the evening a man came from Lamour Dérance to say that he had finished his thinking and was ready to bring his men to serve the French at Port-au-Prince.
All the blancs were in a whirl when we came to Port-au-Prince next day, and this was the reason for it—while Riau was absent they had captured Chancy as he tried to pass through Petit Goave toward Jérémie. Chancy was a nephew of Toussaint by blood, not by adoption like Moyse and Riau. They caught him carrying two letters from Toussaint. One letter was to Dessalines at Saint Marc and the other was to Dommage at Jérémie, a long way out on the Grand Anse to the south. The letter to Dessalines was a copy of the same letter I had seen before in Dessalines’s own hand, because it was Toussaint’s way to send the same letter by more than one messenger. He would not trust a single messenger with all the words his pen set down. But the other letter never reached Dommage at Jérémie, not by anyone’s hand. Dommage was a commander Toussaint trusted very much, as much as he trusted Maurepas or Charles Belair, as much as once he had trusted Moyse. But when the French ships came to Jérémie, Dommage did not know what to do, because Toussaint’s letter had not come to him, so he let the ships into the port and let the men come into the town, and he gave his obedience to the French.
Chancy could not get to Dessalines at Saint Marc because of the French blanc soldiers on the ways between, so he turned south to try to reach Dommage instead, and then blancs caught him as he reached Petit Goave. When I returned to Port-au-Prince from the plain of Léogane, Chancy was in the guardhouse there, expecting that maybe the blanc commander would soon order him to be shot. Major Maillart and General Lacroix and all the blancs there were in a big stir, because now they knew from Toussaint’s letter that Dessalines was ordered to burn down Port-au-Prince no matter the cost. Now they could see too how Dessalines had tricked General Boudet away from Port-au-Prince, with most of the blanc soldiers. They did not know just where Dessalines was, but they knew he would be coming quickly and that he would arrive before General Boudet and his men could return. There were only six hundred regular blanc soldiers in the town, and these would not be enough to fight the thousands Dessalines was bringing.
For that, General Lacroix was very glad to see Riau’s return, with the big band of Lamour Dérance and his maroons, and the band of Lafortune who was with them too. After Riau’s talk with Lamour Dérance had ended under the tonnelle, Lamour Dérance had carried his words to Lafortune, and the two of them decided to go over to the blancs together. Lafortune’s people made double the number of Lamour Dérance’s men, and we were so many coming back to Port-au-Prince that at first the blancs feared it was Dessalines surprising them from the south. But when Lacroix once understood what had been done, he looked as if he might kiss Riau, though in the end he only clasped my hand very tight in both of his. Major Maillart gave me a big clap on the back which was his fashion when he was pleased, though when he took his hand away I saw the fingers trembled a little. They had all