Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [235]
As they walked down, the velvet darkness settled over them, while above, the stars began to brighten. With all the bustle of the arriving troops, the feeling in the town was still and grim. No sign of the blancs Dessalines had marched in, and the doctor noticed that the only white face on the street was his own. He bade a quick good evening to Fontelle and Paulette (the mother seemed eager to get the daughter out of view of the new-arrived soldiers) and went on alone with Bienvenu.
At Massicot’s house the door was barred and the shutters closed. The doctor forebore to knock loudly or long. When there was no reply to his first soft taps, he slipped around to the fenced yard in back and let himself in at the wooden gate, leaving Bienvenu outside. Fanfan, Massicot’s fattening hog, snorted and rolled a long-lashed eye at him, but did not move from her wallow in the fence corner. Presently the back door opened a crack and Massicot peered out.
“Oh,” he hissed, beckoning the doctor in. “I did not know you—I thought it was Dessalines’s men come to steal my pig.”
The doctor slipped sideways through the half-open door, which Massicot at once pressed shut and bolted. In the front room the surgeons sat in darkness, as no one would venture to strike a light.
“What news?” the doctor said, yielding to the general impulse to whisper.
“Gonaives is burned, and Saint Marc too,” Massicot croaked hoarsely. “Dessalines’s people have just been driven back from Port-au-Prince. Oh you’ll see, they are desperate men! They will certainly take my pig.”
“And your life along with it, you old—” Someone shushed the surgeon who had blurted this reproach. If Massicot had heard, he did not seem to take offense.
“Dessalines came with prisoners, I thought I saw,” the doctor said.
“Many,” said Massicot. “Some from as far off as Gros Morne, but he has been sweeping them in all across the plain. Lucky they have not been massacred. There were hundreds killed at Verrettes, we have heard. They are all shut up in the old cotton warehouse, if it is not the brickworks.”
“I had better go and see what can be done for them,” the doctor said. Massicot caught at his sleeve as he made for the back door, but did not follow him into the yard.
Bienvenu hung over the fence, admiring Fanfan in the starlight, his good hand cupped over his navel. The doctor grunted to get his attention, and they went on together. It was only two blocks from Massicot’s to the square; Petite Rivière was a very small town, with no more than forty houses, though many of them were solidly built of brick or stone. Under the eyes of Dessalines’s soldiers, they crossed below the doors of the church. The doctor pulled his hat down over his face and put his hands into his pockets; he felt eyes on his back as they went by. His pistol barrels scraped against his pelvis as he walked. A block ahead, he made out the figure of Père Vidaut, the village priest, flanked by his two acolytes, and he picked up his pace to overtake them. Père Vidaut was vested as if for the mass, and his two black acolytes carried cross and candle.
“Whom are you attending, Father?” the doctor said when he’d caught up.
“Those unfortunates that Dessalines has herded into the old cotton warehouse,” the priest replied. “It is too close for so many in that place— they will suffer much, even by night, and if they are kept through the heat of the day . . .”
“What chance have they to be released?”
“I don’t know.” The priest dropped his shoulders. “Madame Dessalines has come as well, and she has a gentle heart. Maybe she’ll have some influence with her husband. But monsieur le général appears in an especially thunderous mood.”
As the priest’s voice trailed away, they came along the wall of the cotton warehouse, out of use since cotton planting had stopped with the wars and the desertion of the plantations. A familiar face popped up in a small, square window in the brickwork as the doctor passed.
“A l’aide! Help us!”
The doctor stopped, letting the priest go on. Framed