Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [236]
“You are far from your plantation,” the doctor said, somewhat reluctantly. He had never much liked Pinchon; the man feared ill fortune and seemed to attract it. “How do you come here?”
“By mischance. I was visiting—”
There was some turmoil inside the building, and Pinchon’s visage was replaced by that of the naturalist Descourtilz.
“He was visiting me,” Descourtilz said, with a queasy smile the doctor could just make out in the starlight. “We were taken on the road from Habitation Rossignol-Desdunes to—well, it is no matter. In all the Artibonite there is no hiding place any more. Our color betrays us everywhere.”
The doctor nodded, slightly chilled. Descourtilz was also a medical man, and they’d once dined together at Gonaives, pleasantly enough, discussing the anatomy of the local crocodile, of which Descourtilz had been making a study. Like Pinchon, Descourtilz had come out from France during a lull in the fighting, seeking to recover family property under Toussaint’s regime—most likely it was that common circumstance that threw them together. The doctor preferred Descourtilz to Pinchon, though both excited his sympathy now.
“We have got to get out,” Descourtilz said flatly. “We are packed in so, no one can sit down, and if he did he’d suffocate.”
“I understand you,” said the doctor. The porthole through which Descourtilz peered was one of only four in the long brick wall. “The priest has already gone around to the front. I’ll see what he thinks may be accomplished.”
In front of the warehouse, Père Vidaut had met a dozen-odd femmes de couleur who had come bearing food and water for the prisoners. The guards had opened the door to admit them, but when the doctor made to follow, the priest motioned him away.
“You may not get out again so easily,” he said. “Better to return by day.”
“And yourself, Father?”
The priest smiled thinly, one hand on his stole. “I will trust to my cloth,” he said. “And to God’s grace.”
The doctor bowed and made his retreat. A stranger’s face hung in the window where Descourtilz’s had been. He went on without pausing, Bienvenu a pace behind. No one molested them on their climb to the fort, but the doctor was happier than ever to have Bienvenu’s company.
Next morning the doctor jerked up from his mat at the sound of voices disputing and a loud clatter of metal on stone. He crawled out shirtless from beneath the palm fringe of his shelter. Bienvenu and a couple more of the walking wounded were arguing, beside the wall, with a platoon of Dessalines’s men who’d arrived with mattocks, shovels, and hoes. Behind them daylight bloomed quickly over the plain, and in the wooded mountains to the east all of the cocks were crowing, but it was still cool enough that the doctor’s bare chest and arms broke out in gooseflesh.
One of Dessalines’s men shook a hoe at Bienvenu, who skipped out of reach, twisting to shield his wounded arm, then advanced again with coutelas drawn in his left hand.
“Dousman,” the doctor said hastily, taking a step forward. The quarrel paused as both men turned toward him. “What is your trouble?”
By the inner wall, Paulette was on her hands and knees, blowing up the flames of the fire Fontelle had just kindled beneath the iron kettle. A couple of Dessalines’s men stood near, watching the girl’s derrière and the egg and two plantains Fontelle had brought with roughly equal interest. The doctor glanced at that situation; then Bienvenu’s voice recalled him to the argument.
“They want to knock down the walls of the fort!” Bienvenu said hotly. “They say, by order of General Dessalines they will do it, but here are all the wounded of Papa Toussaint.”
Paulette straightened from the fire and moved toward the wall, swinging her skirt away from the men who watched her. One of them reached slyly for a plantain, but Fontelle knocked him away with an elbow, then backed him farther off with the hot iron spoon she held.
The doctor looked for a captain of the crew. “What are