Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [238]
“Come,” he said, drawing the taller man toward the powder magazine. “Let me tell you how it will be done.”
Most of that day the doctor spent shifting his wounded to new shelters hastily raised on the slopes of the bitasyon behind the fort, for Toussaint confirmed the order that all of them should be moved. That was more easily accomplished than to get them all down to the town, and despite Toussaint’s arrival the doctor could still picture Petite Rivière burning, given what Dessalines had said. For the moment, he left his own bivouac within the walls where it had been. Bienvenu, without saying anything, unrolled his own sleeping mat beside the doctor’s.
Dessalines came away from his conference with Toussaint looking well pleased. He swung onto his horse and rode to the town, while Toussaint remained in the fort throughout the day, with Placide and Guiaou following him, overseeing the digging of ditches and the placement of cannon that were being dragged in. Though the doctor, Fontelle, and even Placide besought him to rest, to seek the shade, to take a tisane brewed against his fever, Toussaint ignored them all; he would only crumple, for a few minutes, when the fever turned to wracking chill, and jumped back to his feet as soon as the chill had passed.
Once the wounded were resettled, a little after noon, the doctor gave up the struggle with Toussaint and walked down to the town himself. Outside the priest’s house behind the church, he encountered Madame Dessalines, and made her his deepest bow. The lady returned him a nod and a warm smile. It had not been quite a year since Dessalines had married Marie Félicité Claire Heureuse Bonheur. The couple had begun to celebrate their marriage, the second for them both, here at Petite Rivière. Though the doctor had not been present, he was familiar with the tale. Everyone had been feasting and singing and dancing the carabinierwhen messengers arrived with the news of the Moyse rebellion. At once Dessalines had abandoned his bride to enter the field of those new battles. According to rumor, their courtship had begun on a battlefield too, when Marie Félicité had presented herself to Dessalines with a plea that he allow some water and medicines to be sent into the town of Jacmel, which he was then besieging.
Père Vidaut stood in his doorway, watching her go. When she’d turned the corner, the priest motioned the doctor inside. They passed through two simply furnished rooms and emerged into a tiny enclosed garden at the rear, where they sat in the shade of the one almond tree. An acolyte served coffee, cassava bread, and some fruit. The doctor ate with a sudden hunger, and told the priest of the work under way at the fort. In the course of the morning more troops had arrived, one phalanx commanded by Magny and another by Lamartinière, and both Morisset and Monpoint were present, each with a squadron of cavalry, so there was a great concentration.
“So,” said the priest. “On our side, with the help of Madame Dessalines the captives have been paroled to the town, though they may not leave its limits. As to what will follow . . .” He shrugged. “It’s rumored that Leclerc’s columns are not very far off.”
“Toussaint doesn’t seem to mean to retreat,” said the doctor. He recalled Dessalines’s project to burn Petite Rivière, but maybe that plan too had been altered by Toussaint’s arrival; he did not mention it to the priest. From a few words dropped by Placide and Guiaou, he’d gathered that Toussaint had just come from a lightning tour of his posts inland along the Artibonite and through the mountains from Mirebalais—all these still held, but it appeared that Petite Rivière was to be the first point of strong resistance. The doctor began to wish he were elsewhere. But what were his chances now of slipping away? What