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By Root 2297 0

from him too and in the shuddering chill that followed, he sank against the rough set stones of the magazine wall. The darts of pain his chattering teeth fired in his damaged lower jaw struck him from a long way off, though he wanted to reach toward the pain, restore himself in his body. His eyes were closed, the sun red on the lids. The black cross went on blazing behind his eyes. The deep drumbeat of his heart kept pumping out the fear. Within the cross’s junction point appeared Baron Cimetière, wearing the face of Jean-Jacques Dessalines. His lips were parted but his teeth still set together, and from behind the teeth came the shrill and stuttering gravedigger’s cry— ke-ke-ke-ke-ke—or was it the cry of a hawk overhead? Dessalines has sold me! Toussaint thought, or said. Somehow he had risen, moved away from the wall of the powder magazine; he was no longer cold but hot, his whole head swimming. Dessalines is my Baron . . . Had he spoken aloud? . . . the little white doctor looked at him strangely as he passed, and seemed to speak, but Toussaint did not hear. Dessalines has sold me to the French.

He staggered out the gate, and almost tumbled into a trench in progress that he’d ordered to be dug, but at the last moment he regained his balance and wobbled onto the narrow trail that led into the bitasyon east of the fort. High on a cane pole ahead of him was the small red square of a hûnfor flag. As he walked toward it, it disappeared, hidden by the branches of the trees. He was passing among the wounded from the battle at Ravine à Couleuvre, and it seemed that some of them stretched out their hands to him and that he heard them call the name they gave him, Papa Toussaint. He did not stop. He must take his weakness out of sight, hide it from all view.

But someone was following him. He turned, with an effort that pained his head, and saw Guiaou. At that he felt a flicker of gratitude, far off on the horizon. Guiaou would never sell Toussaint. The trail ascended as he followed it. The fork he’d chosen led neither to the hûnfor nor to any dwelling of the bitasyon but came instead to a little spring. Low to the ground, the water bubbled out of an ogive slit in the rock. By the spring someone had placed a triple govi. Toussaint touched a fingertip to the water—cold shot up his arm to the shoulder. With that shock came a moment of clarity, and he saw that in the moist ground around the spring, behind the govi, and among stones on the slope above, grew armoise, bourrache, and romanier.

Dessalines had not sold him yet. Nor had Baron yet taken him, down to the gate of death. Those two things were yet to come. And he had yet some way to travel before he reached that crossroads. At that understanding Toussaint began to feel a little calmer. The dark beating of his fear and helplessness shrank, folded in on itself, and rolled a little distance from him. He stooped and plucked a bud top of romanier and rolled it in his fingers and smiled at the fragrance.

Guiaou appeared on the path behind him, advancing slowly, but with no hesitation. More terrible than the deep knife scars that plowed the side of his face was the alarmed concern that poured out of his eyes. Toussaint had seen that look many times since Ravine à Couleuvre, flowing out of any eyes that saw him weakened by the fever: Suzanne, Saint-Jean, Placide, and any of the many others who had invested all their future hope in what Toussaint might achieve in the quick passage through these violent days. Most of all Isaac, who doubted his own decision, who envied his brother Placide now—Toussaint had seen it—less for the gallant figure he cut in the honor guard, for his chance at adventure and glory of arms, but more for his having been moved by his spirit to express, fully and unreservedly, the love for his father which Isaac certainly also felt. And so many others had recently regarded him so, down to the least soldier of his armies. Even the blanc, Doctor Hébert, had that look in his eyes just now.

These ideas wavered before him as Guiaou came up. Both his eyes were clear, though