Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [249]
“Mon général,” Toussaint heard him say. “Why do you wander? You are unwell and ought to rest.”
“Fey yo . . .” Toussaint could not succeed to finish his sentence. The herbs. His sore tongue stuck in his head. He opened his hand to disclose the crushed floret of armoise.
Guiaou leaned near, for the daylight was fading, then nodded. “W’ap chita isit la—m’ap vini.” He gestured; the old wounds on his warding arm aligned with the knife scars on his face, the scars all rimed with white, like salt. Sit down there and I will come. Toussaint reeled in the direction indicated. A short way across the slope from the spring, a stand of bamboo arched over a gentle hollow in the ground, filled with dry leaves of the bamboo. A sort of natural tonnelle, an arbor. Toussaint stepped within it, achingly lowered into the twisted, rustling leaves. Guiaou had understood and was gathering herbs around the spring—not only the romanier, Toussaint saw, but the bourrache and armoise too. But of course he had sometimes assisted the blanc doctor, and so must have learned some of the uses of herbs that Toussaint had taught the doctor himself long before. So the virtue of his own teaching returned to Toussaint now. This thought encouraged him. He sank backward, resting against the close-grown, springy canes of bamboo. There was still a little red sunlight filtering through the fluttering leaves. He felt his fever shooting up. The crisis. He saw Guiaou as he had presented himself for the first time years ago, with his scars more freshly healed, cured by the salt of ocean waters. Guiaou had walked halfway across the country to join Toussaint’s army. Before that he had fought for the colons, though, in the regiment known jokingly as the Swiss. As a reward the white men had taken the Swiss to sea in a ship and cut them to pieces and thrown them to the sharks. Few but Guiaou had survived, perhaps none. Guiaou had brought the story to Toussaint, though maybe he had not understood it perfectly—had not seen how the colons could not dare return slaves to the field who had learned war. Guiaou, maybe, saw just the pure monstrosity and not the cause behind it, but that was enough to hold him ever faithful to Toussaint.
When he first came, Guiaou had been afraid of horses, and of water, but now he rode with the best of the cavalry, and he would cross water too, if Toussaint asked it of him. And surely there were dozens and hundreds and thousands of others in and out of the army whose spirits were as strong for Toussaint as was Guiaou’s. Against the others, those with different hearts, who would not return to the field any more, who would not work beyond their daily need of food, who believed freedom to be a license to laziness, who preferred marronage, and libertinage, to any duty of citizenship. And at their head had been Moyse. How Toussaint had loved him . . . He had delayed his arrest for weeks after the rebellion had been crushed, hoping at least that Moyse would recognize his danger and leave the island, but Moyse had waited, stubborn as ever (and certainly he had known very well what was sure to come), to be made prisoner and brought before the firing squad. Toussaint’s thoughts were rushing, spiraling, as the fever rose toward crisis; he knew this but still could not control the thoughts. Guiaou had gone to Santo Domingo for Toussaint, and returned with the terrible news that Paul Louverture had given way to the French, and only because Toussaint’s letter had not come to him. But Guiaou had not been obliged to cross water. Only mountains. Deyè mòn gegne mòn. Behind mountains always are more mountains. And Guerrier. Guerrier had gone to Santo Domingo with Guiaou, was it not so? There was some resemblance between these two, though Guerrier bore no scars. The readiness of Guerrier to lay down whatever tool he’d used before and take up the musket Toussaint offered him. Take up his musket for Toussaint.
“Koté Guerrier?” he said as Guiaou reached him, carrying herbs bundled in one hand and in the other the three-Marassa pot