Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [259]
All the blanc soldiers were planning a big battle where they would catch Toussaint at Petite Rivière, and make him their prisoner or kill him. That was where they all believed Toussaint had gone, after they chased him out of Gonaives. Leclerc, the little blanc general who stood above all the rest, had come down from Le Cap with a lot more men and was meaning to fight this battle himself. But I, Riau, I did not want to go to this battle at all. It was one thing to try to get out from under Toussaint’s rules and laws, and another to fight against him face to face.
Then Jean-Pic had a quarrel with his woman, and he came into Port-au-Prince from the camp of Lamour Dérance on the plain to look for Riau. He did not tell me so very much about this quarrel, but it made him want to go north again for a while, which was our old country, where Jean-Pic and Riau had been maroons together long ago before the risings. I thought I had been too long among these blancs anyway and maybe it was a good thing to go north, at least as far as Thibodet.
So I found for Jean-Pic a uniform coat with only a few patches and those in the back, and a pair of trousers not too worn. He had brought his own horse with him from the plain. I could not get him any boots, because the blancs had not brought enough boots for themselves. Jean-Pic liked the look of boots, but he would not have liked to wear them for long. The hide of his feet was harder than boot leather from all the years he had been walking all over the country.
To leave Port-au-Prince all I needed to do was offer to take a message to the commander at Croix des Bouquets. But before we rode in that direction, I found Chancy. I told him I was going to Toussaint and would take a message to him, if Chancy wanted it so. Chancy was still a prisoner of these French blanc soldiers, though they had made the whole town his prison now instead of that dark cachot beneath the fort, and he was bound by his promise not to run away, but he could still write a letter, secretly, to tell Toussaint what had happened to him, I said. Chancy was happy with this thought, and he did write the letter and sealed it with wax, and then I hid it in the lining of my coat. I did not mean to go to Petite Rivière at all, where all the blanc soldiers were getting ready to bring their battle, but I thought that where the blancs expected they would find Toussaint would probably be the last place he would go.
At sundown Jean-Pic and I reached the post at Croix des Bouquets and left our message there. Then instead of returning to Port-au-Prince we rode on across the plain of Cul de Sac. It was dark by the time we began to climb Morne Cabrit, and the moon was new, and it rose late. Still the sky was clear and the stars so bright we could ride without fear of falling off the rocky trail. I looked at the stars and remembered the blanc doctor Hébert and how he had told me that the stars were named after the old spirits of his own country. He had told me some of those names, sometimes, though I did not remember them now. I wondered that night if he was looking up to see the same stars that I was, from some other place in the country. That night I did not feel the loup-garou eating away at my insides