Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [266]
“Soldiers of the Ninth!” Toussaint’s voice was so loud and large we could all hear it plainly where we were hidden in that acajou. “Will you dare to fire upon your general and your brothers? Only the blancs are our enemy!”
And maybe Golart was an enemy too, I thought. It was a new thing for Toussaint to speak so boldly against the blancs. He had not been saying that before these French ships and soldiers came. But the men of the Ninth all lowered their muskets and began to shout, Vive le Gouverneur! Vive le Gouverneur! It even seemed that some of them were weeping. I thought that the Ninth was all going to come over to Toussaint’s side again then, and Desfourneaux’s soldiers would be wiped out after all. Long live the Governor! all of them were crying. But all at once the French blanc soldiers began to shoot down the men of the Ninth from where they stood behind them. Those soldiers of the Ninth were all confused when the bullets came from behind that way, and a lot of them were killed in the first firing, and the rest were scattered, down the hill and among the trees.
Then there was nothing to stop the French blanc soldiers from shooting straight at Toussaint and his men. The ground was all against Toussaint. The blancs were on the high ground here, and could shoot from cover of the rocks and all the tight bends of the trail, the way Toussaint had taught all of us to do, but it seemed these blanc soldiers understood how to do it too. These were the toughest blanc soldiers I had seen.
Jean-Pic had taken out his pistol, but Sylla stopped him with a hand on top of his arm. Sylla’s men had not yet come from the other side of the mountain, and there was nothing our few shots could do, except to tell those blancs where we were hidden. We watched then, and did nothing more. I, Riau, had seen a lot of battles, but this one was very bloody. I did not see how Toussaint was going to live, among all those bullets falling on his people like a rainstorm. I saw a bullet strike a captain of dragoons who rode beside Toussaint, and Toussaint caught him out of the saddle, and carried him away on his own horse. The horseman passed through the line of foot soldiers Toussaint had brought, and that line held a little while before the French blanc soldiers pushed it back.
What I could not see from where I stood, I found out later from Guiaou and Guerrier. That night, with the darkness to hide us, Jean-Pic and I found our way back to Toussaint again. By then he had given up the fort at Bidourete to the blancs, and was getting ready to go south, with Pourcely’s men, who had missed most of the fighting, and what was left of the men under Gabart. Toussaint was going to lead them south next day, back along the way we had come. I did not speak to him that night, though I watched him from a little distance, sitting by the fire. Toussaint was always made sad by any deaths among his soldiers, but tonight he seemed more angry, at Golart and the men of the Ninth who had turned against him, and at Pourcely for leading his men to get lost, though he tried to swallow his anger at Pourcely. With all that, Toussaint did not seem so much discouraged yet.
Another messenger had come from Dessalines that day, and Guiaou had seen him shot off his horse just as he rode up to Toussaint. That had been when Desfourneaux’s soldiers were still attacking hard. Toussaint carried that messenger off too, though he was wounded to his death, and he bled all down the front of Toussaint’s coat. But the message was in writing and it told we were not beaten yet. All our men were fighting still, around La Crête à Pierrot.
27
Michel Arnaud came abreast of his cane mill and paused for a moment to stare