Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [284]
Maillart deposited Paltre behind the newly solidified infantry line. At the sight of the French reinforcement, Morisset had withdrawn his cavalry up the Grand Cahos road. The French advanced again, to the town and beyond, and halted just out of range of the fort’s cannon. Now the French tricolor flew from the walls. From within the fort came wild shouts of triumph from the blacks. The wide slope below the ditches was strewn with six hundred French corpses.
In the moment before the battle was joined, Dessalines had stirred up the sleeping musicians from the ground with the point of his sword. It would be a rough awakening, the doctor thought, to open your eyes to Dessalines bestriding you, probing your ribs with his blade, a torch smoking in his other hand, his old whip scars writhing on his back like fat white snakes. When Dessalines bared his torso for a battle, it was a bloody sign.
But at first Dessalines seemed in great good humor, as if he anticipated some fine entertainment, a favorite dance like the carabinier. He tickled the musicians into a row, though he did not yet command them to play. The doctor watched from the shade of his ajoupa, Descourtilz crouching beside him there. The cannoneers squatted low beside their gun carriages. At Dessalines’s signal, the fuses had been lit.
Outside the fort came a roar like the wind. The French troopers were shouting their indignation as they charged. Descourtilz got up to peer over the wall, and the doctor cautiously followed suit. He was in time to see the retreating black skirmishers dive into the ditches just under the walls.
“Feu!” Dessalines’s voice boomed, almost simultaneously with the cannon. The guns recoiled and the air filled with burnt-powder smoke. Grapeshot tore great gaps in the ranks of the French. A week previously, Debelle’s troops had broken at this moment, but these new soldiers did not falter. They closed their ranks, and when the second volley laid waste to them again, they closed ranks once more and kept advancing.
At the first volley Dessalines had prompted the musicians to strike up a martial air by smacking them on the calves with the flat of his sword. The drum and trumpets made themselves faintly heard, but the violin was completely inaudible over the noise of artillery, however desperately Gaston sawed it. Dessalines moved behind the players, grinning. The French advance had come to the edge of the ditches. The doctor saw an officer with a dimly familiar face sail his hat over the walls of the fort, then charge after it, with some shouted exhortation. There was a humming around his head, like bees; he didn’t realize it was bullets till Descourtilz pulled him down from his perch.
Together they crawled toward the wall of the powder magazine for better cover. But Dessalines, who’d lost his smile, had resumed his post by the open door. “Turn them back!” he shouted, “Or—” He shook his torch toward the open doorway. Half a dozen French grenadiers had reached the top of the wall and were fighting hand to hand with the defenders there. Dessalines appeared to change his strategy; with a shout he rushed into that fight. The doctor saw him dance atop the wall. A bullet sheered off one of the tall feathers in his hat, but except for that he seemed untouchable.
Then Dessalines came panting back and ordered the musicians to sound the charge. Unbelievably, the gates were pushing open for a sortie. The doctor risked another peep over the wall. Now it was Dessalines’s men chasing the French down the slope, jabbing bayonets in their kidneys. The French made a rally, turning the tide, but mitraille blew away this charge like the others, as the blacks again took cover in the ditches. And now, as the trumpets continued to blare, Morisset led the cavalry out of the woods to sweep the field.
The doctor dropped down to the earth of the fort. Though the cannons had quieted, his ears still rang. Descourtilz hunkered by the