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By Root 2177 0

ride, Maillart was thinking, imagining that Toussaint would feel the same surprised pleasure if he could see his son now. Placide had managed to turn his horse in an unbelievably short space, the animal’s hindquarters scrubbing the ground, then thrusting up again into the charge. Unconsciously, Maillart spurred up Eclair. He’d have to meet Placide this time, now that Daspir had been knocked out of the action and Leclerc stood bewildered, dust-blinded, no weapon in his empty hands, with Placide bearing down on him, admirably single-minded on his target. As Maillart recognized that he himself would be inevitably too slow, too late, the cavalry commander Dalton appeared from the dust cloud and snatched Leclerc across his saddlebow like a sack of meal (due to the nature of his hurt, the Captain-General would be unable to bestride a horse for many days). Placide’s sword flashed through the space where Leclerc had been a split-second before, with such force and penetration that the point hacked a divot from the ground.

Maillart rode by. He could not wheel his horse in twice the time it took Placide—the boy was going to catch him from behind. But instead Placide rode past, ignoring Maillart, bent on Dalton as he carried Leclerc away. All of the French were routed again. Daspir popped up under Maillart’s horse, spitting a mouthful of grit. When Maillart caught his right arm to help him up, Daspir’s face went a stark, cold white. He managed to scramble up behind Maillart, then fainted dead away from the pain as soon as he was seated.

To his surprise, Maillart saw that he was overtaking Placide now. He did not raise his weapon. It was too difficult, when he had to hold the unconscious Daspir on by clamping the arm wrapped around his waist. He passed Placide. They were running, all the French were in full flight; they would not stop before they reached the ferry landing at the river below the town. Placide was losing ground on them, Maillart could see over his shoulder. Now only a splotch of the red rag was visible, now only the flag high on its staff. Then he was gone. At last Placide’s concentration admitted the voice of Monpoint, shouting for him to slow down, turn back. He had too much outdistanced the rest of his squadron, and now the bay was flagging. He drew on the reins and walked the horse, still staring after the stampeded French army. The only thought his mind would hold was that, after all, he had been wrong not to have changed horses.

The two trumpeters and the drummer were wind-broken and exhausted from blowing and beating through the whole day’s fighting. Gaston, however, sat up crosslegged like a grasshopper, still bowing his fiddle through slow, melancholy, country airs that scarcely varied one to the next. The noise was nerve-wracking, but it did mask the screams of the men of the Ninth, who had been turned over to Lamartinière after their capture.

Bienvenu had passed a hard day in the fighting, and the doctor excused him from nursing duties, that he might go to watch the tortures which were this evening’s entertainment for the troops. During the day the doctor had got some nursing help from Marie-Jeanne Lamartinière, when she was not occupied by sniping on the wounded French below the walls, using a long rifle much like the doctor’s, with a skill all the men applauded. Yet when she nursed, there was a forcefulness in her calm that seemed to make a man stop bleeding at her touch.

This evening, however, Marie-Jeanne had gone to join her husband. Encouraged by Dessalines, himself somewhat irritated by a chest wound he’d acquired from falling against a stake, Lamartinière was visiting the worst punishments anyone could imagine on the men of the Ninth who’d turned their coats to fight for the French. From all this, the doctor had averted his eye, but Descourtilz spied on the proceedings for a little while, then crept back to the doctor’s post to whisper the details: “The first was skinned alive, then they tore out his heart and drank his blood; the second was castrated and had his guts pulled out of his belly into