Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [294]
After another forty minutes’ march, he and Aloyse were sent forward to reconnoiter and saw through the trees that covered them a small redoubt on a little knoll, defended by fresh-dug earth supporting roughly pointed logs, occupied by something under two hundred men, by Guizot’s quick estimation. Beyond the redoubt and a little below it was the masonry wall of a more substantial fort, and beyond that a passage into the empty air; Guizot supposed that a bend in the river must lie below.
In another moment, Rochambeau had come up from the rear to join them. From under cover of the trees, he studied the redoubt with a spyglass. Behind the earthworks, a black corporal looked up curiously. Perhaps a flash of sunlight had glinted from the lens, but he seemed uncertain of what he had seen, and Rochambeau quickly lowered his instrument.
“Captain,” said Rochambeau, “I think it would be small trouble to you to sweep away that little emplacement.”
“None at all,” Guizot replied. The blood beneath his infected wound pulsed like a drumbeat, and though he still felt somewhat dizzy, he could feel his anger hardening.
“Good,” Rochambeau said. “Then let us set about it.”
In the morning after that long day’s battle, Doctor Hébert woke to find that Magny’s effort to burn the bodies on the slope outside the fort had been less than completely successful. Yet the smoke from the fitfully smoldering fires had been enough to discourage the dogs, unless they’d been moved to retreat by the rising sun. The doctor turned from his embrasure and set about heating water for a change of bandages. Descourtilz and the musicians were still snoring on their mats. By the steps of the powder magazine, Dessalines was conferring with Magny and Lamartinière. He gestured toward the knoll above the fort, where the French had briefly appeared the day before, and Lamartinière nodded several times, snapping his heels together.
Dessalines was leaving the fort on a mission to bring more powder from Plassac, the doctor overheard—if by chance that depot had survived. Below, they were opening the gate for the sortie, but Dessalines stopped on the threshold, and called out another order. Half a dozen men broke out of his small contingent and scooped the remains of the prisoners of the Ninth who’d been tortured to death the night before onto a square of canvas, dragged it through the gate, and tumbled its contents onto the slope beyond the ditches. The doctor could not quite restrain himself from watching the procedure. Some of the bodies were dismembered, as Descourtilz had reported; his eyes clung to a severed forearm fetched up against a stone, stiff fingers stretching upward from a bloody palm.
During this operation, Dessalines seemed to think of something. He called Lamartinière to come to him, leaned down from his horse, and proffered his right hand, as if to be kissed. But instead he pointed to one of several heavy rings on his fingers. Lamartinière took note of it and nodded.
A few scattered shots came from the French lines as Dessalines rode out. But the honor guard cavalry showed itself in force at the tree line opposite, and that was enough to discourage any serious pursuit. In a moment Dessalines’s little force had vanished in the trees.
In two days’ time, Lamartinière had raised a tidy little redoubt on that knoll above the fort, buttressed with earthworks and bwa kampech. For want of proper tools, most of the digging and chopping was done with