Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [301]
“No,” he said. “I’m staying.”
“You’re mad, then,” Descourtilz hissed. “No one will survive another day of this—it’s not so far to the French lines.”
“But I’m engaged here,” the doctor said. For some reason he pictured Tocquet riding off down the river, the dwindling back of his son Paul.
“With what?” Descourtilz’s barely audible whisper still managed to convey exasperation.
“With this.” The doctor stroked his hands over the velvety darkness surrounding them. “With all of it.” He didn’t know himself what he meant. “Go on, then.” He took Descourtilz’s hand for a moment. “N’a wé,” he said, not sure if the naturalist would understand the Creole. “Si Dyé vlé.” If God wants it, we’ll meet again.
Descourtilz slipped off without saying anything more. There was some rustling, a choked breath, one thump, then another, outside the wall. No one had sounded any alarm. The doctor lowered his head to the mat.
In dream he met the man who’d lost his hands but now there was no gangrene; the stumps had healed and the man displayed them only to demand the doctor’s witness. He saw that these were no battle wounds but a punishment dating from slavery time. In dream the shock of this spectacle set him to weeping, but when he woke to the slate-gray light of dawn, his mind was clear and he felt calmer than he had for many days. He sat crosslegged in the shadow of his ajoupa, wishing distantly for a cup of coffee, a tot of rum, or best of all a glass of cool, clear water. Yet none of these wishes seemed so important now, and though he wondered whether Descourtilz and his companion had been killed either by black sentries or the French, that did not seem to matter so much either. He listened to the liquid calling of the crows in the trees beyond the redoubt, and as the morning mist began to lift and fade into the bluing sky, he watched the men Lamartinière had sent to raise red flags on every corner of the fort.
Now that Guizot had completed the quartet of captains, Maillart learned for the first time what had been their relation on the voyage out. After nightfall had stopped the shelling, they all sat around the embers of the fire that had warmed their evening rations, sharing a bottle of clairin and telling their war stories. Maillart clucked to himself in quiet astonishment as the story of their bet emerged. That these four pups should have thought themselves capable of capturing Toussaint Louverture— well, but he supposed he must have been as young as that himself one time, if it were a long time ago. The rum warmed him to a certain sympathy with the four captains, though he felt distinctly more in common with Sergeant Aloyse, who was nearer to his own age and experience. But the sergeant was not at all convivial; he sat glum and silent beside his pack, nursing his drink, his beaked profile harsh in the starlight. Maillart had been given to understand that he’d lost the last of his old companions in that foolhardy assault on the redoubt.
Daspir twirled a finger through the bullet hole in his hat. “At least I can claim to have seen him first,” he said. “Though I did not get my grip on him.”
“But we were the closest to bringing him in, you and I,” Cyprien said. “At Gonaives—as you said yourself. We might have had him.”
“But you didn’t,” Paltre snuffled sourly. By the luck of his billeting to Port-au-Prince he’d got no glimpse of the quarry at all, and seemed to resent it.
“And I?” Guizot put in, with a drunken giddiness. “I touched him, with these hands.” Only his right hand lifted when he made to raise them both; the left slipped from his lap and dangled. The other three looked at him doubtfully. That one had better stop drinking, Maillart thought.
“What nonsense,” Paltre said. “We have none of us succeeded.”
“There is still time,” Cyprien pointed out, reaching for the bottle. “So long as the old rag-head remains at large.”
Maillart glanced about the group. The lack of enthusiasm was striking. And no wonder, since they were surrounded by nearly two thousand corpses of their people, slain in evidence of the old rag-head’s determination.