Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [304]
“I am happy to have his good opinion,” Placide said.
“Yes,” said Toussaint and turned into the wind. Invisible in the tree limbs overhead, the settling crows squawked and whistled. “I was impetuous myself, when Gonaives was burned. In my anger and my disappointment, that day I abused God. But now again I pray both day and night, that BonDyé favor our cause.”
“May God hear your prayer,” Placide said. “It goes hard for our people at La Crête à Pierrot. Morisset must have told you, but the garrison there has been cut off from water now for days, and Dessalines was driven back from Nolo, so he cannot relieve them. They are surrounded by an ocean of the enemy.”
“And just so, God has delivered the enemy into our hands.” Toussaint smiled openly into Placide’s astonished face. “Look well, they have nearly abandoned their defenses in all the rest of the country to wear themselves out upon that rock, and now it is we who surround them— I, and Dessalines in the Cahos, and Charles Belair below the Artibonite. By tomorrow night, or the next at the latest, I’ll close my grip on the Captain-General, though he does not suspect it.”
“I might have killed him,” Placide said. “I nearly did, but my horse was spent, and could not overtake him.”
“Yes!” Toussaint clapped him on the shoulder. “But God shows his hand in your failure too, for it will be better that I take him as a prisoner, and return him to France, that he may account to the First Consul for the violence he has brought to our country—this war he has waged on us for no just cause.”
Placide’s weariness split away from him like a husk of an almond lying on the ground. The passionate comprehension of his dream washed over him again. It seemed to him that all his father said was possible.
From behind the house across the square, where Toussaint had made his headquarters, there streamed an odor of rice and beans, simmering with pork fat and onion and hot peppers. Placide’s nostrils could pick out each ingredient, he thought, and he felt a pang at the hinge of his jaws.
“Ann manjé,” Toussaint said. Let’s eat. He touched Placide’s arm to guide him toward the house where the table would be laid for them, where the other officers had already gone. “And afterward . . . we’ll move tonight, upon the Captain-General at La Crête à Pierrot.”
“You planned it all,” Placide said. “From the beginning.”
“Not quite.” Toussaint wiped away another smile. “But since Ravine à Couleuvre, I planned it so.”
With that he stopped and faced his son. He needed to look up a little, for Placide was distinctly the taller.
“But you,” he said. “You would do better to go to the Cahos to join your mother and Isaac. You are too much exhausted from these battles.”
“No,” said Placide. He held Toussaint’s deep eyes with his. “I’ll ride with you.”
On the morning of March 24, Captain Daspir rode with Maillart and General de Lacroix to visit the posts surrounding the fort. He could handle his horse well enough with his left hand, though his right was scarcely serviceable. In raising his arm to shield Leclerc, he’d sprained his right shoulder severely enough that still he could not draw a sword or lift a pistol. It was beginning to rankle him a little that the Captain-General had so far failed to take any notice of his sacrifice.
It was quiet at first along the lines, but then, when the dawn light was strong enough for Pétion’s artillerymen on the knoll beyond the fort, the bombardment recommenced. Birds fled, shrieking, across the river, over the surrounding lines. Maillart shaded his eyes with his sun-baked hand, looking up at the shells crashing down within the walls. Each sent a shower of earth and gravel splashing over the parapets. On the corners of the fort, the red flags of “no quarter” stirred slightly in the morning breeze that was rolling the mist back from the mountains.
Then there was a pause in the shelling, and they rode on through the sudden silence. Beyond the ringing of his ears, Daspir began to hear a regular whacking sound, accompanied