Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [308]
Gaston passed the strip of leather to one of the trumpeters, who accepted it with all appearance of gratitude.
“I won’t be needing these boots anyway,” Gaston said, gesturing at the shredded uppers. “Nowhere to walk!” But then the violinist noticed that Marie-Jeanne Lamartinière was coming with the water ration, and he fell silent in anticipation.
The doctor took the penny from his mouth and held it in his hand. Marie-Jeanne gave water with a silver serving spoon that hung from her sash on a fine chain. From the gourd she carried she filled the spoon just short of the brim and slipped it between the jaws of Bienvenu. The doctor watched his Adam’s apple working. Then his own turn came; he stretched up his open mouth as meekly as a baby bird, his eyes fixed on the short knife which rode in her sash between the spoon chain and her sword. Two days before she’d slit the throat of a man so maddened by thirst he’d tried to snatch the water gourd from her—done it as neatly as any peasant woman letting blood from a hog or snapping the head off a chicken. It had been a mercy killing, for the others of the garrison would surely have torn the offender limb from limb.
Marie-Jeanne’s shadow passed over him. The doctor held his water ration in his mouth as long as he could before he swallowed. Gaston gulped his straightaway, washing down his meager meal of shoe leather.
Now Marie-Jeanne had refilled her gourd and was coming to help the doctor tend his wounded. For each, a spoon of water inserted through the burning lips. The doctor steadied each head as Marie-Jeanne gave the water, and Bienvenu restrained the limbs of those most likely to convulse. There was nothing else to be done for them. No fresh bandages, no more herbs, no water to brew them if they had existed. Most of the wounded were well off their heads from fever or unremitting pain. Sometimes the doctor tried to quiet the loudest of them with massage or comforting whispers. Sometimes he thought he’d do as well to strangle them.
As they worked, the doctor stole glances at Marie-Jeanne, admiring her as one might admire an icon. Starvation had burned her beauty brighter. The white bone of her skull shone through her ivory skin like spirit. As they worked, her spidery fingers might by accident brush his, and when this happened she would often smile at him. For all she was exhausted as the rest of them, there remained an energy in her touch which could for a moment restore his will and sense of purpose.
Then there was musketry from the direction of the river, followed by a commotion at the gate. Marie-Jeanne straightened, letting the spoon drop against her skirt, the gourd neck dangling from her right hand. The doctor stood up too, to see the arrival. He recognized the white-headed man who came dashing in as one of Dessalines’s elder officers . . . and also as the messenger of his hallucination earlier that day. But in this reality the envoy brought no letter from Paul. Instead he went straight to Lamartinière, saluted, then drew out of his tattered collar a cord which held a heavy silver ring.
Toussaint rode out of Marmelade near midnight, his white stallion Bel Argent flanked by the cavalry of his honor guard. Placide found his place among their ranks, near Guiaou, Riau, and Guerrier. He’d slept for nearly two hours after the meal, and felt himself somewhat restored. Sometimes indeed he did doze in the saddle, but when he popped awake from these short respites he felt in full possession of his faculties. At one of these awakenings he remembered his red mouchwa têt and in the darkness bound it to his head.
Their progress was not as rapid as Toussaint would have wished, for most of their infantry was composed of armed field hands, who far outnumbered the regular troops. These men, though eager to fight the blancs, lacked the training needed to carry them on a fast forced march through the mountains.
For that reason they did not reach the north edge of the Savane Désolée before first light on March 24, and Toussaint, unwilling to expose his force