Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [312]
“Aux armes!”
Maillart ran toward Daspir’s voice, not twenty paces from him in the dark.
“A spy! A spy!”
Maillart collided with Cyprien and Paltre. Then Leclerc himself emerged from his tent to hear Daspir’s stammered account—three intruders from Toussaint’s force—he waved his left arm in the direction they had gone. At Leclerc’s order, Cyprien and Paltre dashed off to organize pursuit, while Leclerc limped back into his tent, still ginger with his sore groin. Maillart remained by Daspir.
“How are you certain they came from Toussaint?” he said. “There’re blacks aplenty in our own ranks. Are you sure you did not mistake them?”
“So help me God, one of those men was Placide Louverture,” Daspir declared. “I crossed the Atlantic with him—I know his features well enough.”
“Well then—” Maillart began, but before he could complete the sentence his head snapped around to the sound of firing, behind Lacroix’s lines, to the left. Behind the lines and at a point none too well defended. Maillart experienced a flash of pure terror. If Toussaint had really arrived, in sufficient force, the French would find themselves doubly encircled, and their whole force might go swirling down the vortex centered on La Crête à Pierrot.
“Come on,” he said, batting at Daspir to start him moving. They ran toward the shooting and found Lacroix directing the defense himself, with a good success. Whoever was attacking was discouraged after a few volleys. Likely it was no more than a feint. But just as their effort dwindled, new muskets began nearer to the town—an attack on the earthworks there from the direction of the fort.
“They’ve come out of their hole at last,” Lacroix cried, flushed with excitement, and with Maillart and Daspir in tow he hastened toward the new point of attack. The men of the Ninth had spent much effort on fortifying this line, reinforcing the earthworks with timber—they’d understood better than anyone else just what they were likely to confront. Maillart was grateful for the pains they’d taken now, as the skeletal warriors began boiling up from the surging darkness—there was some hand-to-hand fighting atop the works, but only a few could press so far, and these were slain or tumbled back. After fifteen minutes of hard struggle the attack evaporated as suddenly as it had begun.
“Do we pursue?” Daspir blurted.
“No,” said Lacroix. “We’ll not be caught in that same trap again.” He paused a moment to get his breath. “We’ll keep to our lines,” he panted. “There’s nowhere they’ll get through them. And sunrise will find them naked as worms up on that hill.”
Unless they go back to the fort again, Maillart thought, but he didn’t say it. The three of them waited a quarter-hour more, straining their eyes and ears into the dark. Then firing commenced on the hill above.
“Ah,” said Lacroix. “I think they’ve gone to visit Rochambeau.” With a thin smile he added, “I’ll warrant he’ll be ready to receive them.”
Captain Guizot, once the night’s second bombardment had been terminated, went to lie quietly on his blanket. His wounded arm would not let him really sleep, but he drifted in the half-consciousness of fever. On his closed eyelids replayed images of shells bursting in the fort. No sight was more glorious, especially by night. Guizot had conceived a bitter hatred of the black defenders, who’d annihilated his whole company with a few minutes’ worth of grapeshot, all but himself and Sergeant Aloyse. Every night he went to Pétion’s battery to watch the shells pour down, and afterward those fireworks bled through his delirium in still more luridly explosive colors. Beyond it all, apart from it all, the throb of his arm ticked