Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [333]
Then and in the days that followed, no one could see what spirit was with Toussaint. He was smooth like the surface of the ocean when the big fish has gone under and the circle that his tail makes has already disappeared.
When Dessalines came to Marchand at last he was very sick with the fever, so that for some days he could not stand, and when he did get up again he found that no more than sixty soldiers were with him still, or so the story was told later. Dessalines shot two of the captains who brought him this news, and after he had done that, the other captains who still lived found him enough soldiers to make him more content. But at that time Toussaint had gone to Grand Fonds, where he had sent his family when the French blanc soldiers first came down through Ennery, so he did not know exactly what Dessalines was doing. Suzanne and Isaac were staying there, at Habitation Vincindière, but Saint-Jean who was the youngest son had been made a prisoner of the blancs, while they were running from Ennery. Placide was with the other officers, Gabart and Pourcely and Monpoint and Morisset, at Habitation Chassérieux, where Toussaint made his headquarters now, a little way from Vincindière.
In the early morning we were riding into the clouds over the Petit Cahos mountains, where the wet gray fog lay thick among the trunks of old palm trees and tall pines. We had to go carefully along the trails because there were ravines so well hidden in the fog we could only know their places by their echoes or the sound of rushing water deep inside them. But when the sun had risen, the fog turned pale and floated away, like fingers of a hand letting go of the mountains, so that by the time we came to the plateau of Chassérieux it was very hot. Here a lot of people who had run away from the French blanc soldiers in the Artibonite had come, and they had put up ajoupas all over the flat ground there, and other soldiers had come there too, away from different fights with the blancs all around the country.
Toussaint did not go at once to find Suzanne and Isaac at Vincindière. He raised a tent in the center of the flat land among the people, to make shade against the midday sun, and he called for men who knew how to write. I, Riau, was one, and another was his son Placide.
First Toussaint gave us words for Bonaparte, who was the chief of all the French blanc soldiers in France. He had a letter from Bonaparte that he must answer, and in this answer he said that Bonaparte should take away the Captain-General Leclerc, and send someone else to talk to Toussaint, because it was Leclerc who had caused all the trouble and fighting, when Toussaint had never intended to make any trouble with the blancs at all. This letter took a long time to write because of the way the words had to be twisted, and after that we had to write another one, to the General Boudet who had gone down to Port-au-Prince again, after the fighting around La Crête à Pierrot.
The sun had left its height by the time these letters had been copied out and all the words put in their places so that they satisfied Toussaint. Placide and Toussaint got back on their horses then, and they rode on to Vincindière. I found Guiaou, who had been riding with Toussaint that day the same as I, and together we raised a little ajoupa to share. I had been camping with Jean-Pic before, but Jean-Pic had run away after Toussaint’s big bloody fight at Plaisance. He wanted to go north to a place where there was no fighting. Guiaou had been much with a new man called Guerrier, who had traveled with him across the Spanish border, when Couachy was killed by some trickery of the blancs, but this night somehow we decided to camp together.
We had to go some way off from the flat ground of the plateau before we found sticks and leaves enough, because so many people had