Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [334]
No one was singing or drumming in the camp that night, and there was not much talk around the cooking fires, or the talk was low, and there was not very much to cook, because all the people had run so fast from the French blanc soldiers. It seemed that their spirits were low to see Toussaint running from the blancs himself, because that was what it looked like he was doing. And the stories that were being told about La Crête à Pierrot would not make anyone want to drum or dance.
Guiaou had no food with him at all, but I had saved a piece of cassava bread, and I shared this with him. We did not talk at all while we were eating, or afterward when we lay down to sleep. I was thinking of Toussaint, and in my mind I saw a picture of him meeting Suzanne and Isaac at Vincindière, but I thought how he must still wonder about Saint-Jean, if the blancs who held him were treating him with kindness. With that I began to think about Merbillay’s children at Ennery, if they were safe and well themselves, and I knew Guiaou must be thinking the same thoughts, but we did not say anything about it.
Guiaou was asleep sooner than I was, or so I thought from the sound of his dreaming. For a long time, I could not send my thoughts away, though I tried to let them go into the sound of running water I could hear at the bottom of the ravine where our ajoupa was made. Guiaou called Toussaint Papa, as many people had begun to do, but I, Riau, had known him longer, though sometimes I addressed him as parrain. For a long time the words of the letters we had written that day ran in my head, and I wondered how many of us Toussaint might sell to save his children.
When I first came to Port-au-Prince with Maillart, I had seen the messenger Sabès, who had come out of the ships with another blanc named Gimont, with messages from the General Boudet who waited on the ships in the harbor. Lamartinière had made them prisoner then, though they came only as messengers. Later on they had come close to being killed many times. Lamartinière treated them well at first, but Dessalines would certainly have killed them at Petite Rivière, and there were people who wanted to kill them at Chassérieux too, because the anger against all the blancs was very high; only Isaac had come over from Vincindière to protect them. It may be that he had known those two blancs on the ships that he and Placide had ridden over the ocean, or maybe he knew that Toussaint would not like Sabès and Gimont to be killed, even though Isaac had not taken Toussaint’s part against the French blanc soldiers.
It was hard to see what Toussaint’s part was now, and maybe he was trying to hide it in the fog he turned between his hands. When he came back to Chassérieux the next morning, the first thing he did was order that Sabès and Gimont be brought before him. He did not really need to send for them at all, because they had been at Vincindière the whole time, where Toussaint had spent the night. Isaac had brought them there, where they would be safer, after he had got them away from the people who wanted to kill them at Chassérieux. But I thought Toussaint must want all the people at Chassérieux to hear what he would say to these blancs, because he spoke to them outside the tent, loud and before all the people.
Toussaint did not look old or tired any more that morning. He was dressed in his finest uniform, one that he would never wear to ride, and he wore the big sword longer than his leg, on a velvet belt with many bright and colored stones. All our men were gathered around his tent when Fontaine brought Sabès and Gimont in, because the other officers had told them to come there. The men were sitting