Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [339]
Not long after Sans-Souci had gone off to Grande Rivière again, to fight any more blanc soldiers he might find there, Chancy came to Marmelade with letters to Toussaint from the General Boudet. Toussaint did not tell anyone what was in these letters, but read them secretly inside the house where he was living in Marmelade. Chancy did not know exactly what was in the letters either, but he knew Boudet had waited for word from Leclerc before he sent the letter to Toussaint. Chancy was not certain, but he thought that maybe Boudet’s letter might whisper to Toussaint that he could change his coat and come over to the side of the blancs at Port-au-Prince.
The blancs had been trying those tricks all over the country since their ships first came, the same as I, Riau, had done with Lamour Dérance and Lafortune, and as others had done with Laplume. Even Christophe, after our fight with Hardy at Dondon, came with a letter to show Toussaint— this letter was signed by Leclerc himself and it promised Christophe whatever he wanted if only he would catch Toussaint and sell him to Leclerc. That was strange, because Christophe had burned Le Cap, and only he and Toussaint were made outlaw by the paper Leclerc sent out after that. That paper did not say anything about the other generals. But Christophe had also a copy of his answer to show Toussaint, and it was full of angry words.
You propose to me, Citizen General, to furnish you the means to secure Toussaint Louverture: that would be an act of perfidy on my part, a betrayal, and this proposition, degrading as it is to me, is in my eyes a mark of the insuperable repugnance you must feel if you believe me insusceptible of the least sentiments of delicacy and honor. He is both my chief and my friend. Is friendship, Citizen General, compatible with such a monstrous cowardice?
Toussaint only nodded and stroked his jaw when he had seen these words of Christophe to Leclerc, and his eyes were looking a long way off. Maybe he was not as pleased with Christophe’s words as Christophe had expected. I wondered how he would be reading Boudet’s words now.
I asked Chancy if the French at Port-au-Prince had become so weak that maybe they did not want to fight Toussaint any more, but Chancy did not really think so. It was true that General Boudet was hurt at La Crête à Pierrot and had not yet recovered. Pamphile de Lacroix had come back from that fight with big holes hidden inside his lines where men who were dead now should have been marching. And Lamour Dérance, when he heard that Rigaud was arrested and sent back to France, had abandoned the blancs at Port-au-Prince and taken all his people into the mountains again. Even so, Chancy did not think that the blancs felt in much danger at Port-au-Prince, and Toussaint had lost a lot of our men in those fights too.
It was beginning to hurt my head to have to be wondering what Toussaint was going to do. Maybe he had not wanted anything more than to get Chancy free in return for Sabès and Gimont. Maybe he only kept these captured blanc soldiers so well because he hoped to get Saint-Jean back in return for them. Yet it seemed that even four hundred of them would not be worth so much. When they began to talk to our people, and especially to some of our foolish young girls who began to go to them at night, it seemed that they had been brought here almost as slaves were brought out of Guinée. They were not chained inside their ships, but they did not have good shoes or clothes or enough food and they had been told lies about where they were going and they were forced to fight.
No one but Toussaint knew for certain what he meant to do, and maybe even Toussaint was not sure. I, Riau, had changed my coat more than one time, the way my spirit moved me.
But in those days my spirit felt very far away, even though Quamba had helped me take the asson not so long