Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [382]
Since La Crête à Pierrot there was too much of this kind of quarreling. I, Riau, had seen it with Toussaint in Marmelade not long before, when Dessalines tried to undo Charles Belair in the eyes of Toussaint. Dessalines told this story to Toussaint, that Charles Belair meant to go over to the French blanc soldiers to the south. With Dessalines, Charles Belair was holding a line in the Grand Cahos mountains, the same as Christophe held the Cordon du Nord, and if that line was broken then the French blanc soldiers could come from Port-au-Prince to reach Toussaint at Marmelade, and maybe even at further places, like Saint Raphael on the plateau. It was true that Charles Belair received a letter from the General Pamphile de Lacroix at Port-au-Prince, and for that, Dessalines said that Toussaint must order Charles Belair to be shot. But Charles Belair brought to Toussaint both the letter from Pamphile de Lacroix and a copy of the letter he had sent back. Pamphile de Lacroix asked Charles Belair to come over to the side of the blancs, just as Dessalines had said, but in his answer Charles Belair refused. It was the same as when Christophe had got a letter from Leclerc asking him to help trap Toussaint, but Christophe had answered that he would not do it.
Toussaint took Charles Belair out of the Grand Cahos then, and sent the Colonel Montauban to take his place beside Dessalines. People whispered that Toussaint was showing more favor to Charles Belair than to Dessalines, by keeping Charles Belair near him at Marmelade, and maybe it was so, or maybe Toussaint better trusted Dessalines to hold that cordon of the Grand Cahos, and wanted Charles Belair close under his eye because in truth he trusted him less. Still there were people beginning to whisper that Toussaint meant Charles Belair to be Governor-General after him.
That was if we drove out the blancs, or made some peace with them. Toussaint had his letters too, that came to him from the General Boudet, and everything that was in those letters was hidden behind Toussaint’s head.
“I think Christophe does not have much more heart to keep fighting the blancs,” Sans-Souci said. I could not see his eyes any more, but I felt them searching for me in the dark. “Christophe is tired of sleeping on the ground in these mountains.” Sans-Souci made another sound like a laugh. “He would like a soft bed in the Hôtel de la Couronne.”
I noticed Sans-Souci was not sleeping on the ground at all, and probably Christophe was not either. The Hôtel de la Couronne had been burned down a long time ago anyway, not by Christophe when Leclerc came, but in the fire of our first rising many years before. Maybe Sans-Souci wanted Riau to carry his idea of Christophe to Toussaint, to wound Christophe in Toussaint’s spirit.
“Maybe you are right,” I said. “Christophe is more used to the town than the mountains.”
Then a girl came out from the grand’case to take away the chicken plate and give us some cassava with guava paste. Sans-Souci stopped talking about Christophe then. When we had eaten the bread and guava, I drank a glass of clairin with Sans-Souci, and then I went down to be certain that my horse was well. There was a small pond where the horses were watered, and in the last light I saw bats fly low and skim across the water, moving faster than my eye could follow.
I went to the room in the grand’case where Sans-Souci had told me I could sleep. Some other men were there already, talking quietly in the dark. I did not start any talk with them, but lay down on an empty mat. My thoughts came