Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [384]
Kouté la libèté k’ap palé nan kè nou tou. Those words of Boukman sounded in my ears again while Toussaint read, but I did not know if I trusted the words of this blanc Leclerc so well. In some other place in my head I heard the words which Paul Lafrance had said to General Lacroix at Port-au-Prince, before I came back to Toussaint again. That seemed like a long time ago, but still those words were clear.
It looked like Toussaint was not well satisfied with the words Leclerc had sent. He stopped reading and dropped the letter on the table and spoke to Christophe in the same loud voice that reached all the other ears in the room.
“He may claim he is writing a law to safeguard our freedom,” Toussaint said. “But until that law is written and declared to France, whatever he claims means nothing.”
“Yes,” said Christophe, “Oui, mon général, of course you are right—but I believe the Captain-General is true to his word, for when I met with him at Haut du Cap, he let me go back to my men without hindrance, just as he promised there—”
Christophe was pointing to the letter on the table, but Toussaint had caught it up and crushed it in his hand. Toussaint was on his feet, and Christophe too, but Christophe was flung back away from the table as if the force of Toussaint’s words had pushed him.
“You met Leclerc? You dare to meet Leclerc without my order?”
I had not seen such a djab climb on top of Toussaint’s head since the day when he ordered Bouquart to step out of the line and shoot himself. But if he ordered the same to Christophe now, I thought that maybe Christophe would not obey. It looked like Toussaint was going to burn the letter in the candle flame, but then he stopped himself and let the ball of paper roll on the table. Then for the first time he seemed to know that others were there listening.
“Guards!” he shouted. “Clear out this room.”
I saw this order was for me, since Riau belonged to the honor guard now, so I turned and helped to herd the others out into the square. Some went away, but I stayed under the shelter of the balcony in front of the headquarters house, watching the rain pour down over the empty stones of the square. With so much noise of the rain I could hear nothing from inside, but Christophe stayed there for a long time with Toussaint.
When the rain had stopped I went looking for Guiaou, and found out he had gone down to Ennery, one or two days before. Instead of Guiaou I met Bienvenu, who had come up from the Cahos with a message that Dessalines had fever again and was resting at his house in Marchand, leaving the longer part of the Cahos line to the Colonel Montauban. It was a long time since I saw Bienvenu, before La Crête à Pierrot, and I was glad to see him now. He had a woman who was cooking callaloo, and gave me some of it in a gourd. We sat to eat in a place where an overhanging ledge of rock had kept the ground dry from the rain, at the edge of the road from Marmelade to Dondon, where many of our soldiers camped.
Bienvenu told me a lot of things I did not know about what happened at the fort of La Crête à Pierrot. He was glad to know from me that Doctor Hébert was still alive and had got safely into Le Cap. Bienvenu knew that Rochambeau had killed all our wounded men with the bayonet when the French blanc soldiers came into the fort at the end, so he thought maybe the doctor had been killed too. I had not known before that Bienvenu had put so much work into protecting the doctor’s life.
“I have more happiness for you,” I said. “Michel Arnaud is still alive too and safe in Le Cap with the doctor.”
“Is it so?” Bienvenu rubbed a place on the back of his head as if this word had made it ache or itch. “And the crazy one, his woman?”
“She may be crazy, but her spirit is too strong to let her die,” I said. “Maybe neither one of them will ever die.”
I was wrong in that idea, but I would not see it until later. Bienvenu kept rubbing