Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [385]
Bienvenu had reason to wish Arnaud dead, because in that time Arnaud was known as the cruelest of slave masters. Maybe I was wrong to tease Bienvenu about it. The woman took our gourds away and began to wash them from a jar of rainwater, singing softly to herself as she washed. I would have liked to stay near the softness of that song, but I went away to sleep in another place so Bienvenu could be alone with the woman.
The next day Christophe rode out of Marmelade, with most of the men who had come with him. They rode out the same way they had come the day before, along the road to Dondon. Toussaint had ordered Christophe back to the Cordon du Nord, and ordered him not to do any more talking with Leclerc.
By noon that day Guiaou had come back from Ennery again. Merbillay sent with him a basket of the small, sweet rose-colored mangoes of Ennery, and these Guiaou shared with Riau. In the hottest part of the day we slept in the shade of the ledge where Bienvenu was camped. Then late in the afternoon Placide came to wake us. Riau and Guiaou were ordered to go with Placide and Toussaint out on the road toward Dondon.
I never knew what was Toussaint’s purpose in going on that road that day, though later I thought that maybe he already knew what was coming to meet him there. Sometimes he rode out with Placide to teach him things about the country and his way of moving through it and of using it to fight the blancs, and sometimes he would bring Riau into that talk. But today Toussaint sent Riau and Guiaou ten horse lengths ahead of him, while two other guardsmen in their silver helmets rode at the same distance behind. With Toussaint and Placide were Chancy and Charles Belair, but we were too far apart from them to hear any of their words.
The time of the heavy rains was not yet come, but it was going to rain again that day in Marmelade. Gray clouds sank over the tops of the mornes to the northeast, and Guiaou and I looked at each other because we could both smell the rain on the wind. Then Guiaou held up one finger.
“Listen,” he said.
I turned my ears up the road, but I heard nothing. We had stopped before a bend where the road turned to follow the curve of the morne we were climbing. Behind us, Toussaint and the others had stopped. They were passing a spyglass among them and pointing to something down in the ravine we could not see.
“Kouté,” Guiaou said again. Listen.
I thought I heard the wheezing of the horse before I heard the hoofbeats, but before I had well understood either sound the rider rushed around the bend, so fast that our two horses were frightened, and Guiaou’s horse almost went over the edge into the ravine. Guiaou sawed on the reins to bring his horse back, and his lips and the edges of the scars on his face turned gray. The rider pulled his horse to a stop just before it knocked into our horses. Its split hooves knocked small stones into the ravine. When the horse hung down its head, strings of white slobber hung out of its mouth, and mixed with it were threads of blood. I saw he had killed this horse with hard riding. It made my stomach tight to see it.
“Where do you come from?” Guiaou said. He still could not stop his horse from dancing. He was holding the reins too tight.
“Sans-Souci,” the rider said, breathless. “I have a message—where is Toussaint?”
But by then Toussaint had already come up. Behind him, Placide’s face showed