Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [386]
“What is it?” Toussaint said, in his most gentle voice.
“I come from Sans-Souci,” the rider said. “Christophe—” He stopped for breath. This rider was almost as windbroken as his horse. Whenever I looked at that horse my stomach shrank tighter. I wanted to shoot it and push it into the ravine where I would not see it any more. There was nothing to do but shoot it, but I knew we must take it back to camp, because there were men there who had not tasted meat for many weeks.
“Christophe has given up to the blancs,” the rider said. “He has given up all his posts, from Dondon to Pont Français. Grande Coupe, Mornet, Grande Rivière . . .”
“Grande Rivière?” Toussaint said. “Where is Sans-Souci?”
“He got away to Cardinaux. Christophe would have killed him, but he got away,” the rider said. “He has still a few men with him. Perhaps two hundred.”
Toussaint made the sign of the cross with a small movement, as if he hoped no one would see. He held his two hands over his heart.
“What a misfortune,” he said slowly.
Toussaint was looking out across the ravine to all the clouds thickening in the sky. His hands lowered, and one of them reached under his coat to touch the string of small wooden skulls he always kept hanging from his belt. We heard the skulls clicking one against the other.
Then Toussaint turned to Placide, as if he would explain to him, but Placide had learned enough by then to know the meaning of what had happened. With all those posts in the hands of the blancs, there was nothing to protect Marmelade any more, or the passes to the Central Plateau. It was for nothing now that we had beaten the General Hardy at Dondon. Toussaint had made a lot of plans. When the rains flooded the Artibonite River, he meant for Dessalines to take back La Crête à Pierrot. Vernet was supposed to take back Gonaives and Toussaint himself would ride from Plaisance to Limbé. Then the blancs in the north would be cut off from the blancs in the south and Toussaint could beat them one by one. But now none of these things could happen. Sans-Souci might hang on in the mountains, but he would have to run after every fight. I remembered how well Sans-Souci had received Riau two days before, and I almost wished I had not left him.
Toussaint stood quietly, very calm, except for the clicking of the skull beads. Maybe his lips moved in some prayer to Jesus. I could not see what was behind his head, and if he was truly surprised by what had happened I never knew. Another day, when Toussaint rode down to Marchand to bring the news to Dessalines, Dessalines rose up in anger from his fever bed. Dessalines was one of very few who dared show his anger before Toussaint.
“I know him,” Dessalines said, when Toussaint told him what Christophe had done, “and he would never do this thing without your order.”
The day Sans-Souci’s rider came, we led the ruined horse down to the place where Bienvenu was camped. Bienvenu and Guiaou bled it, skinned it, boiled the brains, and roasted the meat of it on the boucan. I, Riau, I ate my share, though without pleasure. I needed strength for when Toussaint would call me to copy letters late into that night. And afterward I could not sleep, lying in the dark beside Guiaou, who in his trust of Toussaint always slept deeply. Words of the letters flew like bats among my thoughts. Maybe Christophe had betrayed Toussaint, as it appeared, as Toussaint wanted it to appear. Or maybe he gave Christophe a secret order, in the headquarters room behind the rain, to give in to the blancs while Sans-Souci kept on fighting them. That was much like a thing Toussaint would do, to work with both hands, to use one hand against the other. But I could not see his reason for it now. And it did seem that Toussaint really felt betrayed. I, Riau, I wrote for him until the candle wax ran down and hardened on the table, copying angry, bitter words to send Leclerc. The letter ended this way—Whatever might be the resources of the French