Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [403]
“I know it,” Toussaint said. Guiaou’s eyes turned to him. The yellow madras cloth made a tight line above his eyes. He stroked his jawbone as he spoke, as if the words pained him when they came out. “But Christophe has undone us. Now the Cordon of the North is lost, we must come to terms, if only for a time.”
“Christophe,” said Dessalines. “Christophe would never have dared to burn Le Cap without your order. And he would never have taken his head to give to the blancs at Le Cap without your order either. This I know.”
“Believe as you choose.” Toussaint’s voice was hard. With his next words, it softened slightly. “When the rivers have overflowed we will fight them again. When the rains and the fevers have come. But now—let us wait for them to weaken. These new soldiers who have just come in the ships make them too strong.”
“You are wrong,” Dessalines said. “We ought to hold out in the mountains until that time you talk about.” His left hand tightened still harder on the snuffbox. Guiaou was surprised his fingers did not bleed. “Never, never betray ourselves to them.”
“Give me that box,” Toussaint rapped out. For a moment, Dessalines looked purely astonished. Guiaou thought for a moment he would refuse. And then? He shifted his weight slightly, so that his hand swung a little toward the handle of his coutelas. At the edge of his eyes he felt Bienvenu watching him. But Dessalines relaxed and sent the box spinning across the table toward Toussaint.
“You hate tobacco,” Dessalines said.
“Yes,” said Toussaint. He left the box where it had stopped; he did not touch it. “Maybe you are afraid that the Captain-General will hold you to account for everyone you massacred at Saint Marc and Port-au-Prince and Petite Rivière.”
“I am not afraid of anything,” Dessalines said, and then, as his eyes dropped away from Toussaint’s, he added: “to do with the Captain-General.”
Toussaint nodded to Riau, who went on reading: As soon as the state of the troops commanded by Dessalines shall have reached me, I will make known my intentions as to the position they should occupy—
And Toussaint raised his hand. “He will not pursue you for anything that you have done until this day,” he said. “This I have arranged for you, though not without much trouble.”
To this Dessalines gave a terribly twisted smile. He turned his face toward the shuttered doorways.
“And also this—he swears, before the eyes of the Supreme Being, to respect the liberty of all people of Saint Domingue.”
“And you believe it,” Dessalines said.
“He has sworn it,” Toussaint said. But this time it was his eyes that skated away. He got up, soundlessly, and left the room. Placide and Monpoint rose and followed him. Riau and Guerrier and Guiaou remained. Dessalines was staring at the snuffbox; the lamplight gave it a coal-like glow. He seemed to constrict still more tightly upon himself.
“If I yield one hundred times,” he muttered, “I will betray them one hundred times.”
Then he too got up and left the room, pocketing the snuffbox as he passed.
Guiaou swallowed. No matter the water he had just drunk, his tongue was sticky and his throat dry. The departure of the generals did not lighten the weight he felt on his chest.
“Will you come with us?” Riau was speaking to Bienvenu. But Bienvenu, instead of answering, dropped himself into the chair where Dessalines had sat. He looked at the polished sheen of the tabletop intently, as if he could still see the reflection of Dessalines’s snuffbox there.
“If I give myself up one hundred times,” Bienvenu repeated, “I will betray them one hundred times.” He raised his head. The lamplight made his eyes look yellow.
“With Toussaint it is the same,” Riau told him. “Even if he did not say so.”
Now Guiaou was watching Riau, who seemed to draw the confidence Guiaou had lost up through the ground beneath the floor, through the soles of his booted feet. In his heart Guiaou believed that he himself owned more of Toussaint’s trust, but Riau, who had the secret of the words on paper, owned more of Toussaint