Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [410]
Leclerc had lunched aboard ship with the Vice-Admiral Magon; it was cooler there, and the fresh harbor breeze relieved the fevers that still plagued him. Also, this situation gave him respite from Pauline’s plaintive interruptions. She was ever more discontent with the noise and dust of Le Cap under reconstruction and wished to return, if not to France, again to La Tortue (with of course a whole covey of lovers from the officer corps) or to Port-au-Prince, where she’d discovered a large plantation to her liking. And with Magon there was much to discuss: the dubious quality and insufficient quantity of supplies and reinforcement trickling out of France, the quite unreasonable demands of the Minister of Marine that several key vessels of Leclerc’s fleet be returned to the home port . . .
They had moved to the afterdeck, for their digestion and discussion, when the shots began exploding around the lower gate of the town. Once the cannons began to bark from the ships deeper in the harbor, Leclerc felt a stirring of alarm; the cannonade was in the style of a salute, but who was being so honored?
Then his eye fell on a rowboat pulling rapidly to their ship from the shore, though it went against the tide. An officer stood precariously in the bow, gesticulating; when the boat came astern, Leclerc recognized Captain Paltre. He was shouting with such fervor that spittle flew out of his mouth to mingle with the sea foam, but the wind carried most of his words away.
“What?” said Leclerc, cupping his ear as he leaned over the rail, and now he made out the phrase, Toussaint has come. At once he swung his legs over the rail and scrambled down a knotted rope, rocking the boat so deeply that Paltre had to crouch and clutch the gunwales to stop from being catapulted into the water. Captain Cyprien came clambering down after him.
“Toussaint has come,” Paltre repeated.
“To make his submission,” Leclerc said, with much more confidence than he felt. Only that morning he had suddenly decided that the rendezvous at Mornet was not secure enough for his liking and that he would send instead another emissary—Daspir, whom he would not object to losing.
“Yes, so they claim.” Paltre turned and pointed. “But he has come with two thousand horsemen, and the people are cheering him like a conqueror wherever he goes.”
“You do well to tell me.” Leclerc swallowed, and shouted up an order to Magon—that he should make the ships ready for an assault on the town if it were needed. Then he gestured to the oarsmen that they must return to the shore with all possible speed.
In the early morning Doctor Hébert had passed by Morne Calvaire to look in upon his sister, who lay still pale and feeble on her bed of boughs, though she did not look so moribund as before. Her bleeding had slowed, though not entirely stopped, the women told him. She had no strength and did not speak to him. How it would go with her was most uncertain, the doctor thought. Sophie had come with him on the morning visit, with Paul—they were both frequent visitors to the lakou anyway, but the infant Mireille had been kept away by Isabelle. Afterward the doctor had sent Sophie and Paul back to the Cigny house. Though Sophie had a whim to try her hand at nursing in the hospital, the doctor thought Elise would not have liked the risk, and besides, there was some party of pleasure being organized for the children with Dermide Leclerc and Saint-Jean Louverture.
Worry for Elise kept him from settling to any concentrated work. Though at first he’d been relieved by Tocquet’s absence, now he very much wished he’d return. Before she—he wouldn’t think that. But often he rose from whatever task and drifted to the hospital gate, looking through the ironwork as if he expected some arrival.
Midafternoon there was a tumult in the lower part of the town, punctured by salvoes of gunfire too orderly to be that of battle. Some parade exercise most likely, but what? At last he saw Captain Cyprien coming up toward the gate, his figure distorted