Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [417]
At first light they rode to Marmelade, and there Toussaint dismissed his guard, as he had agreed with Leclerc to do. For a quarter-hour he spoke to the men, praising their courage and their devotion, and finally recommending them all to the way of peace. When he had done, he embraced all of the officers, and many of the men came to embrace him too, and some could not stop themselves from crying. Placide felt himself begin to weaken, from the exhaustion of the last day and night and the longer, deeper weariness of the whole campaign, but he kept his eyes dry, distracting himself by changing into civilian clothes and packing away his uniform and helmet. The red cloth Guiaou had given him he kept folded in the pocket of his shirt.
Guiaou and Guerrier had vanished with the main body of the guard, which was meant to report back to Leclerc at Le Cap, but Riau and Bienvenu were riding with them still, part of the much smaller escort that accompanied them from Marmelade on the ascent of Pilboreau, divested of their uniforms, though carrying their arms. Only Isaac still wore the dress uniform of Bonaparte’s gift, seemingly unaware of its incongruity.
On the height of Pilboreau, Dessalines awaited them, with a larger force than now rode with Toussaint. Both generals dismounted, to confer for half an hour’s time. Toussaint let Dessalines know that although Leclerc was not willing to give him a military post immediately (as he had done with Christophe and most of the other generals), Dessalines’s surrender had been accepted with Toussaint’s, and he need not expect to be pursued. If Dessalines did not seem wholly content with this news, he did not voice any objection to it either. In silence, he rode away with his men toward Marchand, where he was supposed to retire to Habitation Georges.
Toussaint was bound to follow the same road, as far as Ennery, where he’d elected to retire on his plantations, but he lingered a little while on Pilboreau, so as not to follow too closely on the heels of Dessalines. The market at the crossroads was uncharacteristically silent; indeed no trading was taking place, and the women did not even cry their wares. All were silent at their places, but gradually more and more people began to filter out of the foggy trees on either side of the road, men and women and children alike, until the crowd of onlookers numbered some hundreds.
At last, as Toussaint climbed to his horse, a woman in a spotted headcloth called to him.
“Papa Toussaint, have you abandoned us?”
Toussaint took off his hat and stared for a moment into the crown of it, then looked at the woman who had spoken, and swept his gaze over all the people who were there.
“No, my children,” he said finally. “Your brothers are still under arms, and the officers are at their posts.”
As they moved out, the crowd moved with them, but silently, and conserving a little distance—the people never came within hand’s reach. When Placide had passed this way in their first return to Ennery, he’d felt the boundaries between himself and all the others wash away, and the bitterness of the difference between that day and this one was so large he had to struggle to swallow it. The others all rode with their heads bowed low, and even Isaac looked a little uncertain—not quite so happy as he had been earlier, to be restored to the bosom of France.
Gradually the crowd fell away behind them. A few children ran behind the horses, till their mothers called them back. And always, at every bend of the descending road, appeared a couple of people, four or five or half a dozen, to watch solemnly after them as they rode deeper into solitude.
39
When Elise’s eyes opened, a shadow lay over her, hawk-beaked and dark. It blocked the brilliant light of the sun beyond the doorway, and so at first she was afraid, believing that the demon of that low black cross had come for her, but the words of Maman Maig’ sounded in her head, You are coming back