Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [42]
A rowboat bumped the hull on the starboard side, below where he stood; and a sailor ran over to lower a rope ladder for the messenger to climb: a youth of sixteen with a pimpled nose, the collar of his uniform coat rucked sideways. “New orders!” he piped, as he reached the deck. He shook out the scrolled paper in his left hand and looked down at it. “For the captains Guizot and Paltre. You are to rejoin your regiments.”
“Now?” Guizot said stupidly, with a thrill and a wobble in his belly.
“The boat is waiting,” the courier squeaked.
Guizot exchanged a quick glance with Daspir, then made for the hatchway. “Paltre!” he called into the dim, as he thumped his way down the ladder. “We’ve orders!”
Without a question, and in no particular haste, Paltre commenced gathering his belongings from his berth. Guizot began to stuff his own things into his pack. When he realized his hands were slightly trembling, he stopped and forced himself to breathe more deeply till they stilled. He resumed his packing more slowly, making sure of all his things. When he climbed back toward the deck, with Paltre and Cyprien following, he was outwardly calm, though the flutter in his stomach persisted.
Somehow he’d expected to enter the colony in the company of the more seasoned soldiers, Paltre and Cyprien. But now he’d be separated even from Paltre, who belonged to the command of General Boudet, while Guizot himself was billeted to General Rochambeau. They’d both been plucked from their ordinary postings to this duty of escorting Toussaint’s sons.
“Wait!” Daspir called to Paltre, who’d already swung a leg over the rail to the rope ladder. Daspir’s face had paled a little, Guizot saw; he too was startled by the change. Daspir beckoned the others in toward him. “Give me your hands.”
Paltre’s boot heel hit the deck, retracted from the ladder. At Daspir’s urging the four of them stacked their hands. The pimpled courier looked on curiously, while at a longer distance Placide and Isaac seemed also to have turned their way.
“We’ll keep our compact, gentlemen,” Daspir said excitedly, “though we be separated.” Daspir’s palm spread dampness over the top of Guizot’s knuckles. With relief he felt that his own palm was dry. It irritated him a little that he’d not thought of this reaffirmation.
“We’ll keep it still,” Daspir said and lowered his voice slightly. “It shall be one of us four who brings the old raghead in.”
Guizot restrained himself from looking toward Isaac and Placide, somewhere behind him.
“Well enough,” Paltre said. He seemed impatient with the exercise, which did indeed seem a little foolish, now it was not fortified by rum.
“And the winner shall have . . .” But Daspir seemed not to have thought this sentence through to a conclusion.
“His life,” Cyprien muttered.
“Hurrah!” Daspir shouted, tossing all their hands into the air with his own. A strange retort to Cyprien’s grim remark, but it did produce a surge of conviviality—all four of them pounding each other on the back and making loud promises of reunion.
Then they were over the side, descending. A deep roll of the Jean-Jacquessent Guizot in a sick swoop over open water, his pack and his heavy sword dragging him out toward a free fall, then slapped him back against the hull. His knuckles were bruised on the cords of the ladder, but he kept his grip, and a moment later had safely dropped beside Paltre, onto the boards of the gently rocking rowboat.
Vice-Admiral Magon sailed his squadron westward out of Samana Bay. The larger portion of the fleet, commanded by Admiral Villaret-Joyeuse, made for the open ocean, and soon its sails were lost to the sight of Magon’s ships,