Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [425]
Arms, the writer must have meant; though he had not written out the word, it was plain enough. Maillart read on, silently. The drumming of the distant hammers ceased a moment, then resumed.
I ask you if it might not be possible to win over someone close to the Captain-General, so as to set D . . . free—he would be most useful to me in North America. And get the message to Gengembre that he must not leave Borgne, where the field hands must not return to work. Write to me at Habitation Najac. Signed TOUSSAINT LOUVERTURE
“I don’t recognize the hand,” Maillart said eventually. He was thinking: that D . . . would likely refer to Dommage, the commander who’d surrendered Jérémie and was now a prisoner at Le Cap.
Leclerc sniffed. “Toussaint is unlettered, as is well enough known. He has no hand—his missives are the work of others.”
But Toussaint was far from illiterate, as Maillart knew. On the contrary, he was widely and roundly read, though Leclerc was right that his correspondence was an amalgam of the styles of his several secretaries. This letter, roughly written and uncertainly, phonetically spelled, might actually be the product of Toussaint’s own hand—Toussaint deprived of his detachment of scribes. Or it might not. The signature looked much as it ought, with a curlicue of the final e returning to enclose the usual three dots below the name.
“I wonder,” Maillart said. “If there are so many whose interest is against Toussaint, might not this letter be a forgery?”
“One might take you for one of his partisans still,” said Leclerc.
“Not at all,” Maillart said. “But surely, you must consider that any action against Toussaint would provoke all manner of popular disturbances.”
“Of the sort that plague us even now, Major—the sort which Toussaint is covertly encouraging.” Leclerc flicked the edge of the letter with the nail of his forefinger, then slid it across the table to Captain Daspir.
“Besides, another letter has been intercepted,” Leclerc went on. Daspir looked up from the wrinkled sheet that had been passed to him.
“In the second letter,” Leclerc said acidly, “Toussaint desires the citizen Fontaine to inform him how frequently the death carts go to La Fossette.”
Maillart kept silent. In these last weeks, Le Cap had become a charnel house. Each night more bodies were stacked at the gates of the barracks and hospitals to be carted to the cemetery at dawn.
“I will speak to Doctor Hébert today,” he said. “If it is your order.”
Leclerc inclined his head, and Maillart rose from his seat. Daspir followed him, blinking, into the brilliant sunlight of the Government courtyard. Maillart turned to face the captain before he took his leave, though he was not quite sure what he wanted to say.
“There is a rumor that Leclerc’s secret program, or that of the First Consul, is to arrest and deport all of the black officers one by one.”
Daspir’s eyes were steady on Maillart. There was sometimes a hardness in his eyes which the major would not have expected from the concupiscent contours of his face. The contrast would appeal to Isabelle, he thought.
“If so,” said Daspir, “I have not been privy to it. For I was assigned at the beginning to escort Toussaint’s sons. Quite likely the details of the First Consul’s strategy were not opened either to me or my comrades in that duty. The reasons are obvious, I think.”
“Fair enough,” Maillart said. There was something more he might have added, but he could not articulate it. He offered Daspir his hand and, after a barely noticeable hesitation, the captain took it.
As he went off in search of the doctor, Maillart found himself thinking of Major O’Farrel, an Irish mercenary of the Regiment du Cap, who had at one time claimed a considerable share of Isabelle Cigny’s affection. Maillart would have fought over her once. It seemed a long time ago. O’Farrel had laughed him off, though in a friendly manner. He had made Maillart see