Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [444]
Then the two shadows parted as the door opened between them, and from the highest point of the vault he looked down to see Franz and Amiot walk in. Amiot called the name, Toussaint. When no reply came the commandant crossed the cell and brusquely shook the body slumped in the chair. The cold face skated against the wall, and the dangling arm jerked stiffly; Amiot recoiled as if he’d reached for a human hand and touched a snake instead.
The abandoned pot foamed a scum of oatmeal onto the fire. Franz stooped to move it from the heat, then knelt beside the chair. He lifted the dangling hand and held it for a moment between his, stroking the wrist for the absent pulse and looking up toward the top of the vault as if, perhaps, he had recognized something, but Toussaint was already gone.
Amiot held the wax stick to his tilted candle’s flame. A red blob dripped to the fold of his last letter, and he impressed it with the seal carved on his ring. Outside, the castle bell began to clang, but Amiot was too distracted to count the strokes. It was night and dark and bitter cold. The wax hardened quickly on the edges of the paper where he’d inscribed his request to be relieved of command of the Fort de Joux. Bonaparte’s trust was surely a valuable prize, but Amiot had begun to curse the aspect of fate that had made him a jailer.
At his left hand the other documents were signed and stamped and sealed as required. There was the report of the autopsy conducted by Doctor Gresset and the surgeon Pajot: A little mucus mixed with blood in the mouth and on the lips . . . Bloody swelling of the right lung and of the corresponding pleura. Mass of purulent matter in that organ. A small fatty polyp in the right ventricle of the heart, of which the rest was in its normal condition . . . In consequence we conclude that apoplexy and pleural pneumoniaare the causes of the death of Toussaint Louverture.
There too was a report of Toussaint’s effects which had been sold at auction in the town of Pontarlier; commencing with a suit of calmouk rayé, half-worn-out, sold for nine francs after several bids to the counselor Faivre, bookseller of Pontarlier and concluding with six blue quadrille kerchiefssold after several bids to the citizen Jenat, merchant of Pontarlier, for nine francs. Between, the other items auctioned consisted mostly of personal linen, with one riding coat and two religious tracts. In a separate document Amiot had reported other articles which had been confiscated and were in his own possession before Toussaint’s demise: one gold collar button, one watch with a gold case accompanied by a chain and a key of perfectly convincing imitation gold, one pair of silver spurs, one uniform in bad condition, decorated with a light gold braid, with yellow leather buttonsand two epaulettes, one used hat decorated in gold, and one case with a razor. These items remained in Amiot’s charge because he did not know what to do with them. Perhaps they might be returned to Toussaint’s survivors; there was supposed to be some family, though he didn’t know much about it and did not wish to know more.
To the Minister of Marine Amiot had reported the date and hour of Toussaint Louverture’s death, at eleven o’clock on the seventh of April; that he had sent a special messenger to notify the general in chief commanding the sixth military division of the event, and that he had caused Toussaint’s body to be buried by a priest of the commune by the old chapel of the Fort de Joux, where in former times soldiers of the garrison