Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [74]
Now the new bayonet was fixed. Guerrier raised the musket and sighted it across the darkening surface of the pool. With a satisfied grunt he laid the weapon down beside him and felt a pocket of his trousers.
“I have a tinderbox,” he said, looking at Guiaou.
“We have no food to cook, after all.” Guiaou felt his stomach draw up as he said it. “Better not to show a light.”
The horses were tethered away in the pines, and Guiaou walked down and felt in the straw macoute strung to his saddle. He took out a brace of pistols and gave them to Guerrier. He’d harvested four pistols in all from the dead men around the cabin that day, and a purse of coins he had not yet examined.
“That is good,” Guerrier said. Holding the pistols near him, he lay down on a drift of pine needles where they would both sleep. “What will we do now?” he said.
“We must go to Paul Louverture if we can, and tell him the truth of the true letter face to face,” Guiaou said. “Because the French officer will be bringing him the lying letter, that is sure.”
In the next days they kept traveling toward the south coast, but indirectly, since they did not know the way, and it seemed safer to go by night, especially after the second day when they found a handbill nailed to a tree by a crossroads they’d come upon. The first glimpse of it made Guiaou cold in the belly because it looked so much like the warnings of runaways that had been posted during slavery time. The pictures at the top might have been any two men, and Guiaou could not read much of the text. Riau had taught him his letters in different camps where they were together, but he could only make out a few words of this, and it hurt his head to do that much. Still, after staring at the paper for a long time he seemed to understand that he and Guerrier were denounced as brigands and murderers, though not by their names, and that his scars were described well enough that he was likely to be recognized.
From then on he went somewhere to hide whenever Guerrier needed to go to ask directions. When he must lie hidden he would close his eyes and listen to the nearby breathing of his horse and picture the blind Spanish girl closing her hands on the empty air, with all her guide strings severed, limp, invisible at her feet. What if Guerrier did not return? But Guerrier did come back each time, though his directions were not usually clear or accurate.
In this way they finally reached the south coast, losing count of the days it had taken them to get there. In the darkness, while Guiaou hid himself, Guerrier approached the gate of one of the forts protecting Santo Domingo City and Ozama Bay. When he called up the name of Toussaint Louverture he was answered by a volley, one musket ball whining past his ear like an angry bee, and he came running back to tell Guiaou that the Spanish blancs and sang-mêlés had seized the fort and meant to hand it over to a large French army commanded by General Kerverseau.
At that, Guiaou was chilled all over. It plagued him to have abandoned the body of Couachy, though there had been no choice. And why had not Couachy done as Toussaint must have meant for him to do? He might have shown the false letter to the militia when they came and so won a safe passage with the true one. Or maybe it was Guiaou himself, his action, that had put them in the place where they could only run or fight. And maybe the ruse would have failed anyway. But Santo Domingo City would not be burned now. He had no more hope of reaching Paul Louverture if the French were already landing there, and he and Guerrier could not burn it all alone. But they could go back to Saint Raphael, as the true letter ordered Paul Louverture to do.
This journey too was difficult, indirect and slow. They had to steal their food from the fields by night. There were gold coins in the looted purse, but it was too dangerous to spend them. All the country this side of the border seemed to have turned in favor of the French army, and once when Guerrier risked a turn through