Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [75]
For that, they turned away from Santiago, and rode across the wide, grassy central plateau toward the French part of the island, but when they came near to Saint Raphael they met streams of people running out of the town with a story that the General Rochambeau was coming with a French army that would make them slaves. Those people were running toward Dondon, or to Grande Rivière where Sans-Souci was fighting. No one knew where Toussaint had gone, or where his other armies were to be found. It was plain enough to Guiaou and Guerrier that they did not want to be caught up in the current of these fugitives, and Guiaou knew another route, through the mountains to Gonaives on the western coast, by way of the steep and narrow Ravine à Couleuvre.
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Ogûn-O... Roi des Anges . . . this was the song that sang in my head as we rode west from Point Samana, but I, Riau, did not let the words come aloud out of my mouth. Riau held his mouth closed tight, and rode with his body springing straight up from the saddle like a palm trunk rooted in the spine of the horse, eyes fixed straight between the shoulders of Major Maillart, who was leading our way down to Port-au-Prince. Everything was silence all around us except for birdsong and the insects in the grass, but the song rang inside my head from one wall to the other.
Ogûn-O... Djab-la di l’ap manjé moin, si sa vré . . .
And I, Riau, I knew what the letter riding in Maillart’s pocket said, because Riau’s hand had written down the words that Toussaint spoke. Those words were shaped with a twisted tongue, so that there was nothing in the letter which would make Maillart, a blanc and a Frenchman, unhappy to be carrying it. But Toussaint had put another word directly into the head of Riau, without any paper to hold it still. Between this word and the words sealed into the paper Maillart carried in his coat, there was a crack where the devil came in.
Ogûn-O... the devil says he is going to eat me, is it true?
We rode, then, down the Valle de Consilanza, where the road ran south of the Cibao Mountains. It was Maillart who led our way, though Riau knew this country just as well. I had come over in the army of Toussaint to set free slaves of the Spanish blancs, and before that, long before, Riau had wandered in these mountains in the time of marronage.
Others of Toussaint’s guard rode with us, but before the end of the first day’s riding they turned from our road to bring Toussaint’s message to Clervaux at Santiago. When darkness came it was Maillart who knocked at the door of a Spanish cattle herdsman to ask for food and shelter for us two. Maillart was a tall man with a big mustache and the blanc skin of his face all burnt brick color by the sun. He had a voice that was usually loud and sounded happy. People liked him, both blanc and nèg, and Riau liked him very well too. In the night when we lay near each other on pallets put side by side on the floor, Maillart spoke in a lower voice, which would not wake the Spanish people sleeping in the loft. You are quiet tonight, Riau, and all day long you have been so quiet, my friend. I did not give any answer to this, but instead I made my breathing sound like sleep. Maillart had come over to Toussaint a very long time ago, and in the days and years that followed he had taught many black men all he knew about the blanc way of soldiering. Riau had learned very much from him. In those first days he was my captain. Yet I thought how easy it would be to shoot him in the spot between the shoulder blades where my eyes stopped when we were riding. It was for that I rode behind, for each mile of that journey.
. . . Djab-la di l’ap manjé moin . . .
Next day we rode still further south, around the Lake of Enriquillo. This road took us very near the mountains of