Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [83]
“Riau!” he said when he saw me. “Where do you come from!”
“From Toussaint,” I said. It was true, even if I had not come in a straight line.
“From Toussaint?” Dessalines said. “I have a dispatch from him already.”
“I have no letter,” I said. “Only the words which are in my head.” Then I told him what they were.
“Ah,” said Dessalines. “It is the same.” I was glad to see him put his snuffbox into his pocket then. He took out a letter and gave it me. The seal was cut and at the bottom of the paper I saw Toussaint’s name in his own writing, though the rest was copied in someone else’s hand. Truly these words were much the same as those Toussaint had given me.
. . . Do not forget that while waiting for the rainy season, which will relieve us of our enemies, our only recourse is destruction and fire. Remember that the earth we have bathed in our sweat must not furnishthe slightest nourishment to our enemies. Cut off the roads, have corpses and dead horses thrown into all the springs, have everything burned and annihilated, so that those who come to put us back into slavery will always find before them the image of the hell which they deserve.
It was sure that if Dessalines had been at Port-au-Prince, all the town would have been burned before the French could land out of their ships. Now it was too late for that, but this letter had been written since I left Toussaint, and since the French had landed too, and the letter said to Dessalines that he must wait for another chance to burn the town, when some of the French soldiers might stray out of it. For that, Dessalines was getting ready to move his men down to Croix des Bouquets where Lamartinière was. It was not sure if he would burn Saint Marc before he left, though it seemed the letter wished him to. I, Riau, did not wait to see, but rode out before light the next morning and before the men of Dessalines were moving. I did not want to move with this army myself, and I thought too that now I had found Dessalines, I might go again to look for Laplume, to finish the work Toussaint had given me.
9
Elise descended to the kitchen well before her usual hour, in the first cool light of dawn. Zabeth had prepared coffee; without a word, she poured. Cradling the warm cup in her hands, Elise walked out the kitchen door into the small enclosed garden. There were some first flower plantings there, bougainvillea and hibiscus, and the shoot of a yellow coconut palm which would grow in time to shade this spot. Her brother sat with his coffee near the palm shoot, fingering a week-old letter from Paul.
Elise sat down in a wicker chair near his. There was a rustic table for them to set their cups. This little garden was a work in progress. A work interrupted.
“Are you decided to come with us, or stay?”
At her voice the doctor glanced up, blinking. Elise saw him register the man’s attire she wore, but he made no comment on it.
“There is that wounded cane-cutter in the hospital, and if I remain for a day or so more, I may see him safe to Héricourt again . . .”
“A cane-cutter?” Elise sniffed her incredulity.
“The Cignys are determined not to leave,” the doctor said.
“Will you stay for Isabelle?” Elise dropped a teasing note into the question.
The doctor turned his head from her, his beard jutting up toward the mourning doves which were calling softly from the eaves of the house. Light flashed from the lenses of his spectacles. “When Maillart has gone off who knows where . . .”
“She does, after all, have her husband here.”
“Yes,” said the doctor. “But she will not have you.”
Elise nodded. The doctor’s hand lay on Paul’s letter; for a moment she covered it with hers. Then she got up and walked out through the garden gate.
At another time of estrangement from Tocquet, she’d worn these clothes as an incognito. They were his: the rough