Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [96]
Suddenly weary, Daspir slipped down from his horse. His legs went rubbery when they struck the ground and he caught a stirrup leather for support. Unbelievingly, he squinted at the declining angle of the sun. Almost the whole day had passed in this skirmishing, though to him it had seemed no more than an hour.
Leclerc would never reach Le Cap by nightfall, Daspir realized now. He took off his hat, rubbed the felt, and traced the edge of the bullet hole with one finger. The reddening sun was dropping toward the ridge of Morne du Cap, and east of the mountain the smoke that came boiling up from where the town itself must have been was thick and black as tar.
On the deck of La Vertu the mulatto leaders pressed against the rail, listening to the cannonade that had begun as soon as L’Aiguille was fired on from Fort Picolet. In the space of an hour or even less, all response from the fort had ceased. Rigaud looked to see any sign of a movement of retreat from Picolet, but darkness had settled in to cover everything. An ominous orange glow increased beyond the headland.
The flagship L’Océan weighed anchor and sailed for the harbor’s mouth; La Vertu and the other vessels followed. Their entry was slow; since the channel markers had been taken away the day before, Admiral Villaret-Joyeuse was obliged to send a small boat out to take soundings in advance of the deep-draught warships. Gradually the men on the deck of La Vertu coasted into full view of the burning town.
Villatte, who’d served as commander of Le Cap during the time of greatest mulatto ascendancy there, stared numbly out at the fire. Rigaud studied his face, which seemed bloodless and drawn in the fierce firelight. He gave Villatte a slap on the shoulder. “Don’t trouble yourself,” he said. “It has all been burned and rebuilt before. And of a certainty, we shall not be sent to Madagascar now.”
Captain Cyprien, meanwhile, was free to pace the deck of L’Océan, as the flagship meandered after the sounding boat. He stared moodily out at the conflagration. Madame Leclerc had gone below. The reduction of Fort Picolet had excited her, and even the first sight of the burning town had been something of a thrill at first, but as it sank in that the Jewel of the Antilles would surely be reduced to a heap of cinders before she ever set her satin slipper on the quai, the expression of her small features shifted from amazement to petulance.
Pauline had retired in a very bad humor, and Cyprien felt quite sufficiently morose himself. Since he’d come aboard the flagship, the other staff officers had been quizzing him about the pleasures of Le Cap, where he’d been posted . . . years before, during the not especially successful mission of General Hédouville. Cyprien had had a good deal to report about the voluptuous joys of the town, wine and song and especially women . . . those extraordinarily beautiful and remarkably skilled colored courtesans who’d been so readily available to the officers of Hédouville’s suite. But tonight no one approached him. The town was nothing but a bonfire. Even at half a mile’s distance it seemed he could feel the heat of the blaze full on his face.
It would be hard duty once they got ashore. That much seemed plain. Clearly, Leclerc’s encircling maneuver had fallen well short of its goal. Where was Daspir now, Cyprien wondered, and what might have become of Guizot, with Rochambeau at Fort Liberté?
On shore a powder depot went up like a volcano, hurling chunks of masonry and boulders into the night sky. A sighing moan of awestruck response could be heard all across the decks of L’Océan and even, Cyprien thought, from one ship to the next. He turned in the direction of the Jean-Jacques. If Placide and Isaac had stayed on deck to see the spectacle,