All Souls' Rising (49 page)

B
Y NIGHTFALL THE SKY HAD CLEARED COMPLETELY
and now the stars and a hangnail’s worth of moon appeared to mark the slopes of Morne du Cap on the horizon. When the darkness was complete the movement of many torches could be seen on the dark face of the mountain. Sonthonax and Laveaux were advancing cautiously toward the earthworks, under the cover of a few guards. As a sort of mental fidget, Sonthonax tried to count the lights by multiplying their rows, but they kept shifting, kept increasing, and soon he saw he could not number them.

“Would it be more
gens de couleur
coming in from the countryside?” he muttered to Laveaux.

“The blacks moving up from the plain, more like.”

“
Eh, mon Dieu
…”

“
Justement
,” Laveaux said grimly. “
On verra
…”

There were torches aplenty among their own party, as they had no wish at all to come upon the mulatto position unobserved. They were thirty yards out from the earthworks when someone fired a warning shot and a voice called out to know their business. Laveaux drew his breath deep into his belly and shouted back his name and that of Sonthonax and said that they were come to remedy the
misunderstanding
that had taken place that afternoon (Sonthonax having prompted him to this phrasing). After a couple of minutes a different voice hailed them from the earthworks and gave permission for them to approach.

Sonthonax and Laveaux clambered over the dirt ramparts, leaving their attendants to hold their horses. The damp curve of the wall was overgrown with vine and grasses, going back to jungle. Sonthonax slipped on the wet growth and fell to one knee; Laveaux reached a hand back to pull him up.

There were three soldiers of the Sixth who escorted them along the twisting declivity between the earth walls to a place where a small fire was burning. Choufleur and another colored officer named Villatte were just within the aureole of its light, seated on the carriages of the cannons that had been turned to cover the town. With them were two black men whom Sonthonax and Laveaux had never seen before, one dressed in a mismatched assemblage of military clothing, the other bare-chested and breech-clouted and ornamented like some chief fresh out of Africa.

“Please be seated,” Choufleur said, “
Bienvenu
…” Laveaux and Sonthonax took places on gun carriages of their own. Beside the fire an orderly was brewing coffee in a fired-clay pot. Choufleur snapped his fingers at him and he offered Sonthonax and Laveaux each a cup.

“There has been reckless impetuosity on both sides—” Sonthonax began.

“You mean,” said Choufleur, “that through this so-called
impetuosity
the royalist troops betrayed that conspiracy they had long been hatching to exterminate all
les citoyens du quatre Avril
.”

Sonthonax sniffed his coffee and turned to set it down, untasted, near the touchhole of the cannon he was sitting on. All his intelligencing during that evening had failed to discover just whose conspiracy was whose, nor could he even learn just who had sent that pack of ammunition into the ranks of the Sixth, or why.

“Perhaps there are some few officers of the
ancien régime
who have difficulty in accepting the changes with which the times present them,” Sonthonax said. “But I assure you that these matters will be expeditiously resolved and that you and your fellow officers will be accepted with no further difficulty.”

“Oh, that is without importance now,” Choufleur said. “I and my fellow officers, as you put it, have no longer the slightest interest in serving with the Regiment Le Cap.
Au contraire
, I believe that
all
of our men would absolutely decline to serve in any force into which the Regiment Le Cap was incorporated.”

Sonthonax swallowed dryly and looked toward Laveaux, who seemed to be enjoying his coffee; he frowned and shook his head just slightly, but Laveaux did not notice him. Sonthonax’s head had been filled with stories of poisoning since he arrived; he rather delectated on these tales, but though a republican he feared poison as much as any king.

“I see,” said Sonthonax. “You know of course that our Commission’s most important duty here is to maintain
le loi du quatre Avril
and so to protect the rights of all new citizens.”

“I have heard much lip service paid to that notion,” said Choufleur. “It strikes me that if it were sincere, then any factions who continue to resist the law would have been disposed of with less delay.”

“Don’t presume that you can dictate terms,” Sonthonax said. “You must remember that the Commission is the highest authority in this land.”

“Forgive my discourtesy,” Choufleur said. “I’ve failed to introduce my two compatriots. Pierrot”—he indicated the black man in the uniform, who was staring broodily into the coals of the fire without apparently following the conversation—“and Macaya. No doubt you will have heard their names.”

Pierrot did not acknowledge the introduction at all, but Macaya, when he heard his name pronounced, raised his head and grinned fixedly at the two Frenchmen. He was of a coppery color, compared to Pierrot’s glossy black, and had high cheekbones that seemed to pinch his eyes in slits. His hair had grown very long during the time of the rebellion, and it was propped up with little bones and stiffened with clay in a shape that resembled a peacock’s fan.

“Yes,” Sonthonax said. “I know these reputations.” Immediately he covered his mouth with his hand, out of fear his chin might tremble. He knew that Pierrot and Macaya were the chieftains of the mob of rebel slaves who swarmed in the nearest vicinity to Le Cap; these were far less organized than the men collected under Jean-François and Biassou, but their sheer numbers presented an almost overwhelming threat.

Villatte raised his head and also smiled, but neither he nor Choufleur seemed disposed to make any further remark. Sonthonax studied the neutral faces of Pierrot and Macaya for a moment more and decided to risk the assumption that they understood only Creole, not proper French.

“I had not known,” he said to Choufleur, “that men such as these were precisely your
compatriots
.”

“Ah, but we live in a time of rapidly shifting alliances,” Choufleur said. “Do we not? You will have observed this truth since you arrived here on our island…”

“
Vraiment
.” Sonthonax stood up. “Allow me a moment with my colonel.” He plucked at Laveaux’s sleeve and drew him away into the dark.

On the hill above them the lines of torches continued to snake and circle down. A drumming had begun just at the edge of earshot, thin and parched like a rustle in dry leaves or the first irritating tickle of a cough. Sonthonax turned in the direction of the town and rested his elbows on the breast-high barricade. The lights of Le Cap were interrupted by the mute curve of the barrel of a sixteen-pound cannon.

“How many are they, do you suppose?”

“Fifty thousand? A hundred thousand?” said Laveaux. “No one has had the opportunity to count.”

“And Pierrot and Macaya control them all.”

“
Control
is perhaps not the most exact term,” Laveaux said. “I expect that they can deliver them.”

“What is your estimation, then?”

“
Bon
,” said Laveaux. “They are
already
inside our defenses—assuming the mulattoes act in concert with them. With disciplined troops of the Sixth to stiffen the spine of this African horde, I have no doubt they could sweep us all into the sea in a matter of hours. Thus an end of French rule in the north and possibly in all of the colony.”

“Ah,” said Sonthonax. “It is fortunate, then, that
les gens de couleur
have no good cause to side with these insurgent blacks.”

Laveaux took off his hat and scratched the back of his head unconsciously. The tone of his civilian superior suggested that he was practicing his words for some other audience.

“No,” Sonthonax continued. “It is well that the fortunes of
les gens de couleur
are so closely allied with our own. For
we
, after all, have been pledged from the beginning to defend their rights as citizens; we recognize only two classes of men in Saint Domingue: the free and the slaves. Equality is irresistible! Whoever stands against it must be swept away.”

“Let us hope that they will yield to such persuasions,” said Laveaux.

“But it is not at all a matter of persuasion.” Sonthonax began leading Laveaux back toward the fire; he noticed now that the two rebel chieftains had withdrawn, or been dismissed, from the circle of light.

“
Courage
,” Sonthonax said. “We have only to
recall
for them the mutuality of our interests.”

O
N THE MORNING OF
D
ECEMBER
3, Sonthonax returned to Le Cap with the regiment of mulattoes at his back. The rebel blacks from the northern plain had fallen away beyond Morne du Cap, and no one spoke of the threat they had presented, but there was no further resistance to the integration of
les gens de couleur
into the French troops. Or if resistance did appear, it was sharply and suddenly put down.

Within days, Sonthonax had deported the Regiment Le Cap
en masse
. He set up a tribunal to purge “
les aristocrates de la peau
” from the civilian townspeople as well, and these also soon began to fill the holds of ships in the harbor bound for France. “It is hard for Frenchmen to rule by terror,” Sonthonax wrote to his new minister of marine, Mongé, “but one must so rule here at Sainte Domingue, where there are neither morals nor patriotism, neither love of France nor respect for her laws; where the ruling passions are egoism and pride; where the chain of despotism has weighed for a century on all classes of men from governor to slave. I have chastised; I have struck down: all the factions are in fear before me. And I shall continue to punish with the same severity whosoever shall trouble the public peace, whosoever shall dare deny the national will—especially the holy law of equality!”

During these same days, Laveaux was scurrying among the various military departments, taking such steps as he might to retain those officers whose services he was loath to lose. It was not long before he came to Captain Maillart, who sulked in his quarters in a fog of gloom, expecting his own deportation hourly.

“Now hear me out before you answer—” Laveaux took a bundle of paper from his coat and strummed it against his opposite palm. “I have here a commission transferring you to a regiment under Rochambeau…”

Maillart sat up in his chair with a start. He saw at once that this could be the salvaging of his career, for he did not doubt that in France all the officers of the Regiment Le Cap were likely to be ignominiously dismissed from service.

“Will I serve
under
colored officers?” Maillart said.

“Eventually, perhaps…” Laveaux said, then changed his mind. “Yes, undoubtedly you will. And you will do it honorably.”

Maillart lowered his eyes and chewed on a fingernail.

“Should you accept this new commission,” Laveaux said, “I have also papers for a six-week furlough—long overdue in your case. It will allow you time for reflection. Now I can scarce give you more than a day. You know the situation. But I trust you, Maillart. Never once have I doubted your loyalty. You are a good officer and I refuse to let all my good officers be swallowed up by these political disturbances. Tomorrow I must return for your decision.”

He turned and made to leave the room. Maillart stood up.

“I accept,” he blurted. “I accept the commission.”

Laveaux turned back and nodded. “Good,” he said. “I hoped you would.”

“With thanks,” Maillart said.

Laveaux smiled slightly, his hand upon the doorknob. He opened the door and put a foot through it.

“Colonel,” Maillart said. Laveaux turned back, raising an eyebrow.

“Have you not trusted me too easily?” Maillart said. “Is not your confidence too great?”

“I cannot say,” Laveaux said. “I don’t think so. I do not believe so. I think you will be moved to justify whatever confidence is reposed in you.” And he went out into the stony barracks yard before Maillart could think of another word to hold him back.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“W
ILL
I
TEACH YOU TO TURN YOUR COAT
?” Isabelle Cigny’s voice was low, light, a little husky; her small white teeth were near enough the captain’s ear to bite. He felt her breath against the lobe. It was not the first time she had brought him to the secret room, but it was still a novelty; his throat was yet so swollen with excitement that he could not answer her.

On a small table in the corner, an oil lamp glowed like a ruby within its red glass shade. In the swimming red light she shucked him out of his uniform tunic as easily as peeling a banana, and slid his trousers down the lean poles of his legs. Her deft fingers worked in the crisp black hair of his belly. In a moment she had laid him stiff and bare on a soft mound of carpets in the middle of the floor. Her skirts swung up and over him like a bell and then she settled, nestling, almost like a hen. He smiled at the thought. Then they were joined.

Her long skirts shrouded their point of union; her bare heels locked under his knees and drew them up. From the waist up, she was tidily arranged as for reception in her parlor, only for the mottled flush spreading across her deep décolletage and rising on her throat. Her eyes were half-lidded, there was a hint of hurry in her breathing. Captain Maillart felt a deep desire to work some change in her composure. With certain more assertive movements he was able to move her face into a pinch, a sort of frown, shadowed by the clouds of troubling thoughts, as it appeared. Her mouth twisted; her hand clawed through the fringes of a shawl spread where they lay, long nails driving back into her palm. The captain thought he was shouting at her, perhaps, he could not well hear. Waves of red light from the lamp washed over them like blood. She rode him to a gentler, rocking stroke, and her face gentled, mouth softening as her lips were parted in a sighing ring.

At the end, she slumped over him, holding herself up by her elbows. A strand of pinkish coral beads swung down toward his nose. He raised his head to kiss the cleft between her breasts, but smilingly she turned his chin away. From some distant recess of the house came the muted sound of a small child crying. Abruptly she swung her leg clear of him and sat upon a divan, pinning up a loose tendril at the back of her hair. Her skirts had fallen into perfect order around her when she stood. The captain sat up, a little dizzied by his movement. He was sticky and hollow as an empty, unwashed bowl. On either side of him lay one of a pair of beaded white satin slippers, improbably delicate and frail. He picked them up and, naked still, knelt down to slip them onto her feet. She smiled at him absently. Without, the street door opened and closed.

“You must hurry,” she said carelessly, and left him in the secret room.

It was the first word to pass her lips, after their congress. The door closed softly on her back. Maillart picked up his uniform coat—true enough it was of a different design, since he’d accepted the commission Laveaux had arranged for him. He dressed, and extinguished the lamp before leaving.

D
OCTOR
H
ÉBERT HAD NOT BEEN WAITING
long in the parlor when Madame Cigny came in, carrying Héloïse on her hip, with Robert at her heels, trailed by his black nurse. She offered him her free hand and he bowed and murmured over it. Robert picked up a gilt-stamped leather book from the sofa and flung it on the floor. With a crafty look around the room, he picked it up and made to throw it farther. The nurse, his slave, looked pained, but would not interfere with him before his mother. Pascal, slouching in an armchair, had preceded the doctor on this call, and had evidently been waiting for some time; he regarded the scene with a faintly ironic air of detachment.

“Well, stop him, someone.” Isabelle set down the smaller child. “Must I do everything myself?” she trilled, flashing her inconsequent smile. With a pretty movement, a flirt of her hem, she bent to pry the book from her son’s chubby fingers. Héloïse, meanwhile, pulled herself up by the edge of a low table, oversetting a glass of wine which splashed purply all over the front of her white dress.

“Well, take them out then,” Madame Cigny cooed at the nurse. “Change that dress—and see that it’s cleaned
immediately
.” Her face impassive, the black woman led the children out. As they left the room, Captain Maillart came in.

“Well, you are going then,” said Madame Cigny to the doctor. “Again you are going.” She looked at the captain. “So I am told.”

“Oh, I shall not be long from your side.” Maillart regarded her with something close to open astonishment. How could she have come to this room ahead of him? Fresh as she seemed, she must still be fragrant from their late encounter…He glanced at her slim hand—yes, the palm was still indented with faint nail marks. The captain noticed that Pascal had fixed on him a hostile stare. He grinned at him pleasantly, twirled his mustache, and sat down on the sofa.

“One may venture to hope that this sally will be more successful than your last,” said Isabelle, balancing herself winningly on the edge of a chair.

“After all,” the captain said serenely, “we did return to tell the tale.”

“But of course,” cried Madame Cigny. “A pity that the girl you were protecting could not share in that good fortune.”

The captain colored and emitted a cough.

“
Eh bien
, she was too good for this world, your Marguerite,” said Madame Cigny. “Or perhaps she was simply too stupid.” She turned smilingly upon the doctor. “And your mission will be the same as before?”

The doctor laughed. “To learn if on a third essay I may at last discover Ennery. I have hopes that my sister may have returned to Habitation Thibodet.”

“Your hopes are grounded?”

“
Chère Madame
, they are without a clear foundation,” said the doctor. “Like so many human hopes.”

T
HEY LEFT THE TOWN ON AN EARLY MORNING
, eight men well mounted and heavily armed: the doctor, Maillart, a lieutenant named Vaublanc who’d also survived the purge of the Regiment Le Cap, Arnaud, Grandmont, and three other Creole militiamen. The Creoles, since they were white, whiled away the first hours of the journey with bitter and sarcastic commentary on the rise to power of the mulattoes in the town, and the general ascendancy that
les gens de couleur
seemed to have obtained over Sonthonax and the Commission. The captain held himself aloof from this discussion, and the doctor too kept silence.

On the far slopes of Morne du Cap they dismounted to take their noon repast. They sat cross-legged on stones or stumps, under the cover of the jungle leaves, chewing on chicken legs and cold sweet potatoes, drinking a little red wine from the skins they carried with them. All during the morning it had been raining fitfully, but it was clearing now, though a few drops still pattered on the leaf canopy. A fringe of cottony gray cloud trailed away over the peaks of the southwestern range of mountains, and as the cloud mass parted some shafts of sun leaked through to gild the green of the trees.

Doctor Hébert wore the long duster in which he almost always rode; he’d also acquired a broad-brimmed hat, against the constant rain. Together the two outsized garments seemed to dwarf him. While the others were preparing to remount, he meticulously checked the priming of the two pistols he carried in his belt and of the rifled long gun which was fitted into a scabbard on his saddle skirt. Captain Maillart chuckled audibly to see his concentration. The doctor looked up, alert and inquisitive.

“What is it?”

“Nothing. Only—you seem so piratical, in that garb, with all your weaponry.”

The doctor shrugged, and looked at his shoes. “It’s only practical.”

“Hah,” said the captain. “What could you hit with it?”

“Whatever you like,” Arnaud said, from the far side of his horse, whose girth he’d been tightening. He spoke before the doctor could respond. “And that I’ll wager.”

“Oh, let it pass,” said Captain Maillart, a little irritably.

“But I am serious,” Arnaud said, coming around his horse’s head. “Throw up your hat.”

“
My
hat?” Captain Maillart said. “Throw up your own.”

“I will if
you
will fire at it,” Arnaud said. “I should be safe enough.” He grinned, and held up a gold piece between his thumb and forefinger. “This says our man of science will be the better marksman.”

Maillart reddened and dug into his pocket.

“Excellent,” said Arnaud. “I knew you for a sportsman. Bernard will hold the stakes.” He passed the coins to Grandmont, who rattled them in his loosely curled fingers, showing his brown snaggle teeth in a sort of smile. Two of the other militiamen came up to him to negotiate a side bet. Arnaud took off his hat and turned the brim through his thumb and forefinger.

“How, with a pistol?” the captain said irritably. “But it is absurd.”

“
Mais bien sûr
,” Arnaud said. “Hold your pistol down, just so. When I have thrown it, take your aim and shoot.” Arnaud stepped out of cover onto the trail, swinging his hat at knee level. Rain had begun lowering again, fine as mist, stippling the captain’s cheeks as he followed Arnaud into the open, holding his dragoon’s pistol barrel-down across his hip.

“
Vous êtes prêtes?
” Arnaud said.

The captain nodded. Arnaud flung his hat straight up above him and took a quick step back. The hat rotated smoothly, etched black against the dull overhanging mass of cloud. The captain tracked it, like a fowl, right hand braced over his left wrist. It did not fall so quickly as all that, and yet he knew that he would miss before he pulled the trigger.

Arnaud stepped briskly down the trail and retrieved the unharmed hat. “And now for the good doctor,” he said, returning.

Doctor Hébert stepped onto the trail, fidgeting with the flashpan of his pistol, his lips pursed. Sighing, the captain took off his cap and fingered the bill. He was facing the doctor, twenty paces up the slope of the trail, as if they were preparing for a duel.

“All right, Antoine?” the captain said.

The doctor stood with his pistol hanging down; the overlong sleeve of his dustcoat covered his fingers on the grip. He looked up anxiously.

“
Oui, commences
.”

The captain flung his cap aloft. It turned unevenly, because of the bill, with a sort of fluttering movement. But Maillart’s eye was on the doctor. He saw the other’s thickish wrist thrust out of the dustcoat sleeve, hand rock-steady on the pistol grip. The clouds parted overhead and a sudden flood of sunshine made the captain blink. He had just time to draw a breath while the powder burned in the flashpan, before the ball discharged. A gasp came from the men around him, then a shout of approbation. The captain’s hat dropped in a stunned curve through the mist-glittering sunshine and caught on a bush twenty-five yards down the gorge from the trail, above a twittering run-off stream.

The captain tapped his boot toe restively. “All this useless shooting may well attract the brigands.”

“Come, don’t be churlish,” Arnaud said, collecting his winnings from Grandmont. “It was a fair contest, was it not?”

“Of course,” the captain said. “Well shot.” He approached the doctor and shook his hand, squinting disbelievingly into his face as he tightened his grip. Then he stepped to the edge of the trail and stared glumly down to where his hat hung on the bush.

“I’ll get it for you,” the doctor said, embarrassed.

“No, no…” Maillart scrambled down.

The damp foliage wet him to the hip as he waded through it. The hat had been shot clean through, front to back. The char-rimmed hole at the front would just accommodate his forefinger; at the back, the felt had been blown out in a tripartite tear. The captain put his hat on and adjusted it. On the trail the other men were laughing at him, but in spite of this he grinned as he looked up. The doctor had not joined in the laughter, but stood recharging his pistol with an uncertain fastidiousness as if he’d seldom done that task before.

They mounted and rode on until dark and passed that night in an old provision ground a hundred yards above the trail. The planting was untended and had all been dug over by looters so they found no provender there excepting a half-rotted stalk of bananas sprung up from a runner shoot. They ate some dried meat they carried with them along with bananas roasted in their skins and afterward slept propped up on their saddles, always keeping two men on watch. In the morning they saddled their horses and went on.

The day was luminously clear, the sun bright and warm upon their backs once the mist had parted, so that they sweated in their rain gear. Ahead of them the involutions of the mountains, carpeted smoothly over with green jungle, went on and on like folds of a crumpled fabric. In the forenoon, as they passed in single file along an exposed and rocky outward bend of the trail, they came in view of an enormous throng of brigand blacks on the plain below—the rebels noticed them soon enough, and set up a great shout and stir, seeing their numbers were so few. A shiver ran over the doctor then, though the blacks were more than a mile distant down the mountain, and could not possibly overtake them on that difficult terrain.

In the afternoon they came upon flocks of birds and shot a great many and strung them up on their saddlebows. The fresh fowl assured them a warm welcome at the fort of the
cordon de l’ouest
which they attained before dark. That night they passed around the garrison’s fire, talking to the soldiers. The latest news from Ennery was that all continued peacefully there, though the news was not so recent. In the morning they rose and went on at first light.

In the midafternoon of that day Grandmont spotted carrion birds circling over a rocky defile of the mountains about a mile ahead. He pulled his horse abreast of the captain’s and requested a halt. Maillart resisted at first—vultures were no uncommon sight in these parts, these days—but something about Grandmont’s odd conviction finally swayed him.