Authors: Dewey Lambdin
“
Mais oui, M’sieur Capitaine … Le … pardon, seulement, vôtre
name I cannot say, ees
très difficile, n’est-ce pas
?” Mirabois laughed rather drolly as he explained. “Zey
refuse
place in ze ships,
m’sieur
! ’Ave been
born
here…’ave property
et
business interests,
comprend
? Hayti ees open to ze trade, so zey make …
accommodation
. Wis ze ozzer
blancs
’oo go away, Hayti ’ave need of zem, so…,” he said, shrugging in very Gallic fashion.
“Incredible,” was all that Lewrie could think to say.
“Ze
blancs
’oo stay, zey
know
z’ings we
pauvre Noirs
do not,” Mirabois said further. “ ’Ave ze education, ze dealing wis ze outside world,” he admitted, with another of those pearly-white smiles, then sobered quickly to look almost feral. “Until
we
learn zese z’ings, z’en…’oo knows.
Moi,
I desire
blanc
servants. Ha ha ha! I make
ze pauvre plaisanterie,
again,
n’est-ce pas
? Aw ha ha ha!”
* * *
Their escorts led them from the looted, charred shabbiness of the harbour front to wide streets leading inland to a mansion district of substantial houses, what Lewrie took for banks, and perhaps government buildings, all smoothly stuccoed and painted, once, in white and gay tropical pastels; all with even more substantial double doors and impressive sets of iron bars on the tall windows.
Most were shut tight against the victorious slave armies, their window shutters double-barred. Some had been nailed shut perhaps years before as their prosperous owners fled the colony. Some of those were now in the process of being torn open with crow-levers, or smashed open with heavy mauls, though it seemed an orderly process, not a looting by a jeering mob; the deeds were done by work-gangs or companies of Black troops, supervised by their officers.
Their escort halted in front of a pale yellow–painted government office building with blue doors and shutters, and Spanish-looking roof tiles. Soldiers in neat, clean uniforms stood guard over the entrance, though they made no moves to stop the stream of officers, runners, and idling gawkers, both military and civilian, who wandered in with pipes or
cigaros
fuming, chatting and pointing at their former masters’ splendours as gay as mag-pies.
Colonel Mirabois left them for a long time, standing in direct sunlight and steamy heat, before returning and gesturing them inside; across the high and spacious lobby, and up a long, curving flight of stairs to the upper floor, then into a receiving room large enough to accommodate a good-sized hunt ball of two hundred or more very energetic couples at a
contre-dance
.
“
Messieurs, mon Générals…,
” Colonel Mirabois loftily began as he introduced the British delegation, then made introductions for the splendidly uniformed men who stood behind a massive oak-and-marble desk.
“General Dessalines…!” Mirabois said as that worthy glared at them, a big, tough, brutal-looking man.
“Illiterate, I heard,” Lewrie whispered to Bligh and Barré.
“General Christophe…!”
“Once a British slave, brought here. Hotel waiter here in Cap François,” Lewrie further whispered. “Speaks English.” Christophe was not as big as the rest, and didn’t look quite as threatening.
“General Clairveaux…!” Mirabois said of a solid Mulatto man.
“Betrayal’s his meat an’ drink,” Lewrie related. “Play any side ’gainst the other.”
Captain Barré turned his head slightly to look at Lewrie, with an eyebrow up; the sort of look one gave to a talking dog.
Damme!
Lewrie thought;
I must’ve picked up more than I
thought
I had, from the last time I was here. Useful insights … gossip!
After that, Lewrie stood aside, having no role to play as Bligh presented his formal written proposal from Commodore Loring. Colonel Mirabois took it and handed it to General Dessalines, which was fruitless, since he
was
illiterate, a former field slave. Grudgingly, that worthy had to pass it to either Christophe or the better-educated General Clairveaux, glowering even darker and fiercer, first at the British delegation which had put him in that embarrassment, then at his two “compatriots,” who, most-likely, were scheming to become the supreme leader of their new nation.
“Clairveaux’s a schemer?” Barré muttered from the corner of his mouth, barely moving his lips.
“Supposedly loyal to France and Sonthonax when
he
was here, then Rigaud and his Mulattoes down south, then L’Ouverture, and the Spanish? Slippery as an eel,” Lewrie whispered back. “Might’ve backed LeClerc, ’fore he died of Yellow Jack.”
“You puny, lying White bastards!” General Christophe barked angrily after he’d read the letter and heard Bligh out. “Go back to Europe, the rest of the Indies, and
slaughter
each other! But do not dare to dabble in Hayti’s affairs any longer. Damn
all
you British, but if not for your presence, the French would
already
be gone!”
That was shouted in English; Christophe turned to his compatriots, Dessalines and Clairveaux, and repeated himself in rapid, slurred French, wind-milling his arms and going so far as to spit on the floor, and pound a fist on the marble table top so hard that he made it jump, massive and heavy as it was; about the size of a jolly-boat, to Lewrie’s lights.
General Dessalines rumbled out an equal flood of bile in a deep
basso
, glaring at the trio of British officers and gripping the hilt of his elegant sword so hard that his dark fingers changed colour. Clairveaux, not to be outdone, barked out his own flood of threats.
Not exactly Nelson’s “band o’ brothers,” are they?
Lewrie told himself. He found it amusing … until the roars for “slaughter” and “blood bath” reached the ears of the many revolutionaries beyond those double doors, and Lewrie heard a blood-chilling chant he hadn’t heard in years.
Eh! Eh! Bomba! Heu! Heu!
Canga bafio té! Canga mouné de lé!
Canga do ki la! Canga li!
“Sound in good spirits,” Captain Barré commented, turning about to cock an ear, with a confident smile (false, most-like given their hosts’ attitude).
“It means ‘We swear to destroy all the Whites and all that they possess; let us die rather than fail to keep this vow,’ ” Lewrie nervously translated in a low mutter. “This is gettin’ serious, sir.”
“
Mon Général,
Dessalines, ’e say,
messieurs,
z’at you British are ze
so
despicable, ze grasping beasts, as bad as ze French!” Mirabois translated, looking a tad nervous himself. “You kill-ed z’ousands of
nôtre pauvre
soldiers, came to Saint Domingue to conquer and enslave! E’ say ’e
despise
all of you, and v’ish
every
White devil to die …
seulement
…’e also say if Rochambeau surrender to you and leave ze harbour tomorrow, ’e will not fire on z’eir ships. Z’ey stay
une
hour longer, ’e
will
fire upon z’em, and burn z’em all to Hades. ’E agree wiz
vôtre
Commodore Loring in z’iz. You ’ave ’ees word of
honnour.
’E say
vôtre
Commodore mus’ be satisfy-ed vis z’at, not ze correspondent letter.
Maintenant,
you go! I see you to ze port in safety, or pay v’is my life.
Vite, vite!
Go!”
Captain Bligh opened his mouth as if to say something further, but clapped it shut as Colonel Mirabois began urgent shoving-herding motions, backing them ignominously towards the doors, and looking back over his shoulder to see if any of the bile the British had engendered from the victorious generals would stick to
him
for bringing them.
In a trice, they were down the stairs, across the grand lobby, and out into the sunshine, with their escorting soldiers guarding them even closer with bayonet-mounted muskets held out to fence off and deter the chanting, fist-shaking,
weapon
-shaking mob. Picking up on their officers’ nervousness, and the hostile mood in the building they left behind, those soldiers set a wicked pace back to the quays and their waiting barge, forcing Bligh, Barré, and Lewrie to trot double-time.
* * *
Once the barge was shoved off and under oars, with a wee Union Jack in the bows, and a
large
white flag of truce stood up by the Midshipman in the stern-sheets, they finally got their breaths back, and broke out a small barrico of stale water from beneath the seat for the barge’s Coxswain. They took turns gulping from a battered pewter mug and swabbing their reddened faces; ruddy from being un-used to so much exertion after the restrictions of shipboard life, and the embarrassing manner of their departure. They had almost been
shoved
aboard the boat!
“Bit iffy there, for a moment,” Bligh commented.
“Be back in ten years,” Captain Barré breezily opined, now that he was in calmer takings. “Can you gentlemen imagine that those three jackanapes, or their other generals, Petion and Moise, can
really
run a country?” he scoffed. “More-like, it will be a decade of civil war between them, before the country is so devastated, and de-populated, that it will be ripe for the plucking.”
“We had hopes that the Americans’d beg t’be back in the fold, too, when we left in 1783,” Lewrie pointed out.
“Barbaric as are our American cousins, sir,” Captain Barré rejoined, “they don’t hold a candle to
those
savages back yonder. And, the Yankee Doodles are
White,
and civilised, after all.”
“Different kettle of fish,” Captain Bligh stuck in with a mirthless laugh. “I say … let us take a slant to starboard, and look over our future prizes … assuming General Rochambeau has a lick of sense.”
“Aye, sir,” their Midshipman in charge of the barge agreed, and the tiller was put over to angle their boat closer to the French ships.
“Indiamen, there, a brace of ’em. Don’t see any guns in their ports,” Lewrie pointed out. “That’un, though, she’s a two-decker, a Third Rate seventy-four. And,
still
armed.”
All the gun-ports on each beam of the 74 were hinged open for desperately needed ventilation, any wisp of a breeze that could sweep through both her over-crowded gun-decks to relieve the panting of the hundreds of pale faces pressed close to the openings. Those people had no other place to go, for the weather decks, gangways, poops and forecastles, and quarterdecks of all the French vessels were already teeming with refugees, almost arseholes-to-elbows.
“
Lovely
pair of frigates, there,” Captain Bligh said with an avid note in his voice as they passed the two-decker. “
Chlorinde
… and
Surv … Surveillante,
” he read off their name-boards on the transoms. “As big as our frigates of the Fifth Rate … thirty-eights or better.”
The frigate closest to them had her single row of gun-ports open, too, with children and teenagers sitting on the barrels of her guns to be close to the fresher air, and haloes of faces round every edge.
“Might be nigh a thousand people aboard this’un, alone, sirs,” Lewrie said with a grim shake of his head.
Were I a Frog, I’d be on-board one of ’em, too,
Lewrie thought;
Beats bein’ murdered all hollow!
“Be a shame, does Dessalines set them ablaze,” Captain Bligh told them, sounding sad. “Yon brace of frigates would fetch us fifteen or twenty thousand pounds each, perhaps thirty thousand for that Third Rate, and about the same for the Indiamen, each.”
“Head and Gun Money for all the sailors and soldiers captured, to boot,” Captain Barré pointed out.
“Well, perhaps but half that much, sir,” Lewrie told Bligh. “I think our Prize Courts would most-like steal half for themselves.”
“Oh, tosh!” Barré said with a chuckle. “They ain’t cut up from a drubbin’, and won’t need serious refits, like most French warships we’ve made prize. Even so … aye, it
would
be a pity, do those apes ashore burn them up.”