Chapter Twenty-Six
LéGER FéLICITé SONTHONAX stood on the afterdeck of the ship America, tight curls of his black hair whipping around his long, pale and anxious face. His co-commissioner Polverel was with him; Ailhaud was somewhere belowdecks, ill or indisposed. They were watching the light ship sent out in advance of the commissioners’ small fleet to assay conditions and attitudes in Saint Domingue—which ship had just lately returned and was standing a way off from them, tacking against the stiff wind that carried them all westward toward the colony.
They were lowering a boat from the smaller ship into the chop. Sonthonax guessed by his uniform that the officer scrambling awkwardly down the rope ladder was Lieutenant-Colonel Etienne Laveaux, though the distance was too far for his features to be legible. The sound of the boat knocking against the ship’s hull came to them hollowly across the rough water. The boat plunged and as Laveaux (it must have been he) stepped backward off the ladder he lost his balance and fell hard upon the seat of his trousers. They threw a despatch bag down to him from the ship; in leaning out to catch it, Laveaux almost fell out of the boat. Sonthonax’s stomach rolled. He glanced sidelong at the gray and balding Polverel, who did not seem so much perturbed.
Two sailors were laying into the oars. As the boat drew near, Sonthonax threw down the ladder with his own hands, shouldering aside the sailors of the America who’d have managed the affair. A burst of salt spray filmed over his face; he blinked away the sting and scarcely noticed it. It was Laveaux, indeed, coming up, swinging the despatch case by a strap. Sonthonax was squeezing his upper arm and slapping him on the shoulder with his left hand while clawing into the despatch bag with his right. A roll of paper uncurled and blew; Polverel, suddenly alert, moved to intercept it.
“De la patience,” he said to Sonthonax. “Come, we’ll go below. For shelter.” He gave a speaking look. “And for privacy…”
Sonthonax bit his lip and went after Polverel, despatch case gathered under one arm, drawing Laveaux along by the cuff of his uniform coat. They followed the older man toward the hatches.
In his cabin, Sonthonax pushed back from the small round table where the documents were spread, wedging his back against the bulkhead that straightened the curve of the ship’s outer hull. A lantern rocked with the ship’s motion, swinging a scythelike shadow over the papers and the three men’s faces, while a glass prism set in the deck above let in a little greenish daylight. Sonthonax was reading and simultaneously asking questions of Laveaux, then interrupting before the other could answer him.
It was all enthusiasm, Polverel understood. Each day of their two-month-long voyage, Sonthonax would array himself in the formal dress of his office—the tricolor sash and engraved gold medal (Civil Commissaires on one face, Nation, Law and the King on the reverse)—though in truth there was hardly anyone, in the middle of the Atlantic, for so much grandeur to impress. But Sonthonax had been, would have always been, a small provincial lawyer. The Revolution had dizzied him by shooting him so rapidly to his present height. He was just twenty-nine years old. Laveaux was even some few years his junior.
“Yes, I believe it is all sincere,” Laveaux was saying. “No, not sincere, but genuine. I mean—it is politic, it is only practical. Of course there is race prejudice. But they do accept the law of quatre Avril! At least, in practicality…after all it is their common cause against the rebel blacks…”
“Yes, of course,” Sonthonax said, half attending as he shuffled papers. “So far as it is in their interest…but when the elections must be held?”
Still, he was broadly smiling, thoroughly elated. Polverel knew him to be quick and canny, never mind his youth, or his occasional excesses. He shifted in his seat so as to be able to read over Sonthonax’s shoulder, a longish letter from Governor Blanchelande.
“In July, the white men even gave a dinner for les gens de couleur,” Laveaux was saying. “And shortly afterward the colored men returned the compliment…Of course they would not ordinarily mingle, but…”
“They do accept the law,” Sonthonax said. “In time, will they accept the spirit of the law?” He chewed his fingernail.
Polverel leaned toward Blanchelande’s despatch. He could not greatly trust the author, long suspected of royalist dispositions, but still the news seemed good. Of the four thousand French troops already in the colony, nearly half were in hospital or otherwise incapacitated, but that might be a blessing in disguise, for the commissioners could better depend on the loyalty of the six thousand soldiers they’d brought with their own fleet. By Blanchelande’s account, this force would be warmly welcomed, and he urged that they be put into the field against the insurgent blacks as soon as possible. If the civil war between the whites and mulattoes had truly been resolved, there might be real hope of suppressing the slave insurrection once for all…
Polverel covered a belch with his hand and stretched out his legs beneath the table. He too had been troubled by doubts and anxieties which he took more care than his younger colleague to conceal. On April 4, the king had made law a decree of the French National Assembly that henceforth all free mulattoes of Saint Domingue regardless of birth should enjoy equal rights with the whites of the colony. The mission of the second Civil Commission was to enforce this law and to hold new elections in which the newly enfranchised gens de couleur could participate. It was a worthy work, certainly, but they had all misdoubted whether or not they might be received with cannon fire, discover themselves at open war with the colonists when they arrived.
So Polverel was also warm with relief. He watched Sonthonax, who had calmed himself now, and was reading more slowly, silently, ignoring the continuing stream of Laveaux’s speculations. It might be that the news was too good to be entirely true. Sonthonax would be trying to read between the lines…
…and leave the colonists, perhaps, to do the same. On September 18, the commissioners debarked at Cap Fran?ais, following a mild controversy with the expedition’s military commander, the elderly General Desparbés, about the proper movement of the troops. But there was no resistance, no immediate sign that resistance would come. The attitude of the colonists seemed uneasy but submissive, as Daugy, president of the Colonial Assembly, described it:
“Gentlemen, we are in your hands as a jar of clay, which you may break at will. This is, then, perhaps the last moment vouchsafed us to warn you of a vital truth ill understood by your predecessors. This truth, already recognized by the Constituent Assembly in its closing moments, is that there can be no agriculture in Saint Domingue without slavery, that five hundred thousand savages cannot be brought from the coast of Africa to enter this country as French citizens; lastly, that their existence here as free citizens would be physically incompatible with the coexistence of our European brethren.”
Sonthonax, resplendent in his sash and its gold medal, was immediately on his feet. His words were persuasive, perhaps even to himself; Polverel (who’d had previous opportunity to study his oratorical performances) suspected that the momentum of his discourse might sometimes carry him where he had not meant to go…
“We declare, in the presence of the Supreme Being, in the name of the mother country, before the people and amid its present representatives, that from this time forth we recognize but two classes of men in Sainte Domingue—the free, without distinction of color, and the slaves.” He paused, significantly; the medallion winked in the area of his navel. “We declare that to the Colonial Assemblies alone belongs the right to pronounce upon the fate of the slaves. We declare that slavery is necessary to the cultivation and prosperity of the colonies; that it is neither in the principles nor the will of the National Assembly of France to touch these prerogatives of the colonists; and that if the Assembly should ever be so far misled as to provoke their abolition, we swear to oppose such action with all our power.” He drew in a large breath and stretched out his arms. “Such are our principles. Such are those given us by the National Assembly and the king. We will die, if need be, that they may triumph!”
A flutter of applause ran round the chamber when he had thus concluded; it grew stronger as the import of his remarks began to sink in. There was even an isolated cheer. Michel Arnaud, however, was sitting on his hands. He turned partway toward Doctor Hébert, who’d also come along as a spectator, and muttered out of the side of his mouth.
“See how winningly he lies,” Arnaud said, “this godless Jacobin—one shade of a nigger is as good as another to him, I’ll wager.” He caught himself short and inspected the doctor for reaction, but the other’s face was studiously blank.
WHEN THE INSTALLATION of the new commissioners had been perfected, Doctor Hébert returned—home, as he might come to think of it at last. Nanon’s two rooms near the Place d’Armes had been restored and refurnished, the doctor drawing on the Thibodet accounts at the house of Bourgois to cover the expense. It was better so. Since the declaration of the law of quatre Avril, Nanon’s situation had become more strained than ever chez Cigny. Curious how the law had changed things. Such casual friendliness as might sometimes (rarely) have obtained between whites and les gens de couleur was fairly stifled by it. All became a matter of rule—open hostilities were repressed, but so was any genuine goodwill. In this climate, the charity of Isabelle Cigny had withered, shriveled in the dry heat of other aspects of her character. No doubt there had been additional pressure from her husband too. Doctor Hébert understood as well that the presence of the infant did nothing to ease matters, although of course he had never gone so far as to acknowledge that the child was his.
It was twilight, and the air was cool and damp when he turned into the last street. The forked shadow of a bird flashed over him; he looked up, but it was gone. A pitch apple tree bloomed in the dooryard, a ring of dusty red circling the round white petals of the flower. Nanon had scratched the child’s name—Paul—and his birthdate on one of the waxy green leaves; the impression had remained legible these last six months. The doctor blinked at the token. He took the key from his watch chain, unlocked the door and went in.
A gray cat rose from the rug over the boards, arched his back and rubbed against his leg. The doctor had acquired it to replace the dead monkey; he’d suggested another monkey, but Nanon said it would not do. He bent and ran his fingers over the cat’s fur, then walked to the cabinet and poured himself a glass of red wine from the counter. On the cabinet’s highest shelf were two loaded pistols in a case; he took them down and checked their priming and replaced them, then did the same with the long octagon-barreled rifle that hung over the door. There had been no more insurgencies from the petit blancs of the town since the riots of winter and spring, for Colonel Cambefort and the Regiment Le Cap were keeping them under virtual martial law, but still the doctor had thought well to arm himself, and had even bullied Nanon into learning the use of the weapons.
The girl Paulette was playing with the baby in a corner; she would raise him up, his plump hands wrapped around her fingers, but each time she did it he’d let go and thump back solidly onto his bottom. Each time it happened, the baby gave a sort of soundless laugh, his mouth working itself into a perfect round O of pleasure.
“Paul et Paulette,” the doctor grinned, and the priest’s daughter looked up with a smile. He tilted his glass, rolling the red fluid around the transparent bell, then moved to a table and lit a lamp, for the dark had now shut down outside the closing door.
“Et maman?” he said.
Paulette pointed to the back room, and the doctor carried his wineglass through the curtain. Nanon was stretched on the bed, propped up on cushions, a rug spread over her bare feet. The doctor smiled at her and sat on the edge of the bed. She accepted the glass of wine from his hand, took a sip and returned his smile. Doctor Hébert scraped off his shoes and swung his legs up onto the bed beside her.
They lay in the darkening room and talked for a time, sharing the one glass between them. She told him of all the child had done that day, while he rehearsed for her the events he’d witnessed in the town. Presently Paulette brought in the baby, and Nanon took him to her breast. As she went, Paulette paused to light a candle.
The child nursed with a snuffling sound, and soon enough had fallen asleep. The doctor picked him up and held him to his shirt; the baby molded there like warm, soft, living clay. His lashes were long, and his loose cheek mashed against the doctor’s buttons, taking their imprint, while his mouth pulled partly open. The doctor held him for a few rapt minutes, automatically rocking from foot to foot. Nanon got up, closing her bodice, put on slippers and went out to see to the meal. The doctor laid the child in his cradle and came to table when she called for him.
They dined on the legs of the big grenouille—mountain chicken as they called it here. There was rice cooked with peppers and a dish of greens, afterward a bowl of chopped fruit and some flat sweet cakes. Fontelle had helped in the preparation. She and her children had found lodging in a building across the courtyard and the doctor gave them work and money as he could manage it.
He and Nanon took no coffee and went early to bed. For the look of the thing the doctor had taken rooms for himself in a building nearby, but he spent so little time there he had scarcely troubled himself to furnish them. One chamber was set up as a crude medical laboratory; he received his mail there, and that was all.
In the middle of the night he came alive to the sound of hoarse screaming and the grip of hands restraining him. He shook himself upright gasping and, on discovering where he was, he recognized the hands were Nanon’s, her voice softly calling him, stop, wake up, you are dreaming…He let his breath out in a whistling sigh.
“What was it?” Nanon said. “Was it the camps?”
“Nothing.” The doctor got out of bed, wiping a slick of sweat from his forehead. “I have forgotten.” In the dark, he padded toward the baby’s cradle and crouched beside it, his head cocked till he heard the light sound of his breathing, a series of the clicks and gurgles the child would make in sleep…
His knees cracked as he stood back up. Nanon was still sitting up in the bed; her face turned in his direction; he felt this though it was too dark to see.
“What was it?” she asked again as he rejoined her.
“C’etait rien,” he said. Superstition prevented him from telling a dream before daylight, lest it come true. He fumbled on the night table among his keys and watch until he found the shard of broken mirror he’d kept all through the time of his captivity among the risen blacks and carried daily in his pocket still. His ouanga, it might be. In the darkness he could not see a trace of its reflective glint but the pressure of the broken edge against his palm helped relocate him. He put the mirror piece back on the table.
Nanon snorted and rolled onto her stomach; the doctor stroked his fingers over the small of her back. The nightmare image printed and reprinted itself on his inner eyelids. A golden infant thrust aloft into the clouds, skewered through its rib cage on a spear. He forced his mind away from the image, thought of anything else at all. As usual, he was only able to calm himself by imagining the look of his weapons and the weight they’d have in his hands. It was something under an hour before he could return to sleep.
THE LENGTHENING OF THE FALL brought cooler weather, and so the fever season was somewhat abated. Doctor Hébert had been casually impressed into the makeshift medical corps that treated both the new troops and the old. As always among soldiers so freshly out from Europe, disease was rife: dysentery, dengue, malaria, a few fatalities from mal de Siam. The doctor grew popular among the troops for his success in easing the symptoms of several of these afflictions, though some would also mock him for the herbal concoctions he employed, calling him an old woman and a witch.
But many of his preparations worked. At least they’d seem to palliate most fevers. For mal de Siam he understood no cure, although some few patients did survive it. He knew the symptoms well by now; the yellowed eyes, chills and fever and the deeper bone ache, then days of black treacly vomiting which usually presaged death. As for himself, he was immune and knew it now. Perhaps some time before he’d suffered a mild case—a spell of fever with mild nausea, in his first days at Habitation Thibodet, or even at Arnaud’s, or in the camps. Sometimes, inexplicably, an attack was fairly mild, and left the survivor inoculated against another. The doctor was acclimated now, as much as any seasoned slave or soldier. Death was ever at his shoulder, it was everywhere among the military hospitals, but now he knew he would not die of fever.
Of an evening he inattentively played chemin de fer against the house bank of the Regiment Le Cap. Arnaud, Captain Maillart, and the négociant Grandmont were playing too, while the roly-poly young Lieutenant Baudin served as banker. Only Arnaud was on a winning streak, the others were all losing—Grandmont quite heavily. The doctor played more cautiously than the others, though he was slightly drunk, folding his poor cards early, letting his small stakes leave him as the price of an hour of male company and a share of brandy and water from the regiment’s store.
“Well, and what of your patients today?” said Captain Maillart.
The doctor shrugged. “Much the same as yesterday,” he said. “Some recover and others fall ill. I’d give you a third or quarter of them hors de combat.”
“Among the new troops?” Arnaud said.
The doctor nodded, and folded his hand. Grandmont grinned with his bad teeth as he flipped over his losing cards and shoved his stake across to Baudin. The seriousness of his losses did not seem to trouble him much. Laughing, he rose and walked to a shelf where he took up a pen and wrote out another note to borrow yet more money from the bank. Already he had gambled away perhaps three hundred pounds of sugar…Mentally, the doctor tried to translate the loss into main-d’oeuvre, the labor and lost lives of slaves, but could not do it. He sipped his brandy. Arnaud was still looking at him with an odd fixity.
“And are more affected among the troops of the line?” he said. “Or among those National Guards?”
The doctor noticed that Maillart had shut his cards up in his fingers and was awaiting his reply with a close attention.
“I couldn’t say.” The doctor forced an unnatural chuckle. “Diseases don’t commonly make such nice political distinctions.” He looked back and forth from Arnaud to Maillart, thinking it odd how thickly they’d thrown in together these last weeks, when their characters were so poorly matched, or so he thought. Of course Arnaud had lately been very energetic in raising companies of militia…and yet the regular troops of the line would ordinarily despise such reinforcements.
“En tout cas,” the doctor said, seeking to turn the conversation, “it would be for the better if all these fresh troops were moved out of the city. Away from the coast and the bad air of the marais…”
“Yes, and where they might accomplish something,” Arnaud said, returning his attention to the fresh hand he’d been dealt. “So long they’ve been here, and not the first move against the brigands. No, they leave the troops to rot in Le Cap until they are decimated by disease. This Desparbés is a weak old man…”
“Desparbés is a good soldier,” Captain Maillart said rather sharply. “But he’s hamstrung by the commissioners. They will not give him rein enough to act…he has no course but to hold his hand.”
“And a plague on the Commission too,” Arnaud snapped. “What have they done since they arrived but stir up the white canaille against us?” He drew to nineteen—a jack turned up—and disgustedly shoved his coins toward Baudin.
“Perhaps Roume will accomplish something with them,” Grandmont said reflectively. Roume, the only member of the first commission still in the colony, had come up from the west to confer with his successors; previously no one had much trusted him, but now, by contrast to these new Jacobin commissioners, he was much better liked among these circles than before.
“Ridiculous,” said Arnaud. “He’ll succeed as well as Blanchelande did.”
“There’s a man I pity,” Grandmont said, turning up the corner of his hole card.
“Comment ?a?” Arnaud said. “A waste of your emotion.”
“He has a date with Madame Guillotine,” Grandmont said.
Captain Maillart sniffed. “But he requested his own recall.”
“That was before,” Grandmont said. “Sonthonax deported him—in disgrace, as you’ll remember. They’ll put him on trial when he reaches France—well, a trial is what they call it.”
The worn pasteboards whisked through Baudin’s hands as he shuffled, redistributed. The sound put the doctor briefly in mind of the whisper and rush of a dropping blade. The silence persisted a moment before Arnaud spoke.
“That’s his desert for trying to serve two masters. If not more. One must be bold enough to take a stand and hold it.”
Captain Maillart frowned at him; Grandmont looked away. The silence lingered. Captain Maillart cleared his throat.
“Have you been riding out today?” he said to the doctor. “Gone for your sea bathing?”
“Yesterday,” the doctor said. He pushed his top card to one side—a queen.
“What do you mean, sea bathing?” asked Baudin.
“Why, this one rides over the hills every day to swim at the beach beyond the point,” Maillart said.
“What, alone?” Baudin said.
“Not every day,” the doctor said mildly. Unconsciously, he scratched his scar through his sleeves. “Not since my arm has healed—I only go to find the herbs I need.”
Baudin stared at him. “T’es fou,” he said. “It’s utter madness.”
The doctor shrugged. “I never see anyone in the hills—almost never.” He turned over the ace beneath the queen.
“Yes, you are a witch,” Baudin grunted. He pushed over a small scattering of coins. Arnaud also had won again, a larger bet; he gathered in the money and stacked it up in rows. It was quiet again except for the suck of Grandmont’s breath as he leaned to light a cigar in the candle flame. Then they heard the clatter of hooves, iron shoes clashing on the stones of the court. Immediately there followed a hammering on the door. Maillart got up and jerked open the door so suddenly that the knocker almost tumbled inside.
Major O’Farrel of the “Dillon” regiment—the Irishman was a stranger to the doctor. “Where’s Colonel Cambefort?” he said, in his weirdly accented French. “There’s news—it’s urgent.”
“A raid?”
Arnaud and Baudin were also on their feet, while Grandmont leaned back, smoking. Not long since, a party of insurgent blacks had breached the defenses of Le Cap and penetrated as far as the civil hospital before they were turned back.
“No, the king,” said the Dillon officer. “Word just came in at the harbor…”
“What, dead?” said Arnaud.
“Deposed,” the Dillon officer said. “Quickly, we must find Colonel Cambefort.”
There must have been others come with him from the harbor, for the square courtyard of Les Casernes was milling with troops by the time they went outside. Men were shouting confused tidings; the doctor thought he could make out that a mob had stormed Les Tuileries, that the king was divested of all his powers, and some sort of new government had been installed in Paris.
In the midst of the tumult and tossing torchlight, Colonel Cambefort appeared on a high step. He held out his flattened palms and waited for silence; when it came, he snapped a crisp order for all to return to their quarters. Beckoning Major O’Farrel and a couple of others to follow, he turned smartly on his heel and walked inside. Captain Maillart and Baudin surged forward, along with other officers, but the door slapped shut in all their faces.
They reconvened around the card table, but no one had heart to continue the game. Grandmont still sat in the same chair, contemplatively chewing the wet end of his cigar while the other smoldered. Had he risen to follow them out at all? The doctor was not sure of that.
“C’est foutu,” Arnaud said, and cracked his cane against a chair leg. “You see, this decline won’t stop before the Jacobins are dictators over us all.”
“Sit down,” Grandmont said, pulling the cigar from his mouth, as Arnaud whirled in the corners of the room. “It may be that something may yet be done here.” He glanced at Captain Maillart, who nodded.
“We must look to Cambefort,” the captain said slowly.
“Yes, and to Desparbés.” Grandmont blew a smoke ring toward the ceiling.
Among them all there seemed no one who’d willingly meet the doctor’s eyes. He scraped back in his chair. “I believe I must be going.”
Baudin winked at him then. “Mais oui, you’ve got such a sweet morsel to return to…” Lasciviously he kissed his fingers.
The doctor stared, not precisely at him, but directly through a point on the bridge of his nose to a chip on a brick in the wall behind his head, like lining up the two sights of a gun. It was a trick he had learned in the camps. He touched the shard of mirror in his pocket. In a moment, Baudin had dropped his eyes and turned away in some confusion. The doctor drained his glass with an air of carelessness, stood up, bowed, and took his leave.
The streets were full of criers and couriers, and all the petit blancs were in a state of high excitement. Another day, the troops would have turned out to drive them back inside their doors, but since the arrival of Sonthonax, the soldiers were kept in barracks and the popular demonstrations continued unrestrained. No sign of a uniform anywhere tonight. The doctor passed by a tavern which had become a meeting place for one of the Jacobin clubs Sonthonax had encouraged among the petit blancs. The place was jammed, a mass of jerking heads. Through the orange-lit window he thought he saw some hero raised aloft on a chair. Moved by curiosity, he turned back and went in.
Another night he might have been challenged at the door. As best as he might make mystery of his political sentiments, whatever they were, he could have been denounced as an associate of officers, aristocrats, the grand blancs in general. But tonight the mood of elation was too high for him to be noticed at all, and besides he saw no one he knew even by sight, except for the baker, Faustin.
He did not know the man they’d swung aloft in the chair to cheer him. He was a lean black-bearded fellow, hatless, with the red cockade stuck behind one ear. Almost everyone in the common room was also sporting the pompon rouge; the doctor rather felt naked without one of his own. But no one seemed to have remarked him or his lack. A barrel of rum turned longways on a high counter flowed from its bunghole while cups or cupped hands were thrust under the stream. The doctor saw one half-shaven enthusiast twisting his face sideways to lap at the overflow like a dog…
Liberté! Egalité! Fraternité! There was a massive outcry of these slogans, while from other quarters of the room began a garbled anarchic rendering of La Marseillaise. Someone jostled the doctor into the door frame. In an opposite corner he saw the farrier Crozac, grinning and shouting with the others…There was a crack as the chair leg snapped, and the black-bearded fellow fell down laughing into the crowd. But not all were so amused. The doctor saw the splintered chair leg rise again, come clubbing down. A fist swung in a semicircle, blood, a grunt and the click of a splintered tooth against the wall. A surge of men rippling out from the focus of the fight pressed the doctor back out the street door.
He thought it better to remain without. He’d broken a sweat while pressed in the crowd; now, in the humid cool of the night, it turned clammy on his cheeks and forehead. He straightened his lapels, and felt under his coat for one of his pair of pistols that he’d concealed in an inner pocket. All seemed in order there. The roar and outcries from the tavern faded behind him as he went on his way toward the Place d’Armes.
GRANDMONT CHEWED AN UNLIT CIGAR, sitting across a bare table from Colonel Cambefort. Captain Maillart was looking absently through the window into the courtyard of Les Casernes, where a couple of cavalrymen were brushing down their horses.
“We can turn out a well-organized militia,” Grandmont was saying. “Small numbers, but they’ll be properly armed and should acquit themselves well against the disorder of a mob.”
Colonel Cambefort pulled at his mustache. “We may count absolutely on the Regiment Le Cap.” He glanced at Major O’Farrel. “Dillon and Walsh as well, I should think.”
“A gang of Englishmen,” Arnaud said distastefully.
“Irishmen, mostly,” said O’Farrel. “They’ll be true to us—they’re good king’s men.”
“I think we may also rely on the troops of the line who came out with the commissioners,” Cambefort said. “Although we must be very cautious in speaking to Monsieur Desparbés.”
“Do you doubt his loyalty?” said Grandmont, his mouth turning down toward the weak chin.
“To the king? No,” Cambefort said. “So far as his personal sentiments go. But he is aging, and he certainly does not mean to settle here among us. He must consider that one day, and not long hence, he will answer for his actions here in France. As you all know, it has always been convenient for the home government to set the military and civil authorities here in competition with each other. According to their documents, the commissioners do have plenipotentiary powers. For Desparbés to defy them openly would be a serious matter.”
“Well, he has defied them tacitly,” Arnaud said. “He refuses to order the troops out against the brigands…”
“To take him beyond that point would require a sudden shock,” said Cambefort. “I’ve sounded him and that’s my estimation.”
“The shock must come,” Grandmont said quietly. “In a military situation, the military commander stands supreme. When it does come, Desparbés will choose the lesser evil and declare for us.”
Colonel Cambefort looked out the window. “I think you may be right. Well. Let us consider our strength. With Dillon, and Walsh, and the Regiment Le Cap, we may field fifteen hundred men. As for the new troops…”
Captain Maillart returned his attention to the room. “Disease has discriminated neither for nor against us,” he said. “So we may use the ordinary numbers. Two thousand troops of the line will certainly follow us—with Desparbés or even perhaps without him. Then there are four thousand National Guards to reckon with.”
“Can they be swayed in our favor?” said Cambefort.
Grandmont took the cigar from his mouth and inspected the frayed spittle-soaked end of it. “I’m doubtful of that,” he said. “They are all political recruits. One can’t say for certain which way they’ll jump, but we’d be wiser to assume they’ll stand by the commissioners.”
“Yes, I agree,” said Cambefort.
“But they’ve none of them been long in the field,” Arnaud said. “They’re ill-disciplined—your regular troops will chew them up.”
“We may hope so,” said Cambefort. “Bon ?a, what have we then?”
“Thirty-five hundred regular troops,” Grandmont said. “I could promise no more than five hundred militiamen.”
“To set against your four thousand National Guards,” Arnaud said. “The numbers being equal, superior discipline will carry the day in our favor. Drive the commissioners onto their ships and let them account for their conduct in France.”
“It’s a pleasant notion,” Cambefort said. “We have also to consider the entire mass of the Pompons Rouges. Not to mention les citoyens de quatre Avril—who, whatever else you may say of them, are not to be underestimated in battle.”
There was brief silence in the room. In the courtyard, a horse snorted, and a trooper clucked to it and led it away across the cobbles.
“The unity of those two factions might not withstand much pressure…” Grandmont said, stroking his underslung jaw.
“That’s an imponderable, is it not?” Cambefort said. “We have rather too many imponderables. I would we were more certain of Monsier Desparbés.”
“How does it stand, then?” asked Arnaud.
“A clear opportunity may present itself but I would say it has not yet done so,” said Cambefort. “When it does come, we must not lose it.”
THE MORNING OF OCTOBER 17 was cool and foggy. Doctor Hébert walked toward the hospital in a pleasant humor; he was in no hurry, so he stopped to take a second cup of coffee at a tavern that had set out a few wooden tables along the edge of the Place d’Armes. The chairs had been dampened by the mist, and he wiped one down with his handkerchief before he sat down. As he sipped the coffee, his eye was caught by some odd white placards that had been pasted up overnight on the walls of the buildings surrounding the square.
He set down his cup and strolled idly across for a closer look. Each card bore a rough sketch of one or another officer of the royalist regiments, Le Cap, Dillon and Walsh—and all were depicted as hanging in chains. Cambefort and Desparbés had been gleefully included and some of the civilian grand blancs were represented as well. For some time, the doctor had been aware that La Société des Amis de la Convention, as the Jacobin Club was formally known, had been circulating a list of “traitors to the Republic” whom they hoped the commissioner would deport to France. But this new tactic seemed more violent. The sketches were awkwardly done, but not without a certain verve, and each was plainly recognizable. The doctor was truly brought up short when he saw the caricature of Captain Maillart.
Others had come out to admire this artwork, which they mostly seemed to appreciate and enjoy, pointing and chuckling among themselves. Then there appeared a black-mustachioed officer of the Walsh regiment, who whirled when he noticed the posters, and with an outraged shout began tearing them down from the walls. The brawl broke out so suddenly that the doctor didn’t see it start. The Irishman was clubbed to his knees by the mob of petit blancs, though he swung his hairy fists at them and swore at them in English. Someone was running up with a noose and there was a call for the officer to be hanged on the spot, but before they could fix the rope to his neck, more soldiers came double-time into the square and seized him back. The two parties broke up in a jumble of individual fistfights or grapples, and someone fired a gun into the air.
Doctor Hébert touched his own pistol grip through his coat, then went back to Nanon’s rooms at his best pace short of a run. He collected Fontelle and her children and brought them all in with Nanon. For the rest of the day and on into the night they sat behind closed doors and blinds. The smaller children played dress-up with Nanon’s finery, while the doctor engaged Nanon and the older son Moustique in alternate games of chess. Sometimes he’d hush them all, to listen to the shouting that approached or receded in the surrounding streets, and sometimes he’d pace and fidget with his guns. On two occasions there came loud knocking at the door, but he’d allow no one to answer.
IN THE LATE AFTERNOON OF THAT DAY, Arnaud and Grandmont came riding hell for leather into Les Casernes with the news that the Pompons Rouges had broken into the arsenal and were arming themselves apace. There was no answer at Cambefort’s quarters, but Arnaud soon found Captain Maillart.
“Here’s your opportunity,” Arnaud spluttered.
“Where is Colonel Cambefort!” Grandmont said, sprinting back across the cobbles.
“Gone with Desparbés to the commissioners,” Maillart said. “To demand the Jacobin Club be disbanded immediately.”
“They’ll have to be disbanded with grapeshot now,” said Grandmont. “Who’s in authority here? We can lose no more time.”
Before the captain could answer them, they heard hooves beating over the stones of the court and Colonel Cambefort rode in astride a splendid gray stallion. All three of them clustered at his stirrup.
“What news?” said Captain Maillart.
“The Jacobins were there before us.” Cambefort’s face was drawn and weary, but his eyes had an excited gleam. “They’ve asked for my deportation and that of Desparbés.”
“And the answer?” said Grandmont.
“None given,” said Cambefort.
“But where is Desparbés?” Arnaud said.
“He has broken with the commissioners and is ordering out the troops even now.”
“Well, God be thanked,” Arnaud cried out.
The Dillon and Walsh regiments were already falling out into the courtyard with their weapons in hand. General Desparbés appeared on the high step of the general officers’ quarters. He was stooped with the seventy-three years of his age and seemed to need to hold the door frame for support. Cambefort rode across toward him, the others following on foot.
“The National Guards do not obey the order…” Desparbés voice was shaking slightly. His eyes were rheumy. Captain Maillart veered away before he could catch Cambefort’s response, rushing toward the barracks where the National Guards were quartered. Someone called after him but he paid no mind. Grandmont was striding along a pace or two behind him.
As they clattered up the steps, Lieutenant-Colonel Etienne Laveaux appeared in the doorway. He smiled down at Maillart (for these two liked each other well enough despite the difference of their politics) but at the same time pressed his palm against the opposite door jamb and stiffened his arm to bar the captain’s passage. Maillart stopped on the top step and peered into the dim interior hall, where another officer was lecturing the republican troops.
“Why, will you shoot your brothers only to satisfy the barbarous humor of a handful of aristocrats who only wish to destroy the human race…?”
Grandmont twisted his face aside and spat on the cobbles through his crooked teeth. Laveaux’s eyes were grave and sad above the fixed contortion of his smile. Captain Maillart backed down the steps and walked away. Cambefort had dismounted and now stood alongside Desparbés, gesticulating as he argued with his superior, while Arnaud, standing by, was unconsciously mangling his hat in his hands. But before the captain had reached them, Desparbés thrust Cambefort aside and drew himself erect. In a loud, clear, and almost perfectly steady voice, he gave the order for the troops of the line to disassemble and return to their quarters.
ON THE FOLLOWING DAY, Sonthonax went with Polverel to address the public in the Place d’Armes; this public included a sizable civilian mass, Pompons Rouges, a few grand blancs, some citoyens de quatre Avril. Both the royalist troops and the National Guards were out in force, ranked at opposite ends of the square. Sonthonax’s face was waxen and stippled with little beads of sweat. The speech was very brief for him, and strikingly unornamental. He told the assembly that Desparbés and Cambefort had been placed under arrest and would soon be deported. He pleaded for calm and asked the people to disperse.
After perhaps two minutes of frosty silence, the two bodies of troops began to file out of opposite corners of the square. The commissioners then disappeared from the scene with a noteworthy precipitousness. Captain Maillart, numb and exhausted, walked in his place behind Lieutenant Baudin, scarcely attending the gangs of petit blancs who ran alongside catcalling at them. A man in a soiled bricklayer’s apron was paying peculiar attentions to Baudin, who suddenly wheeled and spat in his face.
“Scum of the earth,” Baudin began, and was just drawing breath to continue when the bricklayer took out a pistol and shot him in the mouth.
His cavalry sword was in the captain’s hand, and he stabbed the bricklayer through the belly without a thought, not even knowing he had done it until he saw the dark blood welling over the hilt onto his hand. As the bricklayer fell sideways, his twisting weight broke the sword from the captain’s hand. The skirmishing was general all around them now, but most of the troops had already left the square. Then Laveaux came riding through, controlling his horse with his knees alone. He was calling out for peace and calling the names of the men he knew and reaching out with both hands to touch them gently as a priest. Both soldiers and civilians allowed themselves to be so manipulated and the fight was over before it had well begun.
Laveaux’s warm palm settled on the captain’s brow. When he removed it, Maillart began unconsciously to weep. Half blinded, he went staggering away from the square.
IT HAD BEEN JUST OVER TWENTY-FOUR HOURS since the disturbances had begun. Doctor Hébert answered the door with a pistol in his fist. Through the crack he could just see a bloodstreaked hand and a uniform cuff. He grabbed the wrist and twisted it and jerked the man inside, pressing his face against the door and jamming the pistol into the hollow at the back of his neck.
“Christ, man, don’t you know me?” Captain Maillart said. The doctor relaxed his grip. Nanon had come up to pull him away, while the children all watched round-eyed from the corners of the room.
“I’m sorry,” the doctor muttered. He laid the pistol carelessly on the chessboard. “We’ve been…a trifle anxious.”
“So it would seem.”
“What’s happened?” said the doctor.
Maillart wiped at his bloodshot eyes. “We’re done for in this country. Cambefort and Desparbés will be deported—with all the senior officers loyal to the king.”
“But not you,” the doctor said.
“Not yet,” the captain said. “Perhaps I’ll find a passage to Martinique, or else…They’ve murdered Lieutenant Baudin, you know. And I was very fond of that fellow.”
The doctor picked up the pistol and returned it to the box on the high shelf. In the back room, the children had resumed their game; there was a rustle as a stiff silk dress slipped down from a hanger.
“It’s true, there was no harm in him,” the doctor said. “I’m sorry.”
He circled a chair and sat down in it. After a moment, the captain followed suit. Nanon came out from the back with a basin of water and clean cloth. She knelt down at the captain’s side and began to sponge the blood marks from his hand.