All Souls' Rising

Chapter Thirty

NOW WHEN WE HAD BEEN IN THOSE Spanish mountains for some weeks, the people all were very hungry, because there was not much fruit to find, and no meat at all to eat. Also Toussaint said we must not hunt with guns because we had not so many bullets or powder then, or any way to get more of those things. All we could do was dig for roots and take birds by glue or by smoking them in their trees, but soon the birds were eaten and new ones did not come. It was always raining there. The clouds sat so low on those big mountains that it rained there even in the summer heat.

Then that one who had run from Habitation Arnaud, who we called Aiguy, was fighting with another man. The fight was about a woman whose name was Achuba. They fought in the old way, using round-headed clubs with nails, and Aiguy was very quick and clever with his club. He broke the head of the other man and left him bleeding, leaning against a tree with the white of his bone showing through the blood and black hairs. The man was hurt almost to his death, and Aiguy was afraid then, because Toussaint was against this kind of fighting, and would sometimes shoot the ones who fought so, especially if there came a death. And I, Riau, I too believed that it was foolish we should fight each other in this way.

Then Aiguy wanted to go away, and also we were very hungry. Aiguy had a story that on the plains of the Spanish whitemen beyond the mountains there were hundreds of cows who ran wild so that we could take them. Merbillay and Achuba were hungry for meat, and that is how we came to go. We took the boy Epi with us, who had been a small boy in Achille’s band but had grown bigger now, to help us cure and carry meat if we did find it.

I left my musket there at the camp and one of my pistols too, also my banza and some other things I did not want to carry, and my horse I left with the horses of Toussaint. A horse could not go where we were going anyway. Maybe Riau always meant to go back, leaving these things behind the way he did, but when we left I was not much thinking of return. Before we went I made two good spears, using scrap iron I could shape in the heat of the blacksmith’s forge, and binding the iron blades to the shafts with lianas in the old Carib way. I had one of my pistols also to take with me but I meant to save its bullets for killing whitemen later on.

We could not go so quickly in these mountains, which were steep and sudden and all cut through with crevices dug by streams. No trails were here or any Carib road that we could find. Merbillay was carrying Caco in a sling across her back. By that time he could walk a little, but he could not have followed in this country. On the third day we found two brown and white goats and killed them with our spears. So far away in the bush away from men, the goats were not even very shy. We were happy then, that night, eating goat meat around the fire till our bellies were tight and hard like melons and our faces shone with fat. The she-goat had milk in the udder for Caco to drink, and I cut small pieces of meat with my knife and Merbillay chewed them for him. So we were happy, only Aiguy wanted tafia to drink, but I, Riau, I did not care.

Next day we built a frame across the fire for drying the meat we could not finish fresh, and Achuba and Merbillay were scraping the two goat hides with stones to clean and soften them. Next day we went hunting again, Riau and Aiguy, and came onto a boar-hog before we knew we’d find him. I put the blade of my spear between the boar-hog’s shoulders but this did not stop him charging me. Thinking how it would be before, I had lashed a crossbar on my spear a foot below the blade when I first made it, but the boar came so hard and fast that the crossbar broke and the shaft went through him like a drink of water. I slipped on the mud and wet leaves, and he knocked me down and maybe he had killed me, but Aiguy came then and killed him with the other spear.

Then we had hog meat to eat beside the goat. The boar was big and very fat. He had cut my legs with his yellow tusks, but not so badly I could not walk. We stayed in that place where we had camped for three or four more days, eating and drying the extra meat. My legs were hurting where the boar had gashed them, but I had learned some herbs from Toussaint, at Bréda and later on when he was teaching herbs to the whiteman doctor. I sent Merbillay into the jungle to look for guérit-trop-vite and when I used this for a few days, my wounds were closed and dry.

After this, we all went back to Toussaint’s camp. Aiguy wanted to go on into the Spanish country. I, Riau, would have liked to see those hundred cows he spoke about, but I had heard another story how the Spanish whitemen used killing dogs to hunt maroons, dogs bigger than Arnaud’s, big as the cows themselves or nearly. I thought Aiguy feared to go back because of the man that he had hurt, but I told him it would all be forgotten by the time that we came to the camp again. We had big packs of dried meat to carry, so we went even more slowly returning.

But when we came to the camp again, they caught us by the skin and the neck all at once, Riau and Aiguy, and dragged us to Toussaint’s tent. Right away Aiguy was taken off somewhere to be beaten, only a little, not enough to break his skin, because the man he had clubbed had not died after all. But when they brought me into the tent, Toussaint shouted out an order, and Chacha Godard jumped up and screwed the barrel of his pistol into my left ear.

I stood at attention then, exactly like a whiteman soldier. Chacha had drawn back the hammer of his pistol, so eager he was to taste my death—he loved death so much he did not care it was Riau. I did not know if even Toussaint’s word could hold his hand. If it had been Riau only, or Og?n in my head, he would have fought and snatched at Chacha’s arm. Then Chacha maybe would have killed me. But all the time I stood stock still and stared straight ahead. Lieutenant Riau, I spit to hear those words, like Toussaint spat the words he said to me.

Toussaint was angrier than I had ever seen, his face was swollen and all the rest of him was shaking, he jumped up and down before me like an angry dog, but his words were sharp and pointed like cat’s teeth. It was all because I was lieutenant he was angry. Because I was officer in his army and so I had desert, and the desert of an officer was a thousand times worse than when another man desert because if the officer desert, a thousand men could follow him. So when a desert officer was captured, the punishment was to be shot.

White bubbles were at the corners of Toussaint’s mouth when he said this, and Chacha’s finger trembled on the trigger, and I felt Chacha’s breath against my neck. Charles Belair was in the tent with us this time, and he jumped up to ask for mercy, but Toussaint ordered him to go out. Toussaint asked me if I understood what he had said.

“Oui, mon general,” I said. “Je comprends bien.” I don’t know why I said it, because I did not understand. Then Toussaint sent Chacha away too. At first Chacha would not hear the order, and Toussaint had to pull the pistol down with his own hand.

Toussaint told me to sit down. There was a shiver in my belly when I did it, and my legs pained me where the boar had hurt them, and my ears were ringing like Chacha had really fired his gun so I was already on my way to the Island Below Sea. But Toussaint was smiling to himself and looking into a sack where he kept all the books he always carried with him. He looked inside the bag and handed me one book I had not seen before.

“Read this,” he said, and opened the book on my knees. “Read this page to me.”

I looked down at the paper and through my mouth the words began to speak.

If self-interest alone prevails with nations and their masters, there is another power. Nature speaks in louder tones than philosophy or self-interest. Already are there established two colonies of fugitive negroes, whom treaties and power protect from assault. Those lightnings announce the thunder. A courageous chief only is wanted. Where is he, that great man whom Nature owes to her vexed, oppressed and tormented children? Where is he? He will appear, doubt it not; he will come forth and raise the sacred standard of liberty. This venerable signal will gather around him the companions of his misfortune. More impetuous than the torrents, they will everywhere leave the indelible traces of their just resentment. Everywhere people will bless the name of the hero who shall have reestablished the rights of the human race; everywhere will they raise trophies in his honor.

When I had done, Toussaint was smiling on me.

“What do you think of that?” he said.

I was thinking about the maroons of Bahoruco where Jean-Pic had gone, how the whitemen gave them a paper to say that they were free. I thought that these maroons were free with a paper or without one, but I did not think Toussaint would like to hear this thought. So I told him that I believed what I had read in the book must have been written by a black man, but that I had not known any black man would write a book.

“No,” Toussaint said. “It was a white man who wrote that, a priest. His name is Abbé Raynal and he is the friend of the King In France.”

So I asked Toussaint how long he had known this book and when he said it was even while I was still a slave at Bréda, I asked him why he did not show it to me there.

“The time was not then, Riau,” he said. “But now, now is the time.” He was walking up and down the tent again with his excitement, a small man in his tall soldier boots. Then he stopped to look at me.

“Your little son, Pierre Toussaint,” he said. “He was not born in slavery, he was born free. Always remember this, Riau.”

“Oui, mon général,” said Lieutenant Riau. But I did not need him to tell it me, there was no chance I would forget. It was Toussaint who forgot that Riau was born free in Guinée, while only he, Toussaint, was born to slavery.

Then Toussaint sat down and began to ask me many questions about Laveaux, the whiteman soldier who had finally whipped us at Morne Pélé and driven us into the mountains. He had me tell him many times over how Laveaux had looked at the fort of La Tannerie when I and Chacha spied on him from trees, and say to him the things that he had said. Times over he made me say the sentence of Laveaux—Whatever they are, they are not savages. Then he smiled and let me go.

After all this I was not beaten, not even a little. The dried meat we had carried back with us did not feed our six hundred for even as long as one day. But we did keep the goatskins, one for Caco and one for the baby Aiguy had put into Achuba that time while we were hunting.

In the next days, we all came together in Toussaint’s tent, Riau and Dessalines and Moise and Charles Belair, writing a letter to this whiteman soldier Laveaux. Each of us wrote the letter many ways, and Toussaint listened to all the ways and changed from one way to the other until every word of the letter was perfect to his ear. At last, when the letter was sent, it told Laveaux that Toussaint would bring our men to fight with the French against the Spanish, because there was war now between these whitemen overseas. It promised to bring the men of Jean-Fran?ois and Biassou also, though Toussaint did not know for certain if he could bring those men or not, but the letter did not tell that part to Laveaux. The letter said that we would do these things only if the French whitemen would admit that all we black men and women were free, not only the soldiers but all the people of Guinée who were in the island then.

So the letter went to speak to Laveaux, and we were a long time waiting for an answer. While we were waiting, we made another letter to speak to the Marquis d’Hermona who was a soldier of the Spanish whitemen. This letter said the same as the other, but in different words that we and Toussaint were a long time in choosing. This letter told that Toussaint would bring our men to fight with the Spanish whitemen against the French if the Spanish white-men would admit the freedom of all the people of Guinée on the island also.

All this time Riau was thinking with two heads. One way I thought that I was glad of this Abbé Raynal and the King In France and how whitemen were in the world that could believe black men were free. But the mind of Og?n in me thought that all whitemen meant evil to us and that all their words were lies and that Og?n must kill them all or drive them back into the ocean. Then I thought Toussaint was very wrong. Then I would go down to the camp of Biassou and feed the loa with the others who were dancing and feel l’ésprit of Og?n in my head. Alone with Biassou in his tent, I helped him make the ouangas against Chacha Godard, and I was happy to make ouangas, thinking that now Chacha had come so near to the taste of my blood he could not rest before he drank it all.

But even then Biassou was going to go over to the Spanish, to be given ribbons and coins to wear on his uniform and to have new officer names of power. Jean-Fran?ois was gone already to the Spanish whitemen. So I went back, always, into the camp of Toussaint.

When Laveaux’s answer came at last, he only said his heart was with us, but he could promise nothing. And because even the promises of whitemen seemed not to be worth much, Toussaint was not pleased with this. Marquis d’Hermona did not send a letter. Instead the gunrunner Tocquet came one day. He did not bring any guns this time, but powder and shot, also some salt and flour. With him came the Père Sulpice. I did not know this priest so well even though he had sometimes come to the camp of Jeannot, but I thought he must pray to the cruel Jesus because of the beads he wore on the string of his black robe. The beads were wood and each not bigger than a fingertip and on one side the face of Jesus was but on each other side it was a skull. He used the beads to count his prayers, though I think he did not love blood so much as that other, Père Duguit.

It was this Père Sulpice who had brought Jean-Fran?ois and Biassou away to the army of the Spanish whitemen, so Riau knew what he meant to do when he came to us, and so did we all know. I was happy that Toussaint did not send us out of the tent this time when Père Sulpice and Tocquet came in. We all stayed there, Riau and Moise and Charles Belair and Dessalines, to hear what words the whitemen said.

The whiteman priest Sulpice told to us then that the Marquis d’Hermona promised these things only, that we who would fight for the Spanish whitemen against the French would be free forever after. They would give ribbons and coins and new uniforms to wear and bigger louder names for our officers to call themselves. Also some money they would give. But Père Sulpice did not say anything about freeing all the children of Guinée. He did not even say anything about our women, or the children we had with us in that place. I did not like the way he played with the skulls on his bead-chain while he talked. But I did think Toussaint would do the thing he said.

All this time Tocquet the whiteman gunrunner sat with his wide hat still on his head, so his eyes were in shadow, but I saw his eyes missed nothing. They were quick and bright and black as the eyes of a crow. Sometimes Toussaint would stop the Père Sulpice from talking and look very hard into the black eyes of Tocquet and ask him if what that père said was true and if he, Tocquet, had heard it with his ears from the Marquis d’Hermona. Tocquet would hold his eyes steady when Toussaint asked him a question, while the eyes of the priest went sliding all the ways around the tent walls when he spoke. But Tocquet said it was all true, what the priest told. He never took his hat off and except when Toussaint asked a question he did not want to say anything at all.

All this time at the cook fires outside the tent they were making flat breads from the flour Tocquet brought. I smelled the bread frying on the iron and the juices started in my stomach, and in my mouth the juices came hard and sharp enough to sting. I knew we would not be staying in those wet mountains for much longer.

So we came down then, to the Spanish town of San Raphael, all we six hundred men and the women and children too. It was not Marquis d’Hermona at that place, but one called General Cabrera of the Spanish army. Here Toussaint was made a general and a maréchal du camp and a knight of the order of Isabella who was the queen of the King In Spain. He had a fine new uniform to wear, the uniform of a general, with a general’s hat. They gave to me, Riau, this louder name of capitain. They gave me a uniform and also boots, only I would not wear the boots because they pinched my feet. Also they gave money to the pocket of my uniform, because these whitemen pay to kill each other, instead of doing it from their desire.

All at once when we had come to San Raphael, Toussaint wanted to hear prayers to jesus, which he had not heard for a long time, since the little fat whiteman priest had gone away from our camp. The Spanish whitemen were all very happy that Toussaint wanted to have their god in his head and so many of them went inside this church with Toussaint. Then Père Sulpice was a long time talking to jesus and all in a language no one could understand, all the time counting his words on his string of skulls. When he was finished talking, he put a piece of jesus meat into Toussaint’s mouth and gave some blood of jesus to Toussaint to drink. All these things were done before the uniforms and the new names were given.

Now Capitain Riau had an army tent for himself, instead of building an ajoupa like before. I saw the Spanish soldiermen did not like to see me keeping Merbillay and Caco in my tent. They did not like to see me sit outside the tent to play on the banza. But while Toussaint was General, it did not matter much what those whitemen liked.

In those days Madame Suzanne and Toussaint’s children came back to the camp. I think they had been hiding on the Spanish side all this time since we first began burning and killing whitemen. Of his sons, only Placide remembered Riau from Bréda. But sometimes I would take Placide and Isaac riding out onto the Spanish plain, bringing Aiguy along with me. The Spanish whitemen did not much like us to go away from camp, but these were General Toussaint’s sons, and Riau, who was Toussaint’s aide de camp, I was more free.

After the first hundred cows were a hundred more and then more hundreds. They all did run wild on the plains, the way Aiguy had told it. We did not see very many cane fields. These Spanish whitemen were not like the French. No matter how many cows they had, they did not seem to know that they were rich. They would not grow anything out of the ground, only provisions, and these they grew poorly. When they were hungry, they would kill a cow and make a boucan. If they were not too lazy, they might cure the skin.

Now we all of us had plenty meat to eat. These whitemen on the plain did not know how many cows they had, I thought. But they were selling cows to the army, and if a cow was stolen, they would somehow know it, and sometimes I saw bad trouble over this.

These Spanish colons lived in cabins not much better than ajoupas, except they used planks of wood instead of sticks to make them. They had not many slaves, and the slaves they had slept in the cabins by the whitemen, and how a slave lived was not so different from a whiteman. They were not very like the French colons. But if a slave would run away, they hunted him with dogs and when they caught him they might give him alive to the dogs to eat. I saw that the whitemen who were on the plains were not happy to see us in the Spanish soldier uniform. But because I was near to Toussaint, our general, no one ever troubled me.

So I brought the children back, to Toussaint’s tent again. Soon it was going to be time to go and fight and kill more of the French whitemen. Toussaint was not anymore speaking to me of Abbé Raynal, or showing the book that came from that man’s head. I did not much know what was in his mind. He was glad to have his wife with him again, and his sons I know, so maybe he was not thinking of much else all through those days.

But on a day he called me into his tent alone. From a little wooden writing desk he was keeping there, he took out a paper. The General Cabrera gave him this little desk for a present, and it had much work of carving in it like the priest’s beads, but it was made here, by a slave. When I looked at the paper I saw Toussaint had written it himself. I could not understand it well at first. His letters all had a bad shape and he did not put the right letters in the words. It was hard for me to make this paper speak.

Then I saw that the Toussaint he had put into my head had learned more about writing down words than the Toussaint who sat across the tent from me. I felt strange inside myself to think this. But Toussaint took the paper from my hand and read to me in his own voice.

“I am Toussaint…” He stopped here, holding out one empty hand while he held the paper high before his face, in his other hand. “Upon a day, you will hear my name. I am coming to fight for you and your people…”

He stopped again. These were the only words that were on the paper. I saw these words had not satisfied him.

“I am Toussaint…” he said again. He held out the empty hand like he was feeling for a weight to balance the word that he was speaking. But I did not know what to say to him. Of course I knew he was Toussaint.

“It wants something,” Toussaint said. “More—another name.”

“Toussaint Bréda,” I said then.

“No,” he said. “Not that.” He was even angry I had said this. But he had been called Bréda forty years. I was not sorry though, if this name was finished for him then.

“Who is the letter going to?” I said. “Who is it for?”

“Of course it is for you,” Toussaint said, smiling on the far side of his mouth. “For you and for all the world also.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. And I did not. We had never before written a letter to everyone. I would not know how to start doing that. Always we knew who would read the letter and so we shaped the words to fit into the ear of this one man.

Toussaint put the paper back into the desk and shut the wooden lid and tapped it with his fingernail. The nail was thick and cracked and yellow like old cowhorn.

“Maybe I don’t understand it either,” he said then. “The letter is not finished yet. But you will help me finish it, Riau. When it is done, not long from now, then we will both know all that there is to know about it.”