Chapter Thirty-One
A CURTAIN OF RAIN PARTED BEFORE Captain Maillart as he walked across the Le Cap quay in the direction of the fountain, and continued withdrawing a pace or two ahead of him, shimmering like a waterfall, stippling the stone pavement with pinpoints of damp. As the cloud tore and lifted off completely, that last faint misty sheet of rain was all at once spangled through with sunlight. The captain had not bothered to cover his head, but walked gaily swinging his hat at his side. The fitful shower had scarcely dampened the stiff newish cloth of his uniform.
He strolled up to the fountain’s rim. A pace away from the lip of the basin, an old white-haired affranchi sat cross-legged on the ground. Perched on his shoulder was an enormous green parrot, head as large as a small dog’s. The old man was feeding the bird with fibrous pinches of soursop from a fruit that lay divided in his lap. The parrot looked askance at each, turning its head sideways, and harshly croaked, cela m’emmerde, c’la m’emmerde, but still accepted every proffer from the crooked black fingers.
Maillart smiled, turning to face the opposite direction down the quay. From a knot of cloud above the southern mountains there arced three bands of brilliant rainbow color driving down into the water of the harbor. It was very still. A French merchantman had negotiated the channel and was drifting silently toward a mooring. The hour was still very early and though a couple of men had come out to catch the lines tossed down from the ship’s upper deck to be made fast, the quay was not very busy as yet.
The parrot clicked, repeated its phrase, turned its head for a sidewise inspection of another fingerful of soursop. Its beak was curved and black, irregularly marked with paler cracks and chips, strong and sharp enough to sever a man’s finger, Maillart knew. There was a short slapping sound of a small-bore cannon firing over the flat water, and he quickly turned his head in that direction. The ship at the mooring had fired a gun from a starboard port; a wreath of blue-gray smoke lazed away from the square trapdoor high in the hull. Now the noise of confused shouting came to Maillart down the quay, as more and more men came out of the buildings to see what was the issue. He could not make out what anyone was saying, but the smoke seemed to darken as it dissipated over the still water, and the brilliance of the day turned chill. Maillart jammed his hat on his head and hurried over the pavement toward the strange ship.
Several men had emerged from the warehouses nearer him and were hastening along in the same direction. Maillart was not acquainted with any. He saw his brother officer Vaublanc speeding up toward him and toward them all, raking unhappily at his hair with one hand and clutching a Paris newspaper in the other. His spurs made a harsh rattling sound with each jolt of his boot heels against the stone pavés. As he came farther within earshot Maillart heard him calling out in a hoarse voice that the king was dead, that Louis and Marie Antoinette had both been slain on the guillotine, and that the French monarchy was now altogether fallen.
“What does it mean,” Maillart said, hardly conscious of his words. He snatched the paper from Vaublanc’s hands and scanned the columns blindly; the words tangled on the page and he could make no sense of them. Two other men stood by looking curiously on while a third had run deeper into the town to cry this news.
“It means that we are finished.” Vaublanc seemed unaware that he was weeping, though his pale face was all in sheets of tears. “Done for in this country, done for in France. There is no France. Well, I shall sell my sword to the Spanish, I suppose, and that straight away—will you come too?”
“Yes,” Maillart said, mechanically. “What are you saying? Do you really mean to go?”
“I do,” said Vaublanc. “Only imagine the demonic joy the monster Sonthonax will have of this intelligence. I would not serve that man another hour. No, but if the Spanish win this island, there may be some refuge here—some order and some decency. Only tell me, will you come?”
“Yes,” Maillart said. He knew, of course, that he’d find friends among the Spanish forces now, for many officers had deserted in the aftermath of that unlucky skirmish between the mulatto Sixth and the Regiment Le Cap. All this he knew, but when he spoke his tongue felt numb between his lips.
He arranged to meet Vaublanc by noon, on the road out of the city that passed by La Fossette. Vaublanc had an affair or two of business to terminate in the town; he believed he might be able to raise some small amount of money. For Maillart there were no such considerations. He went back to Les Casernes in the wake of the riot that ran through the city ahead of him. In the barracks all was equally in turmoil. Laveaux was organizing patrols to quell the confusion in the city, but only the National Guards seemed much disposed to obey his orders.
The captain moved through the courtyard unnoticed, as he thought, and went into the room to pack his gear. The task would not occupy him long, as he had only his linen, a change of uniform, a book or two and a slack purse containing the few coins left of his last pay. When he came into the courtyard again carrying his light saddlebags across his shoulders, Laveaux caught his eye and called out a quick command for him to go with a detachment of ten men to settle a disturbance that had arisen near the Place de Clugny. But Laveaux turned quickly away once he had spoken, allowing no time to observe the captain’s response. So Captain Maillart would not need to openly display his insubordination. All the same, the ten men followed him once he had mounted and ridden through the barracks gate. He looked blankly at them, over his shoulder, touched up his horse and rode away, leaving them there.
Now he might have wept himself, but he would not give way to the impulse. He controlled himself, forcefully emptying his mind. It being unseasonably warm, he was sweating a little under his tunic. Some blocks ahead he heard shouting and the snap of small arms fire; he took his way into a different street.
It was early yet, still short of eleven, and the captain did not want to wait long for Vaublanc under the broiling sun in the open country round La Fossette. The mosquitoes were very bad in that place. It was this distaste, more than the thought he owed her some farewell, that prompted him to call on Madame Cigny. She had been demonstrably cool to him since his return from Ennery, and there’d been no renewal of their trysts.
The parlor was empty when the footman escorted him into it. Shortly afterward, Major O’Farrel of the Dillon regiment came in—from some inner recess of the house, the captain was convinced, because his clothes were definitely rumpled and he was blinking as if he’d come from darkness into light. They had time to pass a word or too before their hostess interrupted them. Today her déshabillé was such as to leave few secrets of her trim light body unsuggested. The captain was inclined to take this as a personal affront. He rose from his seat and moved very near her; yes, he could smell it on her—she was hot and wild as a little cat. A loud throat-clearing from the major helped him suppress his impulse to slap her insolent face. Then Isabelle took his hand in both of hers and when she spoke her voice was kind, atypically sincere.
“Grim news today, my friend.”
“Yes,” the captain said. “It is grim indeed.”
She held his hand a moment longer, neither squeezing nor caressing but only sheltering it in the cage of her own fingers. Then she let it go and walked to the window.
“What will you do?” she said, staring into the street. “I have heard the intentions of Major O’Farrel.”
“I’m going over to the Spanish, I believe,” the captain said, “and so it is I’m come to take my leave of you.”
Isabelle turned from the window, her pretty fingers still on her bare throat. “I would away to the mountains myself, had I the power.”
“You have more power than many suspect,” the captain said, but with no rancor. He had not even meant to say it. And he had no reply of her, except her somewhat wistful smile.
After all it was no hour for embraces. He and the major left the house together, O’Farrel preceding Maillart out the door. Looking at the other man’s broad back, the captain felt his resentment flare again. He toyed with a pair of gloves in his pocket and with the notion of snapping them across the major’s russet beard.
O’Farrel turned smartly as if he’d read the captain’s mind. “No,” he said. “We shan’t quarrel over her.”
The captain started back a pace, as the street door clicked shut behind him. “No?” he said.
“I think it unlikely.” O’Farrel smiled, yellowish teeth foxy in his beard, as he glanced up at the windows above them. “Of course she is an extraordinary woman, but you cannot believe she takes us very seriously. If we were to be so foolish as to fight a duel, say, why she would be laughing in her sleeve at both of us all the while.”
“Bien, I never offered you any quarrel, did I?” Maillart said somewhat irritably.
“Of course not,” the major said. “You are a sensible fellow. You might come in with me to the Dillon regiment—I will be going to La M?le in six days time.”
“Thank you, I am resolved to forswear any further service to these Jacobins,” the captain said.
Major O’Farrel cut his eyes quickly along the street and stepped a little nearer to the captain. “No more than I,” he said. “And no more than many of us with Dillon. There may be something to be hoped of the English, before long…”
“The English.” Maillart twisted his lips in the form to spit.
“Well, if you are so much fonder of the Spanish,” O’Farrel remarked. “Do you recall how half Le Cap put on the black cockade when the Englishman Bryan Edwards sailed into the port?”
The captain shook his head—though he did remember well enough. “At any rate, we shall not quarrel over that,” he said. “I wish you joy of whatever course you take.”
“Yes, and the same to you,” Major O’Farrel said. He slapped the captain on the shoulder, just below the fringe of his epaulette. “Bon voyage et bonne chance.”
HE HAD DELAYED LONG ENOUGH THAT Vaublanc was already awaiting him in the barren field by La Fossette. Their horses fell automatically into step with each other, going along the hard-packed road, which had only a surface layer of damp this day, had not yet gone to mud and ruts. Captain Maillart was gloomy and dour, thinking of acquaintances who had been killed in this place the last September, during the skirmish with the Sixth. At a distance of a hundred yards they passed the hut of the h?ngan who was established at the cemetery’s end. Drums were beating there and there were white-clothed celebrants dancing in the h?nfor.
“Vod?n,” Vaublanc said, contemplatively.
“Are they so overjoyed to learn the murder of the king?” said Maillart.
“I don’t think it probable,” Vaublanc said. “After all most of our black brigands appear to be of a royalist bent.”
Maillart snorted.
“You were there at Habitation Saint Michel, recovering the prisoners,” Vaublanc said. “Do you not remember that green silk flag the brigands round Jean-Fran?ois were displaying? Ancien régime it said on one side—I forget what it said on the other.”
“Vive l’ancien régime,” Maillart said, surprised to hear the bitterness of his own voice.
They passed through the earthwork defenses, riding out beyond them in the direction of Morne du Cap. As they went through, a mulatto officer hailed them with some ironic salutation and fired a musket into the air. The shot’s echo faded behind them in the empty land and they rode on.
They went from fort to fort of the cordon de l’ouest spreading their ill tidings on their way. At some of these white encampments the garrison was Jacobin and their news was greeted with scarce-suppressed pleasure, but elsewhere the despair it engendered was black as their own, and some of these latter forts emptied out behind them, the defenders scattering for the Spanish border or south to Les Cayes and Jérémie, which were reputed still to be émigré strongholds.
As they came nearer to the River Massacre there were no more forts at all and they sought shelter for the night at the house of a free mulatto coffee planter on the lower slopes of the mountains there. He received them gladly enough notwithstanding their color, and told them that despite the burning and looting on the plain, he was carrying on his work without molestation, still harvesting and roasting coffee beans. He was helped by his wife and two young sons and there were a dozen workers in that place, both black and colored; if these were slaves or affranchis it was not clear.
Next day they came down to the bank of the river itself, where in the midst of the razed cane fields the little church and ajoupa were still standing. Someone had planted two carrés with provisions, so that now the ash-blackened land was beginning to brighten with the green of banana shoots and potato vines. There were children working those provision grounds with sticks, but it was not until the tall angular woman in the turban came out to join their labor that Captain Maillart recognized the place from the tales which Arnaud and the doctor had told him.
He left his horse for Vaublanc to hold and walked into the field afoot to speak with Fontelle, whom he remembered seeing once or twice around Le Cap, and at the last in the Place de Clugny, when they had executed the little priest. She did not know him, but seemed pleased when he explained himself. He was curious to learn how she had made her way back to this place with all her children, but she would make no definite answer to his questions. She did tell him how to find a ford without going too riskily near the town of Ouanaminthe, and gave him a sack of yams to carry on their way. She seemed reluctant to accept the coins he offered in exchange, but he pressed the money on her, though his purse was light.
The ford was passable as she had said, and they crossed it with no difficulty and doubled back on the opposite shore, riding back toward the Spanish town of Dajabón, which they reached just at dusk. The place was without much to recommend it, but both officers were unsure of their next direction. Vaublanc was rather wary of going deeper into Spanish lands while wearing their French uniforms. He thought they might change to civilian dress here in Dajabón, which was a smugglers’ town, but Captain Maillart was loath to go in disguise, if only because he pictured a fine scene when he would dramatically cast off his French coat in the presence of grateful Spanish officers.
They debated this matter for a few moments with no result, then Vaublanc suggested they refresh themselves at the tavern. Better in funds than the captain, Vaublanc ordered drinks for them, and returned to their rickety table with two cups of tafia.
“They have no wine at present,” Vaublanc said. “Nor ever have had any, I suspect.”
“I’m glad enough of whatever I can get,” Maillart said, losing no time in warming his inwards with a good gulp from the brim.
He had taken care to seat himself against the wall, and now Vaublanc also hitched his chair around, so that they sat side by side, surveying the room together. Two men were lying on the floor, asleep or drunk or dead perhaps, and three mulatto women were draped against the rough-hewn counter, turbaned heads tilted like flamingos’. A drunken white man kept trying to insert his fingers into the bodice of one of these ladies who as often slapped his hand away. In the corner opposite their own, some black men and a couple of whites were playing dice around a larger table.
“Our troubles are over,” Vaublanc said.
“What do you say?”
Following the other’s gesture, Captain Maillart took note of a white man leaning back into the corner, arms folded across his chest, frowning over the game as it seemed, though it didn’t appear he’d placed a bet. His long greasy black hair was pulled tightly back to the nape of his neck, and his throat was roughened with a week’s dark growth of beard. He wore a white shirt of coarse cloth, loose in the belly and the sleeves and stained with many days of sweat and dirt.
“It’s Xavier Tocquet, look there—” Then Vaublanc was on his feet and speaking louder. “Xavier, well met—” He halted suddenly. Tocquet had jerked upright, away from the wall, and was just slipping a hand into his bloused shirt belly…Captain Maillart laid a hand on his own pistol grip, concealing his movement beneath the table.
“Wait, man,” Vaublanc said. “You know me.”
“Of course,” Tocquet said. “Only you took me by surprise.” He revealed his hands again on the tabletop, each empty. “Come on, then, and bring your drinks.”
The men made space for them to draw up their stools, and Tocquet with a gesture invited them to join in the dice game.
“I fear I’ve played my stake already,” the captain said, demurring.
Vaublanc put up a coin, and watched the play sidelong as he explained their situation to Tocquet.
“Well, your moment is propitious,” Tocquet said when he had done. “Though I’d counsel you to keep clear of San Domingo City for the moment…go instead to San Raphael. They are fitting out new regiments there—to invade you,” he smiled, showing the tips of his teeth, “or for you to invade them, would it be? Comme vous voulez. In any case they will be glad to find white officers.”
“Parfait,” Vaublanc said, smiling fixedly as one of the black men gathered in the coin he had staked. Tocquet reached into his shirt again, took out three slim black cheroots and offered them to the French officers.
“Merci bien,” said Captain Maillart, leaning toward the candle flame. Inhaling, he coughed on the strong smoke. “Mais…un moment. You’re suggesting I command nigger troops?”
Across the table, two of the black men grew quiet and watchful—Maillart wondered if they’d reacted to the sudden stiffness of his tone or if they understood his French.
“I am suggesting that you serve under a nigger general,” Tocquet said with a slightly contemptuous bite. He turned to Vaublanc. “You might have known the man—Toussaint Bréda. He had been coachman and commandeur at Haut du Cap, on the lands of the Comte de Noé.”
“I might know him by sight, perhaps,” Vaublanc said. “I certainly did not know he was so elevated…but didn’t he sign one of those absurd letters that were sent in from the plain?”
“That I can’t say. But he is a general officer now,” Tocquet said, “in the Spanish army. Supposing I had a taste for the military life, which I do not, I had sooner serve under him than any of your Spanish boobies. I tell you this because you asked.” His dark eyes snapped toward Captain Maillart. “Of course, you may do as you like, and be damned to you.”
The captain swallowed. He felt too foolishly disoriented to follow up the challenge. “I meant you no offense,” he said haltingly. “You see I am a stranger in this place…and to these times.”
“As are we all.” Tocquet reached out his hand; the captain grasped it. “I do not take offense so easily,” Tocquet said. “Good luck to you, whatever you choose.”
“I think I have not ever been to San Raphael,” Vaublanc said.
Tocquet toyed with the frayed brim of the large hat that lay on the table near his drinking cup. “I will be going there myself before long, though not directly,” he said, showing his thin smile. “I have business with the quartermaster there—I and my companions…” he glanced at the two black men who had grown wary when the captain first spoke. “I might offer you an escort if you wish it—if you are not in too great haste.”
Vaublanc looked toward Captain Maillart, who hitched his shoulders uncertainly.
“Where have you left your horses?” Tocquet said.
Vaublanc flipped his hand over casually. “Just there, outside the door.”
Tocquet clicked his tongue. “You are carefree…there is a stable on the next street which would be much more trustworthy.”
OUTSIDE THE INN IT WAS COMPLETELY DARK and beneath a sickle moon a small wind gently combed the palm crowns. On the opposite side of the street two dirty white men were fighting empty-handed, but they were so incapacitated by drink they could scarce find each other with their fists. Captain Maillart was much relieved to find the horses still where they had left them. He and Vaublanc unhitched the animals and walked toward the stable which Tocquet had recommended to them.
“Will we go and offer our services to this black general then?” the captain said.
“I think we will,” Vaublanc said. “I’m a stranger to these times as much as you, but Tocquet always falls on his feet, wherever the moment may drop him.”
“I can well believe that,” said Captain Maillart. “What was the name of this black fellow, Toussaint? Toussaint what?”
“I don’t recall,” Vaublanc said, cheerfully enough. “What does it matter?”