Master of the Crossroads (61 page)

Isabelle had managed some unusually nice wine to accompany the repast, but once the ladies had withdrawn, rum stood in the place of brandy for the gentlemen. Monsieur Cigny offered round his cigars. Sonthonax, who looked well satisfied, leaned back in his chair, stuck his feet out and slipped a hand between the buttons of his white waistcoat as if to stretch the fabric.

“Gentlemen,” he said, reaching for his glass and raising it. “I give you—an absent friend.” He revolved the glass in his hand, looking at the amber swirl of rum. “He who has united all our forces for the defense of universal liberty, the General-in-Chief, Toussaint Louverture.”

As they drank, Cigny choked and spluttered. Commissioner Raimond turned to him with great solicitude and thumped him rhythmically on the back until his cough subsided. The doctor looked all around the the table, somewhat uncomfortably. The company was not designed for easy after-dinner conversation, no matter how well steeped in smoke and rum.

“I offer this glass to the Governor-General Laveaux,” Maurepas was saying, “who steadfastly defends our liberty against its enemies in France.”

They drank. Monsieur Cigny swallowed this toast more easily, the doctor noticed. But for all the tricolor cockade Isabelle had pinned to his lapel, he was a royalist at heart, more likely to have sided with Vaublanc than Laveaux, and if slavery were to be restored tomorrow, he would not be at all aggrieved. Then again it had probably required some effort for Sonthonax to propose the first toast to Toussaint, who had chosen to remain at Breda in the company of Bayon de Libertat—a branded royalist and aristocrat, slave holder, minor nobleman . . .

“To our good friend among us now,” Moyse declared. “The Commissioner Sonthonax. Let him remain with us always, to defend the Tree of Liberty he was the first to plant in Saint Domingue.”

The doctor drank, swallowed, left his head tilted back against the top rail of his chair. On the ceiling, three geckos were cautiously converging on a single mosquito, its shadow spread ominously large by the light from the candles. So far as the black officers were concerned, Isabelle’s invitations had been quite canny. Moyse, Clervaux and Maurepas were Sonthonax’s staunchest supporters among Toussaint’s cadre, while Moyse and Flaville were close as brothers, and Moyse was Toussaint’s nephew. There would have been a smooth liaison from Sonthonax to Toussaint across these men, who were Toussaint’s own—if only Toussaint had chosen to appear. Oh, the doctor, thought, it was a delicate game she played, and how gracefully she’d absorbed the disappointment, too. The widening rift between Toussaint and Sonthonax was well enough known to all, and if she’d facilitated a rapprochement between them, Isabelle’s position would have been improved with both. She might even have felt secure enough to bring her children back to the colony, which was, as the doctor knew from Maillart, her heart’s desire. He wished her well, but he’d served himself as message-bearer between commissioner and general for too long to be optimistic; he had not been surprised in the least that Toussaint kept away.

“Tomorrow’s festival,” Julien Raimond announced. “May every throne of tyranny be overturned, and all people rise to freedom.”

They drank. Of course it was the Republican holiday that had inspired Isabelle’s choice of dress for herself and Claudine—they’d wear the same costumes next day to salute the Tree of Liberty. But tonight the mood was something less than festive, despite the effort of all those toasts, and once the men had rejoined the ladies, the party was not much prolonged.

The doctor felt a little stuffy, after such an elaborate meal, and also he did not wish to linger for a post-mortem of the evening between Isabelle and her reluctant husband. He excused himself to walk Captain Maillart back to the
casernes.
The streets were quiet, sometimes a square or wedge of candlelight at windows which they passed, or someone standing silent in a doorway or under an eave. The captain walked with a wide swinging step, rolling his shoulders which had stiffened from too long sitting in a too-small chair. He nipped from his flask and offered it to the doctor, who took a small taste and handed it back.

“I am no great lover of Sonthonax,” Maillart said, “but I wonder, what does Toussaint want in a French agent? No one could have shown himself more friendly to the blacks, and now Sonthonax has made Toussaint military master of this place.”

“Governor-General, one might say,” the doctor murmured, “in all but name. And there’s the difficulty.”

Maillart glanced at him in the moonlight. “I don’t follow.”

“Listen,” said the doctor. “When Sonthonax was recalled to France in ninety-four, General Laveaux was the supreme French authority here—supreme over one starving fort at Port-de-Paix, I know, for it was you who told me that tale. Toussaint appeared and gave better than half the colony into his control again—then Laveaux made him Lieutenant-Governor. Now that Laveaux has gone, who succeeds him?”

“Ah,” said the captain. “But Toussaint is General-in-Chief, not Governor.”

“So Sonthonax would have it, certainly. But what does Toussaint think?”

“That,” said the captain, “no one has ever been able to say.”

“Yes, but you and I have both seen how closely he studies what has gone before. I’ll wager he remembers Galbaud as well we do, even if he was up on the Spanish border when the whole fiasco took place. Galbaud was Governor-General when he went to war with Sonthonax and the Commission. It’s hardly three years since they burned this very town to the paving stones.”

The captain stopped in his tracks. “What do you mean?” They stood on the corner of the Rue Espagnole, with a wind blowing up toward them from the city gate.

“It is the posts themselves, as much as the men who occupy them,” the doctor said. “In the old system, before the insurrection in ninety-one, it was the same. The civil authority set against the military. Intendant against Governor-General. In Paris they
designed
it so, to inhibit conspiracies for independence and the like. No one wanted to see another American Revolution break out in Saint Domingue.”

“So . . .” the captain let out a whistling breath. “But surely in this case the particulars are different.”

“But suppose they were not. Suppose Toussaint to be no different than any other French brigadier. Perhaps he really does see himself that way—he carries himself in the role. No different from the Generals Rochambeau and Desfourneaux, save for his African complection.”

“Save that Desfourneaux is now in the guardhouse at Port de Paix, and Rochambeau has been shipped back to France to answer charges.”

“Exactly,” the doctor said. The captain offered the flask again, but he declined—the cognac seemed to mix poorly with the rum he had taken earlier. “Because they gainsaid Sonthonax. Perhaps also for lack of success in the field—or in diplomacy.”

“Why, everyone knows he arrested them for protesting his favor of the blacks in the army.”

“In other words, they gainsaid Sonthonax,” the doctor said. “As much as to rebel against the civil authority here, do you see?”

“But with Toussaint? In confidence, of course, Antoine, but I know you carry their dispatches.”

“Well.” The doctor glanced over his shoulder. He nudged the captain; they both began walking again, toward the
casernes.
“You know most of their differences, great or small. Toussaint is eager to take over the Spanish side of the island, in accord with the Treaty of Basel, while Sonthonax prefers to delay. The whole business of the
émigrés
and the old landowners has been bitter—if it looks as if it’s all about Bayon de Libertat, you know well enough there are many more like him. Toussaint would have them all come back to manage their properties with free labor.”

“Which is sensible, for that would raise revenue.”

“And that revenue would furnish the army. Yes,” said the doctor, “but Sonthonax, never mind his courtesies this evening, is obliged to regard those returning
colons
as traitors, enemies of the Republic. Strange as it may seem, our friend Isabelle and her family and her properties would likely fare better according to Toussaint’s idea of things.”

“You are right,” said Maillart. “I have often thought so.”

Their boots clopped on the empty street; the doctor’s pace quickened as his thoughts ran more swiftly. “As for the rest of it, Toussaint has complained that Sonthonax is fomenting dissension in his ranks. I cannot judge that quarrel—there has been some trouble, indeed, and arrests to put it down, but for what cause I don’t know. And the small differences—whether the coffee harvest of Plaisance and Marmelade should be shipped from Gonaives to support the army there, or be sold here at Le Cap for the benefit of the Commission . . .”

“But for an army in the field that question is not small,” the captain said. They had come opposite the
casernes,
and here they stopped, lowering their voices so as not to be overheard by the sentry across the street.

“No, you are right,” the doctor said. “And also, the whole catastrophe in the south. Toussaint warned the commissioners against it—sending such men, with such instructions. And he was right, for now we have Rigaud in open rebellion against the Commission.”

“But not against Toussaint,” the captain hissed.

The doctor looked at him intently.

“Rigaud sent an envoy directly to Gonaives,” the captain said. He turned and spat into the street. “You were away and I did not tell you afterward—Choufleur was part of the delegation, you understand, so I didn’t like to mention it.”

“Let that pass. What did they say?”

“I was not admitted to their council,” Maillart said, “though apparently it was successful. By the talk, there is a perfect understanding between General Toussaint and General Rigaud.”

The doctor grinned wryly. “And there you have it.”

“What?”

“When the powers are divided as they are, Rigaud can come to accord with one without the other. For example, he can tie Sonthonax’s proclamation to the tail of his donkey and still have his perfect understanding with Toussaint.”

“But in the end,” said the captain, “the question remains, who shall be master?”

“Oh yes,” said the doctor. “You’re right about that too.”

Maillart nodded and crossed the street; the sentry opened the postern door for him. The captain turned and raised his hand before he ducked inside. Alone, the doctor started back across the Rue Espagnole. There was an ominous feeling in his glands that had nothing directly to do with the conversation with Maillart. It had nothing to do with thought at all, but was more like some aching apprehension of bad weather to come.

A patrol passed, its leader greeting him. The doctor returned the signal. He turned down toward the harbor. There was an alley that would take him directly to the door of the Cigny house, but in the mouth of it a couple of dogs were sniffing over a garbage heap, and when the doctor approached they both raised their heads as if to challenge him. They did not bark or even growl; they were pitiful, half-starved dogs, inconsequential, and yet the doctor felt sure that they would attack him if he tried to pass through the alley. He walked farther down, suddenly, irrationally alarmed—what if his way was blocked so at every turning he wanted to make? But at the next corner there were no dogs. He reached the Cigny house and was admitted by the yawning cook and climbed the stairs to his attic bed.

Next day the national festival took place as anticipated, complete with a grand parade terminating on the Champ de Mars, with cannon salvos from all the forts and answering salutes from battleships in the harbor. The small, red-banded figure of Sonthonax was at the center of the occasion, the quick bright focus of all energy. As Monsieur Cigny muttered in the doctor’s ear, no one could claim that the commissioner did not understand the value of circuses. The people of Le Cap had turned out in force to acclaim Sonthonax as founder of Liberty one more time and to listen to the oration he declaimed across their ranks.

“For five years,” he remarked, near the end of the speech, “the armies of the Republic here have gloriously supported the first effort of an entire nation to break its chains—one would have supposed that they would have made haste to attend this commemoration of such a great day.”

Isabelle, dressed once more in her tricolor taffeta, peered around the bulky figure of her husband to catch the doctor’s eye for just a moment, before she resumed cheering and hurling flowers in the general direction of the podium and encouraging the more apathetic Claudine to do the same. Sonthonax had gone on to his next phrase. But the doctor had not missed that message—clearly a reproach, however light or brief. There were both black and white troops at parade rest on the Champ de Mars, the former commanded by Clervaux and Pierre Michel. But General-in-Chief Toussaint Louverture had not honored the event with his presence.

Much later, when all the panoply was concluded and the debris had been swept out of the streets, the doctor was roused from his midafternoon siesta by the sound of galloping cavalry. He got up, naked, and peered out the porthole, over the red tile roofs. In the next street, Toussaint was riding hard toward Government House, in the midst of twenty-five helmeted
cavaliers
of his honor guard. Though they’d missed the official parade by hours, a small crowd of children ran shouting in the cloud of swirling dust behind the horses.

The doctor dressed and went softly down through the dozing house and out the door. Guided by a premonition, he walked over to Government House. The thick, damp heat made him feel as if he were floating. In the courtyard the guardsmen had dismounted, taken off their helmets, and led their horses to patches of shade. One of them was walking Toussaint’s charger, Bel Argent, to cool the stallion down. The doctor greeted them as he passed. No one challenged him at the door; he was well enough known in that place.

Julien Raimond and the secretary Pascal were in the anteroom of Sonthonax’s offices. The door to the inner cabinet was shut. Pascal acknowledged the doctor with raised eyebrows and a cock of his head toward the door. Glancing at Raimond, who also said nothing, the doctor sat down in a chair against the wall.