All Souls' Rising (6 page)

Toussaint was standing by the water trough at the back, brushing one of the matched pair of grays. One of Arnaud’s grooms was going away from him—Toussaint would have sent him away. I waited until the groom had gone and went a little nearer.

“
Parrain
,” I said. When I was a small boy, I called him so, and now it came again out from my mouth.

Toussaint looked over the horse’s back and nodded. “Riau,” he said. “You’re thin.”

“It’s dry,” I said. “Besides, you’re thin yourself.”

“It’s how I’m made,” Toussaint said. A thick band of leather bound the brush to his palm. He stroked it over the gray’s back and shoulders, sweeping away the dust of the road.

“
Fatras-Baton
,” I said. I used the old nickname of Thrashing-Stick because I thought he didn’t like it. It made me angry that he wasn’t surprised to see me there, to think that he had somehow known my presence earlier, on the road. It was not possible. Toussaint smiled his secret inward smile.

“I remember when you were fat,” he said. “Wasn’t that two years ago?” He came around the near side of the horse and took my upper arm and squeezed it. “Oh, but you are still strong,” he said.

“What did you come here for?” I said.

“To drive the master.” Toussaint turned from me, and brushed along the horse’s flank.

“Why would he come?” I said. “He’s a different man from the master here.”

“They have affairs,” Toussaint said. “The times are strange. You don’t know—” He stopped speaking and turned the horse, crowding me over against the wall. A pair of Arnaud’s grooms were walking through, talking to each other.

“You don’t know, hiding in the mountains,” Toussaint said, when they had passed.

“Have I missed so much?” I said.

Toussaint shrugged, and put the brush in his coat pocket.

“It’s all right for you,” I said. “You have the coach and the horses and the ear of the master. You understand what there is in books.”

The horse nipped at the green cloth of his forearm and Toussaint slapped him lightly on the nose. “Stop it,” he said.

“I don’t understand why you are here,” I said. “Bayon de Libertat is a kind master, as it goes, and Arnaud is a cruel master.” I was wondering if Toussaint knew about the woman and the baby, and what he would have thought. But after all it was not so far from Haut du Cap, and I had heard the stories about Arnaud at Bréda when I was still a slave there.

Toussaint took a curry comb from his coat pocket and began to work out the tangles from the mane of the gray. The horse tossed his head against the pulling.

“Yes,” Toussaint said. “And if he catches you, Riau, he will bury you to the neck in the ground and wait till the ants have eaten your eyes.”

“Truth,” I said.

“Where will you go?” Toussaint said.

“Why?” I asked him. “Have you begun to ride with the
maréchaussée?
”

Toussaint stopped his combing and turned toward me, one hand still knotted in the horse’s mane. He looked at me till my knees grew weak. His eyes looked yellow, in the dim.

“I think we are going south,” I said. “I don’t know where we’ll go.”

“Go where God sends you, Riau,” he said. It was the pompous voice he used when he was reading Bible verses.

“Where else could I go,” I said. We did not mean the same thing, and he knew it. So I turned and went out of the barn, and heard my heart stop.

Arnaud, the master, was standing in the stable yard, switching his cane at the dark place in the dirt where the dog had lain. He looked at me, but he didn’t see me. He saw something, but not Riau; he saw something like a chicken or a horse or an ox. When I could breathe again I walked past him, under his eyes, until I had put a cabin between us. Then I began to run and I didn’t stop running until I had come all the way up the first slope among the wild trees, to the clearing where Arnaud’s slaves had their provision grounds.

Merbillay and Jean-Pic were digging up sweet potatoes with pointed sticks; already they had a heap between them. The two small boys were gathering greens and stowing them away in a sack. Achille stood at the edge of the clearing, propped on his gun barrel, its stock braced against the ground.

“Did you get any powder?” I said.

“It’s all locked away in the
grand’case
,” Achille said. “No, I couldn’t get any.”

“There was powder last night for the
petro
dances,” I said.

Achille stared at me. His eyes were unclear, they didn’t meet, he looked like his head was hurting him. “And you know what they did with it,” he said.

“They burned it for the
petro loa
,” I said. “Yes, I know. When does Arnaud let the people go to the provision grounds?”

“Two hours at midday,” Achille said. “We have already stayed too long.”

“Truth,” I said.

“I would be gone before now,” Achille said, and pointed. “Jean-Pic wanted to wait for you until the sun was there.”

We shared out loads of sweet potatoes and filed out of the clearing. We went along the lower slope, following the curve of the
morne
, moving as quickly as we could on the uneven ground away from Habitation Arnaud. By the noon hour we were far enough away that we could not hear the wailing and shouting of Arnaud’s slaves when they discovered all we had stolen from them. There was nothing to hear except birdcalls in the brush until the evening had turned purple, and Jean-Pic caught at my arm.

“Listen,” he said.

I stopped, but there was nothing to hear, only insects singing in the twilight.

“No, listen,” said Jean-Pic.

I could hear the others going away from us along the slope, passing out of earshot. Then a long long way away, down on the plain, there was something barking.

“That is a mile from here, or more,” I said. “That is only some
habitation
with perhaps a visitor.”

“You say so,” Jean-Pic said. “But listen…”

I thought I heard voices then, calling the dogs together, but it was so far, so faint, I wasn’t sure. Jean-Pic plucked at my wrist and led me. Not far from us was a dry gully and above one side of it a pointed shelf of rock stuck out, from where we could look down the gully to the plain. I didn’t see anything when I looked, but it seemed I could hear more plainly.

“Well, they have not shot all their dogs,” I said. Then down on the plain I saw a spark, another spark, a chain of orange lights, and I knew that they were lighting torches.

“They have not,” Jean-Pic said, between his teeth.

“Still, they’re far,” I said.

“And they’ll come fast,” said Jean-Pic. “We have to go higher on the mountain where horses can’t follow.”

So we climbed down from the rock then, and began to trot into the bush to overtake the others and warn them. The sound we made was enough to cover the barking of the dogs, if they were still barking, so far away behind us. Under the trees it was already very dark, so that running at arm’s length from Jean-Pic I could hardly see him. I didn’t know how the others had gone so far ahead of us. We must have waited longer than we knew, looking over our back trail. Then there was a sound, a crashing sound very near, and I went up a tree so fast it seemed that it had sucked me onto its highest branch.

In a tree nearby I could hear Jean-Pic breathing, it made me angry how loud he breathed. When I looked for a long time I could just see him plastered against the gray-green gleaming of the bark, with his sides blowing in and out like the skin of a frog. The noise had stopped. Then I heard it again—it was in one place—a thrashing sound, and someone groaned. It wasn’t far away at all.

Slowly I slipped down from the tree. The insides of my legs and arms were sore from the sudden climb.

“Where are you going?” Jean-Pic said.

“It’s not them,” I told him.

Jean-Pic hissed at me, no word, just anger—fear.

“It isn’t them,” I said, and I went back the way we’d come. I could hear the thrashing stop and start again, and stop, to the left down the slope from the path we had broken for ourselves. The sound of the
maréchaussée
was still far below, but I thought I knew what they were after now. Not us. Or not only us. I smelled him before I saw him, the sweat from running and the sweat from fear. He had fouled himself too. My toe found a little wet at the bottom of a drying stream and I stopped and saw him there on the other bank where I had expected, bent double with the spikes of his tin head-stall tangled in the vines. He was trying to be still now, because he felt that I was near, but I could still hear the sob and the catch of his breath.

It surprised me he had managed to come so far. I remembered him, the night before—they had unlocked the gate over his mouth when he left the field, so he was eating meal cakes, and drinking
clairin
, and he had danced for a long time, tossing his long-pronged head whenever the powder flashed with the drumrolls. I moved a little closer now, and he jerked away like a horse shying. His back and legs were scratched and bleeding from running in the bush.

“Be still,” I said. He jerked and pulled a little away. The whites of his eyes rolled in the headstall. I saw they had locked the gate again. He must have been running a long time without water.

“Kill him,” Jean-Pic said. He had come up behind me on cat feet.

“I don’t know,” I said. The slave made a strangling moan with many syllables but no words and began to thrash his head from side to side. The vines tightened on the spikes of the headstall. At the back of his neck where the rivet closed the tin there was a thin line of blood.

“It’s a trick,” said Jean-Pic. “He came to see which way we would go.”

“Maybe not,” I said. The slave stopped moving and lay there gasping his crying gasp.

“He brought them after us,” Jean-Pic said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Kill him or leave him,” Jean-Pic said. “You know what’s right.”

I took my cane knife out and looked at the edge of it. Above, the sky had silted over, a damp black. There was a single star.

“Go on,” I said to Jean-Pic, and again I said, “Go.”

Then Jean-Pic went padding off into the trees, and soon I heard him start to jog. The cane knife came up and up and pointed at the one high star. I thought, is it my
z’étoile
, or his? When we die the
ti-bon-ange
must leave the body, but that is only the beginning of the journey, and the
z’étoile
is master of where the
ti-bon-ange
will go and of what things it will do. I felt the handle turn in my hand and when the knife struck it was with the blunt edge, clanging on the rivet. The slave’s head bounced and sprang back from the snarl of vines, but the rivet held and I saw the knife rise and chop down once again and then the rivet broke. So I bent over and pulled the tin of the headstall apart. His head came free and he slid down the bank and lay in the creek bed with his face in the wet. He breathed and then his tongue pushed out and began to lick at the damp leaves.

The cane knife swung down at my side. The cage of tin was twisted up among the vines, broken edges shining in the starlight. Two or three smaller stars had come out next to the one big one and away down the mountain I heard the dogs’ voices toll as they found sign.

“Come on,” I said. “It’s time to go.”

He spoke without lifting his head from the mud. “I can’t anymore.”

So I kicked him in the ribs a time or two until he rolled up on his knees. “Get up and run,” I said. “You don’t yet know what you can do.”

Chapter Three

C
REAKILY
B
AYON DE
L
IBERTAT GOT DOWN
from the coach and paused to look up at Arnaud, who stood on the gallery of the
grand’case
, caressing the pommel of the cane he held across his legs. A harness bell clacked as one of the grays tossed its head to shake off a fly. Toussaint closed the carriage door behind his master and moved to the horse’s head and stroked the line of its jaw to quiet it.

“I hadn’t looked for you so early,” Arnaud said. “The Sieur Maltrot has not yet come.”

Bayon de Libertat sneezed, drew out a cambric handkerchief from his coat pocket and blew his nose. Toussaint had turned to face him, stooped in a sort of frozen bow, eyes raised and querying. Bayon de Libertat nodded as he folded the handkerchief away, and Toussaint led the coach and horses around the rear of the
grand’case
toward the stable.

“You’re well, I take it?” Bayon de Libertat said, a trifle testily. “
Et madame?
”

“—is still abed.” Arnaud smiled suddenly and skipped down the plank steps, reaching for the other’s hand. “Welcome, then. You’ll inspect the fields with me? Come, I’ll order a horse for you.”

Bayon de Libertat, who would have preferred coffee or a glass of water, and a chance to limber his rickety legs and back, began to open his mouth, but the voice which emerged from behind Arnaud’s fixed smile kept rushing over him.

“Come,” Arnaud repeated. “You’re only stiff from jouncing over these bad roads. An hour in the saddle will do you good.”

But when they once were mounted, Arnaud again was silent and morose. Bayon de Libertat asked such polite questions as occurred to him, his voice brittle with annoyance. His stomach was uneasy, his knees sore, his left hand cramped arthritically on the reins. Age told on him, though he would not think of himself as old, but blamed his discomfort on his host’s discourtesy. He was too irked to show his fatigue now. It was already very hot.

“You’ve had another guest,” he forced himself to say.

“Eh?” Arnaud said, raising his head from a muttered conversation with his
commandeur. “Pardon?
”

“A visitor? I met him on the road as I came in. He stopped the coach to ask his way…”

“Oh, that fellow.” Arnaud gouged a heel into his horse’s flank and they trotted toward the next cane piece. “Some freethinker, I suppose, just out from France. He called himself a doctor.”

“No close connection then?” Bayon de Libertat said, and added mockingly, “A relative, perhaps?”

Arnaud glanced over his shoulder. “He was lost.” Again he faced toward the cane piece ahead, where the rise and fall of knives set up a painful intermittent flashing in the sun.

“You’re cutting early,” said Bayon de Libertat.

Arnaud grunted. “It’s twelve-month cane…fourteen, maybe.” He pulled up his horse and got down and went through a gap in the hedge to the first cane row. The horse lowered its head into a swirl of dangling reins, which Bayon de Libertat eyed disapprovingly. Arnaud said something curt to the slave nearest him, who chopped a six-inch section from a stalk of cane already felled and presented it to the master with his face turned away. Then he moved on down the row, raising his knife and swinging it down to cut each stalk as near the ground as possible.

Arnaud walked back toward the horses, peeling the section of cane with his penknife. He split off a wedge and offered it to Bayon de Libertat, who chewed it reflectively, looking wise and saying nothing. He thought this cane would only do for rum or very low grade sugar—then again, Arnaud did have his own distillery, he knew that.

“It’s been too dry, as everyone knows,” Arnaud said. He gathered the reins and swung back in the saddle; the horse stirred restively as his weight returned. Arnaud spoke defensively, as if he’d read the other’s mind. “Why, I’ve hardly been able to replant this year.” He waved his arm to the adjoining cane pieces. “Half this land is only in ratoons.”

“
Faut arroser
,” said Bayon de Libertat, shifting the bit of cane to the left side of his jaw where his good teeth matched each other.

“Of course,” Arnaud snapped. “But with what? When there’s no water in the stream itself, or next to none…”

Bayon de Libertat withdrew the splintered cane from his mouth and flicked it into the dirt beside the citron hedge. He kept his silence, looking away. Arnaud swung his horse’s head back toward the central buildings.

T
HEY FOUND THE
S
IEUR
M
ALTROT
sitting on the gallery with his legs stuck out before him and a damp cloth laid over his eyes. Bayon de Libertat took note of the white cockade on the bicorne hat he’d laid aside. The taste of sugar had brightened him slightly, never mind the quality. Arnaud clapped his hands and when his mulattress house servant appeared he ordered coffee. The Sieur Maltrot pulled the compress from his forehead and sat up to track the taut lifting of her hindquarters under the shift as she withdrew. He shot Arnaud a knowing glance, but the host’s expression gave him no encouragement. The pleasantries which followed were accordingly rather stiff.

Shortly the yellow woman came back with a coffee service and a dish of sliced papaya, overripe and almost deliquescent, interrupting the Sieur Maltrot’s string of observations on the weather. As she handed round the cups, his eyes stroked her from head to toe, lingering on the high arches of her feet and her long toes spreading on the plank floor. Bayon de Libertat also looked down. He rubbed the knuckles of the arthritic hand that lay in his lap like a broken-winged bird, and pulled on the fingers to ease their stiffness.

“
Bien
,” Arnaud said, as the woman left. “What news, gentlemen?” His eyes were on the Sieur Maltrot.

“Mostly bad,” Maltrot said cheerfully, stirring spoon after spoon of sugar into his cup. “Mostly bad. Why, Paris is a madhouse, as you’ve surely heard. They’ve made Ogé a hero in the theater, among other things, but let a colonial planter show himself in the streets and likely as not he’ll be stoned or hung.”

Arnaud drew in his plummy lips and tightened them to a white line. Unhurriedly, the Sieur Maltrot tilted some of the viscous coffee syrup into his mouth.

“In the west, the news is a touch more interesting,” he said. “A touch more hopeful, I’ll declare. Despite the late catastrophes at Port-au-Prince…”

Bayon de Libertat shifted in his chair; one corner of his mouth drew down like a cramp. “I can scarce credit how the Chevalier Mauduit was used there…”

“You may believe it,” said the Sieur Maltrot. His tongue flicked in and out with snakelike speed. “I have it from a witness in the town. They tore him limb from limb like Furies in the street and Madame Martin, a
white woman
, if you please, cut off his balls herself with a knife and carried them to her house for a trophy.”

In the ensuing speechlessness, an insect thrummed loudly under the porch boards. From the cane fields came a dispirited chorus of song measured out by whip cracks. Maltrot sipped from his syrupy cup.

“I hear but I cannot believe,” said Bayon de Libertat eventually. “What sort of creature must she be?”

“A harpy,” said the Sieur Maltrot. “Think no more of her—she is a mere beast. What
is
encouraging is that the colored men are negotiating with Hanus de Jumecourt at Croix les Bouquets.”

“I’m charmed,” said Arnaud, acidly. “To what end?”

“They’re royalists, essentially,” said Maltrot. “We have that much in common. They share our interests—to a point. And the point is to turn the
Pompons Rouges
back out of Port-au-Prince.”

“But at what price?” Arnaud reached for his cane where it balanced against the railing and laid it sideways across his lap.

“Naturally,” said the Sieur Maltrot, “enforcement of the May fifteenth decree.”

“But that’s disgusting,” Arnaud shouted, leaning forward across the cane. “I won’t have the law dictated to me by sons of our slaves. No decent white man will.”

The Sieur Maltrot snapped erect in his chair, gathering his feet below. “Calm yourself,” he said, and stared Arnaud down till he seemed to have subsided. Bayon de Libertat was startled at how quickly his foppish mannerisms had fallen from him. “You must understand,” he continued, “it’s not the decent white men you have to consider, but the indecent ones. Praloto and his renegade troops, the Port-au-Prince
canaille
. Recall that since Mauduit’s unlucky end, that town is lost to us entirely. At least the mulattoes are willing to wear the white cockade, and why? Because, whatever else, they’re men of
property
.”

“Mauduit would not permit them to wear the
pompon blanc
,” said Arnaud. “‘Let them wear yellow,’ he said, ‘as they are yellow men,’ and he was right.”

“The course of events has discovered defects in the judgment of our late friend Mauduit,” the Sieur Maltrot said. “Do you not think so? These mistakes we would be well advised to amend.”

Arnaud crossed and uncrossed his legs. “The May fifteenth decree,” he pronounced, “is a work of anarchy, abominable. And unenforceable as well, may God be thanked.”

“Of course,” said the Sieur Maltrot. “You and Governor Blanchelande are of one mind, to be sure. So far. But what will Blanchelande say if the
Pompons Rouges
chase him out of Le Cap too? You won’t even be able to reach a harbor if that happens. Where will you sell your sugar then?” Maltrot picked up his cup again and began to eat his own coffee-stained sugar with a tiny spoon.

“That’s most unlikely,” Arnaud said. “There’s been no trouble in Le Cap, not of that kind. There’ll be none till the Colonial Assembly meets.”

“Yes, and then there’ll be trouble enough for all,” said the Sieur Maltrot. “I prophesy. Are you not weary of these idiotic legislators yet?”

“Exhausted,” Arnaud said, rocking back in his chair, “
absolument
.” He rolled the cane on his upper thighs, like a baker rolling out yeasty dough.

“The Colonial Assembly will accomplish nothing,” Maltrot said. “More wrangling about the May fifteenth decree, and they may stir up the mob to some foolishness into the bargain. Meanwhile Port-au-Prince is just as bad as Paris. Worse, it’s a state of open war. And it could easily happen at Le Cap, you know it could—the Colonial Assembly will furnish a handsome occasion.”

“The May fifteenth decree is completely intolerable,” Arnaud said.

“So you say.” Maltrot touched the rim of the fruit plate, rotated it with a whisper over the woven cane table the mulattress had brought out to support it. “I would suggest you choose your evils carefully. After all, the decree applies only to four hundred people, even Blanchelande admits that much. Four hundred colored men whose
parents
were born in freedom
and
can prove it, and out of how many thousands? Let them have their political rights, they couldn’t throw a shadow on our governance. The decree is a token and that is all.”

“It is a token,” Arnaud said. “But that’s not all.”

“He’s right,” Bayon de Libertat said, and cleared his throat. “Thus far. It’s a matter of principle.”

The two men looked at him, turning their heads in unison. Bayon de Libertat’s breath went heavily in the soggy heat; sweat ran from his temples and down the leathery creases in his neck. He reached for his handkerchief and dabbed his forehead and his sweat-stringy hair. Arnaud clapped his hands and called into the house. A sixteen-year-old Negress, stomach rounded by an early pregnancy, came out and began to haul on the rope that turned the fan over the gallery.

“
Liberté
,” Arnaud said grindingly. “
Egalité. Fraternité
. You’d have me claim brotherhood with the yellow niggers, would you?”

“Oh no,” said the Sieur Maltrot. He lifted a slice of papaya an inch or so above the plate and held it while the juice dripped down, letting his wandering eye graze over the black girl’s rising belly. “Oh no, nothing so near as that.”

“You’ll give them notions,” Arnaud said. “
Ideas
.” He bit down on the word with the same contempt. “Let one yellow cur have the rights of a white man and they’ll all be howling for the same. I know you haven’t forgotten Ogé since you talked of him yourself.”

“By no means.” The Sieur Maltrot snapped the fruit into his jaws and swallowed. He stretched his legs out comfortably again. “Ogé has done us all a great service,” he said. “I know you don’t believe it but he did. And remember, he was a Creole in name only, really just another troublemaker from Paris, no different from that white trash that plagues us on the coast. He came here and called for mulatto rights and armed his band and even tried to raise the blacks, and what came next? We
crushed him
.” Maltrot licked fruit juice from his fingers, smacked his palm down on his knee. “Easily as that. Ogé proved that it
cannot be done
.”

“However interesting that may be,” Arnaud said, “you’ve a long way to go to convince me to claim kin with him, or any of the yellow rats.”

“Don’t think of it as a love match,” said Maltrot. “It’s a marriage of convenience. Temporary. So long as our interests coincide, however long it takes to dispose of that mob of
petit blancs
at Port-au-Prince. Afterward,” he waved his sticky fingers airily, “everything will return to the way it was before.”

“As easily as that?” said Arnaud.

“Why not?” said Maltrot. “You’ve commanded mulattoes in the
maréchaussée
. They do their job excellently, do they not? And afterward they lay down their arms and go home peaceably? They haven’t terrorized the countryside.”

“The point is well taken,” said Arnaud, “but—”

“In any case,” Maltrot said, “it’s not our territory, nor yet our affair. Let Hanus de Jumecourt make his own arrangements. There’s a very small part that you might play, but afterward we’ll come to that—it’s not what brought me here.”

The Sieur Maltrot sat straight again and withdrew a tiny silver snuffbox, embossed with a fleur-de-lis, from his vest pocket. He sniffed a pinch, sneezed hugely into a lace-trimmed handkerchief, and put away his apparatus.