The Emerald Storm

Chapter 20

I wasn’t eager to leave my wife alone with Rochambeau the lecher, but I also knew Astiza was the type to put even Bonaparte in retreat if she had to. I, meanwhile, might spy out something useful for Dessalines, finding a French weakness and trading it for legends of treasure. That in turn could help get my boy back. I might seem a traitor to my race, but Leon Martel had ensured my enmity by stealing my son and jewel. Besides, it appeared to me that the best choice for Rochambeau’s forces was to leave before they all succumbed to fever. Why not hurry them along?

With my skin color, my reputation, my diplomatic papers, and my wonder of a wife, the French officers assumed my loyalty. They’d also been instructed, I suspect, to keep me busy for the afternoon while Rochambeau tried to maneuver Astiza to that purple couch. So I was given a rambunctious cavalry mount-it took a few minutes for us to come to a proper understanding, which is that I would indicate the general direction I wanted to go and the horse would get there in a manner of its own choosing-and a colonel for escort named Gabriel Aucoin. This officer looked as soldiers are supposed to look, with erect torso, calm confidence, easy command of his mount, and an exploding souffle of blond curls that put me in mind of Alexander the Great.

“They gave you Pepper, American, but you sit him well,” he congratulated.

“It might be more accurate to say he lets me sit. I’m not really a horseman. Still, I can ride when I need to.”

“I’m not an engineer or a guide, but I can show you our gun batteries. And then share some Bordeaux. We’ll be friends, I think. I like honest men, not braggarts.”

And indeed, I liked him and felt guilty for preparing to betray him. But if I could help put an end to this damnable war, maybe Aucoin would live. A prolonged siege would likely mean he’d die. At least that’s what I told myself to justify my confusion of loyalties. I was pretending to be a diplomat while playing the spy, and pretending to be a loyal white while hoping to betray the members of my race here in Cap-Francois. None of this would have been necessary if Martel had not kidnapped Harry, but I regretted having to drag men like Aucoin into my quarrels.

We rode to the flat eastern end of Cap-Francois where the primary fortifications are. The island that Columbus called Hispaniola is divided into two colonies, the Spanish Santo Domingo to the east and the French Saint-Domingue, or Haiti, to the west. The land is very mountainous, and so the French colony was strategically divided into three parts. In the north, west, and south were separate pans of plantations, each hemmed in by hills. The blacks had already conquered west and south and now were pressing on this last white stronghold in the north, having seized all but the city of Cap-Francois itself.

The struggle would be decided on the city’s eastern boundary, between river and mountains.

It was hot as we rode, the scenery somnolent but luscious. The island is a gorgeous mosaic of greens, with cane, orchards, and jungles almost glowing like my emerald under a brilliant blue sky. Birds flit like darting flames, and flowers are a scattering of paint. Oranges, lemons, mangoes, and plantains erupt for the picking like something out of Eden. Butterflies flutter, and insects drone.

Disturbing the green tableau today were fires on the distant horizon, but from war or agriculture I couldn’t say. Haiti is a dream that hate turned into a nightmare, lush paradise as a portal to hell.

We rode along the stumps and graves of the Rue Espagnole. At midday, the lack of shade made the sun feel like it was pounding my straw hat. Past the city’s outskirts were the French lines, and behind them mildewed military tents, hot as ovens, and trampled grassy fields. Artillery waited hub to hub next to neat pyramids of black cannonballs. Soldiers lounged beneath awnings. Muskets, too, were stacked in pyramids.

“We confine drill to the cooler morning,” Colonel Aucoin volunteered when he saw me eyeing the inactivity. “Half my men are unwell, and all are thin from shortened rations.”

Useful, but Dessalines no doubt knew this. “When do you sally to meet the enemy?”

“Not much anymore, because disease depletes our ranks. Dessalines’s army swells, and ours shrinks. He grows bold, and we grow timid. He has the entire island on which to maneuver, and we have half a mile of breastworks.”

“How many men do you have?”

“About five thousand. The blacks have three times as many. The French art of war is all that holds the rebels at bay. We have better discipline and with reinforcement could still reverse events. But now war with the British makes it even unlikelier that help from France will arrive.”

“What are you hoping for, then?”

“Officially, that Dessalines breaks his army on our fortifications, letting our cannon do their bloody work. Then we pursue the remnants with our dogs.”

So I should not recommend a frontal attack. “And unofficially?”

“That we are given a chance to reach an honorable settlement before they murder us all.”

We passed a kennel of the man-eating mastiffs that Rochambeau had purchased from the Cubans. These were monsters almost the size of small ponies, great slobbering things that raced, barked, and lunged as we clopped past. Our horses shied and whinnied, instinctively increasing their pace. The dogs weighed about a hundred and fifty pounds, I guessed, and hurled themselves against the bars of their cages with anxious woofing and snarling. Their excitement bent the wood, which sprung them back like bows.

They reminded me of a brute of a canine owned by my old antagonist, Aurora Somerset, and I shuddered at the memory. That one had torn throats to gristle. “How do you control them?”

“Sometimes we don’t. They’ve turned on our men several times, and we’ve had to shoot some. But the blacks fear them more than a cavalry charge. Besides, our horses are wearing out.”

“Can the dogs turn the tide?”

“The rebels know how to shoot dogs, too.”

“And if Dessalines doesn’t conveniently destroy his army by throwing it against your cannon?”

“Then it will all have been for nothing.” His voice was resigned. Defeat starts weeks or months before an actual surrender.

“It seems a desperate strategy.”

“For desperate times.” He reined up, looking at me squarely. “I am happy to show you about, monsieur, but telling the truth is depressing, and I think we won’t tarry into the evening because you should return to your wife. Our general has a taste for other men’s women.”

“I trust Astiza.”

“Which could be exactly the problem. Her loyalty could make you an inconvenience in Rochambeau’s eyes. My orders are to keep you safe, but don’t count on that forever. You do not want to make her a convenient widow.”

“What do you mean?”

“Rochambeau and Admiral La Touche recently gave a dance aboard the admiral’s flagship, the deck turned into a garden. There were plants and flowers on the bulwarks and vines suspended from the rigging. It was lovely escape, letting one pretend war didn’t exist. But a young beauty not entirely in love with her husband came in a Parisian dress so scandalous she was almost naked. This Clara danced the night away with our commander, and the next day her husband was assigned to a column sent to smoke out the blacks. It was ambushed, and he never returned.”

“And Clara?”

“Seduced, and then packed off to Paris.”

“Astiza is entirely in love with me.” Even as I said it, I wasn’t sure. Her words echoed: What if it was a mistake to marry?

“Then you’re a lucky man.” His tone said he wasn’t sure, either. “But anyone can be tempted. What does she most desire? Rochambeau will find that out and then offer it to her.”

My son, I thought. “I’m not to volunteer for a sally, then.”

“And not to take for granted the fidelity of your wife or the word of our esteemed general. No disrespect for her. It’s just friendly advice, monsieur, for a treacherous island. Fear makes people do strange things.”

“No offense taken, Colonel Aucoin. General Rochambeau gives fair warning by his manner, doesn’t he? Is he simply greedy?”

“Afraid, I think, a man who doesn’t know what to do. That’s why he slaughters and tortures the Negroes, out of fear they’ll do the same to him. It will only make it worse in the end, which he knows, and yet he can’t help himself. I think he ruts so much simply to postpone his nightmares. Servants have heard him screaming in the night.”

I liked this man’s realism. But rarely are the most sensible in charge.

“You must keep this conversation secret, of course,” Aucoin went on. “I am a soldier and will do what I am told, but I try to tell the truth to protect the innocent.”

I hadn’t been called that in some time.

“By the same token, you must not tell the truth about me to him,” the colonel added.

“But of course. I appreciate your trust.”

He shrugged. “I’m afraid, too. It puts me in the mood to confess.”

While the city’s eastern boundaries were flat and seemed to invite invasion, the French had used the terrain as best they could. At a low rise just to the right of the major trunk road, Rochambeau had ordered the construction of a sturdy fort of stone, earth, and logs that had just enough altitude to command the approaches. It was anchored to a much steeper mountain so precipitous that no sizable body of men could flank it from that direction. This fort, I judged, would be the key.

Aucoin led me up a causeway to the top of the bastion.

No enemy could be seen. The flat plantation country beyond seemed deserted, and with the loan of his spyglass I could make out the blackened shells of destroyed houses and sugar mills. Abandoned cane waved in the wind, a sea of ten-foot-high stalks hiding whatever was out there. Once-harvested fields had grown back wild, and smoke hazed the horizon.

“Where’s Dessalines?”

“Watching us as we watch him, and hoping disease finishes his campaign for him. He’s tried some assaults on our redoubts, and we’ve taught his men that voodoo doesn’t protect them from bullets. They charge fanatically, even the women, and it only adds to the carnage. You can smell the dead.”

Yes, there was a hint of the sickly sweet rot of abandoned corpses out there in the grass, apparently too close to French guns to be retrieved.

“So now he waits, licking his wounds. I’d like to go after him, but the general doesn’t believe we have the strength to retain any ground we capture.”

“So it’s stalemate.”

“Yes. He cannot conquer us, and we cannot capture him. Without siege artillery and the expertise to dig the proper approach trenches, I don’t see how he can take our fort here at Vertiers. He must wait for us to sicken or starve.”

I nodded. The French had splendid fields of fire, several batteries of cannon, and magazines crammed with powder. It might still be a long war. “I admire your engineers.”

“You were at Acre, so we respect your opinion.”

My expertise was exaggerated, but I’d developed an artilleryman’s eye in the Holy Land. I saw a crease in the terrain that could be seen from up high but was probably invisible to Dessalines. The ravine was a negligible ditch snaking into the cane, but it pointed at the French walls like a siege trench, and it was hard to see its bottom. It might provide cover in darkness. Well, that was something. “Do you have enough artillery to cover every approach?”

“Not if surprised. The key is that we learn what the blacks are going to do before they decide themselves. We can see them coming when they move; the sugarcane shakes to betray their march.”

“Kleber and Napoleon used the movement of wheat to their advantage in the Holy Land at the battle of Mount Tabor,” I said. “What about flanking you?”

“The mountains are too treacherous for more than a small patrol. A regiment would bog in mud and snakebite. Things will be decided here, in the open, on flat, firm ground. If a French naval squadron arrives, we might still hold out.”

I looked at the mountains, most so steep that attackers would fall at the French as much as charge them. Organization goes to pieces in terrain like that.

But I also saw a stream that sprang from a jungle canyon in those same mountains, emptying into a little pond right behind the French batteries. “You have a water supply, too.”

“Yes. Wells are brackish here, and while we can haul barrels from Cap-Francois, it’s laborious. Our engineers diverted that creek closer to our lines. On a hot day, that rivulet is a real asset. There’s no water on the rebel side, except the brackish river, which keeps them from camping too close.”

I saw a track in the ruddy soil led along the stream into the jungle. “Is there a vantage point up there?”

“It provides a view like a map. Come. We’ll have a swig of wine.”

We left our horses and climbed up along the stream, sweating in the heat. A brow of hill several hundred feet above the French lines finally gave me a clear vista. Here up high, the stream leveled briefly in a hollow, hills cupping either side of the rivulet before it disappeared into jungle. The waterway ran over the lip where we stood and down to the French camp below. I could see the snake of the defensive lines, the ominously quiet sugarcane fields, the sprawl of Cap-Francois, and tangled mountain ranges.

“What will you tell your government, Gage?” Aucoin wanted reassurance, even though my opinion was no better than his.

“It depends on the size and expertise of the opposing army, I suppose,” I said neutrally. “Perhaps I’ll tell them that either side can still win.”

“I called you honest. Now I’m not so sure.” He offered me a flask.

I sipped and glanced about, and an idea occurred. Perhaps I did have a scheme to offer Jubal, who in turn could take me to Dessalines, his mambo priestess, and legends of Montezuma’s treasure.

“Your engineers have expertise,” I went on. That was true enough. “It’s possible you could hold out forever with enough food and powder.” So an idea had tickled my brain, an idea inspired by my son Harry. I looked uphill. “You’ve used geography to great advantage. In America, we call terrain this steep ‘land that stands on end.’ ”

He smiled. “An apt description.”

“I think I’ll congratulate your general on your position. I’m just as happy being on this side of your guns, not charging them.”

The colonel smiled wryly. “I hope Dessalines shares your caution.”

I strode to the stream, scooped up water, and washed my hot face, taking in the geography and trying to memorize it. “But your real enemy has always been the fevers, hasn’t it?”

“Disease demoralizes everyone.”

“More armies have been conquered by plague than artillery.”

“The mal de Siam lingers because our men are weak.”

“And your doctors are baffled?”

“Our doctors are dead.”

I thought of slavery. “Do you see God’s hand in all this carnage?”

“When fortune is against you, you see the devil.”

I nodded. “I’m a card player, you know. I ponder luck.”

“All of life is a throw of the dice, Monsieur Gage.”

“Yes. God. Satan. Fate. Fortune. My wife ponders the imponderable.”

“Your wife, sir, is in as much danger from fever as from General Rochambeau. Come. I’ll show you a hospital for what the British call the yellow jack. It will hurry you on your way back to your marriage, and your home.”