The Emerald Storm

Chapter 25

Jubal and I staggered exhausted from the rebel boat and collapsed to sleep on the bank of the river. We were hidden from view by mangrove trees and wakened at midmorning by heat and insects. Then we shared a breakfast of pork and plantain as we watched land crabs scuttle and caimans yawn. Our escort of a dozen blacks was as armed as a platoon of pirates with pistol, musket, and bayonet. Cane knives and machetes took the place of swords. A boy of ten perched in a tree, still as a cat, watching for French patrols.

“You like to cause trouble, white man,” said Antoine, a former field hand risen to full colonel. “Never have I heard so much shooting at one soggy head.”

“Two, if you count Jubal.”

“I think it was you they were aiming at, no?”

I conceded the point. “I am plagued by misunderstandings.”

“He acts with his heart instead of his head,” Jubal interpreted.

“You mean a woman,” Antoine guessed. “Cock instead of caution.” They laughed.

“Even worse,” said Jubal. “A wife.”

“Care instead of carefree!”

“I’m actually quite a careful planner, and my wife even more so,” I told them. “It’s just that the French in Cap-Francois are excitable.”

“So now you try the other side.”

“You do seem more relaxed.”

“That’s because we are winning.”

I was marched under rebel escort into the abandoned sugarcane fields, still limping from my sprain, my ear aching, my feet bare. The ground, thankfully, was the red soil of soft farmland. It was a relief to have lost my coat; I wondered why I’d worn it in the Caribbean as long as I had. The Negroes gave me another straw hat and a smear of ashes for my nose and ears, to protect against the sun.

Dirt lanes connecting the plantations led this way and that, but instead of grand colonial homes there were only hollow monuments to twelve years of slaughter. The land was humid and initially seemed deserted, but then we’d pass a clearing hacked in the cane and there’d be a platoon of black soldiers camped, dressed in a hodgepodge of captured French military dress, stolen planter fineries, and rags leftover from slavery. The men were lean, tough, and confident. One might puff a pipe, another sharpen a blade. They’d stop chatting and stare at me with suspicion as I trudged past, the lone white amid a squad of blacks. Was I prisoner or mercenary?

But studying them, I was now certain that Napoleon would never reinstate slavery on this island. The inhabitants had become independent not just in deed but in mind. It’s like trying to force a boy or girl coming of age back into childhood; it cannot be done.

“I can see why the French hesitate to fight you,” I said to Jubal.

“Some of these men have been at war all their adult lives,” he told me. “Most have lost brothers, mothers, wives. When we liberate a plantation, we share what is seized, but any money goes to buy arms from Yankee gunrunners. We have men with American rifles who can pick off French officers before they know they are being aimed at.”

“I once had a long rifle. I’m rather a good shot, actually.”

“We have all the shooters we need. Dessalines seeks thinkers.”

“You think, don’t you, Jubal?”

“Books became bread. It was a mistake by my master. I realized there were alternatives.”

“You’re the kind of man who reads and ponders, and thinks before he speaks. Most men in Paris and London can’t do that, you know.”

“Right now, I’m thinking how to make a case for you.”

Several miles from Cap-Francois we began to pass villages with huts of liberated black women and children. They’d already converted small sections of cane field to vegetable patches and animal pens. Chickens clucked, pigs grunted, and naked toddlers wandered, the latter reminding me of my missing son. How much would a three-year-old remember me after all these months? I could only pray he’d found succor with the return of his mother, and that she’d tell him good things about Papa.

How interesting if females ruled, instead of men with their dreams of martial glory! Less sorrow and more dullness, I guessed. More contentment and less inspiration. Not better or worse, necessarily, but different. An easier environment to sustain retirement.

A tropical wood topped the cane fields on a low hill too rocky and poor for agriculture. Within its shade was the main rebel camp. Instead of the closed tents of the French army, the blacks had stretched canvas awnings between the trees to create a network of pavilions that let through the breeze. The elevation put the headquarters at a deliberate distance from stagnant water, keeping mosquitoes at bay. Looted plantation tables and chairs provided outdoor furniture, and hammocks were strung for sleep. A haze of campfire smoke hung in the branches. I could smell roast pig and baking bread, and after our march I was as hungry as when I met Napoleon.

I didn’t get any food before this meeting, either.

The rebel army was not entirely the color of coal. Some were mulattos, and others white deserters. Poles who’d hoped service with France would spread revolution to their homeland instead found themselves hirelings in the sultry Caribbean. Most died immediately of yellow fever, but some survived to flee to the rebel army. Several had become drillmasters because the illiterate field hands responded almost automatically to white command, a habit ingrained since birth. I saw a company marching back and forth to a profane, shouted pidgin of French, African, and Polish.

I also saw children and grandmothers, fancy girls and cripples, craftsmen and cooks. There were dogs, cats, pet parrots, and braying donkeys. In one corner men were clustered around fighting cocks, cheering the birds on.

Dessalines’s headquarters was in the middle of this conglomeration of several thousand men and women, his pavilion roofed by what looked to be a liberated mainsail. Oriental carpets were spread on the ground. Huge black bodyguards ringed what seemed to be an open-air throne room, and the general presided on a red velvet settee that reminded me of the purple one in the office of Rochambeau. He glanced up from papers as I approached, frowning. I was pale, limping, unarmed, soiled, and barefoot. I didn’t look like much of a hero, or of much use, for that matter.

Jean-Jacques Dessalines, in contrast, exuded power and menace.

He was handsomer than L’Ouverture, a Negro of forty-five years, with high cheekbones, a firm chin, powerful torso, and the erect carriage of the French army officer he’d been. His sideburns extended into muttonchops, kinked hair cut close to his skull: in the heat, skin glistening, he looked as chiseled from black marble as a Roman statue of a Nubian lord. His gaze was predatory as an eagle. The general had set aside on the sofa a bicorn hat with ostrich plume, and wore an unbuttoned full military dress jacket with epaulettes and braiding. He was African chieftain crossed with military marshal, but his look of fierce intelligence exceeded either. Dessalines was reputed to be cruel, quick, and brilliantly determined.

Jubal had told me the general was made overseer as a young man because of his obvious cleverness, had been purchased by a free black named Dessalines, and had taken his Negro master’s name. When the slave uprising began in 1791, the opportunistic slave joined the revolt. Through courage, ruthlessness, and strength of personality, he became a key lieutenant to L’Ouverture. He followed Toussaint through a complex web of alliances and rifts with Spanish, British, French, and rival black armies, each side betraying the other again and again as the island’s tangle of ethnicities jockeyed for power. Dessalines was L’Ouverture’s fist, taking no prisoners and burning enemy homes to the ground. Just the year before, he’d heroically defended a fort against eighteen thousand French attackers, retreating only after an epic twenty-day siege. He then succeeded Toussaint when that general was betrayed in June of 1802. Now, in November of 1803, this general had squeezed the last whites into Cap-Francois. He met every atrocity the French could invent with cruelty of his own, and hanged, shot, burned, drowned, and tortured.

It was to this man that I’d fled for mercy and aid.

“We fished the American,” Antoine announced. “He decided to swim instead of walk. Jubal was good enough not to leave him for the caimans.”

“The reptiles spat him out,” my black friend said.

Dessalines studied me skeptically. “Is he useful?”

“He is famous,” said Jubal.

“That’s not the same thing.”

“And handsome!” called a black woman back in the crowd, leaning lazily against a tree. More people laughed, which I hoped was a good sign. I straightened, trying to look the part of resolute savant instead of desperate refugee. Maybe I could interest them in electricity, share some of Franklin’s aphorisms, or teach them a game of cards.

“Silence.” Dessalines held up his hand, and the laughter snuffed like an extinguished candle. He turned to me. “So you’ve come to the winning side.” His voice was low and sonorous.

“I believe we have common interests,” I replied with more confidence than I felt. “The United States wishes to see you victorious so that Napoleon will complete the transfer of Louisiana to my country. The British hope you will deprive their archenemy of Saint-Domingue, France’s richest colony. And the French are in pursuit of a legend they think will help them conquer the English. You’ve become not just the most important man in the land you call Haiti, General Dessalines, but one of the most important men in the world.”

I’d rehearsed this bit of flattery because I wasn’t certain how I’d be welcomed. Around me was Africa in all its dark power, and somehow I had to enlist help. His officers looked as skeptical and opportunistic as medieval earls. One whom I’d learn was named Cristophe was an imposing seven feet tall, while another named Capois tensed like a coiled spring. Even when resting, he seemed poised for attack. They were shrewd-looking, hard-muscled, swaggering men, with pistols in their sashes and tattoos on arms and faces. Some were as gaudily clothed as Dessalines, but one slim giant wore epaulettes on a cord slung around his neck so that his torso was bare in the heat. He displayed scars of an old whipping on his back.

They were still men like me, I reminded myself. Savages we call them because their manners differ from ours, old Ben Franklin had once observed.

“Indeed,” Dessalines replied to my speech. “The whole world knows the importance of Jean-Jacques Dessalines. And men come to me now that I have power for only one reason, the hope that I can help them.” He looked at me narrowly. “Is this not true?”

It would do no good to deny the obvious. “It’s true of me.”

“Hmph.” He let his eyes roam the assembly, keeping attention on his performance with the skill of an actor. “I’m told you were the last to speak to Toussaint L’Ouverture.”

“I tried to rescue him, but he was shot in prison.”

“Yet he told you something.”

“A secret to my wife.”

“He was the first of the blacks, but now he presides over his fallen brothers in Guinea. It is I, Dessalines, who is first of the blacks now.”

“Which is why I’ve come to you, General.”

“But I only help those who can help me.”

“You and I can help each other.”

“The French have stolen his wife and son,” Jubal spoke up. “He has reason to join us, Commandant.”

“Indeed?” The general took up a French snuffbox, a pretty thing of silver and pearl, took a pinch of tobacco, and sneezed.

“Revenge,” Jubal said.

“Hmph.” The black leader pointed to a red and blue banner hanging from a tree. In the middle was a coat of arms. “Do you know what that is, Monsieur Gage?”

“A battle standard?”

“It’s the new flag of Haiti. Do you see what it is missing?”

I glanced, but shook my head. “I’m poor with riddles.”

“It’s sewn from the French tricolor, but I had the white removed.”

“Ah.”

“I hate whites, white man. I hate mulattos, the arrogant gens de couleur who fought us and pretended they are our betters because of the lightness of their skin.” His eyes darted at some of the followers he had just insulted. “I hate the French, I hate the Spanish, I hate the British, and I hate the Americans. I and my slave brothers have been whipped and hanged by white-skins for two hundred years. I have flayed and burned and stabbed and strangled a thousand in return, with my very own hands. What do you think of that?”

This wasn’t going well. Despite my battles, everyone seems more belligerent than me. I cleared my throat. “I do not want to be number one thousand and one.”

There was dead silence, and I feared I’d said the wrong thing, immediately hoping for a quick shooting over a slow roasting. Then Dessalines abruptly barked a laugh, Jubal guffawed in relief, and the other rebel officers joined, too. Laughter rippled around the encampment as my joke was repeated, women shrieking with the men. I smiled hesitantly.

It’s always flattering to be the center of attention.

Dessalines put his hand up, and everyone instantly went silent again. “Then you will earn your keep, as every other soldier does in my army. Are you my soldier now, Ethan Gage?”

When drafted, it’s wisest to make the best of things. “I certainly hope so. I want to liberate Cap-Francois.” I tried to make my nervous smile broader, straighten my shoulders, raise my chin, and otherwise mimic martial traits. “I support blacks, and admire what you’ve accomplished.”

“And maybe I’ll let a white man help us finish, should he prove useful.”

Here was my chance. “I can help you defeat the French fortifications.”

He raised his brow. “How?”

“But if I do that, there’s something you must do for me as well.” My experience with tyrants is that they admire a bit of cheek, so I mustered what courage I had. Bonaparte responded to my cockiness, and Sidney Smith, too.

“You dare bargain with me?” Dessalines glowered like a thunderhead. The whites of his eyes had a faint yellowish cast, and the pale underside of his fingers tapped the hilt of his sword with the rattle of drumsticks. But my bet was that he was acting, too.

“I’m in pursuit of an ancient secret,” I proclaimed, forcing my voice louder. “It’s possible that your people, and only your people, can help me. If I find it, we can share it, and it’s so fabulous you can build your new nation with it. I’m the key. You’ll be greater than Spartacus, greater than Washington, greater than Bonaparte.”

“I want to be an emperor.”

“And I can help make you one.” I could do no such thing, of course, but what happened after we found the treasure of Montezuma was immaterial to me. I needed to find the loot to bargain for Astiza and Harry, and this brilliant megalomaniac was the path to it. “However, this isn’t a secret to share with an entire army, and not something your military officers need know.” I glanced about me at his entourage of killers. “I’ll help with the attack on Cap-Francois; I have a plan to breach their defense. But before I do so, I need to meet those hungars and mambos, priests and priestesses, who know the most about your gods and legends. I need to learn what they know.” Astiza had taught me the titles, and I missed her desperately. She gets a better reception than I do among strangers, and notices details I miss.

“Be careful of our voodoo, white man. It has power that even we can’t control.”

“I don’t need power. Just legends. Then I can help you.”

“He bargains with nothing,” muttered the tall black, Cristophe. Dessalines glanced at him with respect.

In any card game, there’s a time to throw all in. “I need to meet with Cecile Fatiman,” I declared.

“Cecile?” asked Dessalines. “How do you know that name?”

“She’s a famous priestess, Jubal tells me.”

“A mambo, yes.”

“A mambo from the very beginning of the revolt in Boukman Wood.”

“She’s our wisest, said to be more than one hundred years old.”

“That’s who I need. She foresaw my coming. And my wife learned that Cecile is led by the voodoo spirit Ezili Danto.” There was a murmur in the crowd at mention of these names. “I need to meet with Mambo Cecile, tap her witchcraft, and solve your problems and mine at the same time.”

“But what of the French defenses?”

“After I meet Cecile I’ll be ready to help you surprise them.”