“And Harry is a handful. I’m hoping he’s vexed his captor. Maybe by now the devil wants to give him back.” It was a poor attempt at humor, but we needed to lift our spirits.
My secret worry, however, was that my three-year-old had adapted to captivity and kidnapper quite well, and scarcely remembered his father at all.
Cap-Francois also had the scent of a farmyard. Some of the burned-out lots now held penned animals, presumably brought into town for food. There were cows, donkeys, sheep, and chickens. Goats and pigs wandered freely. Flies buzzed off deposits of manure.
The city’s squares were still geometrically planted with palms that shaded shaggy lawns and sculpted shrubbery. But instead of statuary there were gibbets from which rebels hung. We passed three decomposing black bodies while journeying from the port to guesthouse, the corpses turning in the breeze like weathercocks. No one but us gave them even a passing glance.
We took quarters on the Rue Espagnole, not far distant from Government House, where we’d find Rochambeau. The British had provided a little money for expenses since we were otherwise destitute; how I missed my emerald! It was just as well there was little to buy in this besieged city since our allowance was so modest: I’ve always felt pinched doing government work, better to stick with trade and gaming.
“Everyone seems to be waiting,” Astiza said as she sat on the bed.
The guesthouse was shabby from neglect, shutters broken and small green lizards clinging to its walls. The maids were sullen, the floors grimy. My dreams of joining the wealthy were once more in abeyance, while Aztec riches beyond imagination beckoned somewhere in the Caribbean.
It was time to spy.
I looked toward Rochambeau’s headquarters. A hundred yards from its door was a guillotine, blade bright in the sun.
Chapter 18
While we waited for an audience with the French general, Astiza and I mapped a plan to explore Cap-Francois, hoping to sight our son. Given her interest in religion, she’d start at a church and ask about orphans, runaways, or odd parishioners. I didn’t think Leon Martel was likely to turn up in pew or confessional, but it was possible a wayward child or a newly arrived adult of poor character might come to the attention of nuns.
Given Martel’s past, I thought a hunt of brothels would be likelier to find him than a hunt of cathedrals, but I’d been married long enough now to know not to propose that as a beginning. I decided instead to master the military geography of the city in hopes I’d find something useful to take to Dessalines. How we’d cross French lines to this Negro Hannibal I’d no idea, but my experience is that if you poke into a bear den you might find a bear, which had happened during my sojourn with the Dakota Sioux. I don’t believe things always work out, as Sidney Smith claims, but I do believe trouble will find you easily enough, should you go looking.
So I began to stroll, trying to make a crude estimate of the garrison while keeping an eye out for Harry. I’d try to flush Martel out with my mere presence. It didn’t occur that far from hiding, Martel had made himself part of the French government and likely knew of our arrival as soon as we climbed the steps of the quay.
So did others. Survival had become precarious in Saint-Domingue, and the key for all sides was using eyes and ears to prevent surprise.
At first my foot patrol seemed fruitless. The town was desultory, traffic listless, weather sultry, and clouds mounded on the peaks and then clawed overhead like a drawn tarp. There was a growl of thunder to echo the occasional boom of siege guns. Then afternoon downpour turned the streets of Cap-Francois into temporary rivers. Raindrops as heavy as musket balls rattled while I stood on a boardwalk under a porch roof, watching a slurry of silt and garbage flow toward the sea.
How was I to cross this deluge to continue my scouting?
Someone dark and gigantic came striding out of the murk from the middle of the street, as impervious to the pounding water as a bull in a paddock. “Can I offer you a ferry, monsieur?” A strapping black looked up at me on my boardwalk with a smile that glowed, each tooth dice bright and his gums pink like an orchid.
I peered into the curtain of rain. “Where is your carriage?”
“My shoulders, adventurer.”
I glanced down the street. Another white was boarding the shoulders of another Negro like a toddler climbing aboard his father, the human foot ferry keeping his cargo’s feet clear of the mud. And another, and another. It was clearly the odd custom of this place. The first passenger was carried to the boardwalk on the opposite side of the avenue and deposited like a delivery of mail. A coin changed hands.
“There’s an entire company of carriers,” my entrepreneur explained. “Even in a revolution the black man has to make a living, yes?” I saw another duo go by, the human mule singing African songs with the gusto of a Venetian gondolier while the white hunched with hat streaming. It seemed a parody of oppression. But when in Rome…
“What’s your name, broad shoulders?”
“Jubal, monsieur.”
I’ve always found it convenient to have big friends, or quick little ones. This fellow was an extraordinary specimen, six and a half feet tall, with polished skin the color of coal, muscles like a dray horse, and broad smile as brilliant as a snowdrift. He wore a tattered and patched infantry coat that was wet as a washcloth, his pantaloons cut off at the knee so that he could wade barefoot in our tideland of a street. A red kerchief gave his neck a jaunty air, and his belt was wide as a pirate’s. There was poise to his posture completely different from the hunch of the wary slave, and his eyes sized me up with the calibration of an engineer. I was impressed but not surprised. While my race has no shortage of philosophers arguing our God-given superiority, such arrogance has been contradicted by the sheer capability of brown Arab, red Indian, and black African I’ve met in my travels. The races aren’t very different at all, but Europeans seldom believe me. It’s easier to sort people out by pigment.
“Come, monsieur, we will make the voyage to the Left Bank together! I am the Mercury of mire, a Columbus of navigation! Climb on my shoulder and Jubal will take you where you need to go.”
“You seem a very erudite porter.”
“I can read, and even think. Imagine that, from a Negro.”
“And why would an educated freeman work as a mule?”
“Why do you assume I’m a freeman?”
“By your bearing and industry.”
“Maybe I’m just cocky. Climb aboard and find out.”
“And how much for this favor?”
“A franc. But Jubal is the best carrier, so you may wish to give me two.”
It was like mounting a sturdy horse, and off we went into the rain. I’d kept my planter’s straw hat from Antigua, and looked out at the world through a veil of water dripping from its brim. My shoulders were instantly soaked, but the downpour was warm and the ride enjoyable. I felt ridiculous, but at least I wasn’t calf-deep in mud.
Jubal set his own course. Rather than wade straight across to the other side, he splashed to the middle of the avenue and trudged parallel, making us drift toward the harbor.
“No, no, I want to go there!” I pointed. He might not even get his franc.
“You will get there. But perhaps you wish to talk to Jubal first. Out here in the street, in the rain, where no Frenchman can hear us.”
I was immediately alert. “About what?”
“Yes, talk to mighty Jubal, who knows both mountains and sea. Jubal, who has heard of an American diplomat arrived at the harbor with his striking wife, seeking information on the liberation of Haiti. Jubal has heard about this electrician who walks into the lion’s mouth, to ask about the lion.”
My heart beat faster. “How did you learn that?”
“The black man knows all in Cap-Francois. Who rows first to a ship, hoists a trunk, or drives a carriage? The black man. Who mops out a meeting room, serves at a banquet, or digs new entrenchments? The black man. But should an American ambassador talk only to the French side? Or should he seek information from the African legions as well, the ones who will soon rule this country?”