Their escort halted in front of a pale yellow-painted government office building with blue doors and shutters, and Spanish-looking roof tiles. Soldiers in neat, clean uniforms stood guard over the entrance, though they made no moves to stop the stream of officers, runners, and idling gawkers, both military and civilian, who wandered in with pipes or cigaros fuming, chatting and pointing at their former masters’ splendours as gay as mag-pies.
Colonel Mirabois left them for a long time, standing in direct sunlight and steamy heat, before returning and gesturing them inside; across the high and spacious lobby, and up a long, curving flight of stairs to the upper floor, then into a receiving room large enough to accommodate a good-sized hunt ball of two hundred or more very energetic couples at a contre-dance.
“Messieurs, mon Generals…,” Colonel Mirabois loftily began as he introduced the British delegation, then made introductions for the splendidly uniformed men who stood behind a massive oak-and-marble desk.
“General Dessalines…!” Mirabois said as that worthy glared at them, a big, tough, brutal-looking man.
“Illiterate, I heard,” Lewrie whispered to Bligh and Barre.
“General Christophe…!”
“Once a British slave, brought here. Hotel waiter here in Cap Francois,” Lewrie further whispered. “Speaks English.” Christophe was not as big as the rest, and didn’t look quite as threatening.
“General Clairveaux…!” Mirabois said of a solid Mulatto man.
“Betrayal’s his meat an’ drink,” Lewrie related. “Play any side ’gainst the other.”
Captain Barre turned his head slightly to look at Lewrie, with an eyebrow up; the sort of look one gave to a talking dog.
Damme! Lewrie thought; I must’ve picked up more than I thought I had, from the last time I was here. Useful insights… gossip!
After that, Lewrie stood aside, having no role to play as Bligh presented his formal written proposal from Commodore Loring. Colonel Mirabois took it and handed it to General Dessalines, which was fruitless, since he was illiterate, a former field slave. Grudgingly, that worthy had to pass it to either Christophe or the better-educated General Clairveaux, glowering even darker and fiercer, first at the British delegation which had put him in that embarrassment, then at his two “compatriots,” who, most-likely, were scheming to become the supreme leader of their new nation.
“Clairveaux’s a schemer?” Barre muttered from the corner of his mouth, barely moving his lips.
“Supposedly loyal to France and Sonthonax when he was here, then Rigaud and his Mulattoes down south, then L’Ouverture, and the Spanish? Slippery as an eel,” Lewrie whispered back. “Might’ve backed LeClerc, ’fore he died of Yellow Jack.”
“You puny, lying White bastards!” General Christophe barked angrily after he’d read the letter and heard Bligh out. “Go back to Europe, the rest of the Indies, and slaughter each other! But do not dare to dabble in Hayti’s affairs any longer. Damn all you British, but if not for your presence, the French would already be gone!”
That was shouted in English; Christophe turned to his compatriots, Dessalines and Clairveaux, and repeated himself in rapid, slurred French, wind-milling his arms and going so far as to spit on the floor, and pound a fist on the marble table top so hard that he made it jump, massive and heavy as it was; about the size of a jolly-boat, to Lewrie’s lights.
General Dessalines rumbled out an equal flood of bile in a deep basso, glaring at the trio of British officers and gripping the hilt of his elegant sword so hard that his dark fingers changed colour. Clairveaux, not to be outdone, barked out his own flood of threats.
Not exactly Nelson’s “band o’ brothers,” are they? Lewrie told himself. He found it amusing… until the roars for “slaughter” and “blood bath” reached the ears of the many revolutionaries beyond those double doors, and Lewrie heard a blood-chilling chant he hadn’t heard in years.
Eh! Eh! Bomba! Heu! Heu!
Canga bafio te! Canga moune de le!
Canga do ki la! Canga li!
“Sound in good spirits,” Captain Barre commented, turning about to cock an ear, with a confident smile (false, most-like given their hosts’ attitude).
“It means ‘We swear to destroy all the Whites and all that they possess; let us die rather than fail to keep this vow,’ ” Lewrie nervously translated in a low mutter. “This is gettin’ serious, sir.”
“Mon General, Dessalines, ’e say, messieurs, z’at you British are ze so despicable, ze grasping beasts, as bad as ze French!” Mirabois translated, looking a tad nervous himself. “You kill-ed z’ousands of notre pauvre soldiers, came to Saint Domingue to conquer and enslave! E’ say ’e despise all of you, and v’ish every White devil to die… seulement…’e also say if Rochambeau surrender to you and leave ze harbour tomorrow, ’e will not fire on z’eir ships. Z’ey stay une hour longer, ’e will fire upon z’em, and burn z’em all to Hades. ’E agree wiz votre Commodore Loring in z’iz. You ’ave ’ees word of honnour. ’E say votre Commodore mus’ be satisfy-ed vis z’at, not ze correspondent letter. Maintenant, you go! I see you to ze port in safety, or pay v’is my life. Vite, vite! Go!”
Captain Bligh opened his mouth as if to say something further, but clapped it shut as Colonel Mirabois began urgent shoving-herding motions, backing them ignominously towards the doors, and looking back over his shoulder to see if any of the bile the British had engendered from the victorious generals would stick to him for bringing them.
In a trice, they were down the stairs, across the grand lobby, and out into the sunshine, with their escorting soldiers guarding them even closer with bayonet-mounted muskets held out to fence off and deter the chanting, fist-shaking, weapon-shaking mob. Picking up on their officers’ nervousness, and the hostile mood in the building they left behind, those soldiers set a wicked pace back to the quays and their waiting barge, forcing Bligh, Barre, and Lewrie to trot double-time.
Once the barge was shoved off and under oars, with a wee Union Jack in the bows, and a large white flag of truce stood up by the Midshipman in the stern-sheets, they finally got their breaths back, and broke out a small barrico of stale water from beneath the seat for the barge’s Coxswain. They took turns gulping from a battered pewter mug and swabbing their reddened faces; ruddy from being un-used to so much exertion after the restrictions of shipboard life, and the embarrassing manner of their departure. They had almost been shoved aboard the boat!
“Bit iffy there, for a moment,” Bligh commented.
“Be back in ten years,” Captain Barre breezily opined, now that he was in calmer takings. “Can you gentlemen imagine that those three jackanapes, or their other generals, Petion and Moise, can really run a country?” he scoffed. “More-like, it will be a decade of civil war between them, before the country is so devastated, and de-populated, that it will be ripe for the plucking.”
“We had hopes that the Americans’d beg t’be back in the fold, too, when we left in 1783,” Lewrie pointed out.
“Barbaric as are our American cousins, sir,” Captain Barre rejoined, “they don’t hold a candle to those savages back yonder. And, the Yankee Doodles are White, and civilised, after all.”