Master of the Crossroads by Madison Smartt Bell

wore a full uniform, and had kept up the pace in the tall, heavy boots he had on his feet, while most of the black soldiers were barefoot and wore little but their trousers and their weapons.
    They marched down the hill at an easier pace and traversed the squares of cane at a different angle. By the time they reached the area behind the cane mill, the sun had climbed almost to its height. There they were given a ration of water and then dismissed.
    Doctor Hébert was standing knee-deep in water in the swampy area behind and above the grand’case, when Captain Maillart, sweat-soaked and breathless, climbed the little colline to find him there. When he saw the captain approaching, the doctor straightened from his work and pulled off the broad-brimmed straw hat he wore to protect his balding head from the sun. He dipped the hat in the water and then replaced it on his head. The hat had been soaked so often it had lost all shape and the brim hung down the back of his neck like a wet rag.
    “Je m’excuse,” the captain said. He took off his uniform coat and spread it delicately over a thornbush, then removed his shirt and began to wring sweat out of it. The doctor surveyed him with a medical eye. Maillart had lost much weight since his days with the regular French army, so that his ribs showed plainly through the skin and his uniform trousers bagged around his hips, but if he was thin he looked healthy enough.
    “News,” Captain Maillart said, turning to lay his damp shirt beside the coat. “I am dispatched to General Laveaux—at Le Cap or Port-de-Paix or wherever I may find him.”
    “When?” The doctor stooped to rinse his grimy hands and then climbed out onto the bank, which was now partly reinforced by a dam of mud and stones.
    “We leave tomorrow.”
    “Ah,” the doctor said. “But it’s dangerous for you—or not?” He knew that Maillart was at least technically a deserter, having decamped from Laveaux’s revolutionary command along with a good many other officers of similarly royalist inclinations.
    The captain’s thin shoulders hitched in the air. “Who harms the messenger who brings good tidings?” He grinned.
    “Indeed?” the doctor said, in some surprise.
    “Well, we must wait upon events,” the captain said. “I am authorized to express . . . receptivity, one might say.”
    “Ah.” The doctor took off his hat and squinted at the sun. He smoothed his damp hands back over his bald spot. “It’s an odd moment to choose to join forces with the French,” he said. “Their fortunes have hardly been at lower ebb since the first insurrection.”
    “They?” the captain said. “The French?”
    The doctor laughed uneasily. Both he and Maillart were French themselves, but the colony had been fragmented in so many different directions that questions of allegiance had become rather difficult to contemplate.
    “That point may press you more closely than it does me.”
    “True,” the captain said, his face briefly clouding.
    “This Monsieur Pinchon claims to have an overture from the English at Saint Marc.”
    “I didn’t know,” the captain said. He stared down at the pool of water, where three black men were continuing work on the dam. “It’s plausible. In general these English prefer to bribe than fight—but they’ve restored slavery in whatever territory they’ve taken, so I can’t think Toussaint would receive such a proposal. Still . . .”
    “Difficult to know his mind, isn’t it?”
    “Truly,” the captain said. “There’s his advantage.”
    The doctor called to Bazau, who led the work gang: “Break off, shall we? Get out of the heat. We will begin again at three.” Bazau nodded and all three men came climbing out over the reinforced bank. They smiled at the two white men and started down the hill.
    “I meant to ask if you’d go with me,” the captain said.
    “Tomorrow?” said the doctor. “I don’t know. I wouldn’t like to leave this work half done.”
    Both men