The Black Napoleon

By James Jess Hannon

THE BLACK NAPOLEON relates, in fast-paced storytelling, racial conflicts caused by unbending political and social attitudes meeting head-on with strong and determined black efforts to establish a free society. Color lines are crossed and re-crossed as the passions of the many-tiered society explode.

The coals of the revolution of 1795-1803 that overturned the Bourbon dynasty of the French royal house ignited a fire on the island of Haiti in the Caribbean more than two thousand miles west of France and light years distant in human affairs. French Colonists had established paradise for themselves and a living hell for five hundred thousand black slaves. A parade of memorable giants live within these pages: Toussaint L'Ouverture, Napoleon, Christophe, Leclerc, Dessalines, Rochambeau, Hardy, Rigaud, Jeannot, planter Henri Julian, Neville, Rubidoux, Susan L'Ouverture, Count de Noe, Minister Talleyrand and Pauline Leclerc, Napoleon's sibling who brought an unprecedented level of social behavior to that licentious society.

Fifty years a slave, Toussaint L'Ouverture, liberator of Haiti, was a legend in his time. His passionate belief that the enslavement of his people must end carried through the terror and bloodshed that destroyed Napoleon's legions and dispossessed the French colonists. Four words tell the story, 'war of the skin,' as the parade of monumental historical characters intrigue and deceive in that garden spot of the Caribbean.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jul 14, 2000
• ISBN: 9781468554038

James Jess Hannon

James Jess Hannon has authored an extensive inventory of novels following a near fatal accident outside the U.S. that demanded many years of therapy and recovery. He has written original story concepts and treatments for John Wayne, Batjac Productions, Paul Donnelly, Universal Studios, Marlon Brando Sr., Pennebaker Studio and others. He and Marlon Brando Sr. were associated in an endeavor to construct a motion picture 'back lot' on an Indian Reservation in Arizona. Mr. Brando's untimely death ended the venture. During these months, Hannon developed a compelling interest in the history of Southwestern Native Americans and worked with Indian leaders to create a meaningful story based on actual events that would reach a broad section of book lovers. His first effort in years past brought enthusiastic response from Indian leaders. '... Many people tend to see the Indian and his problems, but do not perceive ... you have gone beyond the periphery ... may you walk in beauty ...' Hotana Roebuck, Choctaw, University of California. 'The depth of your knowledge of the Indian and his regard for the land is overwhelming ...' Totus Watson, Chairman, Yakama Reservation. '... The frustrations and anger exhibited by Victorio could well be written in my own biography ...' Ronnie Lupe, Chairman, White Mountain Apaches. '... The Savage American could not have been written by a white man ...' Marvin Mull, Chairman, San Carlos Apaches.

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Copyright © 1992, 2000 by James Jess Hannon

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means,

electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,

without written permission from the author.

ISBN 1-58500-629-7

ISBN 978-1-468-55403-8 (ebook)

Library of Congress Catalog Number A739744

1stBooks-rev. 03/23/00

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication

THE BLACK NAPOLEON: A Novel

Published by Pacific American, Inc.

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition

Jacket design by Virginia C. Hannon

Address all inquiries to Pacific American. Inc. Publishers

P.O. Box 1376. Yucca Valley. CA 92286-1376

To Virginia Christy Hannon:

These few words carry the full measure of my gratitude. Your collaboration and contribution has been of such moment, had they been withheld The Black Napoleon would yet be a box of unfinished handwritten pages.

James Jess Hannon

LAMENTABILIS

Oh bursting heart, cry unheard

In anguish pour out the scalding tears.

Borne of a terrible loneliness

Endure the endless ordeal,

The crushing sorrow.

Bear the agony of flesh abused

Know consuming grief

All of God’s children, mother, child,

Father defiled, condemned

Enduring body ills untended

Sanctuary beyond reach.

Martyred in the limbo of the abandoned

Condemned to an inescapable fate

Denied mercy, denied compassion

Denied dignity, denied privacy

All to be endured, to be suffered …

Driven to the final liberator — death.

Feel the leaden throes of dementia

Regard our purgatory all ye unyielding

Evangelists of the skin

Consider your handiwork

The evil you have wrought

James Jess Hannon

You think me a fanatic tonight, for you read history not with your eyes but with your prejudices. But fifty years hence, when truth gets a hearing, the Muse of History will put Phocion for the Greek, and Brutus for the Roman, Hampden for England, Fayette for France, choose Washington as the bright, consummate flower of our earlier civilization … then, dipping her pen in the sunlight, will write in the clear blue, above them all, the name of the soldier, the statesman, the martyr TOUSSAINT L’OUVERTURE.

Wendell Phillips

Contents

THE BLACK NAPOLEON

About the Book

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

In Retrospectionem

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

In Retrospectionem

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

In Retrospectionem

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 38

In Restrospectionem

CHAPTER 39

CHAPTER 40

In Retrospectionem

CHAPTER 41

CHAPTER 42

CHAPTER 43

CHAPTER 44

In Retrospectionem

CHAPTER 45

CHAPTER 46

CHAPTER 47

CHAPTER 48

In Retrospectionem

CHAPTER 49

CHAPTER 50

CHAPTER 51

CHAPTER 52

CHAPTER 53

CHAPTER 54

CHAPTER 55

CHAPTER 56

CHAPTER 57

CHAPTER 58

In Retrospectionem

CHAPTER 59

CHAPTER 60

CHAPTER 61

CHAPTER 62

CHAPTER 63

CHAPTER 64

CHAPTER 65

CHAPTER 66

CHAPTER 67

IN MEMORIUM

About the Author

END NOTES

THE BLACK NAPOLEON

A critique* by JOHN A. WILLIAMS, Novelist and

Professor of English and Literature at Rutgers University.

Fiction is at every turn ambushed by fact in this remarkable work written by James J. Hannon. The ambush, however, turns into a happy marriage and the result is a landmark companion to C.L.R. James’ 1938 classic. The Black Jacobins, a pure nonfiction work centered on the class structure of the San Domingo French Colonial slave society.

Hannon burrows into the characters and with painstaking detail carries the Haitian history of the war for freedom to yet another level, giving life to historical figures and shifting them back and forth along their journeys, creating dialogue to fit perfectly with the actual. He moves troops of Dragoons and divisions of foot soldiers and fleets of ships through their sad, historical paces, and describes a society so decadent and murderous and racist that the slogan Liberté, Equalité et Fraternité echoes mockingly down the halls of history.

Because the history of Toussaint, Napoleon, and the Revolution is so massive, Hannon employs several chapters called In Restrospectionem, in which that nimble statesman and diplomat, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand (1754-1838), who survived the ancien regime, the French Revolution, Napoleon, the Restoration, and the July Monarchy, interviews the key figures on all sides of the San Domingo Revolution.

This technique adds a grander dimension to the book and underlines the historical impact of the events that occurred on that island two centuries ago.

Good novels are sources of learning and understanding the world and the events that occur in them. This is one of them. For many students of American history, the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 is considered in a vacuum, much like the purchase of Alaska in 1867. Touched on in this novel is the fact that it was the Haitian rebellion that made possible the purchase of the Louisiana Territory.

The Toussaint family of Susan, Placide, and Isaac, with its quiet strength and tender betrayals that sometimes override even fiercer loyalties, comes into clear focus here among James Han-non’s parade of well-drawn characters. First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte in an unusual portrait appears often cold and sharp as flint, as duplicitous and cunning as his sister.

Toussaint L’Ouverture was duped because he believed, and this novel, on almost every one of its pages, sweeps us from the mountains and plains of Haiti to the cold mountains of France, where belief ended in an ignominious death.

The substance of this novel is like granite. The Black Napoleon is one of those all too rare novels that creates its own space in the universe of knowing, feeling, and remembering. Chiefly, though, while it entertains with a crackling pace in the action, it is also a corrective force in its view of the past. Anyone reading this novel will not soon forget the cost of freedom to the Haitians.

About the Book

THE BLACK NAPOLEON relates in fast paced story telling racial conflicts caused by unbending political and social forces meeting head on with strong and determined efforts to establish a free society. Color lines are crossed and re-crossed as the passions of the many tiered society explode.

The coals of the revolution of 1795-1803 that overturned the Bourbon dynasty of the French royal house ignited a fire on the island of Haiti in the Caribbean more than two thousand miles west of France and light years distant in human affairs. French Colonists had established paradise for themselves and a living hell for five hundred thousand black slaves. A parade of memorable giants live within these pages: Toussaint L’Ouverture, Napoleon, Christophe, Leclerc, Dessalines, Rochambeau, Hardy, Rigaud, Jeannot, planter Henri Julian, Neville, Rubidoux, Susan L’Ouverture, Count de Noé, Minister Talleyrand and Pauline Leclerc, Napoleon’s sibling who brought an unprecedented level of social behavior to that licentious society.

Fifty years a slave, Toussaint L’Ouverture, liberator of Haiti, was a legend in his time. His passionate belief that the enslavement of his people must end carried through the terror and bloodshed that destroyed Napoleon’s Legions and dispossessed the French Colonists. Four words tell the story, ‘war of the skin’, as the parade of monumental historical characters intrigue and deceive in that garden spot of the Caribbean.

There’s not a breathing of the common wind

That will forget thee…

thou has great allies:

thy friends are exultations, agonies, and love, and man’s unconquerable mind.

Wordsworth

CHAPTER I

The Julian Plantation bordered the Artibonite River in the vicinity of Mirebalais some thirty miles as the crow flies northeast of Port-au-Prince and seventy miles due south of Cap Haitien, which placed the bountiful acres in the Eastern Arron-dissement of the St. Marc Department.

An undulation in the sculptured grounds thrust upward as it approached the manor house, elevating the gracious white structure and the bordering wide grey flagstone terrace some six feet above the surrounding terrain.

Between the towering mahogany and cedars at either end of the terrace, clusters of rose, myrtle, passion flower, and cassia in splashes of yellow, green, and chartreuse ran close to the dazzling walls, spreading a delicate fragrance around the perimeter of the mansion in the manner of a protective moat, keeping inviolable the rights of the residents to the comforts and pleasures created by the abundant land and the nameless chattels who slaved, agonized, and expired as they brought forth a wealth that made Santo Domingo a greater treasure house for the colonists and traders than any of the colonies and possessions held by Europe’s major powers around the world.

The reaction of Frenchman, Spaniard, and mulatto might well have been one of gratitude as the recipients of such prodigious blessings.

Cocoa, coffee, sugar, cotton, sisal, and bananas flowed in a continuous fleet of merchant vessels from Port-au-Prince, Gonaives, and Cape Haitien to Brest, Nantes, Marseilles, Bordeaux, New Orleans, Philadelphia, London, and Amsterdam, until it seemed that Santo Domingo was destined, in all the world, to show man what endless varieties and quantities of life’s essentials are available, with ambitious management, from heretofore remote, there-for-the-taking corners of the world.

Henri Julian, French planter, seemingly ordained for his station in life, brought to his splendid residence art and furnishings of such opulence that lords, barons, and marshals observed aghast at such an ostentatious display of wealth—which was precisely the effect Monsieur Julian had striven to achieve. He—in stature, bearing, and poise—was a match for his surroundings.

Unfortunately, the Julian Manor, one of many similar, was a perfumed, gracious island floating in a sea of hopeless despair so profane and senseless that the black storm brewing in the encircling waters would one day unleash a fury without precedent in its indiscriminate destruction of all things living and growing on that Caribbean Island. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were ready to ride the length and breadth of paradise.

The conduct of the French colonists was senselessly inhumane during those years when opportunity for lasting achievement cried out to be seized; when common sense pled for recognition; when the practitioners of religious dogma could not comprehend that which they proclaimed; when depraved indulgence could not be distinguished from earnest enterprise; when festering humanity could not be recognized under their imperious, contemptuous noses; when the only colors meaningful to them were black and white—one meaning without right or benefit of the good things growing on every side, the other implying a ‘Divine Right’ to all things; when the answer to every petition or pleading was the flambeaux, the rigoise, the gallows, a cannonball fastened to the feet, and a push off the deck of a frigate. The conduct of those insensate colonists finds few parallels in the long history of man’s inhumanity to man. Setting, climate, and the caressing perfume of the favored island might have turned Henri Julian’s thoughts inward to contemplate the tantalizing opportunities for some lasting effort to ensure the stability of his affluent lifestyle.

Or did he never envision solutions permitting some degree of pride and human dignity for all deserving, particularly when the very foundation of his fortune rested on the great mass of deprived slaves, without whom none of it could be? Could he not see that resistance to needed reforms must slowly but surely erode in the matchless surroundings, or deny for his revered France secure and profitable holdings in the burgeoning new world?

Through the ages, tyrants remain constant. They never learn a seemingly obvious fact: There must be something for the loser. Perhaps therein lies the great difference between tyrant and whole man. Francois Dominique Toussaint was a whole man, a slave for forty-seven years, full of pride, resentment, and outrage. But he knew and believed a salient truth: The loser must not be stripped of all possessions, nor denied the way back to join and participate in a new order of things if the new order is to survive and keep its trust.

Henri Julian was many things. One of the things he was not was a whole man. It was not a lifestyle for himself that caused the inequities—that was foreordained, a birthright as it should be (or so he believed). To his utter discredit and diminishment, it was his unwavering determination to hold other men in servitude that made of him a great deal less than he might have been.

The master of the Julian Plantation was an able man. His forebears had been merchants whose ships carried to Brest and Bordeaux cargo from Asia, Africa, and the New World. Raised in wealth and privately educated, he was admirably suited for the role of merchant prince and the eventual stewardship of the vast Julian commercial empire.

Like many, he possessed much and lacked little; yet it was the quality he lacked that marked him and caused him to fall short of that rare social product: the whole man.

Henri had, from early youth, shown an almost total disregard for the simple rights and feelings of others. The most beautiful women in French society were seduced and abandoned. While he used them he was the model of attentive graciousness, and when he finished with them his manner ruined more than a few lives. With those below his station who attracted him, the routine was the same. Once he had achieved his purpose, they were hurried out, threatened, and abandoned to find their bewildered way back to obscurity.

He was like that with business associates, with one important difference: They were better able to protect themselves and await his mistakes. He made more than a few.

So, in his twenty-fifth year his father altered Henri’s lifestyle. Providing ample funds and passage on a company ship, Monsieur Julian Senior dispatched Monsieur Julian Junior to a company sugar plantation on the island of Santo Domingo, and closed the book on his son’s hardly launched career as merchant prince inherent.

Henri then proceeded to surprise a number of people, including his father. He made the separation permanent. Unlike many of his contemporaries who maintained townhouses in Paris, where they spent most of the year and a large portion of their earnings, Henri found fulfillment on his chosen island, and there indulged without hindrance a special brand of opulence and domination. His life in France had been a long series of abrasive encounters, but there the adversary or victim had been on a more equitable footing with him; there was, in France, a limit to that which they chose to suffer and an ever-present escape. Not so within his Caribbean paradise. He was the master in every sense of the word. The hapless slave knew it, the striving mulatto knew it, and he knew it. For some, those facts would have dulled the sport. For Henri Julian they enhanced it.

He could be responsive but never kind, satiated but never thankful, aware but never sympathetic. His attitude to subordinate whites was cavalier; to mulattoes, contemptuous; to slaves, indifferent; and to all women, remote (including his wife Madeline, who figured hardly at all in his affairs). His one act of grace had been to permit his comely sister, Renée, to take residence with them and provide Madeline a measure of comfort.

Their marriage had added a sugar manufactory to his holdings without in any way curtailing his wenching forays. They were, within their marriage, childless.

The baseness of his character was well masked by a peerless image and impeccable manners. He, more than any other man, manifest all the reasons the sun was setting on the Pearl of the Antilles.

Henri had kept a black woman in the river house for almost five years. It was accepted throughout the District that André Rigaud was a product of that union. André most certainly bore the style and the manner of Henri Julian. Often in the planter’s company he attended the sporting houses of Cap Francois and Port-au-Prince, but never social functions or formal occasions reserved for the Colonial elite.

He emblematized the Colonial French, who ruled Santo Domingo with invincible disdain for all other classes, fostering and encouraging the evils that grow from their brand of determined despotism unbridled, a conglomerate of harsh parts.

CHAPTER 2

A remarkable land, blessed with a climate giving continuous growing seasons. All in all, Eric, there exists no more beneficent colony in this world than Santo Domingo.

Henri Julian glanced casually over his shoulder as a sharp sound, much like two hands striking together, broke on the pleasant scene. Another less definable animal noise dwindled to a whimper.

You are indeed blessed. True, the climate at times bears heavily on one whose blood has not yet thinned to the consistency required in the tropics. That will come to me in good time. Don’t you agree, André?

The two unusual sounds intruded again into the gentle conversation, seemingly unnoticed by the three men reclining in low, high-backed lounging chairs placed near the outer edge of the terrace.

Eric, you will pardon my candid observation. In order to avoid the discomfort of the surgeon’s bloodletting, if you plan a long stay in the Antilles you would be well advised to avoid the rich cuisine that abounds in every manor house here—your girth attests to your indulgence. You merchants from the continent have never learned to curb your curiosity nor your appetites for all things.

Their light laughter was punctuated once again by the slapping sound and the seemingly distant echo of someone attempting to scream out his agony.

Henri and André Rigaud were elegantly attired in white madras cotton silk shirts adorned with ruffled cuffs and fronts. Their fine Italian shoes were splendidly fashioned. André bore a remarkable resemblance to Henri, the similarity more in bearing and demeanor than in facial lines. He was thirty-some years Henri’s junior, but his stern manner and boldly chiseled features imparted an established maturity.

His plantation lay near Jérémie on the western end of the southern peninsula that extended some distance into the Caribbean Sea. The arrondissement of Jérémie, more than a hundred miles west of Port-au-Prince and three strenuous riding days removed from the Julian place, harbored a number of plantations owned by men of color.

Although neither Henri nor André ever condescended in the most intimate of their private affairs to mention their relationship, it was accepted throughout the colony.

A flagstone terrace shaded by a white bamboo canopy was surrounded by tailored greenery. The white-on-white facade of the planter’s residence created a striking background.

A late afternoon breeze had just begun to move the motionless humid air mass that created such discomfort to emigres from the continent. Moving north, a towering cumulous cloud suddenly masked the sun, bringing further relief from the oppressive heat.

Henri set his glass on the table as an agonized scream exploded over the garden sanctuary. The three men turned to face the source of the disturbance a hundred feet distant on a lower level.

Two thick wooden posts extending upwards a distance of eight feet from the hard-packed clay held the silent attention of a hundred black slaves—men, women, and children.

A young male was spread-eagled, naked, between the posts. His bleeding, pulverized back and hips were almost obscured by a curtain of insects.

Grim, stubble-bearded white men wearing soiled, blood-spattered linen stood between the whipping posts and the slaves. A third overseer, more menacing than the others, flexed the dripping rigoise, a braided cowhide whip. He glanced toward the terrace, pulled himself erect; then, with great force, smashed down on the motionless slave. There was no accompanying scream.

Henri raised his clear, soft voice as he straightened in his chair. Jacques—I have not heard the count. The hard-faced overseer turned his head toward Henri. Jacques— Henri’s voice was gentle, supplicating, the commissioner permits fifty strokes. How many have you?

Thirty-one.

Well, then, are you fatigued? Jacques walked close to the spread-eagled slave. He seized the man’s hair and pulled his head back roughly. After a cursory examination, he shouted: Monsieur Julian, this one—he is dead.

Henri turned, looked first at Eric, then at André, rolling his eyes to show utter exasperation. So—are we to waste nineteen strokes? Spreading his hands in an eloquent gesture, he leaned back and reached for the glass as the overseer turned away with a violent oath.

Cut this carrion down. Bring another, vite. Henri raised his glass and looked toward the place where the assistant overseers were pulling a young Negro from the crowd, his expression changing from indifference to one of intense interest.

Jacques—there—close to the tree. Bring her to me at once! The girl straightened and looked to the terrace as she realized Henri was pointing to her. She was young and slender, with a finely molded face and unusual grace.

Jacques, still trailing the rigoise in his right hand, seized her arm and propelled her to the terrace. She stopped short of the table. Fear and shyness were apparent as the three lounging men appraised her—all of her—in silence. The overseer shoved her close to Henri, then lumbered toward the whipping post, flexing the rigoise in eager anticipation of the agony it would inflict on the next terrified victim.

Henri put his hand on the girl’s hip, turned her slowly around in a full circle; then, with one swift motion, ripped off her single garment. She closed her eyes and dropped her head. Her arms and hands hung straight down, held tight to her body.

Eric leaned forward, adjusting his pince-nez. Certainment, Henri, what an exciting surprise for you, non? The ebony-hued body was unblemished, beautifully formed. André sat quietly, studying the girl’s reaction. The spectacle annoyed him. It lacked any element of conquest, one of his great pleasures when he took the wife or daughter of a prominent planter.

Eric continued to comment as Henri’s hands explored the girl’s motionless body.

How is it, Henri, you have not noticed such an unusual one before this moment? His question carried a poorly disguised implication.

A recent quota from Le Cap. I have neglected my usual inspection.

The sharp slap of the rigoise, accompanied by the inevitable piercing cry wrenched from the slave, caused the girl to flinch and suck in her breath.

Eric smiled, reached out his trembling hand, barely touching her breast, then withdrew quickly as Henri fixed him with a hard stare. Perhaps—forgive me—Jacques meant this tender piece for himself.

The planter’s soft voice lowered noticeably. His hand remained on the girl’s flat stomach. Should such a thing ever become known to me, Jacques would know, for all the time left to him, the unique kind of pain Henri Julian can coax from the rigoise.

As the dual sounds from the whipping post muffled his quiet words, he turned and called: Jacques, relinquish the rigoise to Pierre. Remind him not to undercount. Attendez!

He poured again as Jacques approached and stood obediently, a respectful distance from the table. Gentlemen, a mon plaisir.

André and Eric replied in unison: A votre plaisir. The sounds came again, undiminished, attesting to the dependability and conscientiousness of Pierre, a solid understudy to Jacques. Henri picked up the girl’s garment and placed it in her hand. S’il vous plait.

Adjusting the torn fabric, then holding it in place, she looked expectantly at Julian.

Wash her—all of her—with gentleness for the tender parts. The river house, ten o’clock. Sound the night bell and depart.

He looked again toward the whipping post and remarked, as the sounds erupted again: Pierre has a flair for the rigoise. Indeed, his style is worth observing. You have no finesse, Jacques. Strength? Oui, the strength and sensitivity of an ox—allez.

Jacques turned to the girl, his temper flaring as he led her towards the overseer’s quarters.

André Rigaud stared thoughtfully at his glass, then watched the girl’s lithe, floating movement as she kept pace with the ambling brute. His hatred for blacks had become an obsession.

Unfortunately for me, there is something incomplete with the Negro. I cannot see her as you do, Henri.

Eric’s eyes flicked from one to the other as the scene was played out, an unusual treat for him.

And how do I see her, my dear André? The older man’s look and manner were cavalier.

An object of your lust, a body capable of arousing and satisfying your physical indulgence.

Henri smiled. Indulgence in yourself, my dear André, is something I think you have made a career of. There, again—Pierre is precise, exactly on the count of eight he strikes, hold.

The slap and scream came as Henri paused. Precise, according to the law. Punishment has been exacted.

Eric sighed and gazed skyward. The punishment was intended for the wretch who expired. This one, what was his offense?

The planter sat up, then leaned toward Eric. ‘Tou miss the point. The spectacle is also for those who must observe, anticipate, and fear the inevitable punishment exacted for disobedience. The weight of the law descends and impresses, indiscriminately, all who merit justice. The culprit sometimes survives. No matter; he has served our purpose by his demonstrations of honest agony, thereby assuring the others there is pain far beyond that which they have yet known."

Eric glanced at Henri, then extended his glass as he remarked: My good friend, do you pray?

The host filled Eric’s glass as he answered: Pray? Pour-quois? I have no need of prayer.

I think, one day, you and many others in this paradise will have a profound need of prayer.

* * *

The Julian Plantation river house had originally served as guest quarters. Large, high-ceilinged rooms; a wide porch on four sides; plus the setting at a place where the river made an abrupt turn combined to moderate the sometimes oppressive humidity.

Henri had long ago found a more satisfying use for the premises. The acres containing the guest house and a single slave structure were rigidly maintained as a place of inviolate privacy.

He was attended there by an elderly black bearing the singular name of his birthplace, Benin (the great slave market city on the coast of Guinea, West Africa). Benin valued, beyond all other things, his unusual way of life. He was a man of discretion, not likely to betray the trust reposed in him by his master, who permitted, in this one instance, a tacit degree of freedom.

Benin, with genuine consideration, had often counseled the temporary female guests at the river house, adding to the pleasures of Monsieur Julian.

The girl sat rigid, clad in a scanty sackdress on a chair much too large for her. The canopied bed was the dominating fixture in the dimly lit room.

Her expression was somewhere between terror and resignation; still, her poise was undiminished.

His voice was strong, almost musical, as he respectfully stood some distance from her. It will not be as bad as you think. He is not a kind man except to those who give him pleasure. You have known how it is in the slave quarters and the field. A woman, a slave woman, cannot escape the lust of the master, the overseers, the slaves—usually all three.

He paused, lowered his voice, and asked in a more gentle voice: Are you a virgin?

She stared straight ahead, then slowly nodded her head. Benin stepped closer. Tell him so. It will be easier for you. Remember, if you please him this can be your good fortune. Life out there— he waved his hand expressively as he paused at the door. Bon soir, bon chance.

She was still sitting erect, frozen, when Henri entered. He wasted no time with formalities. His eyes never left her face as he disrobed before her, displaying his formidable manhood with a show of dominant pride.

He motioned to the bed, crossed the room, and extinguished the candle.

* * *

Benin sat in front of his cabin, watching the moonlight flicker on the river as the night sounds grew around him.

When her sharp, high-pitched scream smashed through the other noises, he stood up and entered his refuge. A ray of moonlight piercing the patched roof revealed his face, a mask of sorrow and despair.

He remembered all of it. Sometimes, when he was physically comfortable and aware of his good fortune, the memories dimmed a little. Then, abruptly, some act of the whites would arouse him to his true state. It all came back.

He had seen or heard women being raped many times through the long years—on the ship, in the stockade, in the fields, in the manor house and summer house—by masters, overseers, militia, and slaves. For him it was the penultimate horror, eloquently attesting to their abused station. The only right left to them was that of quiet submission.

Freedom and equality and respect he had known once. The laws of his people had forbidden slavery, except in the instance of those guilty of a crime or those who had become prisoners of war.

When Benin was twenty years of age he had been taken by the forces of a neighboring prince contaminated by a love of riches. Later, in the stockade awaiting ship, he had witnessed black chiefs delivering their own kind to the slavers. The year was 1858. Eighty thousand men, women, and children were rounded up in their villages, chained together, then herded aboard ships and crammed into shallow decks where, for weeks and months, the suffering layers of humanity would endure, or expire, in steaming agony. Almost twenty thousand would find their final resting place in the depths of the Atlantic. Each day he saw the best formed and the youngest females pulled from the holds. Sometimes they returned, beyond tears or caring, to lay sullen and uncomprehending until the next occasion. Often they never returned. Having displeased or become infected with one of the flourishing social sicknesses, they were unceremoniously cast over the side.

There were no fuzzy areas when his power of recollection was stimulated by an obscene act upon the body of another helpless victim. Benin rubbed his hand over the coarse ridge on his chest, tracing the line that spelled out JULIAN. One of thousands debarked in Cap Haitien, the picture was burned as deep in his memory as the identifying scar on his chest.

Screams, as the smoking branding iron seared the quivering flesh, brought him to a state of near panic; then he had been pulled upright, arms stretched back as the rancid smell of his own burning flesh and the frightful, searing pain made him oblivious, for awhile, to the joking, finely dressed men and women who held perfumed handkerchiefs to their nostrils as they tittered and commented on the merits of the stark-naked human chattels.

They had been driven, chained together, along the coastal road, staggering under the oppressive, sultry heat, close to suffocation as the powder-fine dust rose and carried along with them, providing some shelter from the curious whites and various shades of color here and there gathered to watch their passing.

The Julian Plantation offered no relief from their ever-changing, ever-tortuous fate. Long after dark they were whipped into a torchlit, barren stockade. Without food or any place to relieve themselves other than where they were standing, they gradually succumbed to their frightful despair and weariness, collapsing, in all manner of position, into a fitful, convulsive slumber.

Bell clanging, profane commands, and the sharp snap of the rigoise brought them back to reality at the first light.

Each day thereafter was a replica of the first. There was no measured time other than day and night; no sensation other than hunger, mind-numbing weariness, and fear and, finally, no hope or respite from their agony. On every side the scars of the depraved world they inhabited were visible. On the ground a spread-eagled fly-swarmed body; another hanging by the wrists; farther, an oozing body violated to death by the rigoise; a screaming child being torn from a grieving mother; an overseer dragging a young girl into the sugar cane; a slave, beyond caring, cutting his throat with a machete. Horror begot horror. During his second hellish year, when the light was fading, the tottering man to his left fell forward during the act of swinging his glistening blade. Benin felt the burning sensation in his left calf and stepped back. He crashed flat to the ground, then sat up. Below his knee, nothing.

All things considered, the accident was his redemption from purgatory.

Benin was a handsome Negro. Julian had noticed the proud slave on occasion. After the accident, he was appointed caretaker of the river house. There he had remained, released from the undiminished hell of the field slave’s punishment.

When the screams from the river house finally ceased, he stretched full length and contemplated the moonbeam filtering in through the roof.

CHAPTER 3

The night air above four thousand feet chilled the blood, making welcome the abundance of rum and taffia, and the steaming kettles of rice and beans. Deep in the heavy stand of timber an arena had been cleared for a hundred paces. Surrounding Caribbean pines were thick and towering. A circular opening high above framed an oversized full moon which appeared as the inverted end of a funnel.

Off to one side of the arena heavy boughs had been cleared to form a rounded, smooth-floored tonnelle, utilized exclusively for voodoo ceremonies. In the center of the floor a small pit glowed with burning cedar logs, sending out undulating waves of light that revealed and obscured rows of maroons kneeling, sitting, and crouching in a packed, wide-eyed, silent circle. Ringed around the firepit were circles of pots-de-tete holding the souls of the faithful.

A subtle sound, almost inaudible at first, caught and transfixed the expectant crowd. The Houngenakon had begun the four-note, repeated invocation, which swelled in volume as, one by one, the others joined in.

When the chanting, swaying fugitives settled into a steady rhythm, the Houngenakon leapt to his feet and raced around the fire, shaking a painted asson, holding corn kernels and a silver bell. He led and occasionally changed the cadence of the chant.

The Loas hovered over and around the gathering, as gods are empowered to do, taking the forms of frogs, crickets, and conneilles.

Occasionally a spectator would rise, shrieking, and attempt to duplicate or improvise the gymnastic flourishes of the Houn-genakon. Many present in that solemn societe were hounsi bous-sales, aspiring but not yet initiated into voodooism.

As the jugs of trempé passed around the circle, individuals succumbed to seizure, possessed by Loa or some form of houp-garou or zombi or baka. Good and bad spirits abounded in that climate. The devil called forth the greatest effort from the Houn-gan as he labored to exorcise the seized, escorted by the laplace to the center area, writhing in agony, calling forth names of departed souls to take back their curses.

Drummers picked up the beat. Suddenly the Houngan, attired in a loose white garment, leapt into the ring, whirling with amazing speed and balance, slashing and stabbing unseen devils, the shining blade inches from the heads and bodies of his entranced audience.

He stopped, picked up a jug of trempé, tilted back his head, took an enormous swallow of the fiery liquid concocted from herbs steeped in rum, went to his knees, picked up a writhing female, and blew a fine spray that saturated her head and shoulders. The Houngan slapped her shoulders and thighs savagely with the broad knife blade as he shouted imprecations at baka devils.

Trancelike, the woman stood up, moved to the shadows, and bowed her head as the priest leaped again into his frenzied whirling dance. The ritual was repeated until finally the societe grew silent as the Houngan stopped and held out his arms to the tall, silent man who had walked into the circle. When they embraced the tall man exposed a handless left arm.

Drums started up again, more subdued than before. The Houngenakon began the chant. Quickly the priest seized the asson and whirled around the imposing giant. Streams of sprayed trempé dripped off his face.

The high priest stopped and held out his hand, clutching a small packet. His hollow-sounding words boomed over the gathering. Before you enter Le Cap, mix the potion with the blood of a raven. Drink and know whatever might seem to befall you. You will soar to the heavens and return to this place to be reincarnated and go forth again. Sounds of drumbeats and singing came from the clearing. In the large, open area a high-spirited crowd—hundreds in number—ate and drank around the perimeters of a dozen log fires. The hub of the arena, encircled by the blazing fires, included a patch of hard-packed level ground for dancing, and a high rough-plank platform supported on either end by cedar stumps.

Moved by the rhythmic, pulsing beat of the skin drums and assotors throbbing through the arena, the revelers formed two long lines—men on one side, women facing them. Drums increased in tempo and intensity. The gourds, holding dried corn kernels, added another dimension to the compelling rhythm. Those not in the dancing lines gathered behind the drummers, clapping and chanting in unison with the beat.

The two undulating lines closed as the dance began in earnest. Aggressive, erotic body touching excited onlookers as well as participants, who touched, bumped, and rubbed hips, thighs, and stomachs in frenzied demonstrations, devoid of inhibitions. Occasionally, overwhelmed by the suggestive rhythm and the sensuous body contact, a couple would caress each other frantically, run to the shelter of the forest, and satiate their aroused passion.

The maroon who had been blessed by the Houngan mounted the platform, followed by a statuesque young female. As the crowd gathered in front of him, Macandal raised his right hand, clutching a bottle, and placed his left arm around the girl’s waist.

Through sheer personal magnetism he commanded and dominated the crowd. His magnificent proportions and bearing set him apart from the others; an aura of majesty graced the legendary leader.

The crowd grew silent as he placed the bottle on the platform and held his right hand toward them. All of you know Macandal—a maroon, as you are—a black who refuses to be a slave…

Shouting broke out again and continued until he commanded silence with a single gesture. Macandal held his left arm upright; the gesture was sudden and dramatic.

Lenormand Plantation—I struck an overseer—so they removed the guilty hand. Better for them to have removed my head—

The gathering erupted with the chant: Macandal, Macandal, Macandal—

Again he raised his right hand. Between our camp and Lenormand, many of our enemies—white, mulatto, black—have died, at our hand. Remember what I say to you— He paused and then screamed: You will never know freedom while a white remains alive on Haiti.

The demonstration, provoked by his last remark, reached new heights. When order was again restored, Macandal continued. Le grand blanc, le petite blanc, hommes de colour—all of them oppose freedom for the blacks, all fight to the death to keep us in servitude. C’est bon—death it shall be—for them!

Another fanatical outburst stopped Macandal. He let it run, then restored silence and concluded: I leave for Le Cap within the hour. Obey your leaders. They have been given the time for attack. Vive le revolution—mort aux les colonistes!

* * *

He sat in a darkened corner of the sparsely furnished room. Simon and Gagne, stationed in Le Cap, served in the town-house of a Plaisance planter. They were seated at a small table in the center of the room. A beam of sunlight from the imperfectly shuttered window revealed their somber faces. Macandal pulled his chair into the patch of sunlight. Simon, don’t fail me. At exactly midnight you will dynamite the munitions warehouse. At that instant, Gagne, you will seize the main garrison. Then our forces will enter Le Cap from all sides. Simon and Gagne nodded vigorously. Tomorrow Le Cap will be ours.

Smiling, he stood up quickly, crossed the room, and opened the street door just enough to study the crowded thoroughfare. He swung the door wide and stepped into a crowd awaiting the passing of a carriage, concealing his left forearm inside his loose shirt front. After the carriage passed he mingled with the others and walked casually in the stream of pedestrians.

In an instant, emerging from both sides of the street, a squad of militia scattered the crowd and surrounded the startled maroon.

A burly Sergeant, stepping out of a concealed passageway, placed himself directly in front of the fugitive.

Macandal, your pardon, Chief Macandal, your arm, would you extend your left arm, s’il vous plait?

Slowly Macandal extended his forearm stump toward the Sergeant, who professed a great pity and shock, then suddenly placed the point