The cannon barked. There was a terrific impact, almost bouncing us clear, and our speed momentarily slackened. A barrel of sugar exploded into a cloud of sparkling white-it had been refined to the costly color, and so no wonder they hoarded it, I thought absently-and then we gained speed again. We struck the cannon and smashed it aside, wheels flying and its spinning barrel scattering the yelling infantry. I think we thumped over one or two men, all of us covered in crystals like snowmen. A few had the wits to shoot, the bullets plunking into the casks. Spouts of sugar laid lines on the street like trails of white gunpowder.
Where were Astiza and Harry?
“More French!” my companion warned.
I looked at the fast-approaching sea. There was a cluster of soldiers on the quay, and a longboat was pulling out from the stone steps and into the harbor. Sailors were pulling on oars, and I saw a woman facing backward at us and a man in the stern pointing something-a pistol? — at her. She lifted her arm to point and the man-Martel, it must be-turned to look at us. And then I saw she was holding a child.
“We’re going over!” Jubal warned.
We hit the stone balustrade that marked the edge of the quay, and everything shattered, stone and sugar hogsheads flying like Britain’s new fragmentation bombs. I’d read in the newspapers about their invention by a Lieutenant Henry Shrapnel, a name I’d never heard before. We flew, too, launched in a corona of sugar. There was a radiating cloud of white, and then I plunged into the dark Caribbean, the pieces of our vehicle splashing into the water all around us.
Fearing gunfire, I swam away as long as I could hold my breath before surfacing. When my head broke water, I looked wildly about, catching a glimpse of the two people I most wanted to see in the world.
“Astiza! Harry!”
“Ethan!” She shouted from a great distance. “Swim away!”
Little spouts erupted as Martel’s scattered henchmen fired at my voice. Then they paused to reload. I considered which way to swim, blessing the tedious nature of ramming down cartridges.
Something seized me, and I almost panicked before realizing it was my black companion. He was dragging me away from the longboat as he swam with his other arm. “This way,” he hissed. “Your foolishness has ruined everything, but maybe there’s still a chance.”
“I need to catch my wife!”
“You’re going to outswim a launch? And then give them a chance to slit your throat as you try to climb aboard?”
I let him drag me. “This isn’t going well.”
“Our only chance is to escape to Dessalines, which I told you in the beginning.”
“You’re not married, are you?”
He stopped a moment, pulling me near, angry and impatient. “You think I never was? That because I’m black or an ex-slave I don’t know what you’re feeling right now? I killed the master who raped and murdered the woman I gave my heart to. But I haven’t survived the last fifteen years by blundering and boasting. I’ve used my wits. Perhaps it’s time you recovered yours.”
That sobered me. I wasn’t used to being dressed down by an ex-slave, but I deserved it. Instead of cleverly trailing Martel, which Astiza had no doubt assumed I’d do, I’d charged about with a meat cleaver and aroused an entire city. What begins in anger ends in shame, Ben Franklin had warned me.
Maybe I’d let Jubal lead for a while.
We stroked east while staying a hundred yards out to sea, paralleling the quay of Cap-Francois toward the mouth of the river I’d seen earlier. Unfortunately, my wife and son were headed in the opposite direction. “She’s going to board a ship and I’ll lose her again,” I complained.
“She’s away from the siege and the plague. Maybe it’s a blessing. Now you must seek black help to find her again.”
“You mean Dessalines?”
“Yes. And maybe me.” It was said grudgingly, but the offer was sincere.
I was frustrated by my own confusion. Perhaps Astiza had tried to signal me before going off with Martel, but I had rushed upstairs. Why hadn’t she called for help to the French officers? They’d have sympathized with a mother and abhorred a kidnapper.
I could see men running along the quay, shouting and pointing, but their shots went wild. Apparently we weren’t easy to pinpoint in the dark, with only our heads above water. Dogs were racing up and down the stone bulkhead, too, barking wildly, but all they could smell was the Caribbean.
“I’m tiring,” I confessed.
“Kick off your coat and boots and rest on your back. Here, I’ll hold you for a moment.” And he did, gently, as we both realized we had more in common than expected: tragedy.
“A planter really took your wife?”
“My love. To punish me. He saw promise when I was young and taught me to read and write, despite the fact my size made me a good field hand. But I used the knowledge to communicate with blacks conspiring toward revolution, and when he discovered I’d betrayed him with education, he decided to hurt me in a way deeper than any whipping. We’d become close, like father and son, and he’d promised eventual freedom. In punishment he raped her and threatened to sell her, to remind me of my station. So I killed him, to remind him I was human.”
“But he killed her?”
“I surprised him with her as you tried to surprise Rochambeau. She died in the struggle, all of us screaming. Emotions are complex on a plantation.”
I began paddling again, slowly. “Emotions are complex everywhere.”
“Never more so than with men who have power over you. It was like killing my own father. This entire uprising has been like the killing of fathers, the destruction of a monstrous, incestuous family. Slavery is not just cruel, Ethan. It’s intimate, in the worst possible way.”
Apparently I wasn’t the only one with problems. And now I had dragged this poor soul into the sea.
“I’m sorry, Jubal.”
“You don’t have to be sorry for my history. You barely know me.”
“I’m sorry for the entire bollocks of a world.”
“Ah, that makes sense.”
We stroked more steadily. “You’re a strong swimmer,” I said.
“I grew up near the shore and pray to Agwe, the loa of the sea.”
“I sensed your education. That’s why Dessalines uses you as a spy, isn’t it?”
“I can do many things. And I have sorrow. Revolutionaries feed on hatreds.”
“Sometimes there are happy endings.”
“The ending, Ethan, is always death.” This statement wasn’t bitter, just matter-of-fact.
We finally reached a spit at the mouth of the river that was across from Cap-Francois and out of easy musket or rifle shot. The two of us panted a moment while lying in the sandy shallows, looking at the city we’d fled.
“Should we run inland?”
“There’s a swamp beyond,” Jubal said. “Snakes. We need a boat.”
“Maybe that’s one.” I pointed at what appeared to be a log.
Disconcertingly, it moved.
“Caiman.” His tone was more exasperated than terrified.
“What?”
“Alligator.” The beast, of scaly mail and reptilian guile, shook off its lethargy with a rippled of muscle, slid into the water, and came toward us, tail curling like calligraphy. “It smells us when the dogs cannot, and wants a meal.”
Chapter 24
What do we do?” The speed with which the monster swam was unnerving. It made straight at us as if we were reeling it on a string.
