The night was already half gone, and we didn’t have much time to implement my scheme. “We’d best hurry. Your army will attack at dawn.”
“Yes, but we’re already atop the French like an ax poised atop a block,” Jubal said with satisfaction. “And these boys are hard workers, aren’t you, my uglies?”
They grinned, a dozen crescent moons in the dark.
“Good,” I replied. “Otherwise, we’re all dead.”
Descending was easier on the lungs though harder on the legs, and we quickly heard the murmur of another stream and broke out of jungle. We’d come to the small mountain pool in that cup of hills on the heights before the stream dropped to water the French. We crept along the creek like panthers. Then the smallest and quietest of us, a former slave named Cyprus, volunteered to scout ahead. We waited silently for ten minutes, trying to ignore the mosquitoes, until he slithered back to report.
“Six soldiers, four asleep and two on guard, at the lip of the stream.”
Half a dozen cane knives came out from sheaths.
“No sound,” Jubal reminded. “From them or you.”
I swallowed. This was war, at its closest and most horrible.
The assassins crawled ahead, with us bringing up the rear for a reinforcing rush if needed. I feared gunfire, shouts, and struggle. Instead, the silence was profound. We slunk along the pool until we were at the lip overlooking the French fortifications. I’d heard nothing, seen nothing. But six severed French heads were lined up next to the stream outlet like a row of melons. Their eyes were shut as if relieved it was over.
Where the bodies went, I never learned.
“Very fine,” Jubal complimented.
I tried not to identify with the pale skin, taking a shaky breath. “Now, like beavers, we must dam the creek as vigorously as my son did in France.”
“What’s a beaver?”
I was at a loss for its African equivalent. “Like an elephant,” I finally said. Those beasts built things, too, and Harry had watched one work in Tripoli.
“What’s an elephant?” These former slaves had apparently never seen one of those creatures, either, in Haiti or in Africa. What zoology did we have in common?
“A beaver is a hairy, very hardworking mule,” I described. “Come, let’s drag this wood.” And we set to work as industriously as my boy.
Chapter 30
Sunrise came from behind Dessalines’s army, shining in the face of the French. Given our height above the impending battlefield, it was in our view before anyone else’s. I watched the Battle of Vertiers unfold as if studying the diagram of a military textbook, columns of soldiers moving like arrows on a map. Some black, some white.
The purpose of my dam was twofold. One was to cut off the flow of water to the garrison below. Indeed, at first light there were shouts of surprise when the soldiers’ watering pond began to drop. A company of infantry was roused and began climbing laboriously up toward us to investigate why the stream had suddenly gone dry. We had to finish before they got in musket range, or we’d all be killed.
Our second objective was to create a timely diversion. We’d turned the lazy stream pool into a substantial reservoir at our altitude by dragging logs and rocks, cutting saplings, and hurling mud. Now we took the kegs of powder and strung them along the dam’s base, each with a jutting fuse. We had to surprise the French lines below at the precise moment when Dessalines’s best regiments were prepared to storm the defending redoubt. My plan was to send a flash flood into the enemy rear just the way Harry and I had broken our own dam at Nimes, enjoying the havoc it created by swirling away leaves, sticks, and insects. Astiza had shaken her head at our excitement.
I watched the reservoir fill, enjoying my own cleverness with the satisfaction of a child. The blacks lay on the crest of the dam, watching the French climb toward us. Between each was a severed head. My men had arranged them like trophies, recalling the worst days of the Terror back in Paris.
“I suppose we should prepare to light the fuses,” I told my band. I was so slathered in mud by this time that we looked identical, a dozen grubby, grinning beavers, or mules. The reservoir would soon top our dam and threaten to wet the powder kegs. I felt in my vest pocket for a tin I’d brought with some coals, and brought it out with some tinder I’d carried from camp.
I frowned. The tinder was soggy. The tin was cold.
In my enthusiasm for dam construction, I’d failed to remember I was getting quite wet. Water and mud had penetrated the ventilation holes of a coal tin I’d neglected to nurse, thanks to enough swigs of mobby and rum. I opened the container. My little bit of fire had gone out. I looked at it stupidly. Well, hell.
I was a three-year-old, indeed.
I cleared my throat. “Now, who brought flint and steel?”
Jubal and his companions looked at me blankly. “Lots of steel, Ethan,” he said. “No flint.”
“A pistol, then.” We could use the flash of its pan.
“You ordered us to leave all the guns back at camp.”
“I suppose I did.” I was thinking furiously. “The weapons of the French sentries?”
“You told us to throw them in the water to avoid any discharge.”
“That is entirely correct. I have been very careful to keep us quiet as mice.” I realized I hadn’t thought the contingencies of my plan entirely through, which is a habit of mine. Perhaps I should start writing things down.
Then I thought of a trick Fulton had told me. “Phosphorus, anyone?”
“Who they?” one of my doughty dam builders inquired.
I’d experimented in Paris with a phosphorus bottle. One uncorks the airtight container, inserts a splinter, and the chemical ignites when lifted into the air. Quite magical.
“Ethan, there’s no phosphorus in the black army,” Jubal said.
“You are correct. A pity.”
“Some of the men can make fire with sticks.”
“Splendid!”
“It takes about an hour,” Antoine amended.
Hell’s bells. At one time I’d helped find a gigantic ancient metal mirror capable of setting whole ships on fire, and now I’d dragged a magazine’s worth of powder up a mountainside with no means of setting it off. We did have steel, but we were on a slope of wet clay. I sent men scurrying to find a stone capable of striking sparks, but the clinking and scraping was futile. I had as much chance of striking fire in this mudhole as finding dry kindling in a downpour.
I wished my genius had more consistency.
Down below, the company of infantry climbing toward us had stopped to take a breath, wary at the odd noises coming from above. They shouted for their sentries, but of course there was no reply. We watched them take their muskets off their shoulders. Then their officer snapped a command, and they came on again, wary but determined.
Meanwhile, Dessalines’s column was almost at the end of the ravine, ready to attack. If the sun climbed high enough to light their position, a single cannon loaded with grapeshot could sweep the defile like a hurricane, halting the rebels before they got started.
Unless we provided a distraction.
Think, Ethan, think! What would Ben Franklin do?
By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail, he used to lecture me with his annoying homilies. He claimed I’d inspired at least half of them. This couldn’t be true, but it got his point across about my dubious character.
What else, what else?
Hide not your talents. They were made for use. What’s a sundial in the shade?
Sundials. Sun. The sun! Of course! I had more than one venerable philosopher to draw from. Archimedes had built a gigantic mirror to harness the sun in a terrifying way, and perhaps I could use the same idea to set off my
