A Son of the Rock

Vintage, 2004, 743p, including i p Contents, ii p Map of Saint Domingue, x p Glossary, xx p Chronology of Historical Events, xviii p Original Letters and Documents, iv p Classification of Races in Colonial Saint Domingue and i p Note on Creole Orthography.

This is a sequel to All Souls’ Rising – which I read long before I started blogging – and is the second in the author’s Haiti trilogy which has as its setting the history of the slave revolt in what was then the French colony of Saint Domingue. The only successful slave revolt in history. For my review of CLR James’s history of the revolt see here.

Like the first in the sequence, Master of the Crossroads shows us scenes from the point of view of Toussaint Louverture, the most successful of the native generals, at the time of his later incarceration by the French, here in Fort de Jeux, on the French mainland, where he is endeavouring to persuade the First Consul, Napoleon, through letters and answers to interrogation, to believe his loyalty has always been to the French state as embodied in the ideals of the Revolution. When charged by his interrogator with having hidden fifteen million francs and shot the Negroes* who buried it for him Toussaint replies, “You blancs always believe there is a gold mine hidden from you somewhere.” The circumstances which led to his captivity were not covered in All Souls’ Rising: neither are they here.

While events in the wider context are illustrated or described, the main narrative features on the affairs of a few characters, mostly from Habitation Thibodet, next door to plantation Ennery and near Louverture’s original home. Some first person chapters are related from the point of view of Riau, a former slave born in Guinée (for most of the characters French would have been their first language but we also have dialogue in Haitian Creole.) Riau had formed an attachment to a woman called Merbillay but in his absence on military duty she took up with Guiaou and has a child by him. After a contretemps of sorts the three come to an unconventional arrangement. The titular owners of the Habitation (if any such right existed in the state of flux of the times) are Xavier and Elise Tocquet. Elise’s brother, Doctor Antoine Hébert, has a more or less acknowledged relationship with the former slave girl Nanon – so acknowledged she sits at table with them all. He is also Louverture’s doctor and accompanies him on various campaigns and expeditions though the country. Other notable characters are Isabelle Cigny and a mulatto man going by the name Choufleur (son of le Sieur Maltrot, who gave him that nickname due to his freckled appearance) and whose younger infatuation with Nanon leads to a fateful situation.

The scenario allows Bell to explore the complicated history of the Haiti revolution – tangled as it became in the French Revolutionary wars with the activities of Great Britain seeking to destabilise any French territory and the internecine manœuvrings of its various principal participants – and the effects of slavery both on slavers and on slaves plus that of the French Revolution on French personnel and colonists and those born in Haiti.

The book is not for the squeamish – times of revolt are usually bloody and Bell does not shy from describing atrocities and we witness Choufleur’s mother tell Hébert, “Cruelty is the first quality of any and all blancs. Cruelty and greed, no matter how you may hide it.” In the same speech she enlarges on her theme by mentioning the fact that on Haiti though you could find “their tools and relics everywhere” there were now no Indians where once there had been half a million. Moreover, she tells him the high incidence of lockjaw in new born slave children (an incidence much reduced since the revolt) was in fact due to midwives making sure – in a horrific way – that the child would not live to face the torments of slavery.

An indication perhaps of Bell’s nationality comes when French Civil Commissioner Léger-Félicité Sonthonax supplies rifles to that part of the colonial army made up of freed slaves, and says to them, “Whoever takes this weapon from you would take away your freedom,” but I suppose in those times and in that place the possession of a gun was some sort of guarantee. Bell also has a sympathetic eye for the customs of Vodou (voodoo,) seen as an expression of the desire of slaves to return to Africa – by whatever means.

Louverture is portrayed as having almost a second sight in the matter of ambushes, twice leaping from a travelling coach which is attacked a short way down the road. His stature at the time is exemplified by being dubbed the Black Spartacus by General Laveaux,

*This is the word which would have been used at that time.

Pedant’s corner:- sprung (sprang,) ablebodied (two words? able bodied,) “rolled to a crescendo” (rolled to a climax,) “slit it open with thumbnail” (with a thumbnail,) bandanna (bandana,) “less people” (fewer people,) “really wanted know” (wanted to know,) “only when spoken too” (spoken to,) “the the table” (no need for the extra ‘the’,) Breda (elsewhere always Bréda,) complection (complexion,) “bowing away from here” (from her,) Elsie (elsewhere always Elise,) “of the those” (no ‘the’ required,) mulattos (usually here the plural is written mulattoes,) “the trade agreement …. had apparently been broken” (been brokered,) “a peak in the zig-zag trial” (trail,) “at a time when no could gainsay her” (when no-one could,) “those of his father’s” (the ‘of’ made it possessive already; no need for the ’s,) “while the doctor embrace Vincent” (embraced,) “from Limbé de Dondon” (from Limbé to Dondon,) “with a citrus sent” (scent,) “‘put on this clothes at once’” (these clothes.)