From the windows they watched the horde of attackers passing by, but only once were they forced to use the weapons to protect themselves, and that was not against bands of slaves or against Sonthonax's soldiers but against their own allies: some drunken sailors intending to sack the house. They frightened them by shooting into the air, and Valmorain calmed them by offering them taffia. One of the Patriots had to go outside, rolling a barrel of liquor, while the rest kept aim on the band from the windows. The sailors opened the cask right there, and after the first swallows several dropped to the ground in the last stages of intoxication; they'd been drinking since that morning. Finally they went away, shouting that the supposed battle had been a fiasco, they'd had no one to mix it up with. It was true. The greater part of Sonthonax's troops had given up the streets without showing their faces and taken positions on the outskirts of the city.
At mid-morning the following day, Etienne Relais, wounded by a ball in his shoulder but firm in his bloodstained uniform, explained once more to Sonthonax, who'd taken refuge with his staff on a nearby plantation, that without aid of some kind they could not defeat the enemy. The assault no longer had the carnival air of the first day; Galbaud had succeeded in organizing his men and was about to take over the city. The irascible Commissaire had refused to listen to reason the previous day when the overwhelming superiority of the enemy force was already evident, but this time he listened to the end. Zacharie's information was proved to be absolutely accurate.
"We will have to negotiate an honorable way out, Commissaire, because I see no way to acquire reinforcements," Relais concluded, pale and hollow-eyed, his arm bound to his chest in an improvised sling, the sleeve of his jacket hanging empty.
"I do, Major Relais. I have thought about it carefully. There are more than fifteen thousand rebels camped outside Le Cap. They will be the reinforcements we need," Sonthonax replied.
"The Negroes? I do not believe they want to get involved in this," said Relais.
"They will in exchange for emancipation. Freedom for them and their families."
It was not his idea, it had occurred to Zacharie, who had found a way to meet with him a second time. By then Sonthonax knew that Zacharie was a slave and realized that he was betting everything on one play, because if Galbaud was victorious, as seemed inevitable, and if he learned of Zacharie's role as informant, he would be broken on the wheel in the public place. As Zacharie had explained to him, the only help Sonthonax could summon were the rebellious blacks. All he had to do was give them sufficient incentive.
"And in addition they will have the right to pillage the city. What do you think, Major?" Sonthonax announced to Relais with an air of triumph.
"Risky."
"There are hundreds of thousand of rebel blacks scattered around the island, and I have a way to get them to join with us."
"Most of them are on the side of the Spaniards," Relais reminded him.
"In exchange for freedom they will put themselves under the French banner, I assure you. I know that Toussaint, among others, wants to return to the bosom of France. Choose a small detachment of black soldiers and come with me to speak with the rebels. They are at an hour's march from here. And look after that arm, mon ami, don't let it get infected."
Etienne Relais, who had no faith in the plan, was surprised to see how quickly the rebels accepted the offer. They had been betrayed again and again by whites, but they clung to that frail promise of emancipation. The pillaging was a hook almost as powerful as freedom, because they had been inactive for weeks, and boredom was beginning to sap their spirits.
Blood and Ashes
From the window of his balcony Toulouse Valmorain was the first to see the dark mass advancing from the hill toward the city. It was difficult for him to realize what it was because his sight was not as good as it had been, and there was a light fog; the air vibrated with heat and humidity.
"Tete! Come here and tell me what that is!" he ordered.
"Negroes, monsieur. Thousands of Negroes," she replied, unable to avoid a shudder, a mixture of terror before what was coming toward them and hope that Gambo was among them.
Valmorain waked the Patriots snoring in the drawing room and sent them out to sound the alarm. Soon all the neighbors were inside their houses, bolting doors and windows, while General Galbaud's men crawled out of their drunken state and readied themselves for a battle that was lost before it was begun. They did not know it yet, but there were five blacks for every white soldier, and they came inflamed by the demented courage Ogoun had instilled in them. The first sounds heard from them were a hair-raising saraband of howls and the clear call of war conchs growing louder and louder. The rebels had a far greater number of combatants, and they were much closer than anyone had suspected. They set upon Le Cap in the midst of a deafening tumult, nearly naked, badly armed, without order or plan, ready to demolish everything in sight. They could avenge themselves and destroy at will, with no threat of punishment. In the blink of an eye thousands of torches were lit and the city became one enormous flame, the wood houses catching fire as if from a contagious illness, one street after another, entire quartiers. The heat was unbearable, the sky and the sea were stained with reds and oranges. Through the crackling flames and the crashing of buildings collapsing amid smoke rose the clear sounds of the blacks' cries of triumph and the visceral terror of their victims. The streets filled with bodies trampled by the attackers, by whites running for their lives, and by hundreds of stampeding horses loosed from stables. No one could offer resistance to such an onslaught. Most of the sailors were massacred in the first hours, while Galbaud's regular troops were attempting to save civilian whites. Thousands trying to escape ran toward the port. Some were trying to haul bundles, but after only a few steps they tossed them aside in their haste to escape.
Valmorain was taking in the situation from a window on the second floor. The fire was already very near, a spark would be enough to turn his house into a bonfire. In the side streets he saw bands of sweat-and blood-soaked blacks unhesitatingly moving toward the weapons of the few soldiers left standing. The attackers were falling by the dozens, but others came right behind them, leaping over the piled-up bodies of their brothers. Valmorain saw a group surround a family trying to reach the docks, two women and several children protected by an older man, surely the father, and a pair of boys. The whites, armed with pistols, were each able to get off a point blank shot, only to be immediately surrounded and erased from view. Several Negroes were carrying decapitated heads by the hair; others had broken down the door of a house, its roof already ablaze, and were yelling as they burst through. A woman whose throat had been slit was thrown out a window; furniture and household goods followed, until the flames forced the assailants outside. Minutes later Valmorain heard the first blows against the main door of his own house. The terror that paralyzed him was not unknown; he had suffered the identical fear when he'd escaped from his plantation following Gambo. He did not understand how things could have turned around so radically, and how the uproarious noise of drunk sailors and white soldiers in the streets, which according to Galbaud would last only a few hours and end in a certain victory, had become this nightmare of enraged Negroes. He was holding his pistols in fingers so stiff that he could not have fired them. He broke out in a sour sweat whose stench he could recognize: the odor of the impotence and terror of the slaves Cambray had martyrized. He felt that his fate was sealed and that like the slaves on his plantation, there was no escape. He struggled against nausea and against the untenable temptation to curl up in a corner, paralyzed in abject cowardice. He felt a warm liquid soaking his breeches.