Free Master of the Crossroads by Madison Smartt Bell

toward the back. Never before had he seen Toussaint bareheaded. Then he remembered to kneel himself, but he still watched Toussaint sidelong, under his lashes, wondering at the docile, lamb-like manner with which he took communion. Next the priest moved toward him with the chalice and the bread, and Moustique closed his eyes completely and received.
    After the service, l’Abbé Delahaye entertained his parishioner in the front room of the small house he occupied behind the church. A young black woman came into the room to serve them coffee—she had remained in Delahaye’s service of her own volition, though she was no longer a slave. There were no longer any slaves in Saint Domingue. Delahaye smiled privately at the thought, groped in the sack of herbs Toussaint had presented to him, and began to spread the contents on the table: sonnette, giraumon, tabac à Jacquot, then something that he didn’t recognize. He raised the leaves in his hand and turned to Toussaint.
    “C’est quoi, ça?”
    “C’est thym à manger.”
    “Et ça sert à quoi?”
    Toussaint was spooning sugar into his coffee, a great deal of sugar. “It is used,” he said, “by women who wish that their children would not be born alive.”
    Delahaye straightened, stiffened, adjusted his stole.
    “Monpè,” said Toussaint, “it must be said that oftentimes it is desirable to know of things which one does not intend to use.”
    Delahaye raised his eyebrows, then nodded, somewhat reluctantly. He opened a notebook, picked up a stick of charcoal, and quickly sketched the herb and its flower on the first blank page. When he had finished, he closed the notebook over the leaves and laid his hand on the cover to flatten it.
    “My son,” he said to Toussaint, “I see by your uniform that you are still given to the service of kings.”
    Toussaint didn’t answer. His long-jawed black face was almost leadenly impassive. Delahaye had the impression that his sentence had overshot the mark and gone flying out the open door behind his guest, into the yard where the colored youth Toussaint had brought crouched on his heels, chatting idly with the black maidservant. That same mute impassivity was frequent among all those who had been slaves, whether African or Creole, but in this case it could not be assigned to stupidity or incomprehension. In the face of Toussaint’s stillness, Delahaye felt utterly at sea. With some difficulty he kept his own silence.
    Presently Toussaint loosened a button on his uniform coat and inserted his hand, as if to produce something from an inside pocket. But when he drew forth the hand, it was empty. From outside the door came the faint twittering cry of a swift darting over the case.
    Delahaye sighed. “I have seen, for example, a letter which you addressed to the republican commander Chanlatte some months ago, wherein you denounce the commissioners, and the republican forces generally, for various cruelties in the field which you allege, but most especially for the cruelty of having executed King Louis XVI in France. In conclusion you say that it is not possible for you and your followers to recognize the commissioners until they have enthroned another king.”
    “As you know, monpè, ” Toussaint said, “I am merely the junior officer of my generals Biassou and Jean-François—”
    “Yes, my son,” Delahaye broke in, “I know this even too well, for it was I who spoke to your generals on behalf of the commissioners of the Republic, to which they replied that they had never done anything since the world was made except to carry out the will of kings, and thus they too could not recognize the commissioners until France had enthroned another king.”
    “It was not I who composed those phrases,” Toussaint said.
    “Perhaps it was not,” said Delahaye. He sighed again and scratched his stiff graying hair, cut carelessly short in the manner of a Roman soldier. “And yet their similarity to those you did compose is