Three hours after sundown that night he flung his trowel down, retired to his room again, and changed into his customary ornate uniform. Then, with a few parting directions to the mulatto engineers in charge of the construction, he let himself out of the studded oaken door that gave on the lower terrace and in a few moments the sentries on the walls saw him far below them, striding down the moonlit trail toward Sans Souci.
What the King did in that single day became a legend. To climb to the Citadel, to work there, and then to come down the narrow, dangerous path in the dark to the palace again would consume the last shreds of most men's energy.
But, at midnight, Christophe knocked softly on a bedchamber door. In a moment a sleepy head appeared, followed instantly by the night-shirted figure of a middle-aged negro baron, a former general in the army of Dessalines who had been promoted by Christophe to the post of military general of the Citadel.
The baron, startled and frightened, saluted. Over his shoulder appeared the worried black face of his wife. She held a lighted candle high over her head. Henry nodded reassuringly. "It is nothing, madame. But, Baron, I have an eryand for you. I will wait here while you put on some clothes."
The baron disappeared into the room, while his lady wavered in the doorway, uncertain as to whether it were better to leave the King unceremoniously in the dark, or, still more unceremoniously appear before her sovereign barefoot in her nightgown.
Christophe met the situation by closing the door.
In a few minutes the wondering baron joined him in the shadowy corridor.
It was three o'clock in the morning when the old soldier returned to his chamber. The baroness, her gnarled negro hands clenched in nervous fear, sat on the edge of their bed, the candle guttering on a table beside her. With a whispered greeting her husband stepped into the narrow circle of light. The woman leaped to her feet with a scream.
"My God! Raymond, you are wearing Henry's uniform. You have killed the King!"
"Sssh. Be quiet. You'll wake the palace. Nothing is the matter. Christophe is going to be abroad all night and he fears assassins. He changed clothes with me in case .. . you see? He is wearing my uniform." 'Then he told her of his errand.
"Henry and I have buried some treasure behind the Queen's garden. The chest was too heavy for even the King to carry alone. I helped him. It is for Marie-Louise, he told me, but he said she doesn't know anything of it herself. He made me swear on my life I'd keep the secret until a time came when she might need money. Henry is a good husband. . . . Mon Dieu, but I'm sleepy! Let's go to bed. . . ."
Soon only the tall sentries in their boxes on the grand staircase were awake—and Christophe, who was walking somewhere restlessly in the wooded mountains, his hands clasped tight behind his back and his agile mind tumbling troubled through a maze of hopes, ambitions, fears.
The following day Henry gave orders that his meals were to be served to him alone in his private apartments. The solitary, brooding mood of yesterday still was on him. He ate ravenously.
At one o'clock he gave orders to a body-servant to saddle a horse. He was going to the village of Limonade, ten miles away, to attend mass.
The servant gaped stupidly. Never before in anyone's memory had Henry gone to mass. Certainly not alone. State ceremonials, yes... . Recovering himself, the man hurried to the stables.
It was the hour when most of Haiti was indoors asleep. The vertical rays of the sun pounded more and more relentlessly on one's back with every mile down the dusty, empty road. But Henry rode without mercy, whipping his sweating white horse to a gallop that soon outdistanced the men of his bodyguard. .
The Church of St. Ann, patroness of maiden ladies, is a simple oblong building with a peaked roof. The interior is drab and shadowy, the staring, painted saints along the walls rather lonely, vacuous figures. It had rarely been visited by communicants more eminent than barefoot, still hopeful old negresses who came to pray to kind St. Ann.
The fat Breton priest who lived nearby was asleep in the hammock when a breathless soldier roused him with the news that King Henry was awaiting him in the empty church.
In a moment he was in the little anteroom that adjoins the sanctuary. A frightened peek through the door assured him that Christophe, whose great body, tilted head, and outstretched hands seemed to fill the meager space by the altar, was waiting. The King was kneeling at a little praying-stand.
With trembling hands the priest put on his vestments. In a minute he was ready. But so furious had been his haste that it occurred to him that not a gust of breath was left in him. Decidedly he was in no state to give Communion to the King. He paused in the doorway to recover himself. From where he stood he could see Christophe, but Christophe could not see him. Suddenly the fat priest's mouth dropped open and his little blue eyes nearly started from his head.
Christophe was slowly rising to his feet. His left hand clutched the prie diew so tightly the wood cracked noisily. His right arm, rigid as an iron rod, was thrust out. His fingers pointed at the altar. He had turned a little so the priest could see his face. It was gray beneath the brown. Little flecks of white foam were showing at the corners of his mouth. His eyes were staring horribly. Now he was standing erect, a black giant in a queerly incongruous bright blue uniform. Frozen helpless with fright, the priest realized Christophe was about to speak. His lips moved helplessly, then words were formed.
"Great God! it's Corneille Brelle!"
The King had seen the ghost of his dead chaplain officiating in strange silence before the altar. With a scream he crashed forward. In the fraction of a second before panic gave wings to the priest's heels he saw that the blow against the stone floor had laid Christophe's head open. As he fled, he realized that the fallen King was lying limp in an ever-widening red puddle.
Two hours later, Dr. Duncan Stewart, the frightened Queen, Vastey, and Dupuy were at Christophe's bedside in the priest's house. The men of his bodyguard had carried him there.
While the tall, frigidly calm Scotch doctor stripped the unconscious monarch preparatory to making his examination, Vastey, consumed with impatience, ran out into the midst of the gaping, silent crowd of peasants that had assembled. In a shrill, high voice he ordered that every goat, every burro, and every dog within a radius of three miles from Limonade be taken at once by its owner outside of the district; that every mother of a young child depart at once, not to return to her village until permission came. 'There must not be a single sound anywhere that might disturb the King. Vastey gave rapid ordlers to some soldiers. Men were to be stationed at every road and trail that led into Limonade, to prevent curiosity-seekers from coming too close. Then, quite forgetting his dignity, little Vastey ran back to the priest's house.
As he tiptoed into the whitewashed room where his old friend lay, Dr. Stewart was saying to the Queen, "A stroke. Apoplexy induced by extreme fatigue and apparently some mental shock. He will recover, but there may be complete paralysis... ." Then, startlingly, the Scotchman added, "Oh, good God!"
For two days Christophe lay unconscious, while not a sound broke the summer quiet of Limonade. On the third day the Queen and Stewart, who had sat by him in a ceaseless vigil, saw his eyelids flutter open and a look of gray, ghastly terror cross his face. Then he saw them bending over him and smiled. That evening he was carried in a special litter to Sans Souci.
The news ran over Haiti. The voices of black farmers carried it, calling from hillside to valley, over across the ranges, across the deserts, the great central plain, and at last into the dry brown hills of the south. At night the rumbling drums of old witch-men sounded the refrain, colored it, dramatized it weirdly and sent the word in code over the marshes where the night birds called and across the narrow strips of sea to lonely little islands off the coast.
Christophe, lying in magnificence in the vast and splendid palace under the hill, heard, when night lay breathless on his kingdom, and his hands caught at his silken sheets. "So much to. do." Then, weakly, he fell asleep.
The next morning young Dupuy and Dr. Stewart came into the King's chamber. The leaded windows were open on a brilliant sky and a cool breeze from the sea fluttered the hangings. One could hear the King's horses whinnying in the stables four hundred yards away.
Christophe was awake and hungry. His face was radiant with cheerfulness. But Stewart had directed him to be perfectly still and he meekly obeyed.
Dupuy and Stewart seemed strangely ill at ease. He laughed at them. Stewart was always saying he had a perfect constitution. With stiff awkwardness Dr. Stewart took his place on one side of the bed and Dupuy on the other.
"Come, Henry, let's get up," said the Scotchman, and held out his hand.
Christophe's arms lifted to them. He put his hands in theirs, raised his head a little . . . and cursed softly. With a force that nearly tumbled the two men over him, he pulled at their arms. Slowly his great body came out from under the covers. His nightshirt, open at the throat, exposed his broad black chest. His head turned toward Stewart, and his eyes, wide and frightened, sought the. Doctor's.
"Duncan, what's the matter? I can't move."
They let go his hands. Stewart flung back the bedclothes, and while Dupuy, his pale brown hands knotted desperately together, looked on, he went methodically over the limp body of the King.
At last: "You might as well know, Henry. Except for your head, your arms, and those hands of yours—and God only knows why he spared those—you are paralyzed. Know what that means?"
Christophe nodded.
That night the hidden drums and the singsong, wailing voices of the peasants carried fresh, exciting news.
In Port au Prince the mulatto politicians heard and rejoiced. Pale, indolent Duke Richard in his mansion at Cap Henry remembered how Christophe had made him work on the fortress walls with common criminals. His thin lips twisted in a smile. Mulatto chevaliers and barons of the Kingdom stroked their chins reflectively. Henry, who despised all vanities of color, had forbidden his aristocrats to grow beards. He knew what pride men with a little white blood in their veins took in whiskers. He had laughed at them. . . . But now, perhaps .. .
Thick-lipped, dull-eyed blacks in the hot sweat of the cane fields spat on the ground and wondered. They arched their backs, yawned, then laughed. It would be good to rest. Sacré! There was too much sugar.
And in St. Mare, the city of the kingdom that lay nearest the border of the republic, two officers of the garrison excused their regiment from duty for a week and entertained at their table officers of the army of the Republic.
But the King, in spite of his infirmity, had rarely been more active. Four of the strongest, tallest black soldiers of his household regiment were attached to his person. On fine days they carried him to a baleony that adjoined the top-floor rooms of the palace. 'There, with his telescope beside him, he could see the richest region of his kingdom spread out like a pale green carpet below him. All day long messengers would ride up the royal road to bring him reports, petitions, papers. Vastey, Count Limonade, and Dupuy were always within call.
Word came of the treason of the officers at St. Mare. Christophe called a negro general to him, a man named Jean Claude, and instructed him to take a company of faithful men to the rebellious city. The two officers and all others, both military and civilian, who had been bitten by revolution, he said, were to be brought to him in chains, so he himself could have the relish of trying them and condemning the guilty. The King's hands pounded furiously on the arms of his throne. They must know their sovereign was master still.
But Jean Claude never reached St. Mare. He was shot through the throat that night less than ten leagues from the palace. He and his men had fallen into an ambush prepared by a company of revolutionists. They had come under cover of the thick forests that clothed the most inaccessible parts of the hills to feel out the sentiment of their countrymen in the north. Messengers took the head of Jean Claude in a sack to Port au Prince as a kind of symbol to friends in the republic of the "good faith" of the St. Mare garrison.
A frightened peasant came at dawn to the gates of Sans Souci. He had a message for the King, he told the sentry. He was at once admitted and fell prone by Christophe's chair.
The man was panting from exhaustion and whimpering with fear, but his message was definite.
The soldiers from St. Marc had left their concealment. They were marching on the public roads and as they marched they were shouting for all to hear: "A bas le Roi! Vive Vindépendance!' And, more particularly, they were promising no more work, free rum, and spoils to all who joined them. A few peasants, not many, had already joyously thrown down their machetes and were in the procession. They were moving, very slowly, it was true, toward Sans Souci. And no one was resisting them.
Christophe's hands caught the chair arms and with a great effort he lifted himself up, but he sank back groaning. His eyes stared terribly while two servants lifted and pushed him to the natural position in his chair, but no sound came from him. The kingdom was toppling about his head and the King was more helpless than a newborn calf. Timorously, his eyes sought the massive hands lying on his lap, and for an instant a grim smile wiped the heavy tragedy from his mouth. ;
"Vastey,"' he shouted, "send a horseman to Cap Henry. I have a message for Duke Richard. He is to report to me here at once."
Baron Vastey's mobile little hands sprang forward in a gesture of protest. His mouth opened. Then his eyes found Christophe's and he saluted smartly and turned away.
Richard, Duke of Marmelade, presented himself on the King's balcony five hours later. A blue silk canopy had been spread to protect the King from the full force of the noon sun. October is the month of heaviest rainfall in the north of Haiti and the air was thick with moisture.
Richard wore his smartest court uniform. But the perspiration, for all his nervous mopping with a handkerchief, ran in little streams down his temples. His distinguished, aquiline face twitched with complex emotions as he faced Christophe.
For a moment they looked intently at each other, then the King, in a quiet voice, said: "Richard, I wondered if you'd come. I am flattered that you are still afraid of me. .. . You have heard the news, of course. The St. Marc troops have passed Ennery on their way here. You have my orders to take the Cap Henry garrison and march against them." Richard's right hand lifted to his forehead in a leisurely salute, and for the fraction of a second a smirk played across his face.
Christophe's head thrust forward and he reached his left hand out. The movement, so strangely dissociated from the deathlike stillness of his paralyzed body, was somehow terrible.
A Richard paled.
"And before you go, damn your dirty yellow soul, you may get on your knees and kiss your master's hand!"
For an instant there was utter silence on the balcony, except for the quick breathing of Baron Vastey, who stood by Christophe's chair. Richard's lips grew white with anger.
Then, as if an invisible hand were pushing him down, he dropped slowly to his knees, leaned forward, and put his lips to Henry's outstretched heavy hand. Then he rose, saluted swiftly, and went away.
Christophe said to Vastey, in a choking voice he strove to make seem natural:
"It is a sound principle of warfare, Pompée, to concentrate all the enemy's forces in one place. By midnight that traitorous swine will have taken all his men to join the St. Marc troops. We have no time to lose. Send word that I will review the army to-morrow morning at ten o'clock,"
