Richard stepped forward. “Hello, Joseph.” He offered his left hand. Joseph took it in his right. His grip was light and his skin was cool to the touch. When he looked up and gave Richard a faint smile, Richard saw written in those hazel eyes and delicate facial features a deep sadness, as though even at his tender age Joseph had grasped that the gulf between his inner world and the real world outside was too vast, too unfathomable, ever to be crossed. Joseph released Richard’s hand and dropped his gaze to the ground.
“Well, son,” his father said after several awkward moments. “Why don’t you and your cousins go on inside and have your dinner. We’ll be along shortly.”
“Yes, Father,” Joseph replied dutifully.
When Joseph and the other children were beyond earshot, John Cutler said, “I’m sorry your arrival here can’t be all joy, Richard. We are so pleased to have you back with us.”
“Good God, John, don’t apologize on my account.” He gave John a light one-armed embrace and a slap on the back, followed by another for Robin. “There really is nothing that can be done for Joseph?”
“It would seem not,” Cynthia said with a heartfelt sigh. “We consulted the best doctors at the Royal College of Physicians, and they offered us no hope. They’re as baffled by his condition as the doctors here are. They were kind to him. Everyone is kind to him—Caleb especially. Your brother is a godsend, Richard. Joseph appears happiest when he’s with him, if he could ever be said to be happy.”
“As are the young ladies of Barbados,” John sniffed. In reply, Caleb gave him a cheerful grin. “But I must agree with Cynthia. We are eternally in your debt, Caleb, for the comfort and care you have given our son.”
As if by tacit consent, for the remainder of the day and into the next, business and other weighty issues were put aside in deference to personal matters. Julia was especially keen to learn as much as she could about Katherine and the children.
“Will was such a wee babe when you and Katherine sailed home to America, Richard. Yet after all that time, your dear wife still writes me a letter every month or two. Because of her I feel as though I know you and your family as well as your neighbors in Hingham do.”
“Probably better than most,” Richard commented. It was late afternoon, and he was sitting at a table with a cup of hot tea before him. About him were the pots and pans, utensils, and bowls and dishes that defined a well-appointed English kitchen. Except that the wood-burning stove was in a separate room connected to the kitchen by a breezeway, to keep the heat of cooking away from the main house. “I wish I could be out on the grounds with Robin and John, to see the new mill we purchased. I mean no offense in saying that, Julia. I do very much enjoy your company.”
Julia laughed. “No offense taken, dear Richard. Don’t fret. You’ll be out of that wretched sling soon enough. In the meanwhile, what harm could there be in walking out to the fields just for a look?”
“A lot, according to the doctors. One slip is all it would take to break the clavicle outright and cripple me for life. I’m ordered to stay put until a doctor here says I can take off the cast.”
“Well, you must absolutely heed your doctor’s advice. In the meanwhile, Cynthia and I and the children are delighted to have you all to ourselves for at least part of each day.”
“I am the beneficiary of that,” Richard said.
“And we all have our wishes,” she went on as she brought over the kettle for a refill. “Mine? I so wish I could travel to England this summer for Captain Hardcastle’s wedding. What joy it would be to see Katherine again. Alas, I cannot travel with a wee babe, and I cannot leave him here with Anna. It simply wouldn’t do. I’m urging Robin to go, however. It would do him a world of good. He so wants to see his parents and Lizzy and little Zeke. And guess what? Captain Hardcastle has invited Robin to sail with him to England on Redoubtable. His ship is being recalled to Deptford for maintenance during the hurricane season. Quite convenient, isn’t it, though I suspect Admiral Parker had a hand in that decision. He’s quite fond of Captain Hardcastle.”
“So I have observed. I met with them both in Jamaica last summer. That’s when Hugh told me about his engagement to Phoebe. Where is Captain Hardcastle now?”
“In English Harbour. He’ll be away for a while, though he promised to make every effort to be back in time for the ball.”
“What ball?”
“Why, the ball we’re hosting in your honor. At Government House. Hugh made the arrangements before he sailed for Antigua. It’s to be held on June tenth. You’ll be out of that dreadful sling weeks before then.”
For Richard, the hours rolled pleasantly into days and the days into weeks. The countryside blossomed in spectacular yellows and reds and whites and pinks as the tropical sun intensified its grip on the Windward Islands in springtime. By the end of March he was allowed to walk into the fields to observe the grinding work of the cut-stone boiling house. The sugarcane juice was channeled into a series of copper kettles and transformed into a sweet syrup, and then either poured into cooling troughs, where sugar crystals hardened around a sticky core of molasses, or transferred directly to the distillery, where the syrup was fermented into rum and aged in charred oaken casks to give it the rich, dark consistency characteristic of Mount Gay rum. March, too, saw a flurry of letters from Hingham now that his family knew where he was and where he would remain for five more months.
Receipt of letters was a highlight of each week. As was her custom, Katherine wrote regularly, numbering her letters in sequence and keeping him informed of the children’s progress and the decisions every parent must make on behalf of their children. Often she would seek his advice on some matter—whether a certain teacher at Derby Academy should be dismissed for overzealous use of the cane, perhaps—knowing full well that a decision had to be made before her husband could possibly respond. That didn’t matter. What did matter was his sense that he was part of the parenting process. Richard’s letters in reply were necessarily brief, but he found as time went on that if he rested his forearm on a table he could scratch out letters that were halfway legible.
As much as the letters from his wife warmed him, those from his father intrigued him. Just as Caleb had described during their numerous discussions on the subject, Thomas Cutler proposed opening a shipping office in Baltimore after peace with France was declared. And that, he believed, would happen soon. Napoleon Bonaparte had consolidated his power in Paris and, according to authorities in the State Department, was keen to end the war with the United States. He had publicly stated that he viewed the rift with America as a distraction—a “family quarrel,” he had put it—and he now wanted to focus his military efforts exclusively on Europe. What Bonaparte also wanted, in Thomas Cutler’s opinion, was a cooling of relations between the United States and Great Britain that would leave England ever more isolated on the world stage.
Further, it was his father’s conviction that Caleb should manage the Baltimore office, assuming that Richard and other family members agreed. And he wrote to say that he had initiated negotiations with John Endicott on opening trade routes to the Orient. First, however, he wanted to better understand what was at stake and what investment would be required. Seizures of American merchant vessels in both the Caribbean and the Mediterranean had fallen off sharply, he explained in one recent letter, and as a result, insurance rates and other costs of doing business had fallen as much as 50 percent. At the same time, worldwide demand for sugar and rum was outstripping the supply, a market dynamic that ipso facto caused prices and revenues to rise for all planters and shippers. Such enhanced profits, Thomas Cutler reasoned, could finance new business initiatives, eliminating the need to borrow funds from a third party or to encumber existing family investments or annual financial distributions to family members.
“What do you think?” Richard asked John and Robin after he had received this letter and allowed his cousins to digest its contents. It was a hot, breezeless day in late April and they were sitting in the c
enter of the compound on two cool, stone-slab benches set beneath the giant trunk of a banyan tree that had been brought over as a sapling from the East Indies.
“Which part of the letter are you referring to?” John asked.
“For starters,” Richard said moderately, “my father’s recommendation that Caleb manage the Baltimore office.”
John shrugged. “He’s your brother, Richard. You and your father know him a great deal better than Robin or I do. And neither of us has ever been to America, much less Baltimore. It’s your decision, not ours.”
“That’s not how we do things, John,” Richard countered. “This is a family decision. You’ve both had the opportunity to observe Caleb during these past several months. You’ve helped him learn the business from the ground up, so to speak. That’s why we wanted him to come here in the first place. Is there anything you have observed during that time that gives you pause?”
Richard instantly understood the meaning in John’s shrug. “We’re not discussing Caleb’s social life, John,” he said irritably, his patience wearing thin on the subject. “What I need to understand is your business perspectives. I realize you do not approve of Caleb’s lifestyle, but I fail to see how that lifestyle disqualifies him from a senior management position.”
“It isn’t just me,” John protested. “Cynthia may not say much about it, but she finds Caleb’s running about just as objectionable as I do. Should you ask any other planters, they will tell you the same thing.”
“And should I ask those planters whose daughters are pursuing my brother just as ardently, and whose morals are even more suspect by your standards? Ease your sheets a little, John. Caleb was ten years in an Arab prison. By the grace of God he managed to come out of it alive. Isn’t that what matters? That he survived and is able to run about, as you put it?”
John stared straight ahead, tapping his fingers on his knee and saying nothing in reply.
“Robin?”
Robin Cutler had listened to the exchange, casually fanning himself with his straw hat as though what transpired was of minor concern to him. Of the two brothers, he had changed the least over the years. Unlike John, whose hair was thinning and whose hairline was receding, Robin retained a full head of russet-colored hair—though now streaked with white—and his sinewy frame and finely chiseled features retained a youthful appearance and vitality. Whereas John delighted in the role and accoutrements of a gentleman English planter, Robin preferred simpler garb and tended to avoid pretensions, despite his marriage into one of the richest families on Barbados. Such differences in style and outlook notwithstanding, John and Robin Cutler complemented each other in ways critical to the prosperity of a family-owned enterprise. Robin Cutler knew how to produce superior products, and John Cutler knew how to sell them.
“As you have heard me say before,” Robin said to Richard, “I am quite impressed with Caleb. I have been since the day he arrived. I particularly admire his determination to learn every aspect of the business, whatever it takes and wherever it takes place. One rarely witnesses such enthusiasm for getting one’s hands dirty. About the only thing he hasn’t done these past four months is cut cane in the fields with the Negroes. And he would have done that if John had not threatened to send him to purgatory in Peter’s room. What’s more, I don’t share John’s views on Caleb’s personal affairs. Neither does Julia. Whom he consorts with and how he does it is his concern, not mine, as long as it does not interfere with the family business and as long as he does it discreetly. Which to this point he has. Do I give him high marks for what he has accomplished here on Barbados? Yes. Do I believe he has the business instincts and acumen to commend him to a senior position in Cutler & Sons? Again, yes, without question.”
“Thank you, Robin,” Richard said. “We are in agreement, then?”
“You and I are. John?”
John pursed his lips and nodded in resignation.
IN MID-MAY, as the Easter season faded into memory and summer-like heat settled over the island, a physician in Bridgetown removed the plaster cast on Richard’s arm for the final time. Pain jabbed at him as he slowly moved his arm this way and that, but the doctor assured him that the discomfort was perfectly normal and would subside once Richard began exercising the muscles that had atrophied during the long weeks of convalescence. And exercise Richard did, right away, with a form he had sorely missed as a semi-invalid. When he returned to the Cutler compound, he walked out not to the cane fields but to the beach, where he stripped to his undershorts and dove into the warm turquoise water. There he lingered for the best part of three hours, swimming an easy side stroke, diving down into the clear depths, relaxing on the sugar-white sand, and then having at it all over again, luxuriating in the clear saltwater and hot tropical sun coursing over him, cleansing him, restoring him. In the late afternoon he returned to the compound, wet and tired, toting six rock lobsters he had plucked off a coral reef and wrapped up in his shirt.
“Supper,” he announced happily. He spilled the lobsters, their tails flapping, into a tin basin on the kitchen table. “I’m finally able to start earning my keep around here.”
Cynthia gave him a rare beam of a smile. “Oh, how splendid, Richard,” she gushed. “How absolutely splendid. Joseph loves lobsters. I must call him this instant.” When she returned to the kitchen, she said, “John left today’s Gazette out for you. There’s an article on the front page he thinks you’ll find interesting. It’s in the parlor.”
“Oh? I’ll have a look after I rinse off and change clothes.”
A few minutes later, still giddy at his newfound freedom and cleanliness, Richard walked into the snug parlor and took a seat in a leather chair bathed in the light of an open window. Beside it was an elegant sandalwood table on which Cynthia had placed a china cup of tea and the latest issue of the Bridgetown Gazette. He picked up the paper, snapped it to straighten it, and read a front-page story that John had starred in black ink.
Toussaint L‘Ouverture Attacks Rigaud; United States His Ally
Jacmel, Saint-Domingue, 30 April 1799. The civil war that has raged on the island of Hispaniola for a decade has taken a dramatic turn. The army of Negro General Toussaint L’Ouverture, led by his senior officer, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, has laid siege to the mulatto stronghold on the southern coast of Saint-Domingue. This assault differs from previous initiatives in that Toussaint’s soldiers appear to be well provisioned and well armed. It is perhaps no coincidence that as Dessalines attacks Jacmel by land, the United States warship General Greene has blockaded the harbor and is bombarding the earthworks from the sea. No vessels, including British merchant vessels, are allowed access to Jacmel in support of the forces of mulatto leader André Rigaud. Tobias Lear, U.S. consul at Cap François, has refused to comment on what appears to be a flagrant violation of American neutrality in this affair. Admiral Sir Hyde Parker in Port Royal, Jamaica, has also refused to comment, although it is widely rumored that he and his superiors in the Admiralty are gravely concerned over this puzzling turn of events. Royal Navy frigates have been dispatched to the area, including HMS Redoubtable of the Windward Squadron, recently in English Harbour, Antigua.
“Son of a bitch,” Richard heard himself say. He put the cup down on its saucer and read through the article again. Overall, it did a commendable job of distilling the complexities of the civil war and summarizing the milestones since the first slave uprisings in 1791. Not surprising to Richard was its failure to mention the combined British and American summit with Toussaint L’Ouverture on Île de la Gonâve.
“Son of a bitch,” he said again, loud enough to be overheard by Caleb, who had entered the room with young Joseph in tow.
“What is it, Richard? What’s the matter?” said Caleb. In a lower voice: “And pray, watch your language in front of the boy.”
Richard glanced up. “It’s an article about Saint-Domingue,” he answered vaguely. He had told his family nothing about his experience there, it being decided among those involved
to keep the stopper in the rumor mill for as long as possible. More to the point, he still had trouble fitting together the pieces of the puzzle. At the time, this much at least had seemed indisputable: British and American interests were best served by supporting Toussaint against Rigaud. That is what Richard had written in his report to Navy Secretary Stoddert, and what Hugh Hardcastle had assured him he would report to Admiral Parker. So why were Great Britain and the United States now seemingly at odds over which side to support? Why would Admiral Parker now succor a man he had once described as “a mulatto half-breed on a French leash” who was the sworn enemy of England? And why was Hugh Hardcastle bound for Jacmel and a possible confrontation with an American brig of war?
“Well, go on. What does the article say?”
Richard was still uncertain how much to reveal, or even if the intelligence he had on the subject had any relevance anymore. “That the civil war there may soon end,” he replied. “Caleb, what do you know about Toussaint L’Ouverture?”
“Not much. Only what has been reported in the Gazette. The Boston newspapers had little to say about him.”
“What’s your impression of what’s happening on Saint-Domingue?”
“Not much,” he repeated. “The way I see it, blacks are fighting blacks on an island populated by blacks. Who cares?”
“Our government, for one. According to this article, the United States has sent weapons and supplies to Toussaint.”
Caleb glanced at the headline Richard held out to him. “We’re allied with him? A former slave? Why on earth would we do that?”
“For trading rights. For Toussaint’s promise to discourage slave uprisings in America. And who knows, perhaps for a little idealism. Toussaint is trying to do for his country what General Washington did for ours.”
Caleb pondered that. “So President Adams has concluded that this fellow Toussaint L’Ouverture can actually win the war. And throw out the French. With whom we’re at war. Sort of.”
The Power and the Glory Page 23