“Mister Pelham, now,” Peel continued quite casually, “is a lad born to wealth. As we both know, respectable wealth in England means land, and property obtaining to the land. Tenants, and rents? He was a bit nettled, therefore, by the, uhm, coincidence. Mister Pelham, however, has the acquaintance of Sir Samuel Whitbread and the ‘Great Commoner,’ Charles James Fox, who are of a persuasive progressive bent. He also admires the work of the Reverend William Wilberforce and Mistress Hannah Moore, the earnest reformers. Mister Pelham is not taken quite so much by their views concerning the reform of English society…but he agrees with them about the abolition of slavery, d’ye see.”
“Uhm-hmm,” Lewrie commented with his mouth full, which seemed safest. I’m ruined, I’m extorted forever…which? he wondered.
“Mister Pelham now thinks the slightest bit better of you, sir,” Peel informed him. “Did you actually have a hand in it.”
“Excuse me, Mister Peel,” Lewrie wondered aloud, after he got his soup down without choking in shock, or relief. “But, not two days ago, re-enslaving every last Black in Saint Domingue seemed to bother him less than a hang-nail. Damme, he’s posing as a prospective slave owner! How can he hold both views simultaneously?”
“Ah, but they’re French slaves, Captain Lewrie,” Peel brightly replied. “Not English-owned. And anyone who tries to put the chains back on ’em will bleed money, soldiers, and grief, the whole next century. Let it be a festering boil for the Frogs, not us. L’Ouverture is getting the land back into limited production, so what he can do, disorganised as he is, our more enlightened British planters can do, just as well if not better. Perhaps with paid labour, d’ye see.”
Lewrie gave that idea the scornful snort it deserved; he doubted if anyone could mention British overseas planters and “enlightened” in the same breath, and not be slung into Bedlam for lunacy.
“And Mister Pelham’s pose is just that,” Peel snickered. “For just so long as it is necessary. He’ll make a great show of keen interest into every aspect of slave agriculture, then suffer a sudden, ah, turn of fortune that precludes the purchase of slaves, or acres.”
“He’ll make a pest of himself, you mean,” Lewrie wryly supposed.
“Uhm!” Peel gaily agreed over the lip of his wineglass.
“Which means that I won’t be saddled with you forever,” Lewrie further assumed. “Your mission ends when Choundas is defeated, or when Saint Domingue explodes again? When Rigaud wins?”
“Hopefully, Captain Lewrie,” Peel said with a mystifying shrug.
“Just how abolitionist is the Honourable Grenville Pelham then?” Lewrie queried. “Enough so to delve into slavery’s horrors and write Wilberforce and Moore all about ’em? So Whitbread and Fox can screech in the Commons and expose the evils?”
“Frankly, sir, I would not put it past him,” Peel agreed. “He is young, you’ve noticed, and, uhm, ardent in his beliefs,” Peel said, with a jaded roll of his eyes at such callowness in younger men.
“Ain’t he, though,” Lewrie replied, chuckling; but he was more amused by the fact that Pelham was vulnerable, too. A word in the right ear, and Jamaica would shun him like the proverbial viper in the breast; an abolitionist spy out to ruin them, take their profits with emancipation and paid-for workers—steal the food from their children’s mouths!
He threatens me, he goes down with me, Lewrie vowed to himself; Pelham presses me too sore, and I’ll have him by the nutmegs!
“I take it that your friend, Colonel Christopher Cashman, is not enamoured of the institution either, Captain Lewrie,” Peel said as his soup bowl was whisked away, to be replaced by a plate of grilled fish and simmered turtle cutlets, with small boiled new potatoes, chick peas, and fried onion slices added.
“No, he’s not,” Lewrie answered.
“How odd, then, that he’s removed to the Carolinas,” Peel said as he broke open a piping-hot roll of shore bread and slathered it with fresh butter; butter preserved as long as it lasted on the cool far-aft orlop deck, sunk in an oak pail of seawater.
“Looking at Wilmington in North Carolina, or Georgetown in South Carolina,” Lewrie supplied, feeling more at ease now they were off that damning topic of his guilt. “Damme, puss, be easy! Here comes your portions. Ye ain’t eatin’ mine, damn yer eyes. Uhm, cotton, tobacco, and naval stores, mostly…rice and indigo from Georgetown. But he will be a factor. He told me he’s placed orders for the machinery for a sawmill and rice mill. No more farming for him. I expect Kit will prosper, no matter where he lights. He’s the hard-pluggin’ sort.”
And damme but I’ll miss him, Lewrie thought once more; Life’ll be dull, ’thout Cashman t’stir things up.
Though, after their last parting supper three nights before, it might be best if Life did get plodding-boresome for a while, for it had been a rowdy and “wet” night of wine, punch, brandy, and some of that infamous Yankee Doodle corn-whisky, before they’d bawled out the last bonne chance and adieu, to the great displeasure of half the sleeping residents of Kingston.
“Ah, the Americans,” Peel simpered. “I’m certain that a man of Colonel Cashman’s kidney will greatly improve the ton of their society, though he’ll have to look sharp, else the Yankees skin him naked. In America, all is trade, everything has its price, and everything, and everyone, seems for sale. You are aware, I trust, that the Americans already trade with Saint Domingue?” Peel asked him.
“Yes, and we should put a stop to it, I take it,” Lewrie said.
“Well, perhaps,” Peel countered. “Before General Maitland negotiated the evacuation of our land forces, he and L’Ouverture came to what he assumed was a form of agreement regarding trade.”
“His defeat, ye mean,” Lewrie shot back, forever prejudiced to anything Maitland did. “I take it L’Ouverture reneged, and the great general was skinned by the little Black man?”
“One could put it that way, yes,” Peel said, almost wincing at Lewrie’s bluntness. “Maitland wined and dined him, held a parade for him, and fawned something shameful. Which nearly killed old Maitland’s soul, since he absolutely despised him but…even so, Maitland is nothing if not a cunning diplomatist, so he dissembled to him deuced well.”
“Piss-poor general, and a piss-poor negotiator,” Lewrie snapped, though much intrigued by the hope of hearing more “dirt” on the man.
“Promised him the moon, did L’Ouverture agree,” Peel summarised. “Our frigates to keep the Frogs at bay. British goods, arms, and munitions brought in by Yankee ships, just so long as the French didn’t get the place back, if L’Ouverture would declare himself king or something and make Saint Domingue independent.”
“But he didn’t,” Lewrie pointed out.
“Wasn’t even tempted, I’m told,” Peel told him, amazed by such sentiments, and what he’d have done, given the chance. “Too much in love with France and the Revolution, the mother country and the mother tongue. Though, you hear the local patter of the slaveys and even the Creoles, and it makes you wonder.”
“More like, L’Ouverture knew Maitland was dealing with Rigaud, too, and saw right through him,” Lewrie said with a prim sniff. “When you get down to it, do we really want the place? Better we blockade the coast ’til Kingdom Come…no imports, and they fall apart. No exports, and they go bust. More importantly, our planters make money with both fists, since French and Spanish colonies can’t supply tuppence to the world market for sugar, molasses, and rum, and all that.”
“But we must—” Peel exclaimed, as if presented with heresy.
“Have it?” Lewrie scoffed. “No, we don’t. And if no one else has it, or can make ha’penny off it, it’s British goods borne by British bottoms that rule tobacco, cotton, indigo, and cocoa…and Europe would shrivel up and die without ’em.”
“But, surely…!” Peel sputtered, dabbing his lips.
“I know, it takes all the fun out of your plots and schemes if the Navy just closes the tap, and lets Saint Domingue rot and wither,” Lewrie gleefully declaimed. “Make
s your, and Pelham’s, presence redundant, don’t it? Why, I might actually get my cabin space back! And France, and Spain, lose all their overseas trade and wealth, and we whip ’em silly sooner or later…if their own people don’t rise up to demand bread and peace, first.”
“Well, I doubt we’ll give up quite that easily, Captain Lewrie,” Mr. Peel told him, once he’d gotten his breath back, so to speak. “We have always coveted Saint Domingue, and that very sort of exclusive possession of the Caribbean you just mentioned. If not exclusive, we would have shared it with Spain, and would have worked in concert to expel the French, the Danes, and the Dutch…expel the Americans, too.”
“Do tell,” Lewrie said, beckoning to Aspinall for more wine.
“As early as ’92, there was a Lieutenant-Colonel John Chalmers, foresaw the coming war with France. He wrote the Foreign Office, and the Prime Minister, offering a plan to conquer all the Sugar Isles…all sorts of maps and such, marked with arrows and little sketches of forts and ships…the same sort of paper fantasies that wish-to-be generals dream up in peacetime—”
“Promising grand success…if they’re put in charge, hmm?” Lewrie sourly suggested. “Military, naval, or…agents?”
“Well, uhm, yes,” Peel was forced to admit. “Ambition grows in every breast. Anyway, Colonel Chalmers suggested that we share the island of Hispaniola, the entire Caribbean, with Spain, and urged that we form a proper alliance, with them as the weaker partner.”
“Which we did, for a while,” Lewrie stuck in, knife and fork in use. “’Til Spain turned on us, and took hand with the Frogs, and God knows why.”
“French and American ships, and trade, would have been driven out of these seas, completely,” Peel continued, as casually as if he were discussing the prospects of a horse at New Market. “Spain is old, tired, and bankrupt…what better sort of ally could one ask for? Colonel Chalmers even went so far as to propose that, with Saint Domingue in our hands, and the United States’ trade eliminated, all those emigrants from Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and even England would settle down here instead of sailing for America…depriving the Yankee Doodles of an expanding population of enterprising newcomers, and all the industries and skills they’d possess, or demand once settled. Talented Britons, who’d—”
Lewrie cocked his head to one side and grinned, setting down his wineglass so he wouldn’t spill when he began to wheeze with laughter. “Mine arse…!” he snorted, “on a band-box! Tell me you’re not serious! That’s the damnedest…! Christ shit on a biscuit!”
“Well, that’s what you get when amateurs connive,” Peel replied when Lewrie at last subsided, as if to prove that his hands had never touched such a scheme. “Property, property…nothing but property, do ye know,” he went on, with a worldly-wise snicker. “‘Ferrea non venerem sed praedam saecula laudent.’ ‘It is not love but booty that this iron age applauds,’” Peel cited. “Tibullus.”
“Bugger him, too,” Lewrie retorted. “With bells on. Beg your pardon, Mister Peel, but, unfortunately, that’s what you get when even the ones who should know better connive.”
“Yes, unfortunately,” Peel admitted. “You know that Maitland’s gone to America? A Mister Harcourt from the Foreign Office is still in Saint Domingue, negotiating on the sly with L’Ouverture. Hope springs eternal,” the elegant spy said with a faint shrug. “Maitland’s brief is to negotiate covert trade arrangements, with Yankee ships to bear the goods. Unfortunately, he may be a trifle late off the mark. Their new President, John Adams, does not follow his predecessor’s advice concerning foreign entanglements, as President Washington cautioned in his farewell address. Adams has already sent trade representatives to Saint Domingue, who seem to own the high cards for some reason.”
“Even though twice as many Blacks are enslaved in America as there are on Hispaniola?” Lewrie said, gawping in surprise. “They have a bloody hope! So, do I end up chasing Yankee merchantmen?”
“It may come to that, yes,” Peel intimated. “We should, uhm, pretend to continue in amity and cooperation with American men o’ war versus the Frogs…for the moment.”
“So all my advisories are over the side, I s’pose,” Lewrie had to assume. “All that blather about equal protection for their traders and such. Sharing information with the American Navy…Damme, this could turn nasty if the Yankee Doodles aspire to dominate the colony’s trade, without spilling a drop of blood, after we did all the—”
“Well, we won’t share all our information, of a certainty,” Mr. Peel warned. “For instance, our agents in Paris smuggled us the French private signals for the next three months, and those we shall not tell the Jonathons about.”
“Really!” Lewrie exclaimed, a slow, devilish grin spreading on his face as he contemplated the opportunities for mayhem those signals codes might open to him.
“For now, we must be grateful the United States Navy is so tiny and weak, and most of her captains inexperienced,” Mr. Peel snickered. “They barely make a show of force against the few French warships here, and those are few and far between, as we both know. Poor-cast cannon, perhaps green-timbered new-built ships…” he scoffed.
“You’d be surprised,” Lewrie was happy to counter, recalling a visit aboard their 44-gun two-deck frigate Hancock. “We sell ’em modern artillery, coppering, everything they wish. A year from now, they will be a daunting challenge. We get into a new war with ’em and out come their privateers. Bad as the Frog privateers are, they’re flea-bites by comparison. Do they get their hands on the exclusive Saint Domingue trade, it might be our merchantmen swept from these seas. If you scratch the Jonathons, you’d find they’d rather have another good bash at us than the French.”
“Hmm…may not signify,” Peel replied, grunting his skepticism at that declaration. “I doubt L’Ouverture will trust any slave-holding nation not to do him harm, in the long run. Adams’s representations to him may goad the French into a real war, or force them to send an army and a fleet out here to quash any attempt to declare Saint Domingue’s independence…or alliance with the Yankee Doodles. Which would put a better face upon our, uhm, sudden evacuation as well.”
“I doubt that’s possible,” Lewrie scoffed.
“Actually, when Mister Pelham and I were about to depart, there was a lengthy article just ready for publication in all the newspapers,” Mr. Peel told him with a mystifying grin. “It had been prepared by a government committee. Well, not an official committee, hmm? I saw a copy of it, and fetched it along. Would you care to read it, sir?”
“Total shite, is it?” Lewrie asked.
“You must understand that it was devised to be read in Paris by the Directory,” Peel related, “to create a rift, or widen the existing rift, ’twixt France and L’Ouverture, firstly. The secondary aim would be to mollify our own populace. Matter of fact, I have it here,” Peel said, reaching into the breast pocket of his coat to produce a sheaf of hand-copied script.
Lewrie took it warily, sure that it would be rank drivel; and the ink would be runny, in this damp. Toulon, at least, was quickly fascinated with anything that crinkled, and pawed at the papers, and his master’s hand, mouth open for an experimental nibble.
“‘No event has happened in the history of the present war of more interest to the cause of humanity or the permanent interests of Great Britain than the treaty which General Maitland has made with the Black general Toussaint upon the evacuation of San Domingo’…that’s what they’re calling it, now? Thought it was Saint Domingue.”
“Less French, more Caribbean and…exotic,” Peel explained.
“‘…the independence of that most valuable island is in fact recognised and will be secured against all the efforts which the French can now make to recover it. Not merely without the expense to England of fortifications or of armies but with the benefit of securing to us its exclusive commerce’…oh, rot!” Lewrie spat.
L’Ouverture was lauded, though a “mere Negro and brigand,” but one born “to vindicate the claims o
f his species and to show that the character of men is independent of exterior colour”…“the late events will soon engage the public attention, and please all parties…”
“Oh, please!” Lewrie gravelled, more agitated. “‘It is a great point to rescue this formidable island from the grasp of the Directory…it is a great point gained to the cause of humanity that a Negro domination is in fact constituted’,” he read, disbelief and bile in his voice, in equal measure. “‘…that the Black Race whom the Christian world to their infamy have been accustomed to degrade…Every Liberal Briton will feel proud that this country brought about the happy revolution! ‘What unutterable gall! Tripe! God-rotted…shit!”
“Ain’t it,” Peel rejoined, as if amused by Lewrie’s naivety.
Toulon pounced upon the papers, now held in a limp right hand, with a glad little cry of victory, and many brisk “digging” motions.
“No, no, little man,” Lewrie chid him, snatching them away with his left hand, and shoving them down-table to Peel. “Not these. Make you sick to your stomach. Bad as a hair-ball. Damn my eyes, Peel, who’d believe that?”
“Don’t much signify,” Peel admitted. “Once in the papers, it’s official, and who’s to say diff’rent? The next generation’ll take this account for gospel. Think of the widows and orphans,” Peel said with a dismissive sniff. “Suddenly, the kin of those hundred thousand dead, crippled, or debilitated have a crumb to cling to…that their lads went for the good of…humanity. ’Twas in a good cause!” Peel said, scornfully pontificating, as all the ministers, parish vicars, Members of Parliament (Lewrie strongly suspected) would soon tearfully declaim.
Lewrie picked up his refilled wineglass and leaned back from the table. Oh, he could have pretended to be so sickened by the whole affair that he’d been put off his victuals, but that wasn’t the case; he was still hungry. Disgust had no effect on his digestion.
“I s’pose,” he finally said, after three moody sips that nearly drained his wineglass, “the same sort of devious cant was spread in the last war…back when I was just commissioned, or a Mid. Cant that I most-like believed.”
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