A Call to Arms (6 page)

“At his home in Portland. He's recovering from some sort of stomach ailment and is waiting to receive his command. Which Mr. Smith,” referring to Robert Smith, recently installed secretary of the Navy, “has told him will likely be
Constitution.
Captain Preble wrote me about that. I have his letter upstairs to show you.”

“I see. Well,
Constitution
is a fine ship. She's not called ‘the pride of New England' for nothing.”

Richard stared down at the table, aware of the eyes watching him, his mind churning. Only when his daughter came over to remove his plate and to kiss him on the cheek did he emerge from his brief reverie. “Thank you, Diana,” he said.

“You're welcome, Father. It's wonderful having you home with us.”

“It's wonderful to be home,” he said to her with feeling. He looked around the table and raised his glass. “To my brother's happiness and to my children's dreams. And to all of you for making this such a remarkable homecoming.”

“Here, here!” they replied in unison.

L
ATER THAT NIGHT,
as Richard and Katherine were preparing for bed in the fluttering light of three candles, Katherine said, “That was a lot to spring on you. But think on it: if we had started out with reports of the war, the evening would have gone a lot differently. Caleb was so looking forward to sharing his news with you. And Jamie has been wild to tell you. And now I have one more item of interest to relay.”

He was sitting on the edge of the bed watching her undress, a sight that never failed to stir him. She was down to her sheer white linen underclothing, an apparition of the night that inevitably cast away the demons of the day. “Oh? What might that be?” His voice was distant, his thoughts conflicted by the prospect of war and the allure of his wife.

She walked over and tilted his chin upward so that his eyes met hers. “The Endicotts want to meet with us as soon as possible to discuss plans for the wedding. Anne-Marie reminded me that June is not far away, and she was right. Are you willing to meet with them? Jack promised that he will not discuss business with you, at least until later.”

“That'll be the day. But of course I'm willing. Are you?”

“Yes, of course.”

“So, you and Anne-Marie have become bosom friends during my absence?” His eyes dropped again to admire the form silhouetted against the candlelight.

“I wouldn't put it quite that way.” She gazed down at him and tugged on an unruly lock of his blond hair. “I have the sense that you are not paying strict attention to what I'm telling you. What exactly is on your mind, my dear husband?”

“You want to know, exactly?”

“Yes, indeed. Exactly.”

He placed his hands on her hips and looked deep into her hazel eyes. “I'm wondering,” he confessed quite sincerely, “how I came to be blessed with a wife who is even more beautiful and desirable today than on the day I married her twenty-two years ago.”

She tickled his neck with one finger. “You are quite the flatterer, Richard Cutler, a quality I have come to admire in you whenever such flattery relates to me. However,” she added, “since you have been away at sea for three months, I suspect that at this moment you would find a female lobster desirable.”

“I'm serious, Katherine. Tell me: am I as desirable to you now as I was . . . back then?”

Katherine folded her arms across her chest and cocked her head, as though sizing him up. “You'll do,” she pronounced at length, “for tonight. But I have in mind several young men in town whom I have come to fancy. In my experience, younger men have more passion, and more stamina.”

“Oh, I see. It's a young stallion you desire tonight.” He pulled her in close and squeezed the firm flesh of her buttocks.

“Mmm. Think you're up to it, sailor?”

“We'll soon determine exactly who is up for what.” He stood and finished undressing her. “If I were you, my lady, I wouldn't count on getting much sleep tonight.”

She backed away to sweep him a deep curtsey. “My lord,” she said in coy sixteenth-century fashion. From that low vantage point she looked up at him and smiled. Then she set about undoing the buttons of his trousers.

And the fires of the night blazed on.

A
G
REEN WAS CORRECT
. Dispatches from across the Atlantic were slow to come in. Once they arrived, however, the national press feasted on them with bold headlines and overblown stories. America's appetite for updates about this sudden and bizarre clash of arms seemed insatiable. American honor had been impugned once too often by the Barbary States, and if European governments were too timid or corrupt to stand up to the pirates, then by God the United States would show the world that at least one country would.

“This plays right into President Jefferson's hands,” Richard commented as he sat in the kitchen of Agreen's modest but well-appointed home on Pleasant Street, nodding at the latest issue of the
Boston Traveler
spread out on the table.

“How so?” Agreen inquired.

“In a good way, I mean. I'm as surprised as anyone by the president's strong stand on this war, particularly on why he believes it justifies a strong Navy. Listen to this.” Richard read from the article he had been reading. “‘The only way to repel force is with force.'” His finger slid down the page. “And here: ‘Force is the only antidote to terror.' Think on it, Agee. Is this the same president who not so long ago signed the Peace Establishment Act and seemed poised to abolish the Navy?”

He was referring to an act of legislation that President Adams had initiated and his successor, President Jefferson, had executed soon after the Convention of Mortefontaine ended the war with France. That act
had reduced the number of ships in the U.S. Navy to the six original superfrigates and a handful of smaller vessels, and the officer corps to 9 captains, 36 lieutenants, and 150 midshipmen—and most of them had been furloughed. Even those who survived the cuts regarded this legislation as the beginning of the end of the Navy.

“Hell yes, I remember,” Agreen groused. “It delayed your promotion and booted me right out of the Navy.”

“Only temporarily, it seems. And we have our friend the bashaw to thank for that. His declaration of war has forced the Navy to recall former officers. I'm told that
Portsmouth
should be ready for sea trials come spring, and I have every reason to believe that my request for your promotion will be accepted. A ship's captain has wide latitude in selecting his senior officers. As Captain Truxtun once put it to me, his life may depend on the quality of the officers he selects. So start packing your seabag.”

Agreen smiled. “I'll do that, Richard. And I'm mighty grateful t' you.”

“Nonsense, Agee. I need the best man for the job, and you're that man, friend or no.”

“It's a shame Jamie can't serve with you,” Lizzy interjected. She had come into the kitchen a few moments earlier with four-year-old Zeke Crabtree, a rowdy lad with the face of a cherub and a shock of yellow hair, who gave his father a gap-toothed smile. He squealed with glee when his father scooped him up onto his lap and started tickling him.

“Don't get him riled up, Agee,” Lizzy admonished. “He needs to settle down for his nap.”

“I'll just keep him here a short spell,” Agreen assured her. He jabbed a finger close to Zeke's face and then drew it away in a game of catch-me-if-you-can. The next time around, Zeke grabbed the finger in his little hands, put it in his mouth, and bit down hard. His father howled in protest, a piece of play-acting Richard had witnessed many times before. Zeke shrieked with joy.

“
That's
the man you want for your first lieutenant?” Lizzy asked her cousin.

“I'm having second thoughts,” Richard said as he watched the scene repeat itself, Agreen protesting ever more loudly and Zeke screeching ever more vociferously. The game went on until Lizzy cast her husband a withering look, at which point it ceased.

“As I was saying,” she said when her son's shrieks had subsided to giggles, “it's a shame that Jamie can't serve with you, Richard. You
do
think he'll receive that midshipman's warrant, don't you?”

“I do. But I wouldn't want him serving with me, Liz. A father-son relationship on a warship is not encouraged and rarely approved. I can think of only one example in the last war: Oliver Hazard Perry served as midshipman for his father, Captain Christopher Raymond Perry, aboard
General Greene.
But Jamie will receive the warrant regardless of how many qualified applicants there may be. He's the right age; he's well educated; he has experience at sea; he has excellent sponsors; and, most important, he has the support of his future captain, a man of no small influence. And he's from New England. Most midshipmen hail from the middle Atlantic states, and the Navy desires equal geographical representation of its officer corps, to the extent possible.”

“You forgot to mention that he comes from a good family,” Lizzy commented.

Richard glanced in Agreen's direction. “Well, yes, he does, except for one member of that family.”

Agreen gave his son a woeful look. “Damn me, Zeke,” he said. “I do believe your Uncle Richard is referrin' t' you.”

Even as Lizzy reproved Agreen for swearing she had to giggle at the blank look Zeke gave them. When Richard scraped back his chair, she put a hand on his shoulder. “Must you go, Richard? Do stay a little longer.”

“I'd love to, Liz, but I can't. Katherine and Diana should be getting back soon from their ride out at World's End. This weather can't last forever, and they're making the most of it. Katherine and I are leaving for Boston tomorrow, and we have a lot to do to get ready. We have a wedding to plan, remember. Two weddings, actually.”

“When are you comin' back?”

“Probably next Friday, Agee. We'll be staying with Anne and Frederick in Cambridge,” referring to his elder sister and her physician husband. “And Caleb will be introducing us to his fiancée on Thursday. We're more than a little curious to meet the woman who sweet-talked Caleb into marriage.”

“Don't forget your snuffbox,” Agreen reminded him.

R
ICHARD AND
K
ATHERINE
awoke the next morning to decidedly different weather. Gone overnight were the summer-like days of early November that just yesterday had been warm enough to work up a fine lather on the bay hunters Katherine and her daughter had ridden hard together in joyful synchrony. The light blue sky had yielded to a dreary overcast that matched the gloomy gray of skeletal trees that had long since shed their bright autumn foliage. To the west, darker clouds were gathering,
summoned forth by cool Canadian air that carried an ominous omen of harsher days to come.

The Cutlers had decided to take an enclosed coach-and-four to Boston rather than a packet boat. It seemed more appropriate under the circumstances, but it was hardly more comfortable. The thickly upholstered interior and the latest in leaf-spring suspension technology did little to cushion the bumps as the hackney coach jounced and juddered along the dirt road winding northwestward through the neighboring villages of Weymouth, Milton, and Dorchester. At a Roxbury crossroads, the coachman took a sharp right onto a better-maintained road that led straight into the heart of Boston along the narrow causeway connecting the shops and stables and single-dwelling homes of Boston Neck to the mainland. The coach finally shivered to a halt at Fourteen Belknap Street, in front of an attractive four-story house perched high atop Beacon Hill that offered a panoramic view of the pastures and walkways of Boston Common and the mast-studded harbor beyond. The three-hour journey had blessedly come to an end.

“We're taking a boat home,” Richard grumbled to his wife as the driver stepped down to open the larboard door for his passengers and place a footstool under the three-rung disembarkation ladder. “To hell with formality.”

As Richard assisted Katherine down from the coach, the front door swung open and a servant dressed in liveried splendor walked briskly down the short flagstone pathway. When he reached the carriage he bowed low in courtly fashion, his left leg out and his right hand over his heart. “Welcome to Boston, Mr. and Mrs. Cutler. Mr. and Mrs. Endicott are awaiting you inside. May I carry anything for you?”

“No, thank you,” Richard said to him. To the coachman: “See to the horses, Robert, and be back here by three o'clock. We'll be departing for Cambridge at that time.” He glanced skyward. “Looks like rain. Or sleet or snow if it gets any colder.”

The coachman tipped his tricorne hat. “At your service, Mr. Cutler.”

After they had stepped inside the freestanding red brick building and the servant had taken their coats, John Endicott appeared from a side room that Richard knew to be a parlor. At least it had once served as a parlor. Soon after the launch of C&E Enterprises, the Endicott residence had been transformed from a fashionable Beacon Hill home into something more like a French château or a British manor house. The furnishings and accoutrements were magnificent—the best that money could buy from the most sought-after designers and manufacturers in Europe.