A buzz of approval circled the room, and with a scrape of chairs all the other men pulled themselves to their feet and raised their cups.
Katherine was surprised to see Hugh Winston lean back in his chair, his own cup sitting untouched on the boards. He'd been drinking all evening, but now his eyes had acquired an absent gaze as he watched the hearty congratulations going around.
After the planters had drunk, Briggs turned to him with a querulous expression.
"Where's your thirst, Captain? Will you not drink to the beginnings of English prosperity in the Caribbees? Sure, it's been a long time coming."
"You'll be an even longer time paying the price." It was virtually the first time Winston had spoken all evening, and his voice was subdued. There was a pause, then he continued, his voice still quiet. "So far all sugar's brought you is slavery. And prisons for homes, when it was freedom that Englishmen came to the Americas for. Or so I've heard claimed."
"Now sir, every man's got a right to his own mind on a thing, I always say. But the Caribbees were settled for profit, first and foremost. Let's not lose sight of that." Briggs smiled indulgently and settled his cup onto the table. "For that matter, what's all this 'freedom' worth if you've not a farthing in your pocket? We've tried everything else, and it's got to be sugar. It's the real future of the Americas, depend on it. Which means we've got to work a batch of Africans, plain as that, and pay mind they don't get out of hand. We've tried it long enough to know these white indentures can't, or won't, endure the labor to make sugar. Try finding me a white man who'll cut cane all day in the fields. That's why every spoon of that sweet powder an English gentlewoman stirs into her china cup already comes from a black hand in chains. It's always been, it'll always be. For sure it'll be the Papist Spaniards and Portugals still holding the chains if not us."
Winston, beginning to look a bit the worse for drink, seemed not to hear. "Which means you're both on the end of a chain, one way or another."
"Well, sir, that's as it may be." Briggs settled back into his chair. "But you've only to look at the matter to understand there's nothing to compare with sugar. Ask any Papist. Now I've heard said it was first discovered in Cathay, but we all know sugar's been the monopoly of the Spaniards and Portugals for centuries. Till now. Mind you, the men in this room are the first Englishmen who've ever learned even how to plant the cane—not with seeds, but by burying sections of stalk."
Katherine braced herself for what would come next. She had heard it all so many times before, she almost knew his text by heart.
"We all know that if the Dutchmen hadn't taken that piece of Brazil from the Portugals, sugar'd be the secret of the Papists still. So this very night we're going to witness the beginning of a new history of the world. English sugar."