We went for maybe half an hour, round a bend in the river, when he said to me: “You remember those Indian children you saved?”
“Yes, Boss,” I said.
“Well,” he said, “their mother died. Fever.”
I didn’t mind so much about the mother, but I had worked hard to save those children, so I asked him if they were all right.
“Yes,” he said, “the children live.”
“That’s good, Boss,” I said.
That evening, we made camp. We ate round the campfire, the Boss, me and the four oarsmen. The Boss was always good with the men. They respected him; but he knew how to sit and joke with them. And even if maybe he had other things on his mind, he would always give the men his time.
The Boss had brought good provisions and a keg of beer. After we had all eaten and drunk a bit, the men were laughing, and teasing me about the women they said I’d had; and the talk fell to women in general. Then one of the men laughed and said that he was afraid of the Mistress. “I wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of her, Boss,” he said. And knowing that the Boss and the Mistress had had a falling-out, I wished he hadn’t said that. And I could see a cloud pass over the Boss’s face. But then he just smiled and said, “I wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of any woman.” So the men all agreed about that. But soon after, he said, “Well, I reckon it’s time to sleep.” And it wasn’t long before the men were dozing; and I lay down too.
But the Boss didn’t sleep. He sat by the fire staring out over the river, very thoughtful, and I reckoned he was thinking about his hard words with the Mistress. So I kept quiet.
He stayed like that a long time. The fire was getting low. The stars over the river were fine, but there were some clouds passing across them; and then after a time, a light breeze came and started to stir the trees, just a little, like a whisper. It was peaceful as a lullaby, and as I listened to it I started to feel sleepy. But the Boss wasn’t getting to sleep.
So by and by, thinking maybe to take his mind off whatever was concerning him, and help him get to sleep, I said: “Listen to the breeze, Boss.”
“Oh,” says he. “You still awake?”
“Maybe it’ll help you get to sleep, Boss,” I said.
“Maybe, Quash,” he answered.
“That breeze is so soft, Boss,” I said. “It’s like a voice in the pine trees. You can hear it if you try.”
Well, he didn’t say anything. But after a moment I saw his head bend down, so I supposed he might be listening. When he didn’t move for a while, I reckoned maybe he’d gone to sleep. But then he got up slowly, and glanced across at me. And I pretended to be asleep.
Then he moved away and started walking along the riverbank in the dark.
I lay still a long time, waiting for him to come back, but he didn’t. And by and by I began to wonder if he was all right. There are plenty of bears in the woods, though you’d expect to hear a shout if one of them attacked him. But when he still didn’t come, I got up, and I started to move along the riverbank after him. I went very carefully, and I never made a sound. But there was no sign of him. I didn’t want to call out, so I just went on. And I must have gone nearly half a mile when I did see him.
He was sitting on a little patch of grass by the water, under the stars. He had his knees drawn up with his back bent, and his shoulders hunched over his knees. And he was weeping. His whole body was shaking, and he was almost choking. I never saw a man weep so. And I daren’t go forward, but I didn’t like to leave him there. So I stopped there awhile, and he went on weeping as if his heart would break. I was there a long time, and the breeze grew a little stronger, but he never noticed. And then after a while the breeze died, and there was just a big silence under the stars. And he was a little quieter. And not wanting him to find me there, I stole away.
When I got back to the fire, I tried to sleep, but I kept listening as well, on account of him. And it was nearly dawn when he came back.
We went for days up that great Hudson River, and we saw the big Mohawk villages with their wooden houses and palisades. And the Boss bought a great quantity of furs. And when we returned, and I ran in to see Naomi, she gave me a curious smile. Then she told me that she was expecting a child, which caused me greatly to rejoice. And soon after the idea came to me that if it was a boy, I should call him Hudson, on account of my journey at that time.
But Naomi also told me the Mistress and Clara had quarreled that morning and that Miss Clara had run out of the house. “The Mistress is in a black mood,” she said.
I was going by the parlor door just after the Boss came in. The door was open, and I could hear the Boss telling the Mistress about the pelts we bought from the Mohawks, but she didn’t seem to be saying anything.
“Where’s Clara?” he asked.
“Out,” she answered. Then after a little pause: “I suppose you spent time with your other Indian friends too.”
“Only briefly,” he replied. “They had no furs.”
The Mistress didn’t respond.
“By the way,” he said, “Pale Feather is dead.”
I’d been listening by the door a little while now, and was thinking I’d better move away, when I heard the Mistress’s voice.
“Why tell me?” she said. “What’s a stinking Indian more or less?”
The Boss was silent for a moment after she said that. When he answered her, his voice was quiet.
“You are cruel,” he said. “Her mother was a better woman than you.” Then I heard him starting to walk out of the room, and I got away quick.
And after that time, it seemed to me, there was a coldness between him and the Mistress, as if something had died.
I often thought about those words after that, and I reckoned I understood what they must mean. But I didn’t care too much. For now I had my own family to think about.
With every year that went by, I came to realize my good fortune in being married to Naomi. She would do all her work about the house for the Mistress, even when she was big with child, but she never complained. I knew how much she had to do and helped her all I could. At the end of the day, she always had a smile for me. We shared everything, and grew to have such an affection between us that, as the years went by, I could hardly imagine what it had been like to live without her.
My little Hudson was the most lively little baby you ever saw. I delighted to play with that child, and the Boss would come and play with him too. I believe for a time Hudson thought the Boss was his grandfather or something. When he was two years old, Naomi had another child, a girl; but that baby wasn’t strong, and she died. Two years later, though, we had another little girl, and we named her Martha. She had a round face like her mother, and as she grew up, I could see she had her mother’s nature.
In no time, it seemed, Hudson was a boy of five. He could run and scuttle about. The Boss said he couldn’t catch him. And Naomi said Hudson looked just like me. I used to put him on my shoulders and take him with me on my errands around the town. But always, if there was time, I would take him down to the waterside, for he loved to look at the ships. And the thing that really excited him was to see them unfurl their sails so they would make a great slap and a bang in the wind.
One day, when Mr. Master was visiting, he asked Hudson what he liked to do. And Hudson piped up and told him that he wanted to be a sailor.
“Ha,” said Mr. Master to the Boss. “Maybe he should come to work for me.” And the Boss laughed. But when I thought of all the cargoes of slaves that Mr. Master was carrying up to New York, I didn’t want my son to sail in any ship like that.
As for Martha, she was a most affectionate child. She would throw herself into my arms if I’d been out for a while, and cling on to me round the neck, and say she wouldn’t let go unless I told her a story. And I didn’t know any stories, so I had to make them up. It wasn’t long before I was telling her stories about a great hunter called Hudson, who lived up the river of that name, who was free, and who had a sis
ter Martha who was very loving and wise. It was amazing the adventures they had with the animals up in that wilderness.
During this time, the Boss also found a good husband for Miss Clara. I think he and the Mistress were both glad to get her out of the house. Once again the Boss pleased the Mistress very much by finding a good Dutch family, so that she was married by the dominie in the Dutch church just like her brother Jan. Her husband did not live in town, but out on Long Island, so we did not see her often. But the Mistress would go out to stay at Clara’s house from time to time, and from all accounts they got on much better now that Clara was married.
As for the Boss and the Mistress, they lived together, but without any quarreling they seemed to go their separate ways.
The Boss and Mr. Master became very close. Mr. Master was one of those men who never seem to look any older. With his narrow face, and his shock of yellow hair, those hard, blue eyes he had, and the stringy build of his body, he hardly changed at all apart from some lines on his face. He had a pleasant manner, and he was always busy with something. Whenever he came by, he’d say, “Good day, Quash,” and when he left, “You’re a good man, Quash,” and he’d give me a quick look with those blue eyes of his. Sometimes he’d say to the Boss, “Quash here is my friend. Is that right, Quash?” And I’d say, “Yessir.”
In these years, wishing to keep the rich Dutch families on their side, and to profit by their friendship, the English governors were giving out huge grants of land to them. And English merchants did well too. And Mr. Master was eager that the Boss should get himself some land. Because in England, he said, you couldn’t be considered a gentleman unless you had plenty of land. And the important men like Meinheer Philipse and the van Cortlandts, who had a big place north of the city, were all becoming gentlemen as fast as they could. And their women were piling up their hair and dressing in fine dresses that pulled in their bellies and pushed out their breasts.
Well, I could see the Boss was taking to this idea. Jan was liking it as well, and sometimes Jan would say they should buy some land. But not the Mistress. She went on wearing a plain round cap on her head and a loose Dutch gown, like the other Dutchwomen. But those Dutchwomen loved jewelry even more than the English. She liked having big jewels hanging from her ears, and I reckon she had a jeweled ring on every finger. And most of the time she would be sucking on her clay pipe.
As for being impressed with anything that was English, she was further from that than ever.
“That is a contemptible nation,” she used to say. “They let themselves be ruled by the papists.”
For it turned out that our owner the Duke of York had been a secret Catholic all along. People reckoned King Charles II might be a secret Catholic too, but he denied it. The Duke of York didn’t hide it though. He was all for the Catholics, and he even sent a Catholic governor to New York. You can follow almost any religion in New York, or none. For they say half the people here don’t believe in any religion at all. But almost everyone is afraid of the Catholics.
That Catholic governor made a charter giving free elections in the province and promising there should be no taxes raised without the men who were elected having a say. So even some of the religious Dutch said he wasn’t so bad. But the Mistress wasn’t impressed.
“Never trust an Englishman,” she would say, “and never trust a papist.”
The winter that ended the year 1684 was uncommonly cold. The big pond north of the town was frozen solid for three months. Like most Dutch people, the Boss liked to skate on the ice; and one morning we all went up there together with Jan and his two little daughters too.
Jan worked with his father, but in those years the business of distilling rum from molasses had been greatly increasing. There had been a distillery across the harbor on Staten Island for quite a while, but Jan had set up another in the town with Mr. Master. He was trading in the spirits that came from Holland as well, like the gin they call Genever.
And the Mistress came with Miss Clara and her husband. They hadn’t any children yet, but I had never seen her look more beautiful. The Boss showed all the children, including my son Hudson, how to skate, and the Mistress was all smiles and said to see all the people skating on that big pond was just like a Dutch painting. She didn’t even seem to mind when Mr. Master and his family showed up.
Now Mr. Master had a son named Henry, who must have been about eighteen years old at this time. He looked just like his father. And when that young man saw Miss Clara looking so pretty and flushed with the exercise and the cold air, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. And they skated together. Even the Mistress was amused and said, “The boy’s in love with you.”
That day would always stay in my mind as a very happy one.
The blow fell in 1685. The news broke over New York like a thunderclap. King Charles II was dead and his brother the Duke of York was king in his place. King James II, the Catholic.
New York had a Catholic king. In no time at all, he was giving Catholics the running of things. Then he tore up the charter that gave elections to the province here. “I told you so,” the Mistress said. “I told you never to trust a Catholic.”
That wasn’t the worst of it. Over in France, King Louis XIV suddenly decided to throw all the Protestants out of his kingdom. There were a huge number of these folk, and they had to take what possessions they could and run. Some went to the Netherlands, and before long they were arriving in New York as well. Huguenots, people called them.
One day Meinheer Leisler came to see the Mistress in the company of one of these Huguenots, a very stately man called Monsieur Jay. And Monsieur Jay said that King James had written and congratulated King Louis for throwing all those Protestants out of his kingdom. They said that there was much discontent in England about the Catholic king. The Boss was shocked; as for the Mistress, from that time she would talk of nothing else. She said the English should revolt and throw the king out. That’s what the Dutch had done when they were under the Catholic Spanish king. The Boss said that the English were prepared to wait. For King James had no son, and his two daughters were both Protestant. In time, he said, things would return to normal. That didn’t satisfy her, though.
And for the next two years, everyone in New York was complaining about the king.
It was a spring day in the year 1689 when the Mistress came hurrying to the house with a big smile on her face and told us that the English had kicked King James II out of his kingdom.
“God’s will is done,” she cried.
The cause was a child. After years of having no more children, King James suddenly had a son, that was to be a Catholic. “Even the English wouldn’t stand for that,” she said. It seemed that in no time they’d kicked him out, and sent for his elder daughter Mary. The Glorious Revolution, they called it.
“Not only is Mary a Protestant,” said the Mistress, “but she is married to our own William, ruler of the Netherlands. And William and Mary are to rule England together.” She was almost dancing for joy, to think that we should be under Dutch rule again.
Soon after the Glorious Revolution came news that the Dutch and English had declared war on Catholic King Louis of France. King William’s War, they called it. We were all afraid that the Catholic French up in the far north would join the Iroquois Indians and come all the way down to New York. And the French and the Indians did attack some of the Dutch settlers far upriver. But for merchants like the Boss and Mr. Master, a war can also be a big opportunity.
I shall always remember the sunny day when the Boss told us we were to come with him down to the waterfront. So we all went. The Boss and the Mistress; I was allowed to bring Hudson. When we got there, Jan and Mr. Master and his son Henry were waiting for us. And we were all rowed out to a ship at anchor in the East River. That was a fine ship, with tall masts and several cannon. Mr. Master took us all around. Hudson was looking at everything on board; I never saw him so excited. Several merchants had invested in that ship making a voyage to attack the Frenc
h merchantmen, now that we were at war with them, and take their cargoes. Mr. Master had taken an eighth share, and the Boss and Jan had taken another eighth. I could see that the vessel was well built for speed. “She’ll outrun anything the French can bring against us,” Mr. Master said. He was very pleased with himself. “And the captain’s a first-rate privateer. With luck she’ll make a fortune.”
Just then Hudson started to pull my sleeve, wanting to ask a question. I told him to keep quiet, but Mr. Master said, “No, let him ask.” So then Hudson says: “Please, Boss, what’s the difference between a privateer and a pirate?”
The Boss and Mr. Master looked at each other and laughed.
“If the ship’s stealing from us,” says the Boss, “it’s a pirate. But if it’s stealing from the enemy, it’s a privateer.”
A little while after the ship left, Miss Clara’s husband became sickly and died. She had no children, and so she returned to live in the house with her parents for a while. I wondered if there was going to be trouble, but the years had passed and she and her mother got along fine. Naturally Miss Clara was grieving for a while, but I heard the Mistress say to the Boss, “We must find her another husband.” For the time being though, I think the Mistress was glad of her company.
My Naomi was good with a needle, and used to do all the mending needed in the house. She’d also started to teach little Martha how to sew. And it wasn’t long before Miss Clara noticed Martha’s skill. Being so young, her fingers were so supple and quick, it was amazing what that child could do. Soon she was saying, “That child is a treasure.” She used to take Martha for walks. The Mistress didn’t seem to mind.
It was one thing to send out privateers against the enemy, but it was another to rule the province. And for a while there was all kind of confusion. Up in Boston, they’d thrown King James’s governor in jail. In New York, nobody knew who was supposed to be in charge. And this was where Meinheer Leisler stepped into history. For since he was one of the leaders of the city militia, the city fathers asked him to take charge until things were sorted out.