Kate had given much thought to their second meeting. She had so much regretted her thoughtless laugh before; as well as being hurtful, it was also rude. It had always been part of her upbringing that a mistake, however regrettable, can usually be corrected. She was determined, therefore, both to make a better impression this time, and to make amends. For an hour before coming, she had carefully prepared herself. She’d rehearsed subjects of conversation that she thought he might like; she had thought hard about anything she could say to overcome the bad impression she must have made; and she had put on a simple dress with a small brown-and-white check that suited her very well.
For to her own surprise, she found that young John Master’s lack of learning hardly troubled her at all. It was not just that he looked like a Greek god—though that, she confessed to herself with some amusement, was a factor. There was something else about him, an inner strength and honesty she thought she divined, and an intelligence too—different from her father’s, but not to be scorned. And, strangely touching and appealing in a way that was new to her, was another realisation: the Greek god was vulnerable.
So from the moment they arrived, she had been waiting for him to appear. She could see that the boy’s father was looking out for him too, with a hint of perplexity: and when they sat down to sup, she ventured to ask her host if his son would be joining them.
“He’ll be along, Miss Kate,” the merchant answered, with a look of slight embarrassment. “I can’t think where the boy’s got to.”
But the fish was removed, and the meat too, and still he did not come. And perhaps it was the hope of seeing him again, as much as politeness, that made her say to her host, in her father’s hearing, that she hoped he and his family would all come to visit them in Boston before long.
It was not often that her father lost control of his manners. The look of horror that crossed his face lasted only a second. But it was visible to all. Though he corrected himself quickly, it was not quite in time.
“Indeed!” he cried warmly. “You must dine with us. Dine with us, when you come to Boston.”
“How kind,” said his New York cousin, a little drily.
“We shall await—” Eliot hastened to say. But what he would await was not revealed. For at this moment, the door was thrown open, and young John Master lurched into the room.
He was not a pretty sight. If his shirt had been as white as his face, it might have been better. But it was filthy. His hair was tousled. His eyes were glazed as he stared round the room, trying to focus. He swayed unsteadily. He looked sodden.
“By God, sir …” his father broke out.
“Good evening.” He did not seem to have heard his father. “Am I late?” Even from the doorway, the smell of stale beer on his breath and on his shirt was now filling the room.
“Out! Leave us, sir,” the merchant shouted. But John remained oblivious.
“Ah.” His eyes now rested on Kate, who, since he was behind her, had turned around to look at him. “Miss Kate.” He nodded to himself. “My cousin. The lovely, I say the lovely, Miss Kate.”
“Sir?” she replied, scarcely knowing what it would be best to say. But she needn’t have worried, for her cousin had acquired a momentum of his own. He took a step forward, seemed about to topple, righted himself, and then cannoned into the back of her chair, against which he steadied himself for a moment as he lolled over her shoulder.
“What a pretty dress, cousin,” he cried. “You are beautiful tonight. You are always beautiful,” he cried out. “My beautiful cousin Kate. I kiss your hand.” And leaning over the back of her chair, he reached his hand down over her shoulder, attempting to take her hand in his. And then threw up.
He threw up over her hair, over her shoulder, over her arm, and all over her brown-and-white check dress.
He was still throwing up a moment later, as his enraged father dragged him from the room, leaving behind a scene of some confusion.
It was a bright, clear August morning, somewhat cooler than the days before, as the small carriage carrying Kate and her father rolled up the Boston road. Behind them the sound of cannon boomed out. The people of New York, whether their governor liked it or not, were giving a formal salute to Andrew Hamilton as he set out, in the other direction, for Philadelphia.
“Ha,” said her father, with satisfaction. “A salute deserved. It has been a visit worth making, Kate, despite the unfortunate incident last night. I am truly sorry, my child, that you should have suffered such a thing.”
“I did not mind, Father,” she answered. “I have known my brother and sisters to be sick in the past.”
“Not like that,” he answered firmly.
“He is young, Father. I think he is shy.”
“Pah,” said her father.
“I did not dislike him,” she said. “In fact—”
“There is no reason,” said her father decidedly, “for us to encounter those people any more.”
And since Boston was far away, and her father in control of her fate, she knew that she would never, in all her life, see her cousin John again.
As the salute of the cannon echoed over New York harbor, and old Andrew Hamilton took his leave, the townspeople could enjoy not only their triumph over a venal governor, but something more profound. Eliot Master’s statement had been correct. The Zenger trial did not change the law of libel, but it told every future governor that the citizens of New York, and every other town in the American colonies, would exercise what, without being philosophers, they believed to be their natural right to say and write what they pleased. The trial was never forgotten. It became a milestone in the history of America. And the people at the time sensed correctly that it was so.
There was one other feature of the trial that was little remarked upon, however.
The rights that Eliot Master believed in, the rights claimed by Andrew Hamilton and exercised by the jury, came from the common law of England. It was Englishmen, alone in Europe, who had executed their king for being a tyrant; it was England’s great poet, Milton, who had defined the freedom of the press; it was an English philosopher, Locke, who had argued for the existence of men’s natural rights. The men who fired the cannon knew they were British, and they were proud of it.
Yet when old Hamilton addressed the jury, he had made one other point that they had liked. An ancient law, he told them, might have been a good law long ago, in England; but it could also become a bad law centuries later, in America. Though no one particularly remarked upon this statement, the idea had been sown. And it would put down roots, and propagate, in the huge American land.
The Philadelphia Girl
1741
THE BOY MOVED cautiously. A May evening. Late shadows were falling, and nothing was safe. Not a street, not a house. If only he had known what was going on when he arrived, he might have acted differently. But he’d only found out an hour ago, when a slave in the tavern had explained: “Ain’t nowhere safe for a nigger in New York. Not now. You take care.”
He was fifteen years old, and the way things were going, this would be the worst year of his life.
Things had been bad when he was ten. That was the year his father had died, and his mother had taken up with another man and left, together with his brothers and sisters. He wasn’t even sure where they were now. He’d stayed behind with his grandfather in New York, where the old man ran a tavern frequented by sailors. He and his grandfather had understood each other. They both loved the harbor, and the ships, and everything to do with the sea. Maybe fate had been the guiding hand at his birth, when his parents had given him the same name as the old man: Hudson.
But fate had been cruel this year. The winter had been colder than anyone could remember. The harbor was frozen solid. On the last day of January, a young fellow arrived at the tavern after skating down the frozen river from a village seventy miles to the north, for a wager. Everyone in the tavern had bought him a drink. That had been a cheerful day; but it was the only one. The weather had
grown even colder after that. Food had become scarce. His grandfather had fallen sick.
Then his grandfather had died, and left him all alone in the world. There’d been no big family funeral. People were being buried quietly that winter. A few of the neighbors and the patrons of the tavern came to mourn. Then he’d had to decide what to do.
That choice, at least, had been easy. His grandfather had talked to him about it before he died. It was no use trying to run a tavern at his age. And he knew what he wanted, anyway.
“You want to go away to sea?” the old man had said with a sigh. “Well, I reckon I wanted the same thing at your age.” And he’d given the boy the names of two sea captains. “They know me. Jus’ you tell them who you are, and they’ll look after you.”
That was where he’d made his mistake. Been too impatient. It hadn’t taken long to dispose of the tavern, for the premises was only rented. And there was nothing else to hold him in the city. So as soon as the weather turned at the start of March, he’d wanted to be off. His grandfather had kept his modest savings and a few items of value in a small chest. Hudson had taken the chest and left it for safe keeping with his grandfather’s best friend, a baker who lived near the tavern. Then he was free.
Neither of the captains were in port, so he’d signed on with another, and sailed out of New York on the seventeenth of the month, St. Patrick’s Day. The voyage had gone well enough. They had reached Jamaica, sold their cargo, and started their return by way of the Leeward Islands. But at that point, the ship had needed repairs. He’d been paid, and taken on by another ship’s master, to sail up the coast to New York and Boston.
He’d learned his lesson there. The captain was a useless drunkard. Twice the ship had nearly been lost in storms before they even reached the Chesapeake. The crew wouldn’t be paid until they reached Boston, but long before they reached New York, he’d decided to cut his losses and jump ship. He had his pay from the last voyage, and he reckoned he could stay in New York until one of his grandfather’s captains turned up.
He’d slipped away from the ship that morning. All he needed to do was to avoid the waterfront for a few days until his present ship and her drunken master had gone. He might be a Negro, but he was a free man, after all.
It had been mid-afternoon when he went to the baker’s. The baker’s son, a boy of about his own age, had been there. For some reason, the boy had given him an awkward look. He’d asked for the baker, but the boy had shaken his head.
“He’s been dead a month. Mother’s running the business.”
Hudson expressed his sorrow, and explained that he had come for his chest. But when he said that, the boy just shrugged. “Don’t know anything about a chest.” It seemed to Hudson that the boy was lying. He asked where the baker’s widow was. Away until the next day. Could he look for the chest? No. And then the strangest thing had happened. He’d never been particular friends with the baker’s son, but they’d known each other most of their lives. Yet now the boy had suddenly turned on him as if the past had never been.
“You’d better be careful, nigger,” he said viciously, “if I were you.” Then he waved him away. Hudson had still been in a state of astonishment when he went into the tavern, and met the slave who explained what was going on.
The best thing might have been to go back to the waterside, but he didn’t want to encounter the captain, who’d be looking for him by now. In the worst case, he could head out of the town, and sleep in the open. But he didn’t want to do that. The thought that the baker’s family might have stolen his money worried him considerably.
He was moving cautiously, therefore, as he made his way through the streets.
The trouble had started on March 18. A mysterious fire broke out in the governor’s house, and the fort had been burned down. Nobody knew who’d done it. Exactly a week later, another fire had started. Seven days after that, van Zant’s warehouse had burst into flames.
It was arson, clearly. But what was its purpose? Thefts had also taken place. Were the gangs of burglars in the town starting the fires as diversions for their activities? Or could the papists be behind it? The British were at war with Catholic Spain again, and most of the garrison at the fort had been sent to attack Spanish Cuba. Were Spanish Jesuits organizing mayhem in the British colonies? The fires multiplied.
And then a black slave named Cuffee was caught, running from one of them.
A slave revolt: the fear of every slave-owning colonist. The city had experienced one back in 1712—quickly put down, but terrifying while it lasted. More recently there had been revolts on the West Indies plantations, and Carolina. Only last year mobs of slaves had tried to burn down Charleston.
So when the city recorder had taken over the investigation, suspicion soon focused on the Negroes. And it wasn’t long before he’d found a seedy tavern, run by an Irishman known to be a fence for stolen goods, and frequented by Negroes. Soon the tavern’s prostitute was talking. Money was offered for testimony. Testimony came.
There was an easy way of getting slaves to confess. Build a bonfire in a public place, put the Negro on it, light the bonfire and ask him questions. Slaves were soon being accused and questioned, even the slaves of respectable people, in this manner. Two slaves, one belonging to John Roosevelt the butcher, gave the desired confessions as they were put to the fire, and, hoping to escape at the last moment, started naming others. Fifty names came thus, in the twinkling of an eye; and the recorder would have spared their lives for such useful testimony; except that the crowd, moved by their natural feelings, threatened to riot themselves, if they could not watch the black men fry.
But now the business of justice was truly begun. Accusations came thick and fast. Any black man doing anything that looked the least suspicious was thrown in jail. By late May, almost half the Negro men in the city were behind bars, waiting to be tried for something.
John Master looked at the Indian belt thoughtfully. He’d always liked that belt, ever since he was a child. “It was my van Dyck grandfather’s dying wish that I should have this belt,” his father had often told him. “He set great store by it.” So when his father had given it to him on his twenty-first birthday, and said, “May it bring you good fortune,” John had been touched, and kept it safely in his big oak press ever since. Sometimes he would take it out and look at the pleasing pattern of the wampum shells, but he hardly ever put it on. This evening was a special occasion, though. And he hoped it might bring him luck.
Tonight he was going to ask Mercy Brewster to be his wife.
The last five years had seen a remarkable change in young John Master. Though he’d kept his good looks, he’d filled out into a large and sturdy figure. He no longer thought that he was worthless. The visit of his Boston cousins had proved to be a turning point. The morning after the humiliating incident with Kate had been the only time he’d ever seen his father truly angry, and it had done him good. He’d been so shaken that he’d tried to pull himself together. With a new determination, he had applied himself to the one thing he seemed to have a talent for, and he’d worked hard, as never before, at the family’s business.
His father Dirk had been astounded, but delighted. The gift of the wampum belt had been his signal to his son that he had faith in him. John had kept on his path and gone from strength to strength, and by now he was generally regarded as an accomplished merchant. But he knew his own weaknesses. He knew that his mind was inclined to be lazy; and he had to take care how much he drank. Having no illusions about his own shortcomings, however, he could accept those of others with good grace. As he approached his mid-twenties, John Master had a view of human nature that was broad and balanced.
There had even been talk of him running for political office. But he wasn’t keen to do it. For the last few years of the city’s life had also taught him much.
After the Zenger trial, the venal Governor Cosby had died, and there had been a move for reform in New York. New men had come into the city government—lesser mercha
nts, craftsmen, men of the people. One might have thought the corrupt regime of the past had been replaced. But not a bit of it. In no time at all, most of the new people had been corrupted themselves, with high offices, high salaries and the chance of riches. In New York, as in London, it seemed the dictum of the old British prime minister held good: “Every man has his price.”
“I’ll stick to making money like an honest rogue,” John told his father, genially.
As he strode along that evening, with a silver-topped walking stick in one hand, he looked every inch the respectable citizen. The streets after dark could be dangerous, but he wasn’t concerned. Not many footpads would care to take him on.
As for this Negro conspiracy, he didn’t believe a word of it. He knew every tavern keeper in the city, and the fellow accused was the biggest villain of them all. It was entirely possible that he’d started some fires, and he might have got a gang of discontented slaves and others working for him. But beyond that, John Master believed nothing. The prostitute would say anything if you paid her. As for the slaves who’d started naming people when the fire was put to their feet, their testimony was worthless. People would say anything under torture. He’d seen the city recorder eagerly taking down the names they screamed out, and felt only disgust. Everyone knew about the Salem Witch Trials up in Massachusetts, the previous century. In his opinion, that was where this sort of thing led—to endless accusations, executions and tragic absurdity. He just hoped it would be over soon.
Thank God that tonight he had happier things he could think about.
When he’d first told his father he wanted to marry Mercy Brewster, Dirk Master had been astonished.
“The Quaker girl? Are you sure? In heaven’s name, why?”
As for his mother, she had looked very doubtful.
“I don’t think, Johnny, you will make each other happy.”
But John Master knew his own mind, and his parents were wrong. Entirely wrong.