The Golden Dove

by Jo Ann Wendt

  "When?" she said in a faint whisper. "Where?"

  "My love! The details are too gory for your gentle ears. Let it suffice to say that I intend to write London and protest on my cousin's behalf. The state must hire better executioners. These stupid, bungling woodchoppers. Ever forgetful to grind their blades to a sharp, merciful edge. It quite brings to mind Queen Mary."

  Even for Fox, this was too much. He swung horrified eyes at the duke. Mary Queen of Scots, great-grandmother to the present exiled King Charles, had been sent to the block seventy years earlier and had suffered what no human being deserved to suffer. Her executioner had bungled. Failing to kill her with the first stroke, he'd grown rattled and hacked her to death.

  Fox swung his eyes to her ladyship. For a moment he thought she would faint, drop like a flower. But she didn't. Her chest gave several enormous heaves. Bright tears, brighter than candlelit crystal, sprang up. She stumbled backwards in shock, then picked up her skirts, turned and fled, forgetful of curtsying to her husband, forgetful of shutting the door, forgetful of everything. She fled down the long, echoing corridor, past windows curtained with falling snow. When her footfalls had faded, the duke turned with an amused smile and strolled to the dogs. He petted them one by one.

  "Dear, dear. One should not believe every rumor that comes leaping over the hedgerow, should one, Fox."

  Fox cleared his throat, a bit shaken himself. "No, Your Grace."

  "I wonder, Fox, if you would be so kind as to send us a letter from London in a week or two? Saying you'd erred? Saying Lord Aubrey de Mont is not dead as reported, but is alive?"

  "Ay, Your Grace."

  The duke's voice grew colder, crisper. "A month after that, you will write again. You will tell us Lord Aubrey is grievously ill. At death's door in fact. Dying painfully of a putrified sword wound."

  "Ay, Your Grace." Shaken by the cat-and-mouse game but wanting to please, Fox added, "And write in me next letter that I was mistaken, that Lord Aubrey is reported in good health?"

  The duke's eyes brightened like candles. "How clever of you, Fox! I like a clever man. But I would warn you. Do not become too clever."

  Fox quickly backed off. The meaning was all too clear.

  4 4Nay, Your Grace.''

  The duke looked at him, musing, then sauntered to the. window and stared out into the falling snow, his eyes hard, his expression intense. Fox knew at what he was looking, even though it lay six miles distant, not visible from Blackpool Castle. In his mind's eye, the duke was ''seeing" Ar- leigh Castle, the de Mont family seat. The duke had long coveted it. Old rumors said he'd once coveted the countess of Arleigh, too. But Lady Glynden had despised him. She'd wed his rival, Lord Royce de Mont, Lord Aubrey's older brother. Unwilling to wed and bed Blackpool, she'd willingly wed and bedded Lord Royce, giving him four sons: Lords Hawk, Raven, Lark and Dove.

  Sequestered now, seized by Cromwell, Arleigh Castle was no longer the home of proud lords and ladies. Now it quartered a regiment of wintering Roundheads, Cromwell's crass soldiers who urinated where they pleased and who passed the long boring winter whoring and scrawling obscenities on the once-proud walls.

  As for the de Monts? Gone. Scattered. Lord Royce, dead. His widow, Lady Glynden, in France. The four de Mont sons, Hawk, Raven, Lark, Dove? Their once-proud names now topped the list of those wanted by the axman, right under their uncle's name, Lord Aubrey de Mont.

  Finished perusing the falling snow, the duke swung around. His eyes flashed irritably. "Surely, you have work to do."

  Startled out of his wool-gathering, Fox nearly jumped. "Ay, milord, surely, surely. I was just running me plans through me head."

  "Do it elsewhere."

  "Ay, milord, of course." He was bowing his way out of the room, giving the duke the fawning, boot-licking treatment he liked, when he was checked by an impatient gesture.

  "One additional request."

  "Of course, milord."

  "When you comb St. Katherine's Docks, tracing the brat, delve into the sailings of one particular ship, a merchant vessel. My informant tells me that eleven years ago the midwife's brother was a crew member aboard her."

  "Ay, milord. A ship sailing under what flag?"

  "Dutch."

  "And the name of the ship, milord?"

  The duke raised a disdainful brow. "The Jericho."

  Chapter Two

  May 1658 ...

  To the eye of an eagle soaring at rarified heights, soaring high above the forested coastline of the New World, the tiny settlement of New Amsterdam might appear to be no more than a dot on the edge of a vast wilderness, a speck on which humans built their strange nests.

  But to eleven-year-old Jericho—sitting scared and anxious on the stoop of a noisy New Amsterdam tap house, holding a bundle that contained all of her earthly possessions on her small lap—New Amsterdam seemed a great, huge city. A metropolis of ceaseless noise and activity.

  New Amsterdam boiled with sights and sounds! Richly dressed merchants conversing in loud booming voices rushed up and down the narrow dirt lanes, hurrying to and from the Exchange that met in the field at the foot of de Heere Graft Canal. Hollanders, Englishmen, French Walloons. Spaniards with oiled beards and a gold earring a 'shine in one ear.

  Buckskin-clad fur traders tramped by, and then came Mohawk sachems in feathers and savage finery. To the loud cadence of kettle drums, Dutch West India Company soldiers marched past, the tramp of their boots shaking the ground, their lobster-tail helmets flashing in the bright May sunshine.

  Dutch goodwives clumped past, wearing starched white coifs and gowns with crisp white collars and cuffs, their wooden shoes protecting their beautiful embroidered Dutch stockings from street mud. Geese flocked everywhere, hissing and honking. Pigs wearing collars and little tinkling bells wandered the lanes at will, eating them clean of garbage.

  Tap houses abounded. Amidst them, winter-snug dwellings of plank and plaster rose thick as trees in a forest. Each house had its own cow shed, its own wall of grinning wolfheads nailed up in neat tidy rows.

  Built to keep out wolves and unfriendly Indians, a stout wall with watchtowers and gates bounded New Amsterdam on the north, stretching across Manhattan Island from the East River to the Hudson.

  To the south, on the tip of Manhattan, stood the fort, a formidable complex of bastions and barracks, shops and warehouses, built by the Dutch West India Company. At the southmost tip, a battery of cannons kept iron eyes trained upon the harbor entrance, guarding it from foreign invaders. Each day at dawn and at dusk one cannon was fired, to scare the Indians and remind them to behave.

  Between the wall to the north and the fort to the south, lay all of New Amsterdam—its tap houses, its dwellings and, best of all, its intricate honeycomb of natural canals. And the whole of it knitted together, as neatly as a Dutch stocking, by little wooden footbridges!

  Jericho was awed by all of it. As she sat on the tap-house stoop, she sent scared, hopeful looks at each passerby. But no one paid her the least attention, and as the day wore on and her polite nods drew no returns, she felt the pain of being ignored. She slumped and merely sat. Like a bird that has run out of song.

  She'd been sitting on the tap-house stoop all day, ever since dice cups had begun to rattle inside, and men had begun to whoop and holler and crow. Still, the games showed no sign of ending. Master showed no sign of coming out. Voices grew louder and drunker with every passing hour.

  Jericho knew that when the gaming came to an end, her indenture would belong to somebody new. And so would she. For that was the way things went.

  Her spirits slid lower. She'd been gambled away before. She'd been sold too, and once she'd been swapped for a sheep. All in all, she'd had more masters than she could count or remember.

  Dejected and hungry, feeling suddenly cross, she drummed her bare heels on the porch skirtboards, then watched for a while as the sun dipped to the west in a blaze of glory, lying upon the canal like a golden lily. Idly, she rubbed at the ugly birth
mark on her wrist.

  "Duivel mark, devil mark," Master's nasty son had taunted her. She'd fixed him. He was bigger than she, but she'd gone at him, fists swinging. She'd knocked him down in the muck of the cow shed and, her cheeks wet with fierce angry tears, had pummeled him until Master had come running and yanked her off him.

  She tugged her sleeve down, covering the shameful thing. She had two other birthmarks, one on her chest .and one on the nape of her neck.

  Maybe I am a duivel, she thought despairingly. Then she thought, I don't care! .

  Gloom filled her. She looked at the boy's breeches she wore. She thought about her duivel marks, her faceful of ugly freckles, her stupid stutter. She thought about the only nice feature she'd had. Her hair. It had been long and red and as thick and curly as rope. Master had cut it off. A punishment.

  Tears sprang up, hot and salty. For a moment her chest heaved perilously. Then she knuckled the tears away and sat defiantly tall.

  "I don't care!" she said to the dog who slept at her feet.

  The dog didn't care either. He went on with his snooze in the warm patch of sunshine, lazy as a rug. But he thumped his tail to assure her he'd heard, and when he did, Jericho bent down and gave him a powerful hug. He tolerated it, groaning only slightly, to tell her she was spoiling his nap.

  After hugging Pax, she felt better. But the shine was off the day. Subdued, daunted, she gathered her bundle on her lap and sat. Her spirits ebbed. Hungry and utterly discouraged, she followed Pax's example. She curled around her bundle and fled into sleep.

  Rich, young, and full of himself, eighteen-year-old Lord Dove de Mont leaped lightly over the sleeping ragamuffin on Dieter Ten Boom's tap-house stoop, sent the tap-room door whacking inward and stepped into the noise and revelry. His smile was bright, eager.

  He was a sociable young man by nature. He loved fun, he loved action. Loved? Demanded! Whenever fun and action failed to present themselves, he'd been known to go seeking them with a reckless gusto that was the despair of his friends.

  And today, especially, Dove longed for action. Today was a milestone. His birthday. His eighteenth! And God's soup, a man should celebrate coming of age, shouldn't he? Eagerly, he swept the loud roistering room with a glance. The action he most wanted today—his birthday!—was a roll in the hay, a bounce in bed with a warm and willing wench.

  Hell's bells, forget that! Governor Peter Stuyvesant ran his

  Dutch West India Company colony tighter than a prioress of an abbey of foresworn nuns. Wench, tart, loose woman? There wasn't even a girl with loose drawer strings within three thousand miles. Governor Stuyvesant, the sour old puke, didn't tolerate them.

  Second best then? Plunged into gloom, he brightened. A rousing good sword fight! Nothing definitive, of course. He didn't want to mark his birthday by sending anyone to kingdom come. He just wanted some exhilarating play—a few nicks, a gash here or there, a spurt or two of the old scarlet .. .

  Juices rising, he swept the room with another eager glance, only to have his spirits drop again in disappointment. Not a swordsman in the lot. No one but fur trappers, sutlers, and merchants, not a one of whom would know a sword from a sausage. He sighed gustily and swung around to his best friend, John Phipps, who should've been right behind him, following him in.

  But John, being John, had paused to look pityingly at the sleeping boy on the stoop. Dove hadn't given the brat a second glance, except to note in a lightning quick, transitory way how homely it was. God's soup, if he hadn't known the mess on its face to be freckles, he'd have sworn it had wheat blight.

  "John, I'm going berserk! If I have to stay in this godforsaken colony one more day, I'll be fit for Bedlam. There's nothing here. Mud, pigs, Dutchmen? A billion pine trees? And behind every tree a silly painted savage? Savages so stupid they think the windmill's alive and sneak down the canals at night to shoot arrows at it?" Without pausing for breath, he said, "John, my mind's made up. I'm going back to England. On the first ship that presents itself."

  John stepped into the tap house with a wry smile. "Fine, go. Your handsome head'11 look right pretty stuck up on a pike at Southwark Gate in London. All the females in the city'11 flock out to swoon over it and snip off them pretty, golden locks as souvenirs."

  Dove heated. "Hell's bells, I need to do something. Thun- deration! I should be in Scotland helping Uncle Aubrey raise an army to fight Cromwell—I should be with Raven and

  Lark, privateering against Cromwell's fleet—I should be in the Caribbean with Hawk, fighting for the king's cause there. I should be anywhere but here."

  "You've got a mission here, Dove, and you know it. So shut up and stop whinin'."

  "Mission?" Dove snorted. "Since when is feeding sweetmeats to a baby a mission? I can't think why King Charles wants to court these dullards. I can't think why the duke of York covets this colony. Manhattan isn't worth piss. What's here? Rocks and rattlesnakes, wolves and savages ..."

  Across the room, a rum-s wilier bellowed, trying to entice gamesters into putting up high stakes and gambling for a bondslave's indenture. Dove swatted at the blue hazy air to clear it. An abominable habit these Dutchmen had! Stoking weed into clay pipes, setting fire to it, and puffing the smoke like chimneys. Tobacco they called it. They'd adopted the queer habit from the Indians. The air stank!

  "And furs," John put in placidly.

  Dove stopped swatting the smoke, glanced at John, and conceded with a smile. "And furs. I'll grant that."

  Inspired afresh, Dove got down to business. Whipping a purse out of his doublet, he winged it over the loud, roistering room with a high toss. It landed on the serving counter.

  4 'Drinks for the house,'' Dove shouted above the boisterous noise. "Today's my birthday! Drink up. Drinks compliments of me, Lord Dove de Mont, and—as always—" he shouted louder, "drinks compliments of His Majesty, King Charles the Second, of England, and His Majesty's royal brother, James, duke of York!"

  Men cheered and whistled and drummed the plank floor with their hobnail boots until the room reverberated in thunder. Dove grinned, enjoying it. Though New Amsterdamers were Dutchmen, they hated the Dutch West India Company. The Company ruled them with harsh, brutal laws and back- breaking taxes. England, it was well known, treated its colonies more fairly.

  Amidst the uproar, one table did not cheer. Pointedly, a group of Dutch West India Company directors, including Director Verplanck, a sour bulldog of a man, rose from their card game, sent glowering looks at Dove, and humped out a side door, probably going straight to Governor Stuyvesant. Dove shrugged, unperturbed. Stuyvesant didn't dare touch him. Neither did the Company. He was an Englishman, an aristocrat.

  But John turned on him with exasperation. "D'ye have to do everything without a whit o' subtlety? D'ye have to be forever skatin' on thin ice?"

  Dove flashed him a smile. "Solid is boring."

  "Boring! They know what you're up to, Dove. They're not ignorant. One more fiasco and Stuyvesant'll bounce you out of the colony."

  "Hallelujah, My lucky day."

  "Don't be flip, Dove." John warmed. "And while we're on the topic, there's one woman in this colony you better not be skatin' on thin ice with. Great day, Dove, have you lost your mind? Hildegarde Verplanck is the wife of a Company director."

  "I'm only flirting with Hildy."

  "Flirting? Is that what you call it? Taking her fishing and bringing her home with kiss marks on her neck? Slipping love notes into her prayer book at church? Playing foot-patty games with her right under Stuyvesant's banquet table, while dinner's going on, right there with the whole blessed Company assembled and dining?"

  Dove threw him a good-humored look. "So it was you who kicked me, eh? Now I feel better. I'd feared it was Hildy."

  "Kicked you? I wanted to bash your brains in. If only you had any, that is."

  Unworried, Dove folded his arms across his chest, tossed happy nods at the men still cheering him, and let his eyes roam the room, sizing up the action. He was popular with New Ams
terdamers, if not with the Dutch West India Company.

  "I'm only trying to put some fun into Hildy's life. And into mine, too. Hildy's but seventeen. Verplanck? A gray- beard. A lard bucket to boot. Hell, John—" Dove threw him a playful grin. "In bed he probably needs a winch to get his pecker up. "

  "Damn it, Dove!"

  Dove's grin faded suddenly, his temper changing like quicksilver, as was the way with de Monts.

  "Keep it!" he ordered abruptly.

  John kept it. He shut his mouth and said nothing more. He watched gently as Dove's bored, restless glances roved the room. John understood. Behind that brassy mouth there lurked a festering anxiety. Dove was worried sick. That's why he was behaving more wildly than ever. He'd had no letters from his family all winter, and here it was May already. Hawk, Raven, Lark? Lord Aubrey? Were their heads already on a pike at Southwark Gate? John felt bad he'd even teased Dove that way.

  John was just opening his mouth to say something soothing when the uproar brought Lizzie popping out of the kitchen. John's chest lightened. He and Lizzie were stuck on each other. Lizzie wasn't Dove's sort of girl; she was too common for Dove. And she was plump. But she had eyes as blue as the sky and a sweet manner. John was satisifed.

  When she spotted them, Lizzie's blue eyes lighted first with delight, then with alarm. She plunked down her beer buckets with a slosh, then came flying through the crowded, smoky room, drying her hands on her hips. She lit into Dove. Tickled, John leaned a shoulder against the wall and watched.

  "Lor' Dove, ye cannot come in here," she said breathlessly. "Ye cannot. Herr Ten Boom, he's at the fort but he left strict orders. 'Lor' Dove, he's not t'be admitted. Not under no circumstances. Not never again.' "

  Smiling, Dove reached out and tucked a wayward wisp of curl under Lizzy's coif. "Lizzie, I ask you, is that fair? This is the only decent tap house in New Amsterdam. The others aren't fit to swill a hog in."

  "I know," she agreed sweetly. "But them's my orders, Lor' Dove. So you'll have to go." When he simply kept smiling at her, she threw an appealing look at John. "John! Tell 'im to go."