He was met at the door by a thin, sour-faced man of maybe sixty, who spoke no English. When Tom made clear that he was seeking shelter for the night, the farmer grudgingly indicated he might sup in the house, but that he must sleep in the barn.
After stabling his horse, Tom entered the cabin to find the farmer, two men he took to be indentured workers, and a black man he assumed was a slave, all gathering for supper. The mistress of the house, a short, fair-haired woman a good deal younger than the farmer, ordered the men to table, and pointed to where he should sit. He didn’t see any sign of children. Tom had heard that the Dutch farmers ate with their slaves, and certainly everyone sat together at this table.
The woman was an excellent cook. The stew was delicious, washed down with ale. It was followed by a large fruit pie. Conversation, however, was limited, and since he spoke no Dutch, he could contribute nothing himself.
He wondered about the woman. Was the farmer a widower who’d married again? Could she be his daughter? Or was she a housekeeper of some kind? Though small, she was full-breasted, and there was something decidedly sensual about her. The gray-haired farmer addressed her as Annetie. The men treated her with respect, but between the farmer and herself there seemed to be a kind of tension. When he addressed the men, he appeared to ignore her. When she brought the bowl of stew toward him, Tom noticed that he leaned away from her. And though she sat quietly listening to the conversation, Tom noticed a look of suppressed irritation on her face. Once or twice, however, he had the impression that she’d been watching him. Just once, when their eyes met, she gave him a smile.
When the meal was over, the hired hands and the slave retired to the outbuilding to sleep, and Tom went out to the barn. Dusk was falling, but he found some bales of straw in the barn and spread his coat on them. And he was about to settle down when he saw a figure with a lamp coming toward him.
It was Annetie. In her hand she held a jug of water and a napkin containing some cookies. As she gave them to him, she touched his arm.
Tom looked at her with surprise. He was no stranger to the advances of women, and there was no mistaking what this was. He looked at her in the lamplight. How old was she? Thirty-five? She was really quite attractive. He looked into her eyes and smiled. She gave his arm a light squeeze, then turned; and he watched the lamp as it crossed the yard back to the house. After this he ate the cookies, drank a little water, and lay down. The night was warm. The door of the barn was open. Through it he could see light coming through the shutters of the farmhouse window. After a time the light went out.
He wasn’t sure how long he’d been dozing when he was awakened by a sound. It was coming from the farmhouse and it was loud. The farmer was snoring. It could probably be heard all the way across the river. Tom stopped his ears and tried to sleep again, and he had almost succeeded when he became aware that he was not alone. The door of the barn had been closed. Annetie was lying down beside him. And her body was warm. From the house, the snores of the farmer still rang out.
Dawn was almost breaking when he awoke. He could see a faint paleness under the barn door. Annetie was still beside him, asleep. There was no sound of snoring coming from the house. Was the farmer awake? He nudged Annetie, and she stirred. And as she did so, the barn door creaked and a pale, cold light fell across them.
The old farmer was standing in the doorway. He had a flintlock. It was pointed at Tom.
Annetie was gazing at the old man blankly. But the farmer was intent upon Tom. He indicated to Tom that he should get up. Pulling on his clothes, Tom did so, picking up his coat and his satchel. The farmer motioned him toward the door. Was he going to shoot him outside? But once in the yard, the farmer pointed to the track that led back up the slope. His message was clear: Get out.
Tom in turn pointed to the stable where his horse was. The farmer cocked his gun. Tom made another step. The farmer took aim. Would the old Dutchman really shoot him? They were miles from anywhere. Who would do anything about it if he disappeared? Reluctantly, Tom turned toward the track and made his way up into the woods.
But once out of sight, he paused. After waiting a while, he crept back toward the farmstead. The place was silent. Whatever had passed between the farmer and Annetie, there was no sign of any activity now. Skirting the house, he stole toward the stable door.
The bang almost made him jump out of his skin. The shot passed over his head and smacked into the stable door in front of him. He turned and saw the old farmer. He was standing on the porch, reloading his flintlock.
Tom looked for an escape. He started to run down toward the river. He made for the little dock and the boat. It was only the work of a moment to untie it. Thank God there was a paddle in the boat. But he’d hardly clambered in before another shot rang out, and a splash in the water told him that the old man had only missed him by a foot or two. Seizing the paddle, he pushed off and paddled furiously downstream. He didn’t pause or even look back until he’d gone a quarter-mile. He’d gone downstream with the tide after that, pulling into the bank and resting when it turned.
During his rest, however, it had occurred to him that he still didn’t know whether Annetie was the old man’s wife, daughter, or had some other relationship entirely. Only one thing was certain. The farmer had his horse, which was worth a lot more than the boat he’d taken.
The thought had bothered him.
Van Dyck let Tom eat in silence. But after a while he asked him whether he’d seen the English fleet in Boston. At this, Tom seemed to hesitate for a moment, but then allowed that he had. “And what’s the fleet doing, exactly?” van Dyck asked. Again the young man hesitated, then he shrugged.
“They were busy in Boston when I left.” He took a corncake and chewed on it for a few moments, staring down at the ground. But van Dyck had a feeling he knew more than he was telling. The Indians asked him if the stranger was a good man. “I don’t know,” he answered in Algonquin. “You should watch him.”
The Indians told van Dyck he should return to them when the summer was over, to join in the hunt. Van Dyck had hunted with them before. The big hunts were enjoyable, but ruthless. Locating the deer, a huge party would fan out in a great arc—the more people the better—and come through the forest beating the trees, driving the deer toward the river. Once the deer were slowed up in the water, it was easy to kill them. So long as there were deer, these Algonquin lived well. Van Dyck promised he would come. And he continued to talk and laugh with them for some time.
It was clear that his obvious friendship with the Indians intrigued the young Englishman. For after a while he asked van Dyck if it was usual for the Dutch to be so friendly with the natives.
“You English do not care to know the Indian customs?” the Dutchman asked.
The young man shook his head.
“The Boston men are busy getting rid of their Indians. It isn’t difficult. They just need one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Wampum.” The young man gave a wry smile. “The Boston men make the Indians pay tribute in wampum, according to how many men, women and children there are. But usually the Indians can’t manufacture the wampum quickly enough. So then they make them give us land instead. The Indian population shrinks, every year.”
“And if they do pay?”
“Then our English magistrates fine them, for their crimes.”
“What crimes?”
“It depends.” Tom shrugged. “Massachusetts can always think of something that’s a crime. The Indians there will all be gone one day.”
“I see.” Van Dyck looked at the young Englishman with disgust. He’d have liked to strike him. Until it occurred to him: Was the conduct of his own Dutch people any better? Every year the number of Algonquin in New Netherland diminished. The hunting grounds on Manhattan were already nearly gone. On the Bronck’s and Jonker’s estates, the Indians were being purchased and pushed off their grounds. It was the same out on Long Island. In due course, no doubt, up here across the great
river, where so far the Dutch only had a few outposts, the Algonquin would also be forced back. Add to that the ravages of European diseases—measles, smallpox and the like. No, he thought sadly, it matters not from which quarter we come, the White Man destroys the Indian sooner or later.
If these reflections tempered his feelings, van Dyck felt a desire to put this young fellow in his place. And when Tom observed that although wampum was considered good enough for the Indians, all reckoning in Boston was nowadays done in English pounds, he saw his chance.
“The trouble with you English,” he said, “is that you talk of pounds, but you have nothing a man can put his hands on. At least the Indians have wampum. It seems to me,” he added coolly, “that the Indians are ahead of you in that regard.” He paused to watch the fellow take this in.
For it was absolutely true. Back in England, you could find the traditional pennies, shillings and gold florins. But the higher coinage was in short supply. And out in the colonies, the situation was downright primitive. In Virginia, for instance, the currency was still tobacco, and business was often done by barter. In New England, though merchants would keep the reckonings between them in pounds sterling, and write their own bills of credit, there was practically no English silver or gold coinage to be had.
But if he aimed to embarrass the young Englishman, it didn’t seem to work. Tom laughed.
“I can’t deny it,” he acknowledged. “Here’s the only money I trust.” And from inside his black coat he took out a little flat box which he tapped lightly and handed to van Dyck. The box was made of pine and sat in the palm of the Dutchman’s hand. He slid back the lid. The inside was padded with cloth, and contained a single coin, which gleamed in the fading light.
It was the silver dollar he’d stolen from his brother.
Daalders, the Dutch called them, but the word sounded more like the German “Thaler”—dollar. Merchants had been using dollars for nearly a century and a half now, and the Dutch made most of the dollars found in the New World. There were three kinds. There was the ducatoon, better known as the ducat, which had a horse and rider stamped upon it and was worth six English shillings. Next came the rijksdaalder, which the English called the rix dollar, worth five shillings—or eight Spanish real, if you were sailing south. But most common of all was the lion dollar.
It was actually worth a bit less than the other dollars, but it was the most handsome. Its face was larger. On the obverse it showed a standing knight, holding a shield which bore the image of a lion rampant; and on the reverse, the same lion splendidly filled the whole face. The coin had a small fault: it was not always well struck. But that hardly mattered. The handsome Dutch lion dollar was used from New England to the Spanish Main.
“Dutch money,” Tom said with a grin, as van Dyck took the coin out of the box and inspected it.
Lion dollars were usually worn, but this one hadn’t even a scratch. It was new-minted; it shone splendidly. And as the Dutchman gazed at it, a thought suddenly came to him.
Getting up, he went over to where two Indian girls, about the same age as Pale Feather, were sitting. He showed them the coin, letting them hold it. As they turned the shining disk over in their hands, examined the images and the way the falling sun reflected upon it, their faces lit up. Why was it, van Dyck wondered, that gold and silver objects seemed to fascinate both men and women alike? “It is beautiful,” they said. Returning to the young fellow from Boston, van Dyck told him: “I’ll buy it.”
“It will cost you,” Tom considered, “a ducat and a beaver pelt.”
“What? That’s robbery.”
“I’ll throw in the box,” Tom added cheerfully.
“You’re a young rogue,” the Dutchman said, with amusement. “But I’ll take it.” He didn’t bother to bargain. He had just solved his problem. The pelt was a sacrifice he almost felt better for making. For now he had a present for his daughter.
That night, to make sure Tom didn’t steal anything, he slept in his boat. And as he lay back on the pelts, and felt the little wooden box with its silver dollar safe in the pouch on his belt, and listened to the faint breeze in the trees, he imagined that, as she had promised, he could hear his daughter’s voice. And he smiled with contentment.
Van Dyck left the young Englishman in the morning. He’d be at Pale Feather’s village before evening, stay there with his daughter all through tomorrow, and continue to Manhattan the day after that.
The weather was warm. He wore an open shirt. Around his waist, he had changed his usual leather belt and put on the wampum belt she’d given him. A little pouch containing the silver dollar hung from it.
The river was almost free of traffic. Occasionally they saw an Indian canoe in the shallows; but as they slipped downstream with the tide, they had the great waterway to themselves. The high western banks protected the river from the light breeze. The water was still. They seemed to be traveling in an almost unearthly quiet. After a time, they came past a bend where, from the west bank, a high point jutted out above the water, looking like a sentinel. Van Dyck had his own names for these landmarks. This one he called West Point. A while later, the river curved again to pass around the small mountain whose flattened hump had caused van Dyck to name it Bear Mountain. After that, the river opened out into a wider flow, two or three miles from bank to bank, which would extend southward fifteen miles until it narrowed into the great, long channel that ran down past Manhattan to the mighty harbor.
Time passed, and they were still some miles above the channel when one of the oarsmen nodded to him and van Dyck, turning to look back up the river, saw that some five miles back, another boat was visible, following them. As he stared he realized that the boat was gaining on them fast. “They must be in a hurry about something,” he remarked. But he wasn’t much interested.
Half an hour later, approaching the entrance to the channel, he glanced back again, and was astonished to discover how far the other vessel had come. It was much bigger than his own, with a mast for a sail; but as the breeze was from the south, the men were rowing. It had halved the distance between them and was advancing rapidly. He couldn’t see how many oars it carried, but one thing was certain.
“Those boys,” he said, “are rowing like fury.”
They were entering the narrow channel now, and van Dyck let the oarsmen take it easy. They were coming down the west side of the stream. Above them, the gray stone palisade of cliffs were catching the rays of the afternoon sun. A slight choppiness now appeared in the water. He glanced back, but the curve of the river now hid the boat that, he assumed, must be following him into the channel.
And then, suddenly, the boat was upon them. It was coming fast and he could see every detail of the vessel now: a big, clinker-built longboat, with a covered section in the middle from which the mast rose. Eight men were rowing four pairs of oars. It was high in the water, so it could not be carrying any cargo. Why should this empty vessel be in such a hurry? There was a figure standing in the stern, but he couldn’t see what sort of man it was.
The vessel pulled closer. It was only a few lengths behind them, then a length. Now it was level. Curious, he looked across at the figure in the stern.
To find himself staring into a face he knew only too well. A face which, some instinct told him, he did not wish to encounter. And the man was staring straight back at him.
Stuyvesant.
He quickly looked away, but it was too late.
“Dirk van Dyck.” The harsh voice came ringing over the water.
“Good day, Governor,” he called back. What else could he say?
“Hurry, man! Why aren’t you hurrying?” Stuyvesant was level with him now. Then, without waiting for a reply, Stuyvesant turned to van Dyck’s oarsmen. “Row faster,” he shouted. “Pull.” And the oarsmen, recognizing the fearsome governor, obeyed at once and sent the boat hurtling through the water. “That’s it,” he yelled. “Well done. Keep up with me. We’ll go down together, Dirk van Dyck.”
“But why?” called van Dyck. The governor had already gone a little past him, but his men were managing to keep up the same pace now, so that the two of them could continue their shouted conversation downstream.
“You don’t know? The English are in Manhattan harbor. The whole fleet.”
So the English fleet had come after all. He’d heard nothing, but that wasn’t surprising. The people at New Amsterdam would have sent a swift rider up to Fort Orange to tell the governor, who was now racing downriver with the benefit of the tide. No doubt word would spread among the Indians soon, but it would take some time.
Clearly the English had lied. He thought of the young fellow from Boston. Had Tom known they were coming? He must have. That’s why he’d hesitated when asked about the English fleet.
“What are we going to do?” van Dyck shouted downstream to Stuyvesant.
“Fight, van Dyck. Fight. We’ll need every man.”
The governor’s face was set hard as flint. Standing tall and erect on his peg leg, he had never looked more indomitable. You had to admire the man. But if the whole English fleet had come down from Boston, it would be a powerful force. The ships would be carrying cannon. Despite all Stuyvesant’s recent efforts, van Dyck couldn’t imagine the shore defenses of New Amsterdam holding up for long. If Stuyvesant meant to fight, it would be a bloody and unrewarding business.
As though in tune with his thoughts, a cloud crossed the sun and the high stone palisades above them suddenly turned to a sullen gray that seemed grim and threatening.
Whatever Stuyvesant might be saying, another thought quickly occurred to van Dyck. If I can see the danger of this course, he realized, so can every other merchant in the place. Would the men of New Amsterdam support their governor against the English? Probably not, if the English came in force. Was his family in danger? Unlikely. Would the English want to blow the place to bits and make enemies of the Dutch merchants? He didn’t think so. The English wanted a rich port, not an angry ruin. They had every incentive to offer generous terms. It was politics and religion, in van Dyck’s private view, that made men dangerous. Trade made them wise. Despite Stuyvesant, he guessed, there would be a deal.
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