New York

by Edward Rutherfurd

  Well, I had got halfway there, just past the end of Mill Street, when I heard a voice behind me.

  “What’ve you got there, Quash?”

  It was the Mistress. I was thinking maybe I’d pretend I didn’t hear her, and I glanced around quick to see if I could avoid her, but before I could do anything, I felt her hand on my shoulder. So I turned and smiled, and asked, “Anything I can do for you, ma’am?”

  “No,” she says, “but you can show me what you got there.”

  “Just some things of mine,” I said. “It ain’t nothing.”

  “Then show me,” she said.

  She can’t surely think I’m stealing from her, I thought, after all this time. I didn’t want to show her that belt, because the Boss had told me to keep it a secret. But she had her hand on the thing, and there wasn’t much I could do. So I started to unwrap it. And for a moment she looked puzzled, but then as she saw what it was, her face grew dark.

  “You give me that,” she said.

  “The Boss told me to take it,” I answered. I didn’t want to tell her where I was going with it, so I let her think he gave it to me.

  “And I’m telling you to give it to me,” she shouted. She had suddenly started to tremble with rage. I had an idea why the sight of that belt made her so angry, but there was nothing I could do about it.

  Well, just then I had to think mighty fast. I knew I must do what I promised the Boss. Also, if I did what he said and gave that belt to Miss Clara for her son, then no one could say I’d stolen it. And I reckoned that if the Mistress was angry, it didn’t really signify, because I knew I was already free. So instead of obeying her, I turned, and before she could get her hands on it, I ran as fast as I could, and dodged behind some carts, and then made my way to Miss Clara’s house.

  When I got there, I found Miss Clara, and I gave her the message from the Boss, exactly as he’d said, and told her that belt was to be kept by young Dirk and by his sons after him for as long as there was family, because that was what the Boss wanted. Then I explained about the Mistress, and she told me not to worry, and that if there was trouble she’d speak to the Mistress about it. So then I left her, but I waited until early afternoon before I went home, to give the Mistress time to calm down.

  There was no sign of the Mistress when I entered the house. But Hudson told me that Jan and a lawyer had arrived a short while ago and that they were with her in the parlor. So I reckoned they must have come about the will.

  I went into the hallway to see if I could hear anything. The parlor door was closed. But then I heard the Mistress’s voice, very loud.

  “Damn your English will. I don’t care when it was made. I have a good Dutch will.”

  You can imagine I went close to the door after that. I could hear the lawyer speaking, though not what he was saying; but I heard the Mistress shouting back at him clear enough.

  “What do you mean, I may stay here a year? This is my house. I’ll stay here a lifetime if I please.” Then, after the lawyer spoke some more: “Free Hudson? That’s for me to decide. Hudson belongs to me.” I could hear the lawyer’s voice, still very quiet. Then the Mistress exploded again. “I see what’s going on, you traitor. I don’t even believe my husband signed this English will. Show me his signature. Give it to me.”

  There was a pause for a moment. Then I heard Jan shout.

  I had my ear so close to the door now that, when it flew open, I nearly fell into the room. At the same moment, the Mistress burst past me. She was staring straight ahead. I’m not sure she even saw me. She had a document in her hand and she was making for the kitchen. The next thing I knew, I was colliding with Jan, who was rushing after her. By the time I got my balance, she’d already gone through the kitchen door with a bang, and I heard her bolt the door behind her. Jan was too late to catch her. He started shouting and hammering on that door, but it wasn’t any use.

  Hudson was in the kitchen, and he told me what happened next. The Mistress went straight to the kitchen fire, and she threw that will onto the flames and stood there watching it until it was burned to a cinder. Then she took a fire iron and poked it until it was just ashes. Then, quite calm, she opened the kitchen door, where both Jan and the lawyer were standing by now.

  “Where’s the will?” said the lawyer.

  “What will?” she answered. “The only will I know is in a strongbox at my lawyer’s.”

  “You can’t do this,” says Jan. “The will was witnessed. I can take you to court.”

  “Do it,” she said. “But you may not win. And if you don’t, then I’ll see to it that, even though you’re my flesh and blood, you’ll get nothing. I’ll spend it all. In the meantime, until a judge tells me otherwise, this house and all that is in it is mine.”

  They went away after that, saying she should hear from them. And I supposed it was my turn to face her anger now. But to my surprise, she turned to me very calmly and said: “Quash, will you fetch me a glass of Genever?” And when I brought it to her she said: “I am tired now, Quash, but we shall discuss your freedom and Hudson’s tomorrow.”

  “Yes’m,” I said.

  The next morning she was up early and went out, telling us to mind the house until she got back, and not to let anyone in.

  Late in the morning, she sent word to Hudson that she needed help at the market; so he went down there. After a while she came back, ahead of him, and she told me to come into the parlor, where she sat down.

  “Well, Quash,” she said to me, “the last few days have been sad.”

  “I’m very sorry about the Boss,” I said.

  “I’m sure you are,” she answered. She was quiet for a moment, as if she was thinking. “It was sad for me, Quash, to discover that my husband meant to dispossess me and turn me out of my home; and that my own family were party to it.” She gave me a cold stare. Then she looked down. “It was sad for me too, Quash, when you disobeyed me yesterday, and ran off with that Indian belt. Perhaps you knew about that English will, and you supposed that since you and your son would be free, you could now insult me as you pleased.”

  “The Boss just told me that Hudson and I should be free when he died,” I said. For that was true.

  “Well,” she said, and her voice was calm, “I have decided otherwise. Hudson is already sold.”

  I just stared at her, trying to take in her meaning.

  “Sold?” I said.

  “Yes,” she said. “To a ship’s captain. He is already on board.”

  “I’d like to see him,” I said.

  “No,” she answered me.

  Just then there was a tap on the door, and a gray-haired gentleman came in and bowed to the Mistress. I knew I’d seen him before, and then I remembered—it was the English planter that Mr. Master had brought to the house one time, years ago. The Mistress nodded to him and turned to me.

  “Since I am now the owner of everything that was my husband’s—unless a judge can tell me otherwise—you also belong to me, Quash. And whatever my husband may have said, since you have disobeyed me, I have decided to sell you. This gentleman happened to be in the market today, and he has bought you. You will go with him at once.”

  I was so shocked I couldn’t speak a word. I must have looked round, as though I was wanting to escape.

  “I have two men with me,” the planter said sharply. “Don’t try any of that.”

  I still couldn’t believe the Mistress would do such a thing to me.

  “Mistress,” I cried, “after all these years …”

  But she just turned her head away.

  “That’s it. Bring him now,” the planter called out; and two men came into the room. One was about my size, but I could tell he was very strong. The other was a giant of a man.

  “I got to get my things,” I mumbled.

  “Hurry,” said the planter. “Go with him,” he told the two men.

  So I collected my possessions, including my little store of money that I’d always hidden away safe. And I was afr
aid they would take that, but they didn’t. I was still in a daze as they led me out to a cart and drove me away.

  The planter had a farm about ten miles north of Manhattan. The building was a Dutch farmhouse with a hip roof. But the English planter had added a wide covered veranda all around it. He had half a dozen slaves, who were kept in a low wooden shed near the cow pen.

  When we arrived, the planter said I should take my shirt off, so he could inspect me; and he did so. “Well,” he said, “you ain’t young, but you look strong enough. I dare say we shall get some years of work out of you.” They were leading me toward the slave shed when he said: “Stop.” There was a big post in the ground just there, and suddenly his two men took my arms and put my wrists in a pair of manacles hanging in chains from the top of the post.

  “Now then, nigger,” the planter said to me. “Your mistress tells me that you stole from her and that you tried to run off. Well, that kind of thing won’t be allowed here, you understand?” And he nodded to the shorter man, who was the foreman. And the foreman went into the house through the veranda, and he came out with a terrible-looking whip. “So now you are going to learn some good behavior,” said the planter. And I was looking around, unable to believe this was happening. “Turn your face back,” the planter said.

  And then the foreman gave me the first lash.

  I had never been struck with a whip before. That only time the Boss had given me a whipping, when I was a boy, had been with his belt. But the whip is nothing like that at all.

  When that whip lashed across my back, it was like a terrible fire, and a tearing of flesh, and I was so surprised and shocked by it that I screamed out.

  Then I heard the whip whistle and crack again. But this lash was worse than the first. And I leaped half out of my skin. And as I did so, I saw the planter watching me to see how I was taking it. The third lash was so terrible I thought I was going to burst with the pain of it; my head jerked back so hard, and I felt my eyes starting out of my head. And they paused for a moment, and my whole body was shaking, and I thought maybe they’d done with it. And then I saw the planter nod to the foreman as if to say, “That’s about right.”

  “I never stole,” I cried out. “I don’ deserve this.”

  But the lash fell again, and after that again, and again. I was on fire. My body was straining and slamming into the post in agony. My hands were clenching so hard on the manacles that the blood was coming from my fingers. By the time he had given me a dozen lashes I thought I was going to die; but still he went on until he had given me twenty lashes.

  Then the planter came close and stared at me.

  “Well, nigger boy,” he said, “what have you got to say?”

  And I was just hanging there against that post, at over fifty years of age, whipped for the first time in my life. And all my dignity was gone.

  “I’m sorry, Boss,” I cried. “I’ll do whatever you say.”

  “Don’t call me Boss,” he said. “I’m not a damn Dutchman.”

  “No, sir,” I whispered. And if I had anger in me, that whipping was so terrible that I would have licked up the dust if he’d told me to. And as I looked into his eyes, I was so desperate.

  “Don’t speak to me,” he said, “unless I tell you to. And when you speak to me, you thieving buck nigger son of a bitch, you look down at the ground. Don’t you ever dare look me in the face again. Will you remember that?” Then, as I looked down at the ground, he called to the foreman: “Give him something to make him remember that.”

  Then the foreman gave me ten more lashes. At the end I believe I fainted, for I do not remember being taken down and thrown into the shed.

  I worked half a year at that farm. The work was hard. During the winter when the snows came, the planter had a forge and we slaves were taught to make nails, which we did for ten hours a day; and those nails were sold. We were always put to work earning him money in some way. He fed us enough and kept us warm, so we could work. And even if we’d thought of it, we were too tired by the end of the day to give any trouble. I wasn’t whipped again; but I knew that if I gave him any cause, he’d do it, and more.

  And all this made me consider how fortunate I had been during the years when I was owned by the Boss—when every year men like Mr. Master were taking maybe thousands of Negroes to the plantations, where conditions would be similar, or worse. And it filled me with sadness to think that this was the lonely life, without their children, that my parents must have known.

  In the spring, we were put back to work in the fields again, digging and plowing. And I was at work about noon one day, all caked in mud, when I saw a light covered cart rolling up the lane, and a man and a woman get out and go into the house. Some time later the planter came out and shouted to me to come over, so I hurried to him. And as I stood in front of him, taking care to look down at the ground, I heard a rustle of a dress on the veranda; but I daren’t look up to see who it was, and then I heard a voice I knew saying: “Why, Quash, don’t you know me?” And I realized it was Miss Clara.

  “You’ve changed, Quash,” Miss Clara said to me, as she and Mr. Master brought me back to New York. “Did he mistreat you?”

  I was still too ashamed of being whipped to tell her, so I said: “I’m all right, Miss Clara.”

  “It took us a while to find out where you were,” she told me. “My mother refused to tell who she sold you to. I had people asking all over town. We only found out the other day.”

  I asked if they knew anything of Hudson.

  “He was sold to a sea captain, but we don’t know who. He could be anywhere. I’m sorry, Quash,” she said. “You may have lost him.”

  I couldn’t speak for a moment.

  “It was good of you to come for me,” I said.

  “I had to pay quite a price for you,” said young Henry Master with a laugh. “The old planter knew we wanted you, so he did me no favors.”

  “We know you were supposed to have your freedom,” said Miss Clara.

  “Hmm,” said her husband. “I don’t know about that. Not after what I just had to pay. But we still have to decide what to do with you, Quash.”

  It seemed that the difficulty was the Mistress. Recently she had gone upriver all the way to Schenectady, intending to live there. She chose that place on account of the fact that it had a strong Dutch church and a town with hardly any English in it. “So long as she stays up there, we can keep you with us, or at my brother’s,” explained Miss Clara. “But my brother doesn’t want her coming back and finding you back. It might make her angry, and she still controls everything at present. I’m sorry you can’t be free,” she added.

  “It don’t matter, Miss Clara,” I said. For I was better off with them than with that planter. And besides, what was freedom to me now, if my son was still a slave?

  Through that spring and summer I worked for Miss Clara and her family. And since I knew how to do most everything about the house, I was very helpful to them.

  In particular, I took pleasure in her son Dirk. He was a mischievous little boy, full of life, and I thought I could see something of the Boss in him. He had fair hair and blue eyes like his mother, but you could see already that he had a quickness in him; though when it came to his lessons, he was a little bit lazy. And how that child loved to go by the waterside. He reminded me of my own son. I’d take him down there and let him look at the boats and talk to the sailors. But above all, he liked to go round past the fort so he could look up the river. That river seemed to draw him somehow. For his birthday, which fell in the summer, he was asked what he would like, and he asked if he could go upriver in a boat. So on a fine day young Henry Master and the little boy and me all set out on a big sailing boat; and we went up that mighty river, running before the wind and with the tide, all the way up past the stone palisades. We camped for the night before returning. And during that journey, Dirk was allowed to wear the Indian wampum belt, which we passed round his body three times.

  “This belt is impo
rtant, isn’t it, Quash?” Dirk said to me.

  “Your grandfather attached great value to it,” I answered, “and he gave it to you special, to keep all your life and to pass on in the family.”

  “I like the patterns on it,” he said.

  “They say those wampum patterns have a special meaning,” I told him, “telling how the Boss was a great man and suchlike. I believe they were given to him by Indians who held him in particular affection. But that’s all I know.”

  I could tell that boy loved to be on the river. He felt at home there. And I hoped that he would make his living on the river rather than with the slaving ships.

  And it may be, as it happened, that I was able to affect his life in that regard. For one day, when I was washing in my room in the attic, and thinking myself alone, I heard little Dirk’s voice behind me.

  “What are all those marks on your back, Quash?”

  The whipping at the farm had left terrible scars all over my back, which I always concealed, and I would not have had the boy see them for all the world.

  “Something that happened a long time ago,” I told him. “You just put it out of your mind, now.” And I made him go back downstairs.

  But later that day, Miss Clara came by when I was tending some flowers in the garden, and she touched my arm and said, “Oh Quash, I’m so sorry.” A couple of days after that I was serving the family at table when little Dirk pipes up, “Father, is it ever right to whip a slave?” And his father looked awkward and muttered, “Well, it all depends.” But Miss Clara just said, very quiet, “No, it is never right.” And with her character, I knew she wouldn’t be changing her mind about that.

  Indeed, I heard her say to her husband once that she wouldn’t be sorry if the whole business of slavery came to an end. But he answered that as things stood, he reckoned a good part of the wealth of the British Empire depended on the slaves in the sugar plantations, so it wouldn’t be ended any time soon.