“You did right,” he said to me. “I suppose we’d better leave this for a while.” I could see he was disappointed, though.
So I waited another few days. Then, one evening when he was looking a little sad, I made my move.
“I’ve been thinking, Your Lordship,” I said. “There might be an answer to our problem.”
“Oh?” he said.
“Yes,” I said. For I had always considered, I told him, that if ever I became free, I might open a little store in the town, to sell all kinds of goods for ladies, and make dresses as well. I believed that Jan and Miss Clara would stake me and send me customers; and I already had a seamstress in mind that I could employ. “If I had that business,” I said, “I could make Your Lordship any dresses you want, and there’d be no one to ask questions. For people wouldn’t see me as Your Lordship’s slave any more. Nobody except me would know I was even supplying you. I could supply Her Ladyship too. And naturally, where Your Lordship is concerned, I wouldn’t be looking for profit. I’d supply Your Lordship and Her Ladyship at cost.”
“At cost?” he said, and I nodded.
“Not only dresses, Your Lordship. Petticoats, silk stockings, anything you and Your Ladyship might like,” I said.
“Hmm,” said His Lordship. “And the price for this is to give you your freedom?”
“I couldn’t do it otherwise,” I said.
“I will consider it,” he said.
Now you may think I was taking a risk in offering to supply Her Ladyship, given that her bills were not always paid. But I reckoned that His Lordship would take good care to pay my bills, if he wanted any more dresses.
The next day, I get a summons to go to the small sitting room. I was expecting to find His Lordship there. But it was Her Ladyship. She was sitting in a chair, and she gave me a thoughtful look.
“His Lordship has told me about your conversation,” she said. “And I have one concern.”
“Your Ladyship?” I asked.
“Yes. By making you free, His Lordship would have no sanction against you if you were to talk. You know what I mean.” And she looked me straight in the eye. “I must protect him,” she said.
She was right, of course. His Lordship was placing himself in my power. And I admired her for saying it. So I was silent for a moment. Then I took my shirt off. I saw her eyes open wide when I did that. But then I turned round, and I heard her give a little gasp as she saw the scars on my back.
“That is what a planter did to me, Your Ladyship,” I said, “before I came here. And truth to tell, My Lady, I would kill that planter, if I could do it.”
“Oh,” she said.
“But in this house,” I continued, “I have received nothing but kindness.” And I said this with some emotion, because it was true. “And if His Lordship gives me my freedom, which I have been wanting all my life, I’d rather be whipped again than repay him with treachery.”
Well, she gave me a long look, and then she said: “Thank you, Quash.” And I put on my shirt again, and bowed to her, and left.
So that is how, in the year 1705, at around the age of fifty-five, I finally obtained my freedom. It all worked out as I expected. Jan was good to me, and helped me rent a store on Queen Street, which is a good part of the town, and he showed me how to buy the best goods; and Miss Clara was sending me so many customers that I had my hands full. Not only did I employ little Rose, but soon I had two more like her as well. Their being young, I didn’t have to pay them much, but they were glad of the regular work, and soon I was making good money.
And from this and all that went before, I learned that, if you give people what they want, it can make you free.
The following year, Her Ladyship died. And I was sorry for that. The year afterward, His Lordship’s party fell from office in London. And as soon as they learned this, all His Lordship’s enemies in New York sent urgently to London begging to have His Lordship removed from office on account of all the debts he still owed. They also said that he was dressing in women’s clothes, for those rumors were growing too—though no one ever heard any word of that from me. They even threw His Lordship in the debtors’ jail.
Fortunately for him, his father died, and he became the Earl of Clarendon, which being a full peerage of England means, under English law, that he cannot be prosecuted—which is a fine trick, I must say. And he is safe back in England now.
Jan and Miss Clara continued to be helpful to me, letting me know if cargoes of silk fabrics or other goods arrived in the port, and helping me get some pieces at cost price. So I wasn’t surprised, soon after His Lordship had left for England, when I got a message that Jan had some goods for me if I would come round to his house that day.
As it happened, Miss Clara was also there when I arrived, and we went into the parlor.
“I’ve bought some goods I think might interest you, Quash,” he said. “And Clara thinks you’ll like them too.”
I knew she had a good eye, so I was eager to see them.
“Well, here they are,” he said. And I heard the parlor door open, and I turned. And in walked my son Hudson.
“The captain of one of Mr. Master’s privateers bought him off a ship down in Jamaica,” explained Mr. Jan. “Do you want him?”
Hudson was looking so fine and strong, and he was smiling. And I think Miss Clara was smiling too, or she may have been crying; but I’m not sure, because suddenly my eyes were full of tears and so I couldn’t see too well.
But after we had embraced, I had to make sure I understood.
“So now Hudson belongs to …?”
“Hudson is free,” said Miss Clara. “We bought him and now we’re giving him to you.”
“He’s free, then,” I said, and for a moment or two I couldn’t speak.
But then—I don’t know why—the idea came into my mind that I wasn’t satisfied. I knew that they meant kindly to me and to Hudson. I also knew, from all that I had lived through in my own life, that this traffic in human beings in which Mr. Master was engaged was a terrible thing. In my heart I considered that neither he nor any man should have the ownership of another; and if he gave up even one slave, so much the better. And I knew that I wanted my Hudson’s freedom more than I had ever wanted even my own. Yet despite all these considerations, I knew that in my mind I was not satisfied with this transaction.
“I thank you for your kindness,” I said to Mr. Master. “But I am his father, and I should like to buy the freedom of my son.”
I saw Jan glance at Miss Clara.
“He cost me five pounds,” he said. I was sure that this was too low a figure, but I said he should have it, and I gave him the first part of the payment that very evening.
“Now your father has bought your freedom,” I told my son. I don’t know if it was right or wrong, but that purchase meant a lot to me.
That was two years ago. I am sixty years of age now, which is older than many men live, and far older than most slaves. Recently, my health has not been so good, but I think I have some time remaining to me yet, and my business thrives. My son Hudson has a little inn just above Wall Street, and he does well. I know he would rather go to sea, but he stays here to please me; and he has a wife and a little son now, so maybe they will keep him here. Each year, we go to Miss Clara’s house for the birthday of young Dirk, and I see him put on the wampum belt.
The Boston Girl
1735
THE TRIAL WOULD begin tomorrow. The jury had been rigged by the governor. Handpicked stooges of his own. Conviction guaranteed. The first jury, that is.
For when the two judges saw it—though they were friends of Governor Cosby themselves—they threw the stooges out and started again. The new jury was not rigged. The trial would be honest. British fair play. New York might be a long way from London, but it was English, after all.
The whole colony was waiting with baited breath.
Not that it mattered. The defendant hadn’t a hope.
The third day of August, the
year of Our Lord 1735. The British Empire was enjoying the Georgian age. For after Queen Anne, her equally Protestant kinsman, George of Hanover, had been asked to take the throne; and soon been followed by his son, a second George, who was ruler of the empire now. It was an age of confidence, and elegance, and reason.
The third day of August 1735: New York, on a hot and humid afternoon.
Seen from across the East River, it might have been a landscape by Vermeer. The long, low line of the distant wharfs, which still bore names like Beekman and Ten Eyck—the step-gabled rooftops, squat storehouses and sailing ships at anchor—made a peaceful picture in the watery silence. In the panorama’s center, Trinity Church’s graceful little steeple seemed to offer a pinprick to the sky.
In the streets, however, the scene was far from peaceful. Ten thousand people lived in New York now, and the place was growing bigger every year. Wall Street, on the line of the former ramparts, was only halfway up the waterfront. West of Broadway, orchards and neat Dutch gardens remained, but on the eastern side, the brick and wooden houses were tightly crammed together. Pedestrians had to thread between stoops and stalls, water barrels and swinging shutters, and dodge the wheels of the carts churning their way over the dirt or cobbled roadway to the noisy market.
But above all, for anyone in the streets, the wretchedness came from the fetid air. Horse droppings, cowpats, slops from the houses, and garbage and grime, dead cats and birds, excrement of every kind, lay strewn on the ground, waiting for the rain to wash it all away, or the sun to bake it to powder. And on a hot and steamy day, from this putrid mess, a soupy stench arose, fermented by the sun, creeping up wooden walls and fences, impregnating brick and mortar, choking every ventricle, stinging the eyes, rising to the roof gables.
This was the smell of summer in New York.
But by God it was British. A man gazing at it across the East River might be near the village of Brooklyn where Dutch was still spoken, but he was situated in Kings County nonetheless, and the next county upriver was Queens. Behind Manhattan island, he would see the mainland across the Hudson River. And for that territory, Charles II of England himself had chosen the name New Jersey.
Within the city, the Dutch, step-gabled houses of New Amsterdam were still charmingly to be seen, especially below Wall Street; but the newer houses were in the simple, English Georgian style. The old Dutch City Hall had also been succeeded by a classical building that sat on Wall and gazed complacently down Broad Street. One might hear Dutch spoken by the market stalls, but not in the merchants’ houses.
With English language went English liberties. The city had a royal charter, with the king’s own seal on it. True, a former governor had demanded a bribe to procure this royal recognition, but you expected that sort of thing. And once such a charter was granted and sealed, the free men of the city could point to it for the rest of time. They elected their city councillors; they were free-born Englishmen.
Some people in New York might have said that this English freedom was less than perfect. The ever-growing number of slaves sold in the market at the foot of Wall Street might have said so; but they were Negroes who, New Yorkers were now generally agreed, were an inferior people. The women of New York—those who still remembered the old Dutch laws which made them equal to their menfolk—may also have regretted their inferior status under British law. But honest Englishmen were well assured that such complaints from the weaker sex were unseemly.
No: what mattered was escaping the tyranny of kings. Puritans and Huguenots were equally agreed. No Louis, King of France; no Catholic James. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 had established that the Protestant British Parliament would oversee the king. As for English common law, the right to trial by jury, and to assemblies that could refuse oppressive taxes, why some of those ancient rights went back five hundred years, to Magna Carta or before. In short, the men of New York were just as free as the good fellows back in England who had cut their king’s head off, not a century ago, when he tried to be a tyrant.
That was why the trial, taking place tomorrow, was so important.
The two men walked along the road together. The man in the tightly buttoned brown coat seemed uncomfortable. Perhaps it was just the heat. Or perhaps something else was worrying him.
Mr. Eliot Master of Boston was a good man, who cared about his children. He was also a cautious lawyer. He would smile, certainly, when it was appropriate; and laugh when it was called for, though not too loud and not too long. So it was unusual for him to worry that he might have made a terrible mistake.
He had only just met his New York cousin for the first time, but already he had reservations about Dirk Master. He’d always known that their grandfathers, his namesake Eliot and Dirk’s grandfather Tom, had gone their separate ways. The Boston Masters had never had any contact with the Masters of New York. But as he was going to visit New York, Eliot had wondered whether enough time had passed to reestablish relations. Before writing to his kinsman, however, he had made some inquiries about these people, and ascertained that the merchant was a man of fortune. That was a relief, for Eliot would have been disappointed to have a kinsman who did not do well. But as to his character, well, that remained to be seen.
As it was a hot day, the merchant was wearing the light and simple coat called a banyan: sober enough. But the silk vest under it had concerned the lawyer. Too colorful. His periwig was too flamboyant, his cravat too loosely tied. Did these things suggest a character lacking in gravitas? Though his kinsman had warmly invited him to stay at his house while he attended the trial in New York, Eliot Master had instead made arrangements to stay with a reliable lawyer he knew; and seeing his cousin’s silk vest, he considered the choice had been wise.
You wouldn’t have guessed they were cousins. Dirk was large, and fair, with prominent teeth, and an air of genial confidence. Eliot was of medium size, his hair brown, his face broad and serious.
In Boston, the Master family lived on Purchase Street. Eliot was a deacon of the Old South Congregation Church, and a selectman. He was familiar with business. How could you not be, among the wharfs and watermills of Boston? His wife’s brother was a brewer—a good, solid enterprise, fortunately. But, as a graduate of the Boston Latin School and Harvard University, it was education and sound ethics that Eliot valued.
He wasn’t sure that his New York cousin possessed either.
Cautious though he was, Eliot Master was ready to stand up for principle. About slavery, for instance, he was firm. “Slavery is wrong,” he told his children. The fact that, even in Boston, about one person in ten was now a slave, made no difference to him at all. There were none in his house. Unlike many of the stern Boston men of the past, he would tolerate freedom in religion, so long as it was Protestant. Above all, like his Puritan ancestors before him, he was vigilant against any attempt at tyranny by the king. This was why he was here in New York, to witness the trial.
It had been proper of his cousin to ask him and his daughter to dinner that day, and useful that, while Kate rested at their lodgings, Dirk was showing him round the town. The merchant was certainly well informed; and clearly proud of his city. Having walked up Broadway and admired Trinity Church, they had taken the road north as it followed the line of the ancient Indian track, until they were nearing the old pond.
“The land to the east was all swamp a couple of years ago,” the merchant told him. “But my friend Roosevelt bought it, and look at it now.” The area had been drained and laid out as handsome streets.
Such development was impressive, the lawyer remarked, when he’d heard how New York’s trade had been suffering in recent years.
“Trade is bad at present,” the merchant acknowledged. “The sugar planters in the West Indies were too greedy and overproduced. Many have gone under, so that our own trade, which lies chiefly in supplying them, has been badly hit. Then those damn fellows in Philadelphia are supplying flour at lower prices than we can.” He shook his head. “Not good.”
Si
nce New York had been stealing away Boston’s trade for half a century, the Bostonian could not entirely suppress a smile at New York’s present discomfort.
“You still do well, though?” he asked.
“I’m a general trader,” said his cousin. “The slave trade’s still good.”
Eliot Master was silent.
On their way back, they passed by Mill Street, and Dirk Master indicated a building there.
“That’s the synagogue,” he said, easily. “Not a bad building. They have two communities, you know: the Sephardics, who came here first from Brazil—rather gentlemanly; and the Ashkenazim, Germans—not gentlemen, but more of them. So they elect an Ashkenazi as president of the congregation, but the services are Sephardic. God knows if the Germans understand them. Funny really, don’t you think?”
“I do not think a man’s religion is a laughing matter,” said the lawyer, quietly.
“No. Of course. Wasn’t quite what I meant.”
It might not have been. But the Boston man thought he detected in the merchant’s manner a hint of moral carelessness—confirmation that he’d been right to have reservations about that silk vest.
They were about to part, when Dirk Master suddenly stopped, and pointed.
“There he is,” he cried. And seeing Eliot look puzzled, he smiled. “That young devil,” he explained, “is my son.”
The lawyer stared in horror.
Eliot Master would never admit to having a favorite, but of his five children, he loved his daughter Kate the best. She had the most brains—though he thought it a pity they should be wasted on a girl. He liked his women to read and think, but only to the degree that would be considered appropriate. She also had a sweet nature, almost to a fault. At the age of five, she had been distressed by the poor folk she had seen in Boston. Well and good. But it had taken him three years of patient explaining to make her understand there was a difference between the deserving and the undeserving poor.
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