The two watchmen reached him. Although he wasn’t moving, one of them grabbed him by the collar.
“Gotcha.” The fellow shook him. “We saw you.”
“Saw what?”
“Back in Vesey Street. Startin’ a fire.”
“A what? I wasn’t in Vesey Street.”
“Don’t answer back, nigger. You’re goin’ to jail.”
The man with the stick had reached them now.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“We saw this nigger boy tryin’ to burn down a house in Vesey Street,” said one of the watchmen. “Right, Herman?”
“Could be,” the other man answered. But Hudson noticed that he looked a little doubtful.
“Not me, it wasn’t,” Hudson protested. “I wasn’t even in that part of town.”
“And when was this?” asked the stranger.
“Maybe ten minutes ago, wasn’t it, Jack?” said Herman.
“The nigger belongs in jail,” said Jack.
“Not this one,” said the stranger, coolly. “Because until I sent him on an errand five minutes ago, he was with me.” He looked Hudson straight in the eye, then turned back to the watchmen. “My name’s John Master. Dirk Master’s my father. And this slave boy belongs to me.”
“He does?” Jack looked suspicious. But Herman was ready to capitulate.
“That’d explain it,” he said. “I thought he looked different.”
“Goddammit,” said Jack.
The stranger waited until the two watchmen had turned the corner before he spoke.
“You didn’t light a fire, did you?”
“No, sir,” said Hudson.
“Because if you did, I’m in trouble. Who do you belong to?”
“Nobody, sir. I’m free.”
“That so? Where do you live?”
“My grandfather had a tavern near the waterfront, but he died. He was called Hudson.”
“I know it. I’ve drunk there.”
“I don’t remember you, sir.”
“Only went there once or twice. But I’ve been in all the taverns. Been drunk in most of them. What’s your name?”
“I’m called Hudson too, sir.”
“Hmm. So where d’you live now?”
“Nowhere at present. I was at sea.”
“Hmm.” His rescuer considered him. “Jumped ship?”
Hudson was silent.
“There was a drunken captain down by the docks today, hollering for a Negro boy that jumped ship. Can’t say I liked the look of him. Drunk on board, too, I should guess.”
Hudson considered. The stranger, for whatever reason, seemed to be on his side.
“He nearly lost the ship twice, sir,” he confessed.
“Well, you’d better stick with me for the moment,” said John Master. “You can act as my slave until something better turns up.”
“I’m free, sir,” Hudson reminded him.
“You want to come with me or not?” asked his benefactor.
And seeing that he had nowhere else to go, Hudson accepted the offer. At least he’d be safe for a while.
Mercy Brewster was rather surprised when John arrived with a new slave. It only took a few moments for him to explain what had happened, after which Hudson was sent down to the kitchen.
“My guess is he’s telling the truth,” John said when Hudson was out of earshot. “If not, I’ve made a horrible mistake.” He smiled. “I’m afraid I lied, Mercy. You won’t approve of that.”
“But you lied to save him from being wrongly arrested. You may even have saved his life.”
“I suppose so. I couldn’t leave the poor fellow like that.”
“No,” she said quietly. “I see you couldn’t.”
“Hope you don’t mind me bringing him here.”
“Oh no,” she said, a little breathlessly, “I don’t mind at all.” She looked at him for a long moment, and decided. Yes, he was kind. He could not have done such a thing, if he were not kind. And then, with her heart secretly in a terrible flutter, she asked: “Was there something you wished to say to me, John?”
Montayne’s Tavern
1758
IT WAS GUY Fawkes Night, and they were burning the Pope in New York.
In England, the Fifth of November was an important day. A century and a half had passed since Catholic Guy Fawkes had tried to blow up the Protestant Parliament, and they’d been burning his effigy on bonfires on that day ever since. Indeed, it being the same season, the celebrations had pretty much taken over the ancient rites of Halloween. And Guy Fawkes Night had come to New York, too. But by and by, the New Yorkers had decided to improve on the old English model and get to the heart of the matter. So they carried an effigy of the Pope himself through the streets, and burned him on a great bonfire in the evening, and everybody celebrated. At least, pretty much everybody. The Catholics in the town may have objected; but there weren’t too many of them, and they had the sense to keep quiet.
When John Master saw Charlie White through the crowd on Broadway that evening, he waved and smiled. And Charlie nodded, but he didn’t smile. And John realized it was years since they’d spoken. So he started toward him.
And maybe John Master felt a tad awkward when he said, “It’s good to see you, Charlie.” And he almost said, “I was thinking about you the other day,” but he didn’t because it would have been a damn lie, and they both knew it. Then fortunately he realized that they were right outside Montayne’s Tavern, so he said, “Let’s have a drink.” Like it was old times.
Old times. Charlie remembered old times, all right. Those had been the days, when he and John Master had been boys together.
Happy times mostly. Fishing in the river. Walking up Broadway arm in arm. Sleeping out in the woods, and thinking they heard a bear. Taking a boat out to Governor’s Island and spending all day there, when John was supposed to be at school. Getting into mischief in the town. Once or twice John had let him come in one of his father’s longboats to run the molasses in from the French vessels at night. And John’s father had given Charlie a handsome tip, to keep quiet about it, though Charlie would rather have died than breathe a word.
He’d been almost one of the family. That was friendship.
As John had got older, they’d gone to the taverns too. But Charlie couldn’t get drunk the way John did, because he had to work. So John mostly got drunk with the sailors, and Charlie got him home afterward.
When John had turned away from all that, and started to work, he hadn’t seen so much of Charlie, and Charlie had understood. He doesn’t want to see me, Charlie thought, because I remind him of what he’s trying to get away from. I remind him of what he used to be. He understood it, but he was still hurt. They’d see each other from time to time, even go for a drink. But it wasn’t the same any more.
Charlie had made a small mistake once. He’d been in the market place, and happened to see John standing near the entrance to the fort, talking to a merchant. He’d gone over and greeted his friend, as he usually would, and John had given him a cold look, because he was interrupting him. The merchant hadn’t been too pleased either that a fellow like him would interrupt them. So Charlie had gone away quickly, feeling a bit of a fool.
The next day John had come round to his house first thing in the morning.
“Sorry about yesterday, Charlie,” he’d said. “You took me by surprise. I’d never done business with that fellow before. I was trying to understand what he wanted.”
“That’s all right, John. It’s nothing.”
“Are you free this evening? We could have a drink.”
“Not this evening, John. I’ll come by soon.”
But of course, he hadn’t. There was no point. They were moving in different worlds now.
John hadn’t forgotten him though. About a year later, he’d come by again. Charlie was a laboring man, but he also had a cart, and was engaged part-time in the carrying business. John had asked him if he could engage with the Master famil
y to transport goods up to some local farms. It was a regular contract, a full day every week, and the terms were good. Charlie had been glad of it, and the arrangement had continued for quite a while. John had put other business his way when he could, down the years.
But by the nature of things, it was a case of a rich man giving work to a poor one. The last time the Masters had given Charlie work, it hadn’t been John, but a clerk who’d come to make the arrangements.
They’d both married, John to the Quaker from Philadelphia, Charlie to the daughter of a carter. They both had families. John wouldn’t have known the names of Charlie’s children. But Charlie knew all about John’s.
For the fact was, Charlie often thought of John. He’d often pass by Master’s handsome house. He knew what Mercy Master looked like, and her children. He picked up gossip about them in the taverns. A curiosity, which may have been a little morbid, made him do it. But John Master would have been surprised to know what a close watch Charlie White kept on his affairs.
They sat down at a wooden table in the corner and nursed their drinks.
“How’s your family, Charlie? You doing all right?”
Charlie needed a shave, and his face was getting furrowed. Under the mess of his black hair, his eyes narrowed.
“They’re well,” he admitted. “They say you’ve been doing well.”
“I have, Charlie.” There was no point in denying it. “The war’s been good for a lot of people.”
It was three years since John’s mother had died and his father Dirk had retired from business and gone to live on a little farm he’d bought north of Manhattan, up in Westchester County. He lived there very contentedly, looked after by a housekeeper. “You’re like an old Dutchman,” his son would tell him affectionately, “who’s retired to his bouwerie.” And though Dirk liked to be told about what was going on, it was John Master who was entirely in control of the family business now. And thanks to the war, business had been booming as never before.
For the old rivalry between France and Britain had taken a new turn. If the two powers had been struggling since the previous century for control of the subcontinent of India, the rich sugar trade in the West Indies, and the fur trade of the north, their conflicts in America had mostly been skirmishes, conducted with the aid of the Iroquois, on the upper Hudson or St. Lawrence rivers, far to the north of New York. Recently, however, both powers had tried to grab control of the Ohio Valley to the west, which joined France’s vast, Mississippi River territory of Louisiana to her holdings in the north. In 1754, a rather inexperienced young Virginian officer in the British Army, named George Washington, had made an incursion into the Ohio Valley, set up a small fort and promptly been kicked out of it by the French. In itself, the incident was minor. But back in London, it had caused the British government to come to a decision. It was time to drive their traditional enemy out of the North-East once and for all. They’d gone to war in earnest.
“I should thank George Washington,” John Master would cheerfully say, “for making me a fortune.”
War had meant privateering, and John Master had done well out of that. It was a high-risk business, but he’d figured it out. Most voyages made a loss; but the profits from the few captured were spectacular. By taking shares in about a dozen ships at a time, and averaging his risk, his profits had more than paid for the losses. In fact, he’d been able to double or triple his investment every year. It was a rich man’s game. But he could afford to play.
The real benefit to New York, however, was the British Army. Before long, ten, twenty and soon twenty-five thousand redcoats had arrived from England to fight the French, together with a huge fleet and nearly fifteen thousand sailors. They came to New York and Boston.
Armies and fleets need provisioning. Not only that: the officers wanted houses built, and services of every kind. In addition to his regular trade supplying the Caribbean, John Master was getting huge government contracts for grain, timber, cloth and rum; and so were most of the other merchants he knew. Modest craftsmen, swamped with demand, were upping their prices. True, some laboring men complained that off-duty soldiers were taking part-time jobs and stealing work from them. But by and large, laboring families like Charlie’s could get unheard-of wages. Most people in New York with anything to sell could say with feeling: “God bless the redcoats.”
“I get a lot of building work,” said Charlie. “Can’t complain.”
They talked of their families, and of old times, and they drank through the evening. And remembering his youth, it seemed to John that it hadn’t been such a bad thing that he’d spent time with fellows like Charlie. I may be a rich man of forty now, living in comfort, he thought, but I know the life of the streets, the wharfs, and the taverns, and I run my business better because of it. He knew what men like Charlie were thinking, knew when they were lying, knew how to handle them. He thought of his own son, James. James was a good fellow. He loved the boy, and there was nothing much wrong with him. He’d taken pains with his general education, always explaining things about the trade of the city, things to watch out for. Putting him on the right path. But the fact was, John considered, that the next generation was being brought up too genteel. What James needed, his father was thinking, was to learn a few of the lessons that he’d learned himself.
So when, late in the evening, Charlie remarked that his son Sam was thirteen, exactly the same age as James, John suddenly leaned over to him and said: “You know what, Charlie, your Sam and my James should get together. What do you think?”
“I’d like that, John.”
“Why don’t I send him over?”
“You know where to find me.”
“Day after tomorrow, then. Noon.”
“We’ll be waiting.”
“He’ll be there. Let’s have a last drink.”
The Pope had been burned to a cinder by the time they parted.
The following morning, John Master told his son James about Charlie White and that he was to go to visit him the next day. He reminded him again that evening. Early on the day in question, before he went out, he gave James precise directions for finding Charlie’s house, and told him not to be late. James promised he’d be punctual.
Mercy Master had a visitor of her own that afternoon. She’d chosen a time carefully. Both her son James and his elder sister Susan were out. Her husband wouldn’t be home for a long time yet. When the architect arrived, he was ushered by Hudson into her parlor, where she had cleared a little table, and soon the drawings were laid out upon it.
She was preparing her husband’s tomb.
Not that she wanted John dead. Far from it. Indeed, it was part of her passion that John should be well cared for, dead or alive. And so, as a Quaker, she was being practical.
Mercy’s passion for her husband had only grown with the years. If she saw a new wig, or a fine coat in the latest London fashion, or a splendid carriage, why then she would immediately think: My John would look well in that. If she saw a fine silk dress, she would imagine how it might please him to see her wearing it, and how well they might look together. If she saw a Chippendale chair in a neighbor’s handsome house, or some beautiful wallpaper, or a handsome silver service, she would want to buy them too, to make their own house more elegant and worthy of her husband. She’d even had his portrait painted, along with her own, by fashionable Mr. Copley.
Her passion was innocent. She had never cut herself off from her Quaker roots. Her love of such finery was not to make a worldly show at the expense of others. But since her husband was a good man, who had been blessed with success in his business, there seemed no harm in enjoying the good things that God had provided. In this, she certainly had the example of other Quakers before her. In Philadelphia, the Quaker oligarchs ran the city like Venetian nobles; just above New York, it was a rich Quaker named Murray who had built the magnificent country villa called Murray Hill.
And here in the city, God had never provided such opportunities for elegance before. I
f the cultivated classes of Boston and Europe had found New York somewhat coarse in John’s youth, things were changing fast. The rich classes were drawing ever further apart from the hurly-burly of the streets. Tidy Georgian streets and squares were closing themselves off into a genteel quiet. In front of the old fort, a discreet and pleasant park, called the Bowling Green, after the fashion of Vauxhall or Ranelagh Gardens in London, now provided a haven where respectable people could promenade. The theater might be limited, and concerts few, but the aristocratic British officers who had recently arrived in the city could find themselves in houses quite as fine as their own at home. The town house of one rich merchant family—the Waltons—with its oak paneling and marble foyer, put even the British governor to shame.
England. England was the thing. If the British shipping laws ensured that few goods from Continental Europe could get into American ports, it hardly mattered. England supplied everything that elegance required. China and glass, silver and silks, all manner of luxuries, dainty or robust, were being shipped from England to New York, along with easy credit terms to induce people to buy. Mercy Master bought them all. Truth to tell, she would dearly have loved to cross the ocean to London to make sure that she wasn’t missing anything. But that was not to be thought of, with all the business that her husband had to do.
There was only one thing that John Master had denied her. A country house. Not a farm, like the old bouweries of the Stuyvesants and their like. A country house might have a few hundred acres of farmland, but that wasn’t really the point. It was also a place to escape the unhealthy city in the hot and humid summer. But above all it was a trophy—a villa in a park—a place for a gentleman to show off his good taste. It was a fine old tradition: rich gentlemen had set up these parks in the Renaissance, the Middle Ages and in the Roman Empire. Now it was New York’s turn. Some were on Manhattan; there was the Watts house at Rose Hill; and Murray Hill of course; and others with names taken from London, like Greenwich and Chelsea. Some were a little further north, like the van Cortlandts’ estate in the Bronx. How well her husband would look in such a place. He could well afford it. But he had adamantly refused.