As for the American colony, the refusal of American merchants to trade with England, besides being disloyal, does less to harm the mother country than they suppose. There are two reasons. First, the Boston and New York men may observe these embargoes, but the southern colonies privately ignore them. Even Philadelphia is trading with London. Second, merchants like Albion are more than making up for the shortfall in their trade with India and the other countries of Europe. But in any case, I think that the present quarrel with the colonies will end before long. The new prime minister, Lord North, is well disposed toward the American colony, and it’s thought that he will do all he can to end the quarrels. All that is needed is a little patience and good sense which, I have no doubt, the better sort in New York can provide.
And now, my dear parents, I have joyful tidings …
As Master read the rest of the letter, he groaned. For several minutes afterward, he stared straight ahead. Then he read the letter once more. Having done this, he put it aside and turned to the letter from Albion. It contained a number of business matters. Then it turned to the subject of James.
You will have learned from James that he is to be married. Normally I should never have allowed him to enter into such an engagement, while living under my roof, without his first obtaining your blessing. But I must tell you frankly that the young lady’s circumstances do not permit such a delay. A child will be born this summer. I must now tell you something of his wife—as she will be by the time you receive this letter.
Miss Vanessa Wardour—for so I call her, although she was briefly married to Lord Rockbourne before he died in a hunting accident—is a young lady of considerable fortune. She is also, it will interest you to know, a cousin to Captain Rivers, on his mother’s side. She has a handsome house of her own in Mount Street, Mayfair, where she and James will live. As you may surmise, she is a few years older than James, but besides her wealth and many fine connections, she is generally accounted a beauty.
I will not say that I am without reservations in this matter, nor did I promote it—I understand James first met the lady at the house of Lord Riverdale—but most of London would certainly say that your son had made a brilliant match.
John Master put the letter down. It was some time before he could bring himself to show it to Mercy.
1773
No one could remember a worse winter. The East River was frozen solid. But it wasn’t just the awful fact of the cold. It was the misery that went with it. And the deaths. Darkness was falling, but Charlie White was nearly home. His hat was pulled down, his scarf was wrapped round his face. He’d driven his cart across the frozen river to Brooklyn to buy a hundredweight of flour from a Dutch farmer he was friendly with. At least his family would have bread for a while.
Sometimes in the last couple of years Charlie had felt angry, sometimes just discouraged. If his personal feelings against John Master were as keen as ever, they were mixed with an outrage and a grief that was more general.
He knew the troubles of the poor, because his family often suffered them. And it seemed to him that there must be a better way in which the world could be arranged. Surely with a vast, fertile continent stretching westward, southward and northward, it could not be right that working folk in New York were starving. It could not be right that rich men like Master, backed by the British Church and British arms, could profit hugely when ordinary folk could not find work. Something must be wrong. Something needed to change.
Surely, if free men like himself were running the city, instead of the rich, and if their elected representatives ruled the land, instead of royal governors who cared nothing for the wishes of the colonists, then life would have to get better.
The protests against the Stamp Act had worked. The new prime minister, Lord North, had removed Townshend’s taxes—except, just to save his face, the tax on tea. And that was just the moment, in Charlie’s opinion, for the Sons of Liberty to continue the fight. But influenced by the old guard like John Master, the city authorities had turned against them. The statue of King George had been set up on Bowling Green. Everyone said, “God save the king.” There was a tough new English governor called Tryon now, and more British troops under General Gage. It was back to business as usual. Why, Montayne had even told the Liberty Boys not to meet in his tavern any more.
Well, to hell with Montayne. The boys had got their own meeting place now. Hampden Hall they called it, after the hero who’d stood up to the tyrant Charles I in the English Parliament. As for John Master and his crowd, and Tryon, and General Gage—let them remember what happened to King Charles. It might be quiet on the streets, but Sears and the Sons of Liberty had a large faction in the Assembly, now, who listened to them. “Change will come,” Charlie would say grimly to his friends, over a drink in the tavern. “And when it does …”
Not this winter, though. Last year, there had been a collapse of credit in London. Soon all the colonies were suffering—and that was before this terrible winter hit. The poorest were starving. The city authorities were doing their best to feed them, but it was hard to keep pace.
Charlie had just got to the southern end of the Common, where it met Broadway, when he saw the woman and her daughter coming out of the dingy old Poor House.
The woman paused for a moment, glancing anxiously up at the darkening sky. By the look of it, she’d been in the Poor House longer than she realized, and the darkness had taken her by surprise. Then she took off her shawl and wrapped it round her daughter, for the wind was starting to bite.
The street was nearly empty. He drew level. She looked up.
“Are you going down Broadway?” She had no idea who he was. He didn’t answer. “Would you take us down Broadway? I’d be glad to pay. With my daughter, here …”
She was right, of course. In the last few months, with the times being so hard, the streets had become unsafe. Women he knew had taken to selling their bodies for extra cash. He knew men who’d been robbed. The woman and her daughter shouldn’t be walking home alone when it was getting dark.
“How d’you know I won’t rob you?” he muttered through his scarf.
She looked up, only able to see his eyes. Her face was kind.
“You would not harm us, sir, I am sure.”
“You’d better get up,” Charlie grunted. He indicated the space on the seat beside him, then nodded to the back of the cart. “The young lady can sit on the sack.”
He turned the horse’s head down Broadway.
So this was the wife of John Master. He’d recognized her at once, of course, though she didn’t know him. And she thought he wouldn’t harm her. Well, I dare say I wouldn’t, he thought, once I’d burned your house down.
As they started down Broadway, he gave her a sharp look.
“You don’t look as if you belong in the Poor House,” he remarked in a less than friendly tone.
“I go there each day,” she said simply.
“What do you do there?”
“If we have them to spare, we take a load of provisions up there in our cart. Sometimes blankets, other things. We give them money to buy food.” She glanced back at the sack of flour. “We do what we can.”
“You take your daughter?”
“Yes. She should know what kind of city we live in. There’s much for any good Christian to do.”
They were just coming level with Trinity Church. He glanced at it with dislike.
“Would that be a Trinity Christian?”
“Any Christian I should hope. My father was a Quaker.”
Charlie knew that too, but he said nothing.
“My daughter talks to the old ones,” she continued quietly. “They like to talk to a child. It comforts them.” She glanced at him. “Have you been in the Poor House?”
“Can’t say I have.”
“There are many children in there, and some of them are sick. I was tending one of them today. That’s what I chiefly fear now. Some have died in the cold, but most will be fed. They are weak, t
hough. The old ones and the children are starting to fall sick. It’s disease that will carry them off.”
“You could fall sick yourself, going in there,” he muttered.
“Only if it’s God’s will. Anyway, I’m not in their weakened condition. I don’t think of it.”
They had just gone down Broadway another hundred yards when they saw a cart being driven by a black man coming swiftly toward them.
“Why, there’s Hudson,” she remarked. “Hello, Hudson,” she called. As the two carts met, Hudson looked relieved.
“The Boss sent me to bring you safe home,” Hudson said.
“Well, this kind man has brought us down, as you see. But we’ll come with you now.” She turned to Charlie. “I don’t know your name,” she said.
“Don’t matter,” said Charlie.
“Well, let me give you something for going out of your way.”
“No.” He shook his head. “I reckon you were doing the Lord’s work.”
“Well, then, God bless you, sir,” she said, as she and Abigail got down.
“And God bless you, too,” he answered. And he was level with Trinity before he silently cursed himself. Dammit, he thought, why did he have to say that?
If John Master hadn’t come out to fetch Mercy himself, it was because he’d received an unexpected visit. Captain Rivers had called to see him. He’d arrived by ship from Carolina that very morning, and informed Master that he’d already taken lodgings in the town. He looked older. He had some gray hairs. But John had to admire the straightforward, manly way that Rivers explained the reason for his visit. Namely, that he was broke.
Well, not entirely. If, during the last ten years, many Southern landowners had got themselves in trouble with their London creditors, the recent collapse of the London credit markets had made matters much worse. Captain Rivers himself had always dealt with Albion, and his credit there was good. But his wife was another matter.
“She’s had dealings with other London merchants going back to the time before our marriage. I wasn’t even aware of the extent of them until recently. It seems we owe far more than I realized.”
“Can you retrench?” Master asked.
“We’ve done so. And the plantations still provide a good income. But the London creditors are pressing. And they’re so far away. They’ve no way of seeing how we run things. To them, we’re just another damned colonial plantation in trouble. What I want is to pay them all off, and raise a new debt to someone here in the colonies. The plantations provide ample security. If you came down to Carolina, you could see for yourself that we are sound. You could leave a clerk to work with us, if you please. I’ve nothing to hide.”
On the whole, John was inclined to consider the proposition. His instincts told him Rivers would perform. And he had just told him, “Before I commit, I’d like to do as you suggest, and see the place for myself,” when he heard his wife and daughter come into the house, and smiled. “We’ll dine at once,” he said. “I hope you will join us.”
The dinner was a pleasant family affair. Nothing was said of Captain Rivers’s business. Mercy, who’d liked him when they’d met before, was pleased to see him. He also knew how to talk easily and draw Abigail out. At thirteen, she was just starting to turn into a young woman; and Master, watching her in animated conversation with the Englishman, thought with some satisfaction that she was really becoming very pretty.
He was also glad to use the opportunity to probe Rivers on another subject.
James had written regularly since his marriage. He had a son called Weston, aged two. Albion had taken him into partnership. His last letter told them that a little girl had been born, but died at once. The letters spoke of his wife Vanessa, and from time to time he gave them dutiful messages from her. “But we know very little of your cousin,” John told Captain Rivers. “What can you tell us?”
If Rivers hesitated, it was only for a moment.
“Vanessa? I’ve known her since she was a child, of course, and she was beautiful even then. After her parents died, she was brought up, so to speak, by an uncle. She has neither brother nor sister, so she inherited a considerable fortune.” He paused. “Though she’d never miss the season in London, she loves the country too.” He laughed. “I dare say she’ll make James into a country squire, one of these days. He’ll have to learn to hunt.”
“Is she a godly woman?” asked Mercy.
“Godly?” Captain Rivers almost looked puzzled, then collected himself. “Absolutely. A staunch supporter of the Church, to be sure.”
“Well,” said Mercy quietly, “I hope that James will not wait too long before he brings her home.”
“Indeed,” said Rivers, noncommittally.
It wasn’t until he was sitting alone with the captain, after the ladies had retired, that Master returned to the subject of Vanessa and his son.
“I’m thinking of what you said about your cousin, and remembering my time in London,” John began quietly. “I should think she’d want her husband to be a fashionable man.”
“Probably,” Rivers answered.
“So she can’t like the fact that he’s in trade.”
“I couldn’t say.”
“From what I saw in London,” Master continued, “the English don’t consider a man a gentleman if he’s in trade. A man may belong to a gentry family and engage in trade because he has to—like our friend Albion. But once an Englishman makes his fortune in trade, he’ll probably sell up his business, buy an estate in the country, and set himself up as a gentleman there. Trade and being a gentleman don’t mix. But why is that, would you say?”
“It is true,” said Rivers, “that in England, a gentleman goes into Parliament, or the army, but avoids the counting house if he can.” He laughed. “They’re supposed to be the old warrior nobility. Knights in armor, you know. In theory at least.”
“It’s different in America.”
“A man like Washington in Virginia, say—an officer in the army, with a country house and huge estates—he’d be called a gentleman in England, without a doubt. Even Ben Franklin,” Rivers added with a smile, “is entirely retired from trade nowadays. He’s quite the gentleman in London.”
“And what does that make me?” asked Master wryly.
For just a moment, he saw a look of worry cross the aristocrat’s face. My God, Master realized, Rivers is wondering if he’s insulted me and I’ll refuse him a loan.
“In Carolina,” Rivers answered simply, “I work in my own storehouse, and I’ll sell you goods across the counter at my trading post. And you shouldn’t lend me a penny if I were too proud to do it. Here in New York, sir, you live in a far higher style than I. You have ships and businesses which others manage for you. Your landholdings are large. Should you ever consider returning to England, you would live as a very considerable gentleman indeed.” He gave Master a curious glance. “With your son there, I wonder if you think of it. You’d have many friends, including, I can assure you, the Riverdales.”
It was cleverly said, and kindly meant. But it also came as a shock. Return to England? After the Masters had been rich in New York for more than a century? The thought had never crossed his mind.
Yet later that night, thinking it over, he had to admit Rivers’s question was natural. His son was gone. He had an English wife. James was English. He was blind if he didn’t see it. And his English wife was only waiting, presumably, for James to inherit a fortune and retire from business.
And then John Master realized something else. He was determined to stop her. He wanted James back, here, in America. But how the devil was he to do it?
As the Master household entered the spring of 1773, Hudson had several things on his mind. He could count himself fortunate that he and his family were warm and well fed in one of the kindest houses in New York. That was a blessing. But there was still plenty to worry about. His first concern was Mercy Master.
Early in March, John Master had taken a ship down the coast to Carolina, inten
ding to spend some time inspecting the Rivers plantation. He had not been gone three days when Mercy fell sick. Hudson reckoned it must be something she had caught on one of her visits to the Poor House. A physician was called, but she lay in her bed with a fever for days on end, and though his wife and Hannah nursed her constantly, Ruth confided to Hudson that she wasn’t sure that their mistress would live. A letter was sent after John Master, but who knew when it would catch up with him. Meanwhile, Solomon was dispatched to Dutchess County to summon Susan from her farm.
But most touching to Hudson was the behavior of Abigail. She was only thirteen, yet she was quite as calm as any adult. Perhaps the visits to the sick that she’d made with her mother had prepared her. During the worst of her mother’s fever, she had quietly taken turns with Hannah to help at the bedside. By the time her elder sister arrived from Dutchess County, Mercy’s fever had somewhat subsided, and Abigail would sit by her bed, wipe her brow and talk to her gently, keeping her company by the hour.
Susan was a brisk, practical woman with two children of her own now, and another on the way. She stayed in the house for a week, and was pleasant company, but once she was sure that her mother was out of danger, she said that she must get back to her family. And as she truly remarked, nobody could be a better help to her mother than Abigail already was.