New York - The Novel

was the one who went behind the governor’s back, who composed letters to the West India Company and published complaints—all to bring down Stuyvesant. And for what? “The Jonker is a lover of liberty,” her husband used to tell her. “You’re all fools,” she would cry. “He loves only himself. He’ll rule you in Stuyvesant’s place if you give him half the chance.”
    Fortunately the Jonker had failed to destroy Stuyvesant, but he’d managed to get his hands on a big estate north of the city. He’d even written a book on New Netherland which her husband assured her was fine. The wretch was dead and gone now—thank God! But the people of New Amsterdam still called his big estate “The Jonker’s Land,” as if the fellow were still there. And his example had so infected the merchants that, in her opinion, Stuyvesant shouldn’t trust any of them.
    The governor’s hard eyes were fixed on her.
    “Can I count upon you, Greet?”
    Her heart missed a beat. She couldn’t help it.
    “Oh yes.”
    He was happily married, of course. At least, she supposed he was. He and Judith Bayard lived up at their bouwerie, as the Dutch called their farms, with every appearance of contentment. Judith was older than Peter. It was she who’d nursed him back to health after he lost his leg, and married him afterward. So far as Margaretha knew, he’d only once had an affair, and that had been when he was a young man, long before he met Judith. A small scandal. She thought the better of him for it. If it hadn’t been for that little scandal, he might have become a Calvinist minister like his father, instead of joining the West India Company and going to seek his fortune on the high seas.
    “And your husband? Can I count on him?”
    “My husband?” Wherever he might be. Avoiding her.
    Well, that was about to change. While he’d been away, she had giventhe matter some thought and formulated a plan for his future that would be more satisfactory. It was lucky that Dutch custom gave women far more freedom—and power—than the women of most other nations. And thank God for Dutch prenuptial agreements. She had some very definite plans for Dirk van Dyck, when he came home.
    “Oh yes,” she said. “He’ll do as I say.”
    “I am going down to the fort,” Stuyvesant said. “Will you walk with me?”

    London. A cheerful spring day. The River Thames was crowded with ships. Thomas Master gazed at the vessel before him and tried to decide.
    In his hand was the letter from his brother Eliot, telling him that their father was dead. Tom was too honest to pretend he was sorry. He was twenty-two, and now he was free.
    So which should it be? England or America?
    On his left lay the great, gray mass of the Tower of London, silent, giving nothing away. Behind him, as he glanced back, the long, high roof of Old St. Paul’s suggested disapproval. But of what? Of himself, no doubt. After all, he’d been sent to London in disgrace.
    Thirty years ago, when Adam Master from England’s East Coast and Abigail Eliot from the West Country had first met in London, these two earnest young Puritans had agreed that England’s capital was a shocking place. King Charles I was on the throne; he had a French Catholic wife; he was trying to rule England like a despot, and his new henchman, Archbishop Laud, was determined to make all Englishmen conform to the high ceremonies and haughty authority of an Anglican Church that was papist in all but name. After they married, Adam and Abigail had stuck it out in London for a few years, in the hope that things might get better. But for Puritans the times had only got worse. So Adam and Abigail Master had joined the great migration to America.
    Englishmen had been going to Virginia for two generations. By the time Shakespeare’s Globe Theater was performing his plays on the Thames’s south bank, half the population of London were smoking clay pipes of Virginia tobacco. But the number who’d actually left for Virginia was still modest. A few hardy souls had ventured to Massachusetts; other settlements had also started. But it was hardly a migration.
    In the second half of King Charles’s reign, however, something completelydifferent occurred. The Puritans of England started leaving. From the south, the east, the west, they gathered in groups, sometimes families, sometimes whole communities, and took ship across the Atlantic. There was hardly a week when a vessel wasn’t sailing from somewhere. From