New York_ The Novel - Edward Rutherfurd [14]
“Tell me what you remember about me when I was little,” she said.
“We should move on,” he answered, “but I will tell you as we go.”
So they left the glade where the wild strawberries grew, and found the old Indian trail again, and as he rode slowly along, he did his best to call to mind all the little incidents he could remember from her childhood, of days he had spent together with her and her mother; and this seemed to please Pale Feather. After a time, though she was not tired, he put her up on the horse in front of him.
They reached the top of Manhattan well before dusk and camped on high ground above some Indian caves. Wrapping themselves in two blankets, they lay staring up at the sky, which was clear and full of stars.
“Do you know where my mother is now?” she asked him.
“Yes.” He knew what the Indians believed. He pointed his arm along the line of the Milky Way. “Her spirit has traveled along the path of stars to the twelfth heaven. She is with the Maker of all things.”
She was silent for a long time, and he wondered if she were still awake. But then, in a sleepy voice, she said: “I think of you often.”
“I think of you too.”
“If you cannot see me, you can always hear me.”
“Tell me how.”
“When there is a little breeze, listen to the voice of the wind sighing in the pine trees. Then you will hear me.”
“I will listen,” he said.
The next morning they made their way down to the water and found the two Indians with the big canoe. There they parted and Dirk van Dyck went home.
Margaretha van Dyck waited three weeks. It was a Sunday afternoon. Her husband had been reading a story to their children, and Quash the slave boy, in the parlor while she sat in a chair watching. These were the times she liked him best. Their son Jan was thirteen, a strong boy with a mop of brown hair, who admired his father and who wanted to follow in his footsteps. Dirk would take him to the company warehouse, explain the workings of the ships, the ports they called at, and the trade winds their captains had to follow. But Jan also reminded her of her own father. He had less waywardness of spirit than Dirk, more love of the counting house. She thought he’d do well.
They had lost two other children a few years ago to a fever. That had been a terrible blow. But the compensation had been the arrival of little Clara. Fair-haired and blue-eyed, she was now five years old, and looked like an angel. A wonderfully sweet-natured child. Her father adored her.
As for Quash the slave boy, he was coming along very well. He was about the same age as Jan, and had been allowed to play with him when he was younger. He was very good with Clara, too. But Quash knew his place.
And watching her husband contentedly reading to his family, Margaretha thought that perhaps her marriage might still become a very happy one, if she could make some small adjustments.
So after the reading was over and the children had gone to a neighbor’s, and her husband had remarked that he’d need to make another trip upriver soon, she nodded quietly. Then she sprang her trap.
“I was thinking, Dirk, that it’s time you joined a syndicate.”
He looked up quickly, then shrugged.
“Can’t afford it.”
But she knew he was paying attention.
Dirk van Dyck had a talent for the fur business. A quarter-century ago, when the West India Company still monopolized the trade of the port, he would have been a more significant figure. But since then, the economy of New Amsterdam had opened up and expanded hugely; and it was the golden circle of leading families—Beekmans, van Rensselaers, van Cortlandts and a score of others—who formed the syndicates to finance the shipping of tobacco, sugar, slaves and other growing commodities. This was where a man could make a fortune. If he had the price of entry.
“We may have more money than you think,” she