New York_ The Novel - Edward Rutherfurd [165]
“Good.” It was a mediocre argument, but the best Master could come up with.
“They say he is a traitor.”
“No. Your father has an honest disagreement, but he is not a traitor.”
“But the Loyalists are right, aren’t they?”
“They believe so. But the quarrel is complex.”
“But one side must be right and the other wrong,” said Weston, looking confused.
Master sighed. What could one say to a little boy?
“I am a Loyalist, Grandfather, aren’t I?” Weston pursued. “You told me so.”
“Yes.” Master smiled. “You are very loyal.”
“And you are a Loyalist, Grandfather, aren’t you?” asked Weston, wanting confirmation.
“Of course,” Master replied. “I am a Loyalist.”
Only he could not say the truth. That he was a Loyalist who’d lost his heart.
But he was still a businessman. General Clinton liked him. And so, that September, when Master suggested it might be time to fit out another privateer, Clinton was delighted. “Take from the French and the Patriots as much as you like,” the general encouraged him, “and I shall be vastly obliged to you.”
The preparations for the voyage were advancing well when a small incident occurred which took him by surprise. He was working quietly in his little library one morning when Hudson entered and requested a private interview.
“I was wanting, Boss,” he began, “to speak about Solomon. He’s been twenty-five a while now.”
Of course. Master felt a pang of guilt. He had always promised that Solomon should be free when he was twenty-five, and the distraction of the war was no excuse for his omitting to deliver on his promise.
“He shall be free today,” he told Hudson at once. But to his amazement, Hudson shook his head.
“I was hoping, Boss,” he said, “that you’d keep him a slave for a while.”
“Oh?” Master looked at him with some bewilderment.
“The fact is,” Hudson confessed, “he’s been keeping some bad company.”
There was no need, Hudson considered, to tell Master about the arguments he and Solomon had been having. And certainly no need to allude to his suspicions as to what his son might have got up to with Sam and Charlie White. Solomon was just an impatient young fellow in search of adventure. His father understood that well enough. But he also understood something else equally clearly.
If you were a black man, there was nobody you could trust. Yes, the British offered slaves their freedom, but they only did it to weaken the Patriot slave owners of the South. If the British won this war, he doubted they’d be helping the black man any more. As for the Patriots, if they could beat the British, they’d be wanting to get as many slaves back as they could.
Nothing was certain, but it seemed to Hudson that the nearest thing to security that his family had, whether slave or free, was the protection of John Master. So the last threat Solomon had uttered had filled his father with horror.
“I’m due my freedom now,” he’d said, “and when I get it, maybe I’ll be going off to join Captain Master.” And if he didn’t get his freedom, Hudson had inquired sarcastically, what then? “Then maybe I’ll run away to join the British Army and get it that way.” Whichever of these harebrained solutions his son attempted, Hudson could see nothing but trouble.
“Solomon don’t mean any harm, Boss,” he told Master, “but you might say he’s restless, and I’m afraid of him getting into all kinds of trouble if he’s free. Fact is,” he admitted mournfully, “I don’t know what to do with him.”
“In that case,” Master suggested with a smile, “I may have a solution. Let him serve on board the new privateer. That should give him some adventure and keep him out of trouble. Any prizes they take, as crew he may have his share. And the day this present conflict is over, he shall be free. Will that do?”
“Why, yes, Boss,” Hudson said, “I reckon it would.”
Soon afterward, when Solomon sailed away in the handsome ship, the merchant turned to Hudson and remarked with a grin: “I’ve every confidence that he’ll make an excellent New York pirate!