New York_ The Novel - Edward Rutherfurd [20]
He received a friendly welcome. The people of the village were busy, because it was harvest time. Like most of the local Indians, they had planted maize in March, then kidney beans, which served as useful props for the tall maize plants, in May. Now both were being harvested. For two days, van Dyck and his men remained in the village, helping with the harvest. It was hard work in the hot sun, but he enjoyed it. Though they had little fur to sell, the Algonquin were still able to trade maize to the White Man, and van Dyck promised he would return in a month to take a cargo of maize downriver for them.
The harvest went well. On the third day they had all sat down for the evening meal, and the women were bringing out the food, when a small boat came in sight. It was paddled by a single man.
As the boat drew near, van Dyck watched. When it reached the shore, the man stepped out and dragged the boat up the bank. He was a fairhaired young fellow, still in his early twenties, with slightly protruding teeth. His face was pleasing, but quite hard. Despite the warm weather, he was wearing riding boots and a black coat that was splashed with mud. His blue eyes were keen. From the boat he lifted a leather bag, which he slung over his shoulder.
The Indians looked at him suspiciously. When one of them addressed him, it was clear that he did not speak Algonquin. But by an easy gesture he made clear that he was asking for food and shelter; and it was not the custom of the Algonquin to refuse. Van Dyck motioned the stranger to sit beside him.
It took only a few moments to discover that the young man did not speak Dutch either. He was English, which van Dyck could speak well enough. But the fair-haired man in the dark coat seemed cautious about saying much in that language also.
“Where are you from?” van Dyck asked.
“Boston.”
“What’s your business?”
“Merchant.”
“What brings you here?”
“I was in Connecticut. Got robbed. Lost my horse. Thought I’d go downriver.” He took the bowl of corn he’d been offered and started to eat, avoiding further questions.
There were two kinds of men van Dyck knew in Boston. The first were the godly men, the stern Puritans whose congregations lived in the light of the Lord. It was a harsh light, though. If Stuyvesant was intolerant of outsiders like the Quakers, and kicked them out when he could, that was nothing to what the people of Massachusetts did to them. Flogged them half to death, from all accounts. It did not seem to him that the stranger was one of the godly, though. The second kind were the men who’d come to New England for the money to be made in fishing and trading. Tough, hard men. Maybe the young stranger fell into this category.
But his story seemed unlikely. Was he a fugitive of some kind who’d gone west to shake off his pursuers? Stolen the boat too, maybe. He resolved to keep a careful eye on him.
Tom Master had not been having a very good time. His voyage to Boston with the English fleet had encountered storms. When he had reached Boston and gone to the family house, now occupied by his brother, Eliot had greeted him with a look of horror, followed by hours of silence that, Tom decided, were even more unpleasant than the storms at sea. His brother did not actually throw him out of the house, but he made it clear in his quiet, serious way that, dead or not, their father should be obeyed; and that Tom had violated every rule of decency by attempting to re-enter the family circle.
At first Tom had been hurt, then angry. The third day, he’d decided to treat the whole business as a joke; out of sight of his brother, he had laughed.
But finding employment in Boston proved to be no laughing matter. Whether he had a bad reputation, or whether Eliot had been busy warning everybody about him, he could find no encouragement from any of the merchants he knew. Evidently, if he remained in Boston, life was going to be difficult.
He also wondered if his father had made any provision for him in his will. But when he asked his brother,