New York_ The Novel - Edward Rutherfurd [43]
Well, I could see the Boss was taking to this idea. Jan was liking it as well, and sometimes Jan would say they should buy some land. But not the Mistress. She went on wearing a plain round cap on her head and a loose Dutch gown, like the other Dutchwomen. But those Dutchwomen loved jewelry even more than the English. She liked having big jewels hanging from her ears, and I reckon she had a jeweled ring on every finger. And most of the time she would be sucking on her clay pipe.
As for being impressed with anything that was English, she was further from that than ever.
“That is a contemptible nation,” she used to say. “They let themselves be ruled by the papists.”
For it turned out that our owner the Duke of York had been a secret Catholic all along. People reckoned King Charles II might be a secret Catholic too, but he denied it. The Duke of York didn’t hide it though. He was all for the Catholics, and he even sent a Catholic governor to New York. You can follow almost any religion in New York, or none. For they say half the people here don’t believe in any religion at all. But almost everyone is afraid of the Catholics.
That Catholic governor made a charter giving free elections in the province and promising there should be no taxes raised without the men who were elected having a say. So even some of the religious Dutch said he wasn’t so bad. But the Mistress wasn’t impressed.
“Never trust an Englishman,” she would say, “and never trust a papist.”
The winter that ended the year 1684 was uncommonly cold. The big pond north of the town was frozen solid for three months. Like most Dutch people, the Boss liked to skate on the ice; and one morning we all went up there together with Jan and his two little daughters too.
Jan worked with his father, but in those years the business of distilling rum from molasses had been greatly increasing. There had been a distillery across the harbor on Staten Island for quite a while, but Jan had set up another in the town with Mr. Master. He was trading in the spirits that came from Holland as well, like the gin they call Genever.
And the Mistress came with Miss Clara and her husband. They hadn’t any children yet, but I had never seen her look more beautiful. The Boss showed all the children, including my son Hudson, how to skate, and the Mistress was all smiles and said to see all the people skating on that big pond was just like a Dutch painting. She didn’t even seem to mind when Mr. Master and his family showed up.
Now Mr. Master had a son named Henry, who must have been about eighteen years old at this time. He looked just like his father. And when that young man saw Miss Clara looking so pretty and flushed with the exercise and the cold air, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. And they skated together. Even the Mistress was amused and said, “The boy’s in love with you.”
That day would always stay in my mind as a very happy one.
The blow fell in 1685. The news broke over New York like a thunderclap. King Charles II was dead and his brother the Duke of York was king in his place. King James II, the Catholic.
New York had a Catholic king. In no time at all, he was giving Catholics the running of things. Then he tore up the charter that gave elections to the province here. “I told you so,” the Mistress said. “I told you never to trust a Catholic.”
That wasn’t the worst of it. Over in France, King Louis XIV suddenly decided to throw all the Protestants out of his kingdom. There were a huge number of these folk, and they had to take what possessions they could and run. Some went to the Netherlands, and before long they were arriving in New York as well. Huguenots, people called them.
One day Meinheer Leisler came to see the Mistress in the company of one of these Huguenots, a very stately man called Monsieur