New York_ The Novel - Edward Rutherfurd [57]
In the spring, we were put back to work in the fields again, digging and plowing. And I was at work about noon one day, all caked in mud, when I saw a light covered cart rolling up the lane, and a man and a woman get out and go into the house. Some time later the planter came out and shouted to me to come over, so I hurried to him. And as I stood in front of him, taking care to look down at the ground, I heard a rustle of a dress on the veranda; but I daren’t look up to see who it was, and then I heard a voice I knew saying: “Why, Quash, don’t you know me?” And I realized it was Miss Clara.
“You’ve changed, Quash,” Miss Clara said to me, as she and Mr. Master brought me back to New York. “Did he mistreat you?”
I was still too ashamed of being whipped to tell her, so I said: “I’m all right, Miss Clara.”
“It took us a while to find out where you were,” she told me. “My mother refused to tell who she sold you to. I had people asking all over town. We only found out the other day.”
I asked if they knew anything of Hudson.
“He was sold to a sea captain, but we don’t know who. He could be anywhere. I’m sorry, Quash,” she said. “You may have lost him.”
I couldn’t speak for a moment.
“It was good of you to come for me,” I said.
“I had to pay quite a price for you,” said young Henry Master with a laugh. “The old planter knew we wanted you, so he did me no favors.”
“We know you were supposed to have your freedom,” said Miss Clara.
“Hmm,” said her husband. “I don’t know about that. Not after what I just had to pay. But we still have to decide what to do with you, Quash.”
It seemed that the difficulty was the Mistress. Recently she had gone upriver all the way to Schenectady, intending to live there. She chose that place on account of the fact that it had a strong Dutch church and a town with hardly any English in it. “So long as she stays up there, we can keep you with us, or at my brother’s,” explained Miss Clara. “But my brother doesn’t want her coming back and finding you back. It might make her angry, and she still controls everything at present. I’m sorry you can’t be free,” she added.
“It don’t matter, Miss Clara,” I said. For I was better off with them than with that planter. And besides, what was freedom to me now, if my son was still a slave?
Through that spring and summer I worked for Miss Clara and her family. And since I knew how to do most everything about the house, I was very helpful to them.
In particular, I took pleasure in her son Dirk. He was a mischievous little boy, full of life, and I thought I could see something of the Boss in him. He had fair hair and blue eyes like his mother, but you could see already that he had a quickness in him; though when it came to his lessons, he was a little bit lazy. And how that child loved to go by the waterside. He reminded me of my own son. I’d take him down there and let him look at the boats and talk to the sailors. But above all, he liked to go round past the fort so he could look up the river. That river seemed to draw him somehow. For his birthday, which fell in the summer, he was asked what he would like, and he asked if he could go upriver in a boat. So on a fine day young Henry Master and the little boy and me all set out on a big sailing boat; and we went up that mighty river, running before the wind and with the tide, all the way up past the stone palisades. We camped for the night before returning. And during that journey, Dirk was allowed to wear the Indian wampum belt, which we passed round his body three times.
“This belt is important, isn’t it, Quash?” Dirk said to me.
“Your grandfather attached great value to it,” I answered, “and he gave it to you special, to keep all your life and to pass on in the family.”
“I like the patterns on it,” he said.
“They say those wampum patterns have a special meaning,” I told him, “telling how the Boss was a great man and suchlike. I believe they were given to him by Indians who held him in particular