New York_ The Novel - Edward Rutherfurd [65]
But above all, for anyone in the streets, the wretchedness came from the fetid air. Horse droppings, cowpats, slops from the houses, and garbage and grime, dead cats and birds, excrement of every kind, lay strewn on the ground, waiting for the rain to wash it all away, or the sun to bake it to powder. And on a hot and steamy day, from this putrid mess, a soupy stench arose, fermented by the sun, creeping up wooden walls and fences, impregnating brick and mortar, choking every ventricle, stinging the eyes, rising to the roof gables.
This was the smell of summer in New York.
But by God it was British. A man gazing at it across the East River might be near the village of Brooklyn where Dutch was still spoken, but he was situated in Kings County nonetheless, and the next county upriver was Queens. Behind Manhattan island, he would see the mainland across the Hudson River. And for that territory, Charles II of England himself had chosen the name New Jersey.
Within the city, the Dutch, step-gabled houses of New Amsterdam were still charmingly to be seen, especially below Wall Street; but the newer houses were in the simple, English Georgian style. The old Dutch City Hall had also been succeeded by a classical building that sat on Wall and gazed complacently down Broad Street. One might hear Dutch spoken by the market stalls, but not in the merchants’ houses.
With English language went English liberties. The city had a royal charter, with the king’s own seal on it. True, a former governor had demanded a bribe to procure this royal recognition, but you expected that sort of thing. And once such a charter was granted and sealed, the free men of the city could point to it for the rest of time. They elected their city councillors; they were free-born Englishmen.
Some people in New York might have said that this English freedom was less than perfect. The ever-growing number of slaves sold in the market at the foot of Wall Street might have said so; but they were Negroes who, New Yorkers were now generally agreed, were an inferior people. The women of New York—those who still remembered the old Dutch laws which made them equal to their menfolk—may also have regretted their inferior status under British law. But honest Englishmen were well assured that such complaints from the weaker sex were unseemly.
No: what mattered was escaping the tyranny of kings. Puritans and Huguenots were equally agreed. No Louis, King of France; no Catholic James. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 had established that the Protestant British Parliament would oversee the king. As for English common law, the right to trial by jury, and to assemblies that could refuse oppressive taxes, why some of those ancient rights went back five hundred years, to Magna Carta or before. In short, the men of New York were just as free as the good fellows back in England who had cut their king’s head off, not a century ago, when he tried to be a tyrant.
That was why the trial, taking place tomorrow, was so important.
The two men walked along the road together. The man in the tightly buttoned brown coat seemed uncomfortable. Perhaps it was just the heat. Or perhaps something else was worrying him.
Mr. Eliot Master of Boston was a good man, who cared about his children. He was also a cautious lawyer. He would smile, certainly, when it was appropriate; and laugh when it was called for, though not too loud and not too long. So it was unusual for him to worry that he might have made a terrible mistake.
He had only just met his New York cousin for the first time, but already he had reservations about