New York_ The Novel - Edward Rutherfurd [72]
Before they rose from the table, Dirk Master made her father promise that he would come to visit them again while in New York, and she was glad that her father politely said that he would.
“You’ll be at the court for the whole trial?” the merchant asked.
“From the beginning to the end.”
“And Miss Kate?” their host inquired.
“Oh, indeed,” she said enthusiastically. “My father is concerned with royal tyranny, but I have come to support the freedom of the press.” Her father smiled.
“My daughter is of the same opinion as the poet: ‘As good almost kill a man as kill a good book.’”
It was the sort of quotation that, in their Boston household, might be heard on any day of the week.
“‘He who destroys a good book, kills reason itself,’” Kate immediately chimed in.
Their host looked at them both, and shook his head.
“It sounds familiar, but what are you quoting?” he asked genially.
Kate was surprised he would need reminding. The words came from John Milton, author of Paradise Lost. Not from a poem, but a pamphlet, the greatest defense of Free Speech and the freedom of the press that was ever penned.
“It’s from Milton’s Areopagitica,” she said.
“Ah, Milton,” said her host.
But young John’s face contracted into a frown.
“Harry who?” he asked.
It came unbidden. She did not even have time to think. She burst out laughing.
And young John Master blushed, and looked ashamed.
“Well,” said her father cheerfully, as they walked back to their lodgings, “the dinner could have been worse. Though I’m sorry your New York kinsmen turn out to be smugglers.”
“Mr. Master seems well informed,” she suggested.
“Hmm. In his way, I dare say. The boy, I’m afraid,” he added confidently, “is beyond redemption.”
“Perhaps,” she ventured, “you are too harsh.”
“I think not.”
“I liked him, Father,” she said, “very much.”
The court was on the main floor of the City Hall on Wall Street. The courtroom was a light-filled, lofty space. The two judges, Philipse and Delancey, wigged and robed in scarlet, sat enthroned upon a dais. The jury sat together on two benches to their left. The crowd of people, of all sorts, were seated around the sides, and on the floor of the hall. It might have been a Protestant congregation about to hear a preacher. In the center, before the judges, was the dock, like a box pew, for the accused. He had not far to come, for the cells were in the basement of the building.
Kate and her father had secured good seats in the front row. She looked around the hall eagerly, taking in the scene. But most interesting of all to her was to witness the change in her father. To the outside observer, he looked the quiet, careful lawyer that he was; but to Kate, his unwonted paleness, the alertness in his eye, and the taut nervousness of his face told a different story. She’d never seen her father so eager in her life.
Bradley, the Attorney General, in wig and long black gown, plump and confident, was nodding briskly to people here and there. The court had appointed a lawyer named Chambers, competent enough, to defend the printer. The Attorney General nodded to Chambers, too, as though to say: “It is not your fault, sir, that you are about to be crushed.”
And now there was a stir. Through a small door at the back of the court, two officers like huge, black bumblebees were bringing Zenger in. How small he seemed between them, a neat little fellow in a blue coat, who nonetheless kept his head up bravely as they led him to his box, and shut him in.