New York_ The Novel - Edward Rutherfurd [79]
“You’d better be careful, nigger,” he said viciously, “if I were you.” Then he waved him away. Hudson had still been in a state of astonishment when he went into the tavern, and met the slave who explained what was going on.
The best thing might have been to go back to the waterside, but he didn’t want to encounter the captain, who’d be looking for him by now. In the worst case, he could head out of the town, and sleep in the open. But he didn’t want to do that. The thought that the baker’s family might have stolen his money worried him considerably.
He was moving cautiously, therefore, as he made his way through the streets.
The trouble had started on March 18. A mysterious fire broke out in the governor’s house, and the fort had been burned down. Nobody knew who’d done it. Exactly a week later, another fire had started. Seven days after that, van Zant’s warehouse had burst into flames.
It was arson, clearly. But what was its purpose? Thefts had also taken place. Were the gangs of burglars in the town starting the fires as diversions for their activities? Or could the papists be behind it? The British were at war with Catholic Spain again, and most of the garrison at the fort had been sent to attack Spanish Cuba. Were Spanish Jesuits organizing mayhem in the British colonies? The fires multiplied.
And then a black slave named Cuffee was caught, running from one of them.
A slave revolt: the fear of every slave-owning colonist. The city had experienced one back in 1712—quickly put down, but terrifying while it lasted. More recently there had been revolts on the West Indies plantations, and Carolina. Only last year mobs of slaves had tried to burn down Charleston.
So when the city recorder had taken over the investigation, suspicion soon focused on the Negroes. And it wasn’t long before he’d found a seedy tavern, run by an Irishman known to be a fence for stolen goods, and frequented by Negroes. Soon the tavern’s prostitute was talking. Money was offered for testimony. Testimony came.
There was an easy way of getting slaves to confess. Build a bonfire in a public place, put the Negro on it, light the bonfire and ask him questions. Slaves were soon being accused and questioned, even the slaves of respectable people, in this manner. Two slaves, one belonging to John Roosevelt the butcher, gave the desired confessions as they were put to the fire, and, hoping to escape at the last moment, started naming others. Fifty names came thus, in the twinkling of an eye; and the recorder would have spared their lives for such useful testimony; except that the crowd, moved by their natural feelings, threatened to riot themselves, if they could not watch the black men fry.
But now the business of justice was truly begun. Accusations came thick and fast. Any black man doing anything that looked the least suspicious was thrown in jail. By late May, almost half the Negro men in the city were behind bars, waiting to be tried for something.
John Master looked at the Indian belt thoughtfully. He’d always liked that belt, ever since he was a child. “It was my van Dyck grandfather’s dying wish that I should have this belt,” his father had often told him. “He set great store by it.” So when his father had given it to him on his twenty-first birthday, and said, “May it bring you good fortune,” John had been touched, and kept it safely in his big oak press ever since. Sometimes he would take it out and look at the pleasing pattern of the wampum shells, but he hardly ever put it on. This evening was a special occasion, though. And he hoped it might bring him luck.
Tonight he was going to ask Mercy Brewster to be his wife.
The last five years had seen a remarkable change in young John Master. Though he’d kept his good looks,