New York_ The Novel - Edward Rutherfurd [88]
“I should thank George Washington,” John Master would cheerfully say, “for making me a fortune.”
War had meant privateering, and John Master had done well out of that. It was a high-risk business, but he’d figured it out. Most voyages made a loss; but the profits from the few captured were spectacular. By taking shares in about a dozen ships at a time, and averaging his risk, his profits had more than paid for the losses. In fact, he’d been able to double or triple his investment every year. It was a rich man’s game. But he could afford to play.
The real benefit to New York, however, was the British Army. Before long, ten, twenty and soon twenty-five thousand redcoats had arrived from England to fight the French, together with a huge fleet and nearly fifteen thousand sailors. They came to New York and Boston.
Armies and fleets need provisioning. Not only that: the officers wanted houses built, and services of every kind. In addition to his regular trade supplying the Caribbean, John Master was getting huge government contracts for grain, timber, cloth and rum; and so were most of the other merchants he knew. Modest craftsmen, swamped with demand, were upping their prices. True, some laboring men complained that off-duty soldiers were taking part-time jobs and stealing work from them. But by and large, laboring families like Charlie’s could get unheard-of wages. Most people in New York with anything to sell could say with feeling: “God bless the redcoats.”
“I get a lot of building work,” said Charlie. “Can’t complain.”
They talked of their families, and of old times, and they drank through the evening. And remembering his youth, it seemed to John that it hadn’t been such a bad thing that he’d spent time with fellows like Charlie. I may be a rich man of forty now, living in comfort, he thought, but I know the life of the streets, the wharfs, and the taverns, and I run my business better because of it. He knew what men like Charlie were thinking, knew when they were lying, knew how to handle them. He thought of his own son, James. James was a good fellow. He loved the boy, and there was nothing much wrong with him. He’d taken pains with his general education, always explaining things about the trade of the city, things to watch out for. Putting him on the right path. But the fact was, John considered, that the next generation was being brought up too genteel. What James needed, his father was thinking, was to learn a few of the lessons that he’d learned himself.
So when, late in the evening, Charlie remarked that his son Sam was thirteen, exactly the same age as James, John suddenly leaned over to him and said: “You know what, Charlie, your Sam and my James should get together. What do you think?”
“I’d like that, John.”
“Why don’t I send him over?”
“You know where to find me.”
“Day after tomorrow, then. Noon.”
“We’ll be waiting.”
“He’ll be there. Let’s have a last drink.”
The Pope had been burned to a cinder by the time they parted.
The following morning, John Master told his son James about Charlie White and that he was to go to visit him the next day. He reminded him again that evening. Early on the day in question, before he went out, he gave James precise directions for finding Charlie’s house, and told him not to be late. James promised he’d be punctual.
Mercy Master had a visitor of her own that afternoon. She’d chosen a time carefully. Both her son James and his elder sister Susan were out. Her husband wouldn’t be home for a long time yet. When the architect arrived, he was ushered by Hudson into her parlor, where she had cleared a little table, and soon the drawings were laid out upon it.
She was preparing her husband’s tomb.
Not that she wanted John dead. Far from it. Indeed, it was part of her passion that John should be well cared for, dead or alive. And so, as a Quaker, she was being practical.
Mercy’s passion for her