New York - The Novel Read Free

Walloons, three hundred Germans and almost as many English who’d chosen to live under Dutch rule. The rest came from all parts of the world. There were even some Jews. And among them all, how many upright, righteous men? Not many, in her opinion.
    Margaretha was not a religious woman. The Dutch Reform Church was stern and Calvinistic; she didn’t always abide by its rules. But she admired the few strong men who did—men like Bogard, the old dominie preacher, and Stuyvesant. At least they stood for order.
    When Stuyvesant clamped down on the excessive drinking in the town, or forbade some of the more obviously pagan folk festivals, or tried to keep the town free of the foolish Quakers or wretched Anabaptists, did any of the merchants support him? Hardly any. Not even the Dutch West India Company, whose servant he was, could be relied upon. When a parcel of Sephardic Jews arrived from Brazil, and Stuyvesant told them to go elsewhere, the company ordered him: “Let them in. They’re good for business.”
    No one could deny that he’d been a fine governor. The men who came before him had mostly been corrupt buffoons. One idiot had even started an unnecessary war with the Indians that had nearly destroyed the colony. But Stuyvesant had learned to rule wisely. To the north, he kept the English at bay. To the south, he had made short work of an upstart Swedish colony on the Schuylkill River when it had become an irritation. He’dencouraged the sugar trade, and started to bring in more slaves. Every ship from Holland brought, as ballast, the best Dutch bricks to build the city’s houses. The streets were clean, there was a little hospital now, and the school had a Latin master.
    Yet were the people grateful? Of course not. They resented his rule. They even thought they could govern themselves, the fools. Were these men capable of governing? She doubted it.
    The worst of them had been a two-faced lawyer, van der Donck. The Jonker, they’d called him: the squire. He was the one who went behind the governor’s back, who composed letters to the West India Company and published complaints—all to bring down Stuyvesant. And for what? “The Jonker is a lover of liberty,” her husband used to tell her. “You’re all fools,” she would cry. “He loves only himself. He’ll rule you in Stuyvesant’s place if you give him half the chance.”
    Fortunately the Jonker had failed to destroy Stuyvesant, but he’d managed to get his hands on a big estate north of the city. He’d even written a book on New Netherland which her husband assured her was fine. The wretch was dead and gone now—thank God! But the people of New Amsterdam still called his big estate “The Jonker’s Land,” as if the fellow were still there. And his example had so infected the merchants that, in her opinion, Stuyvesant shouldn’t trust any of them.
    The governor’s hard eyes were fixed on her.
    “Can I count upon you, Greet?”
    Her heart missed a beat. She couldn’t help it.
    “Oh yes.”
    He was happily married, of course. At least, she supposed he was. He and Judith Bayard lived up at their bouwerie, as the Dutch called their farms, with every appearance of contentment. Judith was older than Peter. It was she who’d nursed him back to health after he lost his leg, and married him afterward. So far as Margaretha knew, he’d only once had an affair, and that had been when he was a young man, long before he met Judith. A small scandal. She thought the better of him for it. If it hadn’t been for that little scandal, he might have become a Calvinist minister like his father, instead of joining the West India Company and going to seek his fortune on the high seas.
    “And your husband? Can I count on him?”
    “My husband?” Wherever he might be. Avoiding her.
    Well, that was about to change. While he’d been away, she had giventhe matter some thought and formulated a plan for his future that would be more satisfactory. It was lucky that Dutch