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“It’s different for you, Dan,” said Robert, shrinking from his friend’s anger but still persistent. “You’re not really English, and Anneke’s Dutch. But Bess and I aren’t. Imagine what the Winthrops would say if we betook ourselves under the Dutch flag.”

“A pox on the Winthrops!” Daniel roared. “And a pox on you for a faint lily-livered numbskull!” He had been swilling rum steadily since the day they found the Labdens, and his temper - never placid - was dangerous. His fist clenched, his red beard quivered, and Elizabeth, fearing he might hit Robert, had intervened hastily.

“The Dutch have the best claim to our land, husband. You
know
that. Remember Governor Kieft’s stern letter! If we persist in denying them it’ll be worse for the English, might even start a war.”

It was this argument which eventually wore down Robert’s resistance, joined to his innate dependence on Elizabeth’s judgment and his fear of Daniel’s disapproval. Moreover, at this time he developed blinding headaches, and his nightmares returned. They did not seem to be based on the horror he had seen in the Labden hut, as might be supposed, but from his muttered cries at night, Elizabeth deduced that he was again bedevilled by the old mysterious trouble in London. During the last week she unwillingly recognized some signs of the “strangeness” which had been absent for two years, but ascribed this to the headaches for which she dosed him unavailingly with witch-hazel. When Toby’s
Dolphin
yesterday entered the cove, and the expedition today had been decided, it was clear that Robert, though no longer opposed, was not well enough to go. He had been wan and moaning with headache at dawn today when they sailed off towards New Amsterdam. Anneke and Joan were tending him, and caring for the younger children.

“Sit down i’ the bilges! Hold fast, and keep outa my way!” suddenly commanded Toby, tightening sail and pushing the tiller hard over. “Ben, watch it!” he called to the bow. Elizabeth crouched, holding; to the combing, but Daniel said sharply, “What for?”

“Hell Gate,” said Toby. “Fall overboard, then, if you wish.”

Daniel looked ahead at a narrow stretch of boiling waters, where a small Dutch sloop was pitching and churning violently, while the skipper with a steering oar tried to free his craft from a whirlpool. Daniel sat down in the bilges. “Do we have to go through
that?”
he called to Toby, who did not bother to answer but plunged into the roaring rapids cannily steering close to a large rounded point on the Long Island shore, where the current ran freer. The
Dolphin
grazed a hidden rock, then shot through the tide-rip like an arrow, and settled down in quieter waters near a long splinter of an island where swine were grazing.

“Good for you, Toby!” cried Elizabeth, exhilarated. “No wonder ‘tis called Hell Gate. And what a fine sailor you are!”

“Chancy run-through at this tide, couldn’t a done it later - “ said Toby, his heavy freckled face indicating recognition of Elizabeth’s compliment. “Now we’ll soon be to the Fort,” he added with satisfaction. Toby approved of this mission. He liked the Dutch and enjoyed himself at New Amsterdam. They had a dozen taprooms, overflowing with rich food and a variety of potent liquors. Also most of the mynheers were easygoing and liberal with their guilders. They’d buy all the beaver and otter pelts Toby could pick up, and pay well besides for messenger service between the Long Island settlements and Manhattan. There had, however, been some recent awkwardness since Director General Kieft had demanded the submission of the Feakes, and had his request ignored. Toby had found his New Netherland markets shutting against him. On his last visit the schout, or sheriff, had rescinded his trader’s licence and warned him away from the Fort until the matter of his uncle’s allegiance should be settled. So Toby had needed no inducement to make this trip.

As they skimmed down the East River and neared Manhattan’s tip, the water traffic thickened. They passed Indian dugouts with pointed stern and bow, heavier built than the New England canoes. The paddling Indians, clothed in wildcat and wolfskins, with lopsided hair arrangements, also looked different. “Hackensacks, Raritans, or mebbe Mohawks from way up the North River,” said Toby indifferently in answer to Elizabeth’s question. “There’s a ship in from Holland!” he added, pointing. “My pelts’ll fetch a good price soon as you and Patrick’ve cleared us.”

So filled was the harbour with shipping - sloops, yachts, canoes, shallops, and barges - that at first Elizabeth did not see the great high-pooped West Indiaman, riding at anchor near the Breucklen shore. When she did, she looked from its ensign to the larger counterpart on the Fort’s flagstaff, a piece of cloth with horizontal red, white, and blue stripes fluttering in the breeze.

Elizabeth, accustomed to the English cross of St. George, thought that this neat tricolour did not look like a flag at all, and was dismayed. Oh, what are we doing? she thought. And to Daniel she cried sharply, “I think we must be mad! We can’t give Greenwich to Holland. Robert was right. Let’s go back!”

The two men stared at her in astonishment. Toby shrugged and steered for the landing. Daniel said soothingly, “Me dear girl, ye’re talking nonsense. ‘Tis late days fur patriotic qualms. What’s more, we can’t help ourselves. Can’t go it alone in case o’ trouble.”

The Indians again, Elizabeth thought, annoyed. Daniel had changed, grown jumpy and crotchety as an old woman. It was the drink perhaps. She knew Anneke was worried.

“Bess,” said Daniel, watching her. “Stop sitting there all broody. We’ll have no chopping an’ changing now. Ye’re a smart woman, and used to your own way, but ye ha’nt allus got good sense and ye’ll take orders for once.”

Elizabeth’s rebellion was soon quenched by self-doubt, and the realization that even did she change her mind, there was little she could do. Daniel had Robert’s signed authorization in his knapsack.

“Aye, perhaps you’re right,” she said at last.

New Amsterdam was a quaint, colourful town, dominated by the peculiar many-angled earthen Fort and a windmill. Strung along the shore, outside the Fort, were fifty little bouweries, plots of land each with a house, topped by a steep-pitched roof sparkling with red tiles. The houses were enclosed by picket fences and gardens already bright with daffodils and early tulips. In every window there were starched white curtains. Despite the noisy chickens and pigs rooting in the swill which had been dumped in the dusty streets, the little town gave an impression of cleanliness and gaiety. Elizabeth’s spirits rose, for there was much to look at

On their walk from the landing place to the new City Tavern, which Kieft had erected for the reception of strangers, they met a motley assortment - working folk bunchily clad in vivid linsey-woolseys clomped along in wooden shoes, and a fat mounted burgomaster rode by in a richness of fur, plumed hat, and big lace ruff as she hadn’t seen since London. His wife ambled beside him, looking placid and prosperous in an otter-trimmed gown and velvet cap edged with tiny pearls. But New Amsterdam was a cosmopolitan town and transiently contained many nationalities.

They met two Spanish sailors with scarlet bandannas and gold earrings, and an Angol slave, his sleek black body barely covered by a white cotton shift, and then they saw a Jesuit priest solemnly walking from the Tavern, his missal open in his hand, a brass crucifix around his neck.

“Will ye look at that!” Patrick cried, pointing to the priest. “Free as air, an’ nobody hindering him.”

“What
is
he?” asked Elizabeth, staring at the long black robes and the tonsure.

“What I ha’nt seen in donkey’s years,” said Daniel, rushing up to the priest, while Elizabeth stopped in surprise, though Toby walked on. “Father, Father - will ye gi’ me a blessing?” cried Daniel to the priest, sweeping off his helmet and looking humble for the first time in Elizabeth’s knowledge.

The Jesuit raised his head and smiled. “You are
Catholique!”
he said gently in a strong French accent, and at Daniel’s somewhat shamefaced nod the priest raised two fingers, and made the sign of the cross.
“Que Dieu vous bénisse,”
he said, and bending his head continued to read his missal.

“Where do ye lodge, Father - ” said Daniel, urgently following the priest. “Might it be that you’d hear me confession?”

The Jesuit looked up again, his wise eyes searching the rugged red-bearded face. “If you wish, my son,” he said. “I lodge at the Tavern, until I go to my mission with the Iroquois.”

“Mass,
Father?” asked Daniel below his breath.

The priest inclined his head. “Each morning in my attic chamber.”

Freethinker though she felt herself to be, Elizabeth was shocked,
while the horrified epithets, “Anti-Christ,” “Roman lewdness,” “Scarlet idolatry” echoed through her mind in Winthrop’s voice,

Daniel, still looking humble, shamefaced, and yet happy, gave her a keen look as he returned to her. “Well, ye knew I’d been a Papist, me dear - ” he said with a lopsided smile.

“But not for many years,” she answered uncertainly. “And confession; Mass; a priest, all that - why I never thought it of you, Dan.”

“Nor I,” he agreed. “It come over me, when I saw the good Father. I don’t know the state o’ me soul, except ‘tis bad. Should I die sudden, at least I’ll be shriven once again, and had the sacrament.”

Elizabeth shook her head. “ ‘Tis my turn to say
you’re
talking nonsense. You won’t die. And all that claptrap surely wouldn’t help you!”

Patrick stopped dead on the street. “Bess, you’re a fool!” he exploded. “A meddlesome, stiff-necked, Puritan fool!” He cried so loud that a white-capped woman leaned out of a nearby window, and a small boy in sabots turned and giggled. Elizabeth caught her breath and walked on quickly. Never before had Daniel glared at her with resentment.

“Don’t let’s quarrel, Dan,” she said at length, trying to steady her voice. “I’m sorry I said anything.”

The throbbing in Patrick’s head subsided. He walked beside her in silence until they came to the new stone building which was called the City Tavern.

“I need another drink,” he said in semi-apology. “Some o’ the fair an’ fiery white genever I used to relish in Holland.”

Daniel did not, however, get drunk that night. He sought out the priest, made his confession, and received absolution. At dawn he attended Mass with the Spanish sailors and a trader from New France. Elizabeth went to bed early, in a room she shared with two other women, a mevrouw from up the Great North River at Rennselaerswyck, and a Bermudian gentlewoman en route to Virginia.

The next morning, which was Saturday, an ensign called Gysbert deLeeuw summoned the Greenwich proprietors and escorted them to the Director General of the New England. Kieft lived in an imposing brick mansion inside the Fort, next to the new church which was but half built. The pounding of sledgehammers and the shouts of workmen in both Dutch and English came through the open windows and accompanied the ceremony in which Greenwich was transferred.

William Kieft was a small fat man like a skittle ball. In a carved thronelike chair, he perched upon two red velvet cushions so that his head might be higher than his associates who were ranged on either side of a long table. Ensign deLeeuw ushered Daniel and Elizabeth into the wainscoted room. Elizabeth, who was very nervous, stumbled over the edge of the Turkey carpet and, clumsy with pregnancy, would have fallen - except that a tall thin young man jumped up from the end of the table and caught her. “Careful there!” he said smiling. “Can’t have you plunging headlong into patroonship!” He looked down admiringly at her embarrassed face.

“You speak English!” she cried in relief, trying to hide her swollen body under her cloak, for she saw all the Dutch eyes fixed on her.

“I
am
English,” replied the tall man. “George Baxter, English secretary to the Director General. You’re Mrs. Feake?” As she nodded, he continued, “This is Mr. Feake?”

“No. My husband is ill. This is Captain Patrick ... I came in my husband’s stead.”

George Baxter, turning to Kieft, translated this. The Governor frowned. He smoothed the gilded plumes on his beaver hat. He drummed his fingers on his neat little paunch. He made small explosive remarks to a grave Frenchman who sat beside him.

“I’ve brought Mr. Feake’s authorization, Your High Mightiness,” said Daniel, and as Baxter started to translate, Daniel interrupted. “Don’t bother, thankye, I can do it meself.” And he began to address the Governor in halting but obviously persuasive Dutch.

Baxter motioned Elizabeth to a chair beside his own. “Do sit down, Madam,” he said low behind his hand. “This’ll take a while. Kieft’s a fusser. Doesn’t think fast. He expected Mr. Feake.”

“They won’t refuse us now?” she whispered, suddenly anxious. “Oh no,” said the secretary. “And ‘tis not a matter of ‘they’ anyhow.”

Baxter glanced at the faces around the council table. Van der Huyckens the Fiscal, Cornelis van Tienhoven the secretary, Dominie Everard Bogardus the pastor, Ensign van Dyke the incompetent head of the militia, Doctor de la Montagne the councillor. Not one of them save de la Montagne could influence Kieft, and he seldom. The pompous little ass’ll ruin us with his stupidities, Baxter thought, but he pays me well. The secretary, seeing that Elizabeth was looking at him expectantly, went on with a smile.

“Kieft does as he pleases, only other person with a vote is his councillor there, Jan de la Montagne, French Huguenot he is, able man - physician and soldier both. But even
he
can’t stop Kieft, once he’s made up his mind.”

“Stop him from what?” she asked, feeling more at ease, and glad to find so nice an Englishman in this alien place.

“From anything. But it’s the Indians that concern us right now. Kieft’s heading for trouble. Bullying and oppressing our Manhattans, other tribes too. He’ll get us massacred yet.” He checked himself, aware that the pastor, Bogardus, was staring at him and that he was talking too freely to this pretty woman. “Ah,” he said - ”See, the Director General is nodding. Your business is settled!”

“Baxter! Winkelman!” called out Kieft in his guttural, rasping voice. The English secretary and Dutch clerk both sprang to their feet Kieft waved his pudgy hand towards paper, inkhorns, and pens which were set out in readiness. The two men sat down again and began to write at the Governor’s dictation.