The Dutch Girl (28 page)

Lettitje came back with a tray and three wooden beakers of small beer. Anna noticed how Elizabeth's face brightened again when she reappeared. It was not so very uncommon to encounter such relationships when you taught young girls and moved in a world of spinster ladies.

“Gerrit will want to know you are alive and well. Your father is dead—why must you live out here, like this? In seclusion?”

Elizabeth looked back at her, again with a trace of surprise. “Andries is not my father,” she said firmly. “You wrong him greatly if you think he would not have me come back home—that he has not asked us more than once. To live in the manor, with Lettitje as my lady's maid. But I
love
my brother, and he loves Harenwyck. The times could not be worse for such a thing, such a kindness. One whiff of scandal, of
decadence
, in the hall could destroy all that he's trying to build, damage him and the legitimacy of the patroonship itself in the eyes of the pious and discontent. Who would respect, who would serve, such a man, with
such
a sister?”

The bitterness that colored Elizabeth's voice for a moment disappeared as she took Lettitje's hand in hers and held it tight. “Besides,” she said, “we've grown accustomed to the quiet, and to appreciate the freedom of living together—not as lady and maid, but
honestly
.”

For a long moment, Anna looked at the two women with newfound respect, and content that they'd found, at least, a measure of happiness in spite of everything. Then she returned to the matter at hand.

“Gerrit
needs
to know about Sophia, about your father,” she said. “He is raising a militia to march on Harenwyck, and he is doing it by offering the tenants freeholds. He and Andries both want to reform Harenwyck, but they will never come to terms with this open wound between them.”

“I do not think an ordinary schoolteacher would care so much about her place of employment, or her employers,” said Elizabeth Van Haren astutely. “Which one of them are you in love with? Andries or Gerrit?”

“Gerrit,” said Anna, without hesitation. “And if he goes on like this, he is going to get himself killed.”

“You have my permission to tell him,” said Gerrit's sister, “but I would advise you against it. Andries didn't cuckold him, but he made a cuckold of him by letting the marriage proceed. To believe that your brother has lain with your wife out of lust and jealousy is one thing. To discover that your father has out of malice and spite is quite another. It is possible that you will be able to bring my brothers together—and it is equally likely that this news will only serve to drive them further apart.”

Anna left the cottage with Sophia's testament tucked inside her stays. She had thought she would discover a truth there that would defuse the conflict brewing between Gerrit and Andries, but now she wasn't quite so certain. Andries had kept the truth from his brother for the same reason that he refused to sell land to his tenants: he thought he knew best. He simply believed that he knew what was best for others better than they did themselves. He did not see, or in some cases care, that he was robbing them of their right to determine their own destiny.

It was impossible for Anna to deny that he had done some good. His sister and her lover were living a safe if secluded life. But Anna was not as certain as Elizabeth that she and Lettitje could not have survived, even thrived, on their own
beyond
the borders of Harenwyck.
They were content with their isolation now, but had they gone to New York and set up housekeeping as spinster sisters, say, they might have enjoyed a wider society than secret visits from Elizabeth's brother and Mevrouw Zabriskie could provide.

And their seclusion had its own perils. Anna doubted she had been the only one to see “Barbara Fenton” in the woods at night. Country people were not as a rule tolerant. If they discovered the two women living there in the woods, they might punish them with rough music. Annatje had seen the
mevrouwen
of Harenwyck drag a man accused of adultery naked through the estate and nearly drown him in a well. Andries had protected his sister and Lettitje from the old patroon, but she doubted he could protect them from his tenants if they had a mind to do them violence.

It was late afternoon and the sun was low on the horizon when she climbed the granite stairs of the manor porch. They sparkled in the waning light. She was surprised when no servants appeared to greet her or pull wide the grain-painted doors. She had remembered lazy mornings after the cider pressings, certainly, but not lazy
afternoons
.

Inside she could tell immediately that something was amiss. The great house was cold and dark. Normally the maids went from room to room making up the fires and banking them when the family moved to another part of the house, but no warmth emanated from the parlors or the grand dining room. The sconces in the
entrance hall had burned down the night before and not been replaced.

Anna found Jannetje and Grietje in the library, poring over Gibbon in the last light of the day. Gerrit might have stolen or destroyed the majority of her school equipment, but his tantalizing characterization of
The
Decline and Fall
—
worse than pirates—
had made Gibbon good for a fair few more lessons. She lit a lamp for the girls and went to find the patroon.

The door to the small office he kept behind his bedroom was ajar and light spilled out. Anna could hear voices speaking in Dutch.

“I do not like it, sir,” said Mr. Ten Broeck.

“The tenants always start work late the day after the cider pressing,” said the patroon dismissively.

Not this late,
thought Anna.
Never this late.

“The grooms have not come to work at all. I had to saddle my own horse to tour the estate. Only the home farms show any signs of activity, the ones within a short ride of the manor, the holdings of your
schouts
and militia and favored tenants. The ones who are indebted to you for their prosperity. Go farther than a mile or two from the house, and there is no one stirring.”

“You are reading too much into a night of overindulgence,” said the patroon. “I am not prepared to believe that it is the End of Days just because my tenants have taken the morning off.”

“This is your brother's doing,” said Ten Broeck. “One of the footmen said he was at the cider pressing last night. He was promising the tenants freeholds.”

“And how many of them,” said the patroon reasonably, “can afford to buy their land? Precious few.”

“He is not
selling
them,” said Ten Broeck. “He is giving them away in exchange for service in his so-called militia. If they march on the house, we may not have the men to repulse them. If they march on the house and come with wives and children in tow, armed with scythes and pitchforks, the men we
do
have will not fire into such a crowd.”

The patroon said nothing at first. Then, his voice flat: “What are you suggesting I do, Ten Broeck?”

“You have already tried the Americans. Their promises are empty. They do not have the men or the powder to spare us. Declare for the British. Take their oath. There is a British warship anchored near the Narrows. Send word to it. Act now, before it is too late to preserve the patroonship.”

“How is it that you know about this British warship, Ten Broeck, while I do not?”

“You have been unreceptive to British overtures, Mr. Van Haren, so I stopped putting them before you. But I have kept the channels of communication open in your name, in case it came to this. There is a certain Major André. He is said to be thick with General Clinton, his deputy adjutant general, and acts with his
authority. His offers of aid are generous. Six hundred men to fight your brother, if you but take the oath.”

It was the same offer John André had made to Gerrit at the Halve Maen, and Anna had no doubt that the British agent would treat equally—fair or foul—anyone who secured him control of Harenhoeck and the Narrows.

“Mr. Ten Broeck,” began the patroon, but just then Anna heard feet upon the stairs behind her. Someone was coming. She smoothed her skirts and knocked upon the half-open door.

“Come,” said the patroon.

Anna entered. The patroon smiled when he saw her and rose. Ten Broeck popped up guiltily as well.

“Where is everyone?” she asked, in English.

“The servants get a late start the day after the cider pressing,” said the patroon, forestalling Ten Broeck from pressing his arguments. “A local tradition. I am sorry if you've been inconvenienced. Mrs. Buys is short staffed. I told my nieces to make up their own fires.”

“They are too engrossed in Gibbon to be bothered by the chill,” said Anna.

“Are they?” asked the patroon. “Perhaps the End Times
have
come.”

“Not quite, but it will seem so when we have run through all the books in that library. And I can well see to my own fire.”

“No need, Miss Winters,” said the patroon. “I will do it for you. I wanted a word anyway, about your supplies from New York.”

Mr. Ten Broeck did not look pleased when the patroon abandoned him to lead Anna down the hall. He made up the fire in her room and then drew her away from the door to speak in low tones.

“I do not want to alarm you unnecessarily, but it would be best if you kept the girls inside for the rest of the day. I dispatched
schouts
to evict Rie and Ida Dijkstra this morning, but they have not yet returned from the ferry. It is most likely just a product of the general lassitude. If the ferry master was not yet up they might have had to wait, and depending on the delay, they may elect to remain at the landing until morning. In any case, until they report back, I'd prefer that you and the girls stay close to the house.”

“I understand,” she said. But she promised nothing, because she knew she would not be able to honor such an undertaking if Andries sent for André and Tarleton. She would need to warn Gerrit. And she would be obligated to alert the Americans.

In the morning Anna woke to find her room cold, and no tea waiting for her. She dressed and went downstairs to find Mrs. Buys alone in the kitchen, cutting up a chicken.

“Mr. Ten Broeck says this is Gerrit's doing, but I do not credit it,” said Mrs. Buys. “He wants the patroonship, right enough, but he's no plotter, and he would not risk the dear girls' safety with a riot.”

Mrs. Buys hacked a wing off the chicken and sent a morsel of raw meat flying onto the floor. A black ball of fur streaked from the hearth to catch it. Scrappy. It was
a small comfort to Anna to find
someone
unmoved by the present tensions, but her attempt to scratch the kitten behind one ear was met by a tiny, proprietorial growl.

“Everyone wants something to have and to hold,” said Anna, sparing a last look at Scrappy and her prize. “But I don't believe Gerrit would do anything to put the girls in jeopardy.” Not intentionally, anyway. But he might make the mistake the British and the Americans were making. He might think the estate—or the mob—could be controlled by one man.

Anna helped Mrs. Buys for an hour. She took her tea in the kitchen and kept the girls inside. She had the stiff board and the paper she had bought at the castle store, and she showed the girls how to cut stencils for theorem paintings: the cheerful sort with fruit and flowers, and the doleful kind for memorial pictures, the gravestones and urns and anchors.

“But won't they all look the same if you're just making your picture up out of stencils?” asked Grietje.

“No,” said Anna. “The stencils are only outlines. No one can tell you how to combine them, where to put the apple and where to place the pear, how to color or shade them, whether the fruit is soft and ripe or hard and green. That's why no two ever look alike.”

The girls became engrossed in their projects and Anna cut a stencil just for herself, one to mask her long-deferred letter to Kate Grey, when she knew what she must write in it.

After the midday meal Mr. Ten Broeck arrived with his family in a cart piled high with furnishings, clothes,
dishes, silver, a very excited dog, and what appeared to be every small thing of value from his home. His slave had driven them.

“We saw lights in the field last night,” explained Ten Broeck. “It is starting.”

Andries came home from his morning tour of the manor with a dozen men carrying muskets and rifles. He positioned them around the house. Ten Broeck's girls huddled together nervously. Their mother retired to a bedchamber and would not come out. Jannetje and Grietje ran from window to window arguing strategy with one another and badgering Anna to teach them Latin so they could read Caesar and tender their uncle some useful defensive advice.

The patroon retired to his study. Anna found him there cleaning a pistol.

“You think Mr. Ten Broeck is correct, don't you?”

“Don't you?” he asked. His manner was controlled, but taut with suppressed anger, as though he saw himself beset and betrayed by those who should most welcome his leadership and reforms.

“I'm not certain. A riot does not seem to me Gerrit's style. What do you plan to do?”

“Ten Broeck wants me to take the British oath.”

“And will you?” She did not want him to.

“What choice have I? I cannot get a message to the Americans. My brother has seen to that.”

“Perhaps you can't,” she said. “But I can.”

“How?”

“I have a contact on the estate.” Mevrouw Zabriskie
had been in the Widow's confidence. She would have a reliable means of sending messages. But that was not Anna's secret to share.

“Even if you could get word to the Americans,” said the patroon, “and they had the men to help us, they could never get here in time.”

Anna had known this was coming. She braced herself inwardly.

“Then tell your brother the truth. About Grietje and Jannetje. With some understanding, some hope of forgiveness, you and he could find a compromise.”

Andries' lips tightened into a thin line, and his complexion seemed suddenly ashen, but his gaze was level. He saw that she
knew
, Anna realized, if not how, and declined, for the moment, to pursue the whys and wherefores.

“Gerrit will never listen to any offer that comes from me,” said the patroon. “And why should he? I didn't cuckold him, but I deceived him for eleven years.”

Anna suspected Andries had in mind the “burned” will and his insistence that Harenwyck was his rightful patrimony as much as things relating to Sophia and her children, so she pressed on, trying to point up rifts that could yet be bridged.

“To protect someone you cared for, those who could not protect themselves,” she said. “Sophia, the girls . . . even the tenants. In that way, you and your brother are very much alike, Andries. What you did was wrong, but you and Gerrit were young when you made many of
those decisions, and your reasons are the kind he would understand.”

After a space, when the patroon said nothing, she continued.

“If you speak to him,
explain
, you could offer him a compromise. Sell freeholds to the tenants who have enough money to buy the land they are leasing. Build your school and hire your doctor and make your improvements for those who don't. Or split the estate between you so each of you can order things in the way you see fit.”

Andries seemed surprised at this last suggestion, but something in his blue eyes suggested he saw in it a possible way clear. But when he spoke, his voice was low, resigned. “You may be right, but this is pure fantasy. There is little time, and I do not even know how to find my brother at the moment. Or why, come to that, he'd believe anything I might say about Sophia and our father after all these years.”

“I do,” said Anna. “I can take an offer from you to work out your differences, or, failing that, to divide the estate, to him, along with
this
.” She unfolded Sophia's testament and placed it on the table.

The patroon read it, fingertips smoothing the paper out. Then he placed his palms flat on top of the document as though he could absorb some trace of the woman he had loved through her written words.

“How did you come by this?”

“It was hidden in the pole screen Sophia embroidered.” Off Andries' astonished look she added, “It is a
common schoolgirl hiding place. I have been to see your sister—it was her you were going to meet that night at the old manor, wasn't it?”