Chapter 5
New Amsterdam
September 10, 1636
“Have you considered Boston or Plymouth?” the fat toad asked.
Dominie Karl Brouwer finally stood in the presence of Wouter van Twiller, director-general of New Amsterdam. It had not been worth the wait.
“I know it’s English—well, French now—but you might find the company more to your liking.
Here, we have a lot of tradesmen. Even a few Jews.”
After waiting a week because they were unwilling to bribe Egbert Wessels, the Director-General’s clerk, they were finally able to present their petition for a new township on the isle of Manhattan, with a house of worship and land for shops and farms.
“You’re sure?” the Director-General went on. “Very well. But as to your petition, no, I am afraid not. There would be fees, you see, and the West India Company already owns that land. So, I have to protect their interests. And if I were to put their interests aside, well, there would be fees. And you would have to, ah, persuade me to take up your cause. And you were apparently unable to come up with the wherewithal to persuade my clerk to bring you in to see me early.”
The meeting went downhill from there. In cold, hard truth, Karl Brouwer hadn’t expected it to go much better. He didn’t expect to have the Director-General give them land owned by the Dutch West India Company.
What he had been hoping for was a counteroffer. A place near New Amsterdam where they would be able to set up a township and establish their own laws.
Karl Brouwer had read a lot about the United States of America, and especially about their breaking away from the rule of England. He thought that if a bunch of English could do it, certainly his Gomarists could do it. But not yet. First they needed a base to build from. And they needed to work fast, before their most Catholic majesties, Fernando and Maria, started paying attention to the Americas again.
There were a lot of Counter-Remonstrants in New Amsterdam by now, pushed here by the capitulation of the Prince of Orange to the Spanish Cardinal-Infante—who now styled himself the “King in the Netherlands.”
After another fifteen minutes—and at least twenty requests for bribes, each a little less veiled than the last—they were escorted out.
* * *
“Very well,” Karl Brouwer said to his cousin and the rest of the party. “We do it from here.”
“I don’t know why you even tried,” Conradus said. “We have money and every ship brings more hands to our cause. And the United Provinces, even combined with the Spanish territories, aren’t England at the end of the eighteenth century. England today isn’t England at the end of the eighteenth century.”
“And we aren’t thirteen colonies stretching across most of the east coast of North America,” Karl said. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, cousin. This isn’t going to be easy.”
* * *
Egbert Wessels was shaking his head as he entered the room. “With respect, sir, it might almost be worth it just to be rid of them.”
“Quite. But I couldn’t allow it. It’s the principle of the thing,” Director-General van Twiller said. “Principle, sir? What principle is that?”
“That no one does anything in the New Netherlands without paying me my fee.” Egbert Wessels grinned. “It’s so nice to be working for a well-principled man, sir.”
“What do you have there?” The Director-General gestured at the several sheets of paper in Egbert’s hands.
“Complaints about Bogardus, sir.”
“Maybe we should give Bogardus his own town. Somewhere far up the Hudson.”
“He wouldn’t take it, sir,” Egbert Wessels said.
Dominie Everardus Bogardus was increasingly a thorn in the side of the Director-General. Bogardus didn’t approve of slavery. Having read some of the up-timer histories that had arrived by ship over the last three plus years, he had come to the conclusion that slavery had always been an offense against God. More accurately, he had his beliefs confirmed by the future history, and intended that slavery should be ended before the blood debt for it would lead to a war in this timeline, like unto the American Civil War in that other history.
“What is it this time? More dire predictions about a war to end slavery in a hundred years?”
“It’s not the sermon this time. It’s the congregation. Bogardus had Africans, including half slaves and full slaves, in the pews right next to slave owners.”
“Not that there are a lot of slave owners who attend his services.”
“No, sir. And the ones who do aren’t the ones who are complaining. It was several of the other slave owners. They don’t like the notion that slaves, or even free blacks, should be accepted into a white congregation, whether it’s theirs or not.”
* * *
Wolfert Dijkstra placed the ruler on the sheet and drew the line. It was another change in the design after the customers had walked through the half-finished building last Friday. Now they wanted a dumbwaiter between the shop on the bottom floor and a storeroom on the second floor.
It was actually a good idea. Wolfert just wished they’d realized the need before the second floor had been put in in that part of the house.
Eduart Jansen came up to him. “Ah, Mister Dijkstra. Did you hear about the sermon?”
Wolfert had indeed heard about the sermon. Or more accurately about Dominie Bogardus’ congregation. “Yes, I heard. What about it?”
“Do you think slavery is an offense against God?”
Wolfert considered. “I honestly don’t know. The New Testament doesn’t mention slaves. Jesus threw the moneylenders out of the temple, but he didn’t go around smiting slave owners. It seems to me that there are an awful lot of things that offend the Lord, and which ones are the worst depends on who’s telling the tale. None of us can avoid offending Him to some degree. All we can do is the best we can manage, and hope that He’ll forgive us for the rest.
“As to slavery in particular, I think it’s probably wrong but I’m not at all sure it’s a wrong that can be avoided. There are all sorts of servitude, managed in all sorts of ways. But what you’re really asking about is Nailah and my owning her. Isn’t it?”
Eduart looked at the ground as though he was ashamed to have asked the question. And Wolfert didn’t know why he should be. It wasn’t as if Eduart owned a slave, even a half slave. If anyone ought to be looking down in shame it would be Wolfert himself, who was starting to think he should be. Just starting to, though, and a long way from actually feeling shame.
“The way I look at it is, I’m getting her service in exchange for the money I paid when I bought her.”
Eduart looked away and Wolfert waited, but finally Eduart nodded and went back to work.
* * *
Nailah put the soup and bread on the table and called the children from their game. She, too, knew about the sermon and the congregation, and had her own opinion. But she also had washing to do, meals to cook, wood to gather, and all the other jobs that were necessary for maintaining a household in the seventeenth century. And that was what she was spending her time on when she wasn’t thinking about Eduart and his shy smile and big shoulders.
If asked—which she hadn’t been—she would have pointed out that she never agreed to her purchase, nor did she receive the money that Master Wolfert paid for her. But she was very grateful that she was here, and not down in the Caribbean being worked to death on a sugar plantation.