Chapter 9
Near the port, New Amsterdam
November 1, 1636
Eduart was still very much a trainee in the Governor’s Guard, but he was here anyway because the information for this came, in part, from Nailah. After the Emancipation Proclamation, news of it spread like wildfire throughout the New Netherlands, breeding anger among the patroons of the Dutch West India Company and hope among the slaves and half slaves. At this point in history, half slaves were not so much less common as less official. There were quite a few Africans who were, under the law, just slaves, but were, in fact, closer to half slaves.
Or had been, until the Emancipation Proclamation.
Now, a lot of slave owners were feeling cheated and were taking it out on their slaves.
In this case, a group of field hands from an estate on Long Island was being smuggled through New Amsterdam to a ship that would take them to the Caribbean for resale. At a hopefully better price than the government here in New Amsterdam was paying.
Eduart looked around the corner, and saw the wagon. What he didn’t see was the field hands. And that was wrong. Nailah had a friend who worked in the kitchen of van den Heuvel, and she knew about the transfer, knew the day and time. And there in the wagon was van den Heuvel and his foreman, but the back of the wagon was empty except for a pile of stuff under a tarp.
Then the tarp moved. Not much, but enough, and Eduart knew what was going on. It even made sense. The slaves knew that it was illegal to sell them except to the government, or transport them out of the New Netherlands. So all they would need to do was raise an alarm and the patroon would be caught. To prevent that and still have live slaves, they had to be gagged and tied.
The wagon rolled on past Eduart in the alley and turned to the dock. Then a squad of ten of the Governor’s Guard came out in front of it. Sergeant van der Molen shouted, “Ready arms!”
Ten “Infantes” came up. All pointing at van den Heuvel and his foreman. “What is this?” demanded Patroon van den Heuvel.
“This,” said Captain de Kuiper as he stepped out from the same alley Eduart was standing in, “is a royal inspection of the contents of that wagon.” The captain waved the warrant signed by the royal governor and bearing his seal, as more guardsmen, including Eduart, stepped out behind the wagon and presented their “Infantes.”
Eduart loved that nickname for the Dutch Cardinals. Officially, they were the Low Countries Rifle, but everyone knew they were a copy of the French Cardinals. Before he became the king in the Low Countries Fernando had been known as the Cardinal-Infante, so members of the Royal Guards, and now the Governor’s Guards, called the rifles “Infantes” as a sort of joke.
It was really weird what went through your head as you were standing with a rifle against your shoulder, waiting to find out if you were going to have to kill someone in the hours before dawn.
As it turned out, they weren’t called on to kill Patroon van den Heuvel. Instead, Eduart was put to work freeing the slaves from the ropes and gags. One of them wasn’t breathing. He was a large man and well muscled, but he wasn’t breathing.
Eduart didn’t know what to do. He called the sergeant. “Sergeant van der Molen, he’s not breathing.”
The captain ordered, “Go!” almost before the words were out of Eduart’s mouth. And one of the troops, the company medic, ran around to the back of the wagon. He pulled a large and very sharp knife from a scabbard at his belt as he ran, and cut loose the rest of the slave’s bonds. He checked the eyes and put his hand against the artery in the man’s neck, then shouted, “No pulse! But he’s still warm. Hot, actually.”
The medic pointed at Eduart. “You help me with him.”
Together they laid the man in the bottom of the wagon and the medic checked his airway. Then Eduart got a lesson in CPR.
Luckily, they caught him in time. In less than a minute of CPR, the magic had him breathing again. The slave, who was named Oringo, and was a captive from Africa, had just had a cold. The cold gave him a stuffy nose, and the gag had mostly blocked his airway. He’d gotten by until the arrest, then the excitement and increased heart rate was just too much, and he couldn’t get enough air. Gagging him had almost killed him, and would have killed him if it had taken a bit more time for his lack of breathing to be noticed.
Shaking his head, the medic said, “People don’t realize how fragile the human body is, given the wrong circumstances.”
* * *
Lady Maria Amilia Alaveres looked at the tall black man as he was brought in. Oringo was laid out on the cot in the newly active hospital, and Amilia had the duty. She got the particulars from the medic, and set about seeing to Oringo. She had him rolled onto his side, so that with luck at least one of the nasal passages would drain, opening up an airway without him having to breathe through his mouth. She washed his head and chest with cool water to try and bring the temperature down a bit. He was a handsome man, even sick like this. Well muscled, with a strong face.
Over the next few days his fever spiked twice, but then it broke and he started to mend, and Amilia got to meet the man. He was a warrior of his tribe, captured in a raid, and brought here almost two years ago. And he spoke Dutch poorly. Well, Amilia’s Dutch had a decidedly Austrian accent. But he had a nice smile, and seemed to take the world as it came.
Brechtje’s boarding house,
temporary Government House
November 2, 1636
The dining room was full, but not with diners. This was the first Royal Court, and the room was full of spectators. That was good, Adam Olearius thought, as he took his seat behind the table that had been put on a six-inch platform just for this.
Patroon Gijsbert van den Heuvel was defending himself and his defense was jurisdictional. He was a new patroon who bought his patroonship all of a month after King Fernando had besieged Amsterdam. A man who could see the writing on the wall, but wasn’t all that good at predicting outcomes. He bought his patroonship on the assumption that Spain would win, but that the Low Countries would fight on from here.
It wasn’t, Adam admitted, a bad guess, given what was known at the time.
Van den Heuvel sold his lands and businesses in the Low Countries to buy a patroonship, and the slaves to man it, and retreated to the New World in the confident hope that, just like in that other history, the New World would throw off the old.
Then Adam showed up and spoiled everything. Granted, the crown was offering to pay for the slaves, but not enough. And the important point was he had paid good money for his patroonship, and he had the right to make the laws within his patroonship, not the royal governor. It was in his contract. It was in the Charter of Freedoms and Exemptions, right there in black and white. Van den Heuvel went on for some time about the Charter of Freedoms and Exemptions, and Adam let him talk until he ran down.
Then it was Adam’s turn. “Your contract was with the Dutch West India Company. The Dutch West India Company, in turn, had an agreement with the States General of those parts of the Low Countries that were then in rebellion against the Spanish crown. That’s the Charter of Freedoms and Exemptions that you’ve been harping on.
“But that rebellion failed, and while the Treaty of Amsterdam did grant the States General recognition and certain privileges, its laws were subject to change by the victors. As they always are.
“In this case, the law making slavery illegal in all the lands under Dutch control was endorsed by not just His Majesty, but by Frederik Hendrik, as well. If you want part of your money back, the people you should sue are the representatives of the Dutch West India Company.
“None of that is news. It was all explained the very day I arrived. The government of the New Netherlands is no longer in the hands of the Dutch West India Company, and it wasn’t when you took ten of your slaves, bound them and gagged them, and carted them off like so many bags of grain to a ship bound for the Caribbean with the intent to break His Majesty’s laws. In so doing, you very nearly killed one of His Majesty’s subjects.
“Understand, if Mister Oringo had died, I would hang you for willful murder, so you can thank Corporal Smit for your life. However, in light of your willful disregard not just of His Majesty’s laws, but the lives of his subjects, this court is not inclined to compassion. Your property—all of your property in the New Netherlands—is returned to the crown. Mister Oringo and all of your other slaves are hereby freed.
“And as for you, you almost murderer and flouter of the king’s law, you will receive twenty lashes. And once they are delivered, you will be branded as an outlaw. Take ship back to the Low Countries, or move to one of the newly French or English colonies, but you can’t stay in the New Netherlands.”
* * *
Gijsbert van den Heuvel stood there and felt his righteous rage fade into horror. This couldn’t be happening. Whipping and branding? These were punishments reserved for slaves and peasants, not men of substance and property!
He’d known he was going to lose the case from the moment those troops stepped out of the alley.
He’d even expected to lose the slaves without any recompense.
But all his property in the New Netherlands? That was all his property.
Such a massive seizure was well past too much. Too much even if the slave had died.
It wasn’t like Africans were really people anyway. Gijsbert didn’t hold with the half slave nonsense. A slave was a slave, and that was all. A piece of livestock, no more. The death of a slave, while a financial loss, wasn’t murder. Especially not the accidental death of a slave.
He was outraged when the royal governor seized all his property, but whipping and branding? It couldn’t be. He still hadn’t accepted that the royal governor meant it, when the guards came to take him away.
* * *
Anne Jefferson watched the trial, and wasn’t all that much less shocked and outraged than Gijsbert van den Heuvel. Whipping and branding? What was this, the Middle Ages?
No, she realized. It was called “the early modern period.” Whose distinction from the Middle Ages—or the Dark Ages, for that matter—often seemed miniscule to her.
But from Adam, she’d expected more of the modern and less of the early. You didn’t torture people, not to get a confession, and not as a punishment.
Back in their room she asked him, “What’s wrong with you, Adam? Have you been taken over by Ivan the Terrible or Torquemada?”
“No. By practicality and a need to make it clear that there is an iron fist in the velvet glove.” He sighed. “And Oringo almost died. In a way, I really would have preferred to have the man executed.”
“Why didn’t you, then?”
“First because without Oringo’s death, I didn’t have grounds to.” He looked her in the eye and his normally warm eyes were cold. “But also because I wanted him humiliated in a way that a simple hanging wouldn’t accomplish. I need them to fear me. To know that they will suffer if they step too far out of line.”
Anne wasn’t sure what to say to that. It was cold comfort to realize that, given another century and a half of social evolution, Europe would replace the medieval headsman’s axe with the guillotine.