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Chapter 10

Residence of Hansje de Lang
November 3, 1636


The discussions were loud and acrimonious, but that wasn’t what bothered Karl Brouwer. Nor was it the fact that a fair part of his congregation was on the royal governor’s side in this. Karl didn’t approve of slavery himself. No, what bothered him was the strident undertone of fear.

The notion that this could turn into a real fight, that the king in the Low Countries might actually send troops to bring the New Netherlands to heel as he did in the old Netherlands . . . That was new. Even after Olearius arrived with his honor guard and his high-handed ways.

For the Governor’s soldiers were an honor guard, at least by the standards of the Old World. Fifty men wasn’t much of a force to be reckoned with, even here. Back in Europe, a single tercio was three thousand men.

Granted, the whole city of New Amsterdam didn’t have many more people than that, but that was just New Amsterdam. The rest of Manhattan Island had another eight hundred or so, Long Island had over five hundred, Staten Island almost a thousand, and there were more on the coast and, increasingly, upriver. There were at least ten thousand Dutch people in the New Netherlands, most of them young men. With time, they could raise a force of five hundred, perhaps more. And cousin Diederik was a soldier who had fought against the Spanish tercios before that fool Frederik Hendrik lost the war.

But it was going to take time, and the God-cursed governor wasn’t giving them that time. Mistress Sara de Lang came up to him. “Dominie, the Director-General, well, the former Director- General is here. He wants to talk to you.”

“What does he want?”

“I don’t know, but he asked to speak to you in private.”

The de Lang house was a fair-sized house. Hansje was a tailor who’d managed to bring a sewing machine with him. “An actual Higgins,” as he was prone to tell anyone who would listen. He’d also brought his wife, three surviving children, a journeyman, and two apprentices. In the European style, the ground floor was the business, and the second floor was the residence for the family and staff. The ground floor was where the discussion was getting strident.

“Sara, could I trouble you for the use of your sitting room?” Brouwer asked.

The sitting room was a small room at the front of the second floor. It had glazed windows, though not in the new large-paned style, but plenty good enough to let in the sunlight, since it was a southern-facing room.

“Of course, Dominie.” Then she muttered, “I’ll just have to clean it after he leaves.”

Dominie Brouwer chose not to hear the mutter. He agreed with her assessment of the former Director-General.

* * *

Former Director-General Wouter van Twiller was looking a bit shabby these days. His friends were, for the most part, friends of convenience. With the loss of his power to grant favors, he’d also lost most of the “friends.”

When Sara showed him into the sitting room, Dominie Karl Brouwer was already seated. He waved to a wooden bench. “Have a seat, Mister van Twiller. What brings you to me?”

“Whatever agreements my uncle was forced to make under the Cardinal-Infante’s guns, I am still the Director-General of the New Netherlands. Any agreements were made under coercion and are not valid.”

Karl Brouwer blinked. That sounded almost plausible. No . . . not almost. It sounded like a reasonable legal argument. Certainly as legal as that ridiculous Declaration of Independence the English colonists had issued in that other timeline. Not a fig leaf based on the so-called rights of the governed, but an argument of prior claim. “That is an interesting point, sir.” Karl declined, for now, to use the title van Twiller claimed. “But can you back it?”

“Not by myself, perhaps, but in cooperation with others? Olearius brought only a very small force. And the strength of formation fighting requires enough men to have a formation. You need a mass of men for massed fire. Fifty isn’t enough.”

“In a fort, you don’t need a tercio. No pikes needed to hold off cavalry, if you have thick earthen walls backed by brick and mortar.”

“But they don’t. At least, not yet, and not soon. They have torn down my house and dug a basement, laid up some earth. But, for now, for some months, they will be staying in Robert Mulder’s boarding house. It’s a solid enough building for wood and daub, but hardly a fort.”

“Fifty men with those fancy guns of theirs make it a fort. We would lose men taking it, a lot of men. And even if we did take it, what about Admiral Tromp?”

“What about him? He’s in the Caribbean, last I heard.”

“He is also opposed to slavery, and has apparently made his pact with the Catholic devil who sits on the throne in Brussels. Were he to take it into his head, he could blockade the port of New Amsterdam and leave us all to the tender mercies of the local savages.”

“The local savages aren’t all that savage. In general, we Dutch have treated more fairly with them than either the English or the Spanish. And we are less prone to offer or receive atrocities from the natives. What concerns me more is that a blockade would cut off our trade with Europe and ruin our businesses,” van Twiller said.

“However, we can get through that. It won’t be easy, at least at first, but in one way, at least, Fernando did us a service when he sent Olearius.” He grimaced. “Not Olearius or his soldiers, but the technicians and the tools. Even his wife. He has provided us the tools to make an industrial base of Manhattan Island. Not easily, but possible. Which means we will need to take the boarding house and the warehouse intact.”

“And the clinic?” asked Brouwer.

“I would rather take it intact as well, but the important thing is that we capture Anne Jefferson alive. Both for her medical knowledge, and as a bargaining chip with Olearius, if he survives. And with Fernando and Tromp, if he doesn’t. As for the clinic, you can use it as an example, if you need to.”

“I may. Did you see Saturday’s paper, about her immunization program?”

“Yes?” van Twiller asked cautiously.

“She wants to immunize the pagan savages who haven’t accepted Christ at all, and without requiring any acknowledgment of the sacrifice Christ made for all of our souls.”

“Ah, the part about herd immunity makes quite a bit of sense.”

“It would, if you failed to include the fact that every inoculation given to a pagan savage is one not given to a Counter-Remonstrant Dutchman. It is God’s herd that needs to be immunized, not the pagans.” Dominie Karl Brouwer paused, took a breath, and changed the subject. “None of it matters, though, as long as Olearius and his fifty troops are sitting in that boarding house.”


Brechtje’s boarding house,
temporary Government House
November 7, 1636


The rider from Fort Orange was mud-stained, but not injured. He reported a conflict between the new Gomarist religious community three miles from Fort Orange and the local Indians, apparently started when the Gomarists tried to convert several tribesmen who were bringing furs to the trading post. The rider, a Gomarist himself, insisted that the Indians were at fault. The commander of the fort wasn’t so sure. At least, not that Adam could tell from his letter. But in either case, the situation clearly needed a show of force.

After the man was released to his meal, Adam, Anne, and Captain de Kuiper went to Adam and Anne’s room for a private chat.

* * *

As the door closed, Anne asked, “Can Johan deal with this, or do you have to go?”

“From the level of confusion the courier reported, I think we are going to need a political solution backed by a visible military presence.”

“I was afraid of that,” Anne agreed, waving for Captain de Kuiper to take a seat on a chair next to a small table stacked with papers. “How are you going to get there?” she asked, taking a seat on the bed. Adam remained standing.

“It’s been a mild autumn thus far, so I see no reason not to use a small ship. And a couple of boats,” said Captain de Kuiper. “We may need them to manage the bend at West Point.”

“That seems the best plan,” agreed Adam. “I’d like to use one of the steam engines, but there isn’t enough time to install one in any of the ships we have.”

The radios they had weren’t the uptime radios, nor were they the crystal sets or the Ferguson alternators. They were tube sets using the first radio tubes out of the factories in Amsterdam. Those tubes weren’t great by the standards of the up-timers. They had short working lives and a high failure rate. But they did work. And they allowed for FM radios and powerful AM transmitters. Powerful enough to bounce off the stratosphere and reach across the Atlantic.

Even so, to get any real range they needed fairly good-sized antennas. But the mast of a sailing ship was plenty tall enough to use to get a signal the one hundred and fifty miles to Fort Orange. Especially since it would be talking to the really tall antenna they were building just outside of town.

“All right, Captain, find us the ship and boats. I figure to take half the company.”

“I don’t need half the company,” Anne said. “Leave me a squad. Ten men, eleven with the sergeant, should be plenty for all I am going to need to do.”

It took a bit more arguing because Adam was worried about her, but she convinced him that if anyone was going to need troops, it was him. So, in the end, he took most of the garrison. Other than the unit assigned to guard Anne, he only left behind a handful to keep an eye on the fort. A corporal and five soldiers would be enough to keep thieves away.


New Amsterdam docks
November 9, 1636


Corporal Ivo Hoebee checked off a box on his sheet after reading the markings on the crate. According to his inventory, the small wooden crate was mostly filled with packing to keep the ten Mark 4 amplifying tubes safe. They were spares for the radio set that would be set up on the small ship. Once they got to their destination, they would take it off the ship and set it up in Fort Orange so that they would have regular instant communications between Fort Orange and New Amsterdam.

Ivo looked at the next box. D rations, canned pork—what the up-timers called SPAM, two hundred cans, each with enough SPAM to feed a squad. He checked off his box. Next came beans. Then freezedried cabbage. Freeze-dried and sealed in waxed boxes in a factory in Amsterdam. Another check mark.

The next box was filled with pre-made cartridges, lead bullets on one end of a waxed paper cartridge. You could shove the cartridge into the chamber. Closing the chamber would cut off the back end of the cartridge and all the rifleman would have to do is put the cap on the nipple, cock, aim, and fire. Another checked box.

And so it went. By the time the whole loading was finished, it was past noon. The sun was over the yardarm before they set sail.


On the Hudson River, headed toward Fort Orange
November 12, 1636


Specialist Jacob de Haan set the switch and watched the tubes light up. Most of the tubes lit up. One of them, a Mark 4, didn’t. Jacob cursed under his breath, then sighed. This didn’t happen all the time, not even half the time. It just seemed like it happened all the time.

“Sergeant, we have a dead tube again.”

“All right. Go down in the hold and get one of the spares.”

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, Jacob carefully opened the box that was supposed—according to the list— to have ten Mark 4s. It actually had fifteen Mark 3s. Jacob made several comments on the ancestry of the inbred idiots who had mislabeled the box. Then, carrying the box, went back to the radio to report to the sergeant.

“Well, fix it!” the sergeant ordered.

Jacob bit his lip to keep from commenting on the sergeant’s ancestry. “It’s not a blunderbuss. I can’t bang on the bullets to make them fit. The impedance is wrong. The only thing we can do is go back to New Amsterdam and hope that all the boxes of tubes weren’t the wrong sort.”

The sergeant didn’t look particularly pleased at that. Well, Jacob wasn’t happy either.

* * *

“We haven’t gone all that far, Governor.” They were in the S curve that was just downriver of West Point. “We could leave the boats here, turn around and go back. If we’re going to have to make another trip, anyway, we might as well.”

“I would, except for the danger that we might have a massacre up near Fort Orange if we don’t get there in time.”


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