The Deed (2 page)

“Good day, madam,” said the fat one, peering around the corner, ruddy and out of breath. “Is your husband at home?” A quick look around the one-room house answered his own question, and without awaiting an invitation, he threw the door open wide and entered, leaving a trail of wet leaves as he clomped over to the rough-hewn wooden table by the fireplace. The strange thin one followed, casting a disinterested glance her way as he first leaned the black gun against the wall by the door, then thought better of it and carried it with him to the table.

Quietly thankful they’d left the door open, Nahoti watched as the two men settled onto the benches by the table, where the noon sun slanted steeply through the unshuttered window, illuminating dancing motes of dust and deepening the crags and pits of the white men’s faces.

“Pieter’s not here,” she said with measured calmness, standing stonily by the door as the thin man laid the gun on the table before him and began rubbing part of it with a cloth drawn from his pocket.

Having already set the bag on the table, just within the swing of his meaty paw, the burgher plucked the hat off his head and dropped it on top, before casting his eyes around the cabin again.

“I suspected as much,” he confided, and the man with the gun snickered. “Perhaps you’ll be good enough to entertain us yourself until he returns?” he continued, licking his lips lasciviously.

Nahoti froze, and the burgher rolled his eyes. “Something to
eat,
my dear. And beer, if you have it.”

“We…we have only water,” she replied in a near whisper, eyes dropping to the floor.

The gunman, with his back to her, turned halfway around and sniffed the air, a grin spreading across his face. A moment later he had risen and muscled past her to the cooking table, where he scooped up the cakes with a laugh, shaking off her halfhearted attempt to clutch at his sleeve and carrying them triumphantly back to the table.

“Here’s goodly water, Van Cleef,” he offered with a grin as he reseated himself and distributed the booty. “Drink your fill.”

“Oh, be civilized, Jacob,” the burgher demurred, even as his wet tongue ranged over his lower lip like a blind, pink animal.

The gunman broke one of the cakes with his hand, and without looking up, addressed Nahoti: “We’ll have that drink now, woman. And be quick about it.”

“Get out of my house,” came a voice from the doorway.

The burgher started visibly, and his expression further paled on seeing Pieter, his rangy but muscular frame outlined in the light, a pair of gamebirds in one hand and a musket, held at the trigger, in the other.

The soldier was not impressed. He knew Pieter Haansvoort to be a bookish weakling and despicable traitor to Holland. Rising from the table to his full height, Jacob skidded the rough wooden bench away behind him, where it caught on the floor and tipped over with a crash.

“Well, Haansvoort,” he said with an oily smirk, bowing mockingly, one hand on the table. “My humblest apologies to you
and
your brute,” he added with a sidelong glance at Nahoti, who had retreated safely to the corner by her window.

“Enough, Jacob, enough,” directed the burgher nervously. “Pieter, I’m afraid my companion lacks the—”

But Pieter silenced him with a cold shake of his head. His eyes stayed with the soldier as he stepped farther into the room, and though his gun remained pointing at the floor, his finger curled sensually around the trigger. “Either he leaves or you both do, Van Cleef—it’s all one to me.”

The soldier met Pieter’s glare with his own unblinking gaze for a moment or two before looking to the burgher for support. But Van Cleef only turned away, glancing at the satchel on the table as if to make sure it had not crawled away in the confusion. Scowling, the soldier snatched up his blunderbuss with one hand, spat on the floor, and lurched past Pieter to the outside, slamming the door shut behind him.

“Well, what a bit of unpleasantness,” said the burgher. “I deeply apologize.”

“No, no; I’m exceedingly glad to see you, Van Cleef,” said Pieter, smiling grimly and dropping the gamebirds on the table as he righted the fallen bench and seated himself, propping his own gun against the table.

“I can well imagine,” said the burgher soberly.

Pieter grinned. “I expected you sooner, if truth be told.”

“Securing an escort proved…problematic,” replied the burgher. “The savage hovers about the fort like a flock of hellish crows. There are few enough able soldiers to man the walls, and none to spare for hiking half the length of the island.” His eye drifted toward Nahoti, who picked at the hem of her dress from the relative safety of the cooking-bench.

“Well,” said Pieter knowingly, “that is your governor’s fault.”

Van Cleef sighed wearily. “You intend to start that again, then.”

Pieter shrugged. “If you continue to throw your soldiers’ lives away attacking peaceable Indians, you cannot also have them available for defense.” He smiled affably. “Mathematics is quite invincible on the point.”

Van Cleef’s eyes narrowed. The disastrous event to which Pieter alluded had occurred some weeks earlier, when a few hundred Algonquin Indians had massed outside Fort Amsterdam, seeking shelter from a pursuing band of warring Iroquois. The Dutch colony’s famously paranoid Governor Kieft, crying conspiracy, denied the refugees entry into the fort, and his army seized on this prohibition as a license to open fire. The terrified Algonquins fled, and gleeful soldiers pursued them across the river to Pavonia, largely obliterating them in a weeklong massacre of men, women, and children. Though technically a “victory,” a frightful number of Dutch had been killed in the campaign, further thinning the troop strength of the fort to a disheartened two hundred or so, including conscripts.

“I only tolerate your insolence because of our great need,” Van Cleef chastised diplomatically. “Rest assured, we still have army enough to protect ourselves. The fort will stand, Pieter, trust to it. Though I’m sure it little contents you.”

“On the contrary, my dear Van Cleef,” replied Pieter, folding his hands on the table before him. “I sleep better knowing I’m under the protection of the Royal Dutch soldiery.” His eyes twinkled. “They are a vanishing breed.”

A hint of real anger began to crystallize at the edge of Van Cleef’s voice. “It is not my business to question the affairs of our governor, nor yours either,” he replied tersely. “I remind you, you are still a Dutch citizen.”

Pieter held out his palms in conciliation. “My apologies, Van Cleef,” he relented. “I mean no disrespect.” He glanced over at the satchel by the portly man’s elbow. “Come, that
is
the document, I presume?”

Still officially slighted and muttering, the burgher retrieved and unbuckled the leather bag. From its depths he withdrew a snowy piece of vellum, a foot square and curling slightly at top and bottom. Thirty or forty lines of text snaked their way across the page, revealing the ad hoc nature of their contents in hurried, spidery penmanship, anchored by a brown wax gubernatorial seal at the bottom. Laying the document on the table, the burgher scanned it briefly, then reversed it and slid it across the table.

Pieter lifted the page gingerly, by one edge, trying not to betray his excitement. Van Cleef, normally a keen observer of men, missed the sudden brightness in Pieter’s eyes, as he was otherwise engaged in the act of producing a quill pen and a sealed inkstand from a deep interior pocket of his greatcoat.

“A witness is…customary,” Van Cleef began, drawing ink into the pen. He glanced back toward the door.

Ignoring him, Pieter slowly examined the document. He found no fault in its construction—no great surprise, as he’d dictated its terms himself—and was amused to note peripherally the burgher shifting in increasing discomfort. Satisfied at last, Pieter took up the pen and signed his name before passing the quill on to Van Cleef, who signed beneath him. Retrieving the page, Pieter turned toward the far side of the room. “Nahoti?”

Van Cleef’s mouth opened in automatic protest, but he held his tongue as Pieter summoned his wife to the table and handed her the quill with a nod of encouragement. Nahoti expertly signed the Dutch translation of her name, while the burgher produced a few other, smaller papers, which Pieter also looked over, making a change here and there before signing. These Van Cleef replaced in the satchel; the vellum scroll remained on the table.

“You’ve taught her Dutch,” said Van Cleef.

“She taught herself. There, it is done,” said Pieter, satisfied, with something like wonder in his voice.

The burgher smiled warily. “You have performed a noble service to the Dutch West India Company…and to your people.”

“Hurrah for me,” Pieter said dismissively. “A detail of Manahata Indians will bring the first provisions to the fort within three days. Please try to remember not to kill them.”

“And…the beer?”

This brought an indulgent smile. “All in good time, Falstaff; all in good time. Rest easy: The terms of the contract will be fulfilled.”

Satisfied, the burgher redeposited the pen in an interior pocket and gathered up his bag. “Then that is all. Thank you for your hospitality, madam,” he said to Nahoti, tipping his hat with disingenuous grace before putting it back on.

“Van Cleef, I’m curious,” said Pieter, waving his hand over the page. “What do
you
think of this little bargain of mine? It will not make the Company’s ledgers sparkle, precisely.”

“Very true,” Van Cleef allowed quietly, resuming his seat and taking a deep breath. “But we are in an…unprecedented position, as you well know. A governor’s first duty is to the people of the colony; the good captain does not let the passengers die to salvage the ship.”

“Well put,” Pieter said, nodding. “And yet, New Amsterdam is a business venture, not a colony. Governer Kieft serves the Dutch West India Company before Holland.”

“Oh, not before Holland,” protested the burgher.

“The masters in Amsterdam will be furious,” Pieter continued. “Van Cleef, speak plainly with me. We are both men.”

The burgher focused his eyes on the table before him for a few long moments; finally he shrugged.

“What else can we do?” he said quietly. “You know the strength of your position. The outlook for the settlement—colony, trading post, what you will—is black. The farms are ravaged, and already the first frost—”

“The farms are ravaged,” Pieter interrupted eagerly, “because your soldiers raid the Indians and then retreat behind the walls of the fort, leaving the farmers to fend for themselves.”

“Pieter, if we are to speak plainly, I must say that your sanctimoniousness is really quite unbearable,” said Van Cleef.

“It’s Governor Kieft, there’s the problem,” said Pieter. “I’ve said so from the beginning. And now you all know it, too.”

Van Cleef was nodding slowly, with a sneering expression underlined by a tight-lipped smile. “Yes, yes, you’ve always said so. Even back when you still deigned to live among your fellows, you barked incessantly about”—here his voice grew suddenly, acutely sarcastic—“our catastrophic disruption of these aboriginals. If I may say so, it’s the most outrageous hypocrisy yet visited on this New World.”

Pieter’s eyes widened in real surprise at the vehemence, but Van Cleef was not yet finished.

“
You’re
the one teaching them our language, Pieter,” he continued, with a sidelong glance at Nahoti. “Training them in Dutch cultivation, Dutch architecture, giving them our clothes, our tools, our guns. Who’s the colonist, here—you or me?”