Birthright

by David Hingley

  ‘They knew each other from the war, I think. What was said about him only pretending to be on the King’s side might be true.’ He glanced at Nicholas and then quickly away, but Nicholas had seen.

  ‘Mercia,’ he said, looking down. ‘I am truly sorry for what I did.’ He turned to her, his face troubled. ‘I hope you can forgive me one day.’

  She tugged at a ringlet of her hair. ‘I know you did it for your daughter’s sake. I would be lying if I said I was ready to trust you completely.’ She held his gaze for a few moments. ‘But I would love to see Eliza someday.’

  ‘I would like that. Believe me, if I’d known you better, or if you’d—’ He checked himself. ‘I’m sorry. That’s not fair.’

  ‘If I had not been so dismissive at the beginning, you mean.’ She held up a hand. ‘No, you are right. I am sorry too.’

  There was a momentary silence. Nathan shifted on the hard ground.

  ‘Nicolls wants to return the painting to England as soon as he can,’ he said. ‘Now the town is British, he has threatened van Arnhem with imprisonment for possessing the King’s personal property.’ He smirked. ‘That scared him. He confessed he bought the Section with embezzled West India Company funds.’

  Mercia let out a bitter laugh. ‘Why does that not surprise me?’

  ‘’Tis why he went to such trouble smuggling it here, sending Pietersen to arrange things with North, and then sending him again with the paintings under lock and key. He fears if his former colleagues find out, he will be in worse trouble with them than he is with Nicolls.’

  ‘Will we go back on the same ship, do you think?’ said Nicholas. ‘That could be an uncomfortable journey, if Sir Bernard goes too.’

  ‘I have been thinking about that,’ said Mercia. ‘We have come so far and at such cost. Yes, we found the painting that the King badly wants. But the deaths.’ She swallowed. ‘So many. And Lady Markstone. I liked her. I respected her.’ She rubbed her tired eyes. ‘Winthrop invited me to Connecticut. Perhaps I will take up his offer before we return.’

  She looked at Nathan, expecting him to give her a reason why she should not. But in truth she was exhausted. After three months at sea she wanted at least some respite before she braved another long journey. And she was curious about this new world, this America. While she was here, she wanted to see more.

  He surprised her. ‘If you can, why not? I am sure Daniel would enjoy it.’ He reached over to squeeze her hand.

  ‘Well.’ Nicholas stood up. ‘I will leave you two alone.’

  Mercia craned her neck. ‘Do not forget Nicolls is treating us all to dinner. Apparently Stuyvesant’s cooks are rather good.’

  ‘They’re staying on?’

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose Stuyvesant will be recalled to Amsterdam.’

  ‘Looking for a new job,’ he said. ‘As it seems must I.’

  She watched him walk away. ‘Perhaps not,’ she called.

  Nicholas turned and smiled, his green eyes dancing in the New York light, before he vanished into the town’s embrace.

  When he had gone, Nathan sidled closer.

  ‘Congratulations. You have done it.’

  ‘We have done it. But I am tired, Nat, and not a little sad. I hope it is all worth it.’

  ‘If it were not for you, that painting would still be lost. And perhaps when the King learns your father was a victim of Sir Bernard’s treachery, it will worry his conscience.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ She watched Daniel looking for his new friend in a game of hide-and-seek. The Dutch boy was the other side of the windmill; Daniel would find him quickly enough. ‘Do you really think he would enjoy a trip to New England?’

  ‘I do. And perhaps …’ he hesitated, ‘I might come too?’

  She looked at him. ‘Do you not have to return to your land? Once the first ships go back, it could be a while until others leave.’

  ‘My land can wait. My brother is proficient. I would rather … stay with you.’

  She edged up to him. ‘I nearly lost you yesterday. When you rode from the wall, I thought Sir Bernard was going to shoot you.’

  ‘I have no doubt he was. But I would do anything to make sure you are safe.’

  ‘I know.’ She grasped his hand. ‘Thank you for looking out for me this whole time.’

  ‘Well, you saved me, remember?’ He laughed. ‘You rode your horse right at him. And then shot his arm off.’

  ‘Not quite off,’ she said, joining in his laughter.

  ‘Come, then. We should tell Nicolls of your plan. Depending how long we are gone, by the time we return you may have received a message from the King.’

  ‘Let us hope the answer is good. I want Halescott back.’ She nodded towards Daniel. ‘Not for me especially, but for him. I want him to have the future he deserves. And I hope’ – she paused, looking at the sky – ‘I hope my father is proud of me.’

  ‘He is,’ said Nathan, drawing her towards him. ‘He definitely is.’

  She rested her head on his shoulder and smiled. Together, they looked across the river, the sails of the windmill turning gently up above.

  Historical Note

  The seventeenth century was a period of intense drama in shared British and American history. It was in 1664 that New York was founded by the British, not by settling a new town but by taking charge of the existing – and thriving – Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam at the southernmost tip of the forest-covered island of Manhattan. At the time, the Dutch and the British were at irregular war, and the conquest of New Amsterdam, if it can be called a conquest in the absence of a fight, was part of a much larger design of expansion and consolidation, a policy that also witnessed an exertion of royal authority on the New England colonies. Much has changed since Richard Nicolls replaced Pieter Stuyvesant to become the first British Governor of New York, but the majesty of Manhattan remains, albeit with soaring man-made structures replacing the former verdant beauty, then as now surely the most breathtaking introduction to the American continent any ocean-crossing traveller could have envisaged.

  At the time Birthright is set, Britain was a country finding its greatness. Ravaged by the civil wars of the previous decades, the restoration of Charles II was viewed by many as a welcome return to peace and harmony. Others were less keen – men such as John Dixwell, one of the real-life regicides who had signed the former King’s death warrant, and who like many of his fellows was forced to flee the country else die. Still others who had supported Oliver Cromwell in the Parliamentarian cause kept their profile subdued, relying on the King’s amnesty to permit them to live out their lives in relative obscurity. Amongst them, the fictional Sir Rowland Goodridge was not so fortunate.

  As an original work of fiction, Birthright is dominated by such imagined characters. Mercia Blakewood, Nathan Keyte and Nicholas Wildmoor are all my creation, as are Lady Markstone, Sir William and Lady Calde, Sir Francis Simmonds and Sir Bernard Dittering; so too are One-Eye Wilkins and James North, Joost Pietersen and van Arnhem, but I hope they reflect plausible lives and attitudes of their time. Certainly, it has been a joy to create them and get to know them. The book is nonetheless strewn with real-life people drawn from the richness of the times. So it is that the characters of Charles II, the Duke of York, Richard Nicolls and Pieter Stuyvesant are all real, as are Captain Morley of the Redemption, Governor John Winthrop of Connecticut, and James Davids aka John Dixwell, who did indeed disappear for a time before resurfacing in New England in the mid 1660s, and so why not first in New Amsterdam?

  Throughout the novel, I have endeavoured to keep the story as true to life as possible, weaving the action around actual events, but there are naturally instances where I have taken a modicum of liberty with the past. In such cases I hope the knowledgeable reader will indulge me somewhat, and understand that first and foremost I have attempted to create a believable, lively fiction, drawing on history as my support. So, for example, the London customs office is entirely my invention, but a scene where Mercia coul
d learn more about James North while happening on the portraits of the regicides was helpful to the plot. Again, and more specifically, as a representative of the West India Company, Stuyvesant’s title would have been Director-General rather than Governor, but I have chosen the more political designation to set him on an obvious par with Nicolls and Winthrop. There will be other deliberate inaccuracies of this sort; any accidental errors are, of course, my own.

  The village of Halescott will not be found on any map, present day or historical. The Oxford Section too is my fabrication, but it fits the facts. Charles I did move his court to the university town during the civil war, and he did of course amass a huge – and expensive – collection of art throughout his reign, lusted after by the competing collectors of Europe. Cromwell’s Great Sale of these works likewise did take place, and if that part of the collection I have termed the Oxford Section ended by being stolen and sold on to a rich businessman before being destroyed at his vast American estate, then so much the more intriguing for Mercia and her friends. As for the painting Mercia did recover, the family portrait the King coveted above even New York, were it real it would have been painted in 1640, the only time when those particular eight members of the royal family would have been alive concurrently (the King’s youngest sister Henrietta was some years from being born). Henry, Duke of Gloucester would have been but a few weeks old, his infant sister Anne sadly about to die: indeed by 1664, as Lady Markstone says, four of the six children and of course the father were all dead. A poignant and irreplaceable reminder of lost family: surely, the King would have rejoiced in its return.

  If the Oxford Section is a construct, then the historical references in the story are genuine – the King’s celebrated regular walks in his newly restored royal park, for example, or the menagerie Mercia comes across at the entrance to the Tower of London. The backdrop to the second half of the story – the invasion fleet and the takeover of New Amsterdam – is firmly historical fact, save that I may have toyed with the precise sequencing of events. As in Birthright the real fleet constituted four ships, three of them named as I have them here: the Guinea, Elias and Martin, although I have amended the fourth from the William and Nicholas to the Redemption. The surrender of the town happened much as I have described it, and several of the scenes in Part Four – in the town hall where Stuyvesant rips up the terms of surrender, for instance, or on the battlements as he looks out to sea – are reported by a number of historians. The several available primary sources make for wonderful reading, amongst them the fascinating letters exchanged between Nicolls and Stuyvesant. A search of the internet will locate these quickly enough: such a marvellous research tool for the writer.

  The vestiges of New Amsterdam are apparent in New York to this day, if nothing of the physical settlement survives. The famous Wall Street, for example, is named after the wall or palisade at the northern edge of the town through which Mercia passes on her way to Pietersen’s farmhouse. The even more celebrated Broadway runs along much the same route today as it did when it was a dirty, wide track that led from the gate of Fort Amsterdam and up through the island beyond. Stuyvesant himself is remembered in several ways in Manhattan, including in the name of another street. Quite touchingly, after he was recalled to Amsterdam to explain the loss of his colony, he returned to New York despite its new masters to live out the rest of his life there. He is buried in the grounds of an East Village church near the bouwerij, or farmland, where he lived – the modern Bowery being yet another reminder of the Dutch presence, as are the place names Harlem (Haarlem), Brooklyn (Breuckelen) and so on. Van Arnhem’s plantation house is my invention; Stuyvesant’s peg leg is not.

  Whether Mercer Street in Lower Manhattan is named for Mercia Blakewood is open to debate.

  We hope you enjoyed this book.

  Do you want to know about our other great reads,

  download free extracts and enter competitions?

  If so, visit our website www.allisonandbusby.com.

  Sign up to our monthly newsletter (www.allisonandbusby.com/newsletter) for exclusive content

  and offers, news of our brand new releases, upcoming events

  with your favourite authors and much more.

  And why not click to follow us on Facebook (AllisonandBusbyBooks)

  and Twitter (@AllisonandBusby)?

  We’d love to hear from you!

  About the Author

  Originally from the Midlands, DAVID HINGLEY worked in the civil service for eleven years before moving to New York with his husband, where he passed his days on Manhattan fulfilling his long-term ambition to write and penned his debut novel, Birthright. He returned to the UK in 2016. Puritan is his second novel.

  davidhingley.com

  @dhingley_author

  By David Hingley

  Birthright

  Copyright

  Allison & Busby Limited

  12 Fitzroy Mews

  London W1T 6DW

  allisonandbusby.com

  First published in Great Britain by Allison & Busby in 2016.

  This ebook edition first published in 2016.

  Copyright © 2016 by DAVID HINGLEY

  The moral right of the author is hereby asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All characters and events in this publication other than those clearly in the public domain are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978-0-7490-2037-8