The Orphanmaster

by Jean Zimmerman

  The spirit of the season ruled New Amsterdam between the Feast of Sinterklass on the sixth and Kerstydt, Christmas, on the twenty-fifth. The director general, who made clear his disgust with any drunken carousing during the holidays, yet made his Great House ablaze with candles and invited colonists in to dance in the entry hall.

  But the mood this year was on the whole muted. Murder dampens the spirit.

  Young Peer Gravenraet had only recently reached the age when he could be about outside after dark, at least in his home neighborhood of Beaver Street. The family lived in a new three-bay house overlooking the canal, with two proud chimney stacks. Passing his twelfth birthday gave the son of Femmie and Aalbert Gravenraet the freedom he coveted. During the day, his parents allowed him the run of the settlement, river to river, palisade to strand.

  And then, suddenly, just this holiday season when it would have been so great to roam wild, the newly earned freedom was withdrawn. His mother sat him down.

  “Peer, my darling, your father and I are going to say, just for now, that you must remain close to home,” Femmie said.

  “Why, Mother?”

  Femmie looked at him sharply. He was not yet of the age where he could ask why.

  “There are evil doings in the colony, things you know nothing about,” Femmie said.

  Things Peer knew nothing about? Of course, he knew everything about everything. His mother didn’t know half what he knew.

  “Children have gone missing,” Femmie said. Yes, yes. The Imbrock boy, so stupid he wouldn’t be able to find a button on a shirt.

  “An indian demon is abroad,” she continued. I know all about that, too, Peer thought smugly. The witika. Whoo-ooo! Peer owned a penknife. He’d like to see the witika try anything on him.

  Then Femmie said, “A witch lives within the palisade.” Hello. What’s that all about? Peer needed to know more, much more, such as what was the woman’s name. A witch! He’d like to get some of his friends together, they would go make a visit, toss some stones at her window, get her to show her long-nosed face.

  Kidnappings, demons, witches. That was that, as far as Femmie and Aalbert Gravenraet were concerned. Peer’s roaming privileges were curtailed.

  “It is only for now,” Femmie said, attempting to tamp down her son’s tendency toward rebellion.

  He thought to argue. I am not an orphan, Peer could have told Femmie. The witika takes only orphan children. So how am I in danger?

  He knew what would happen if he raised that objection. A hard-knuckle rap on the head, and an admonition not to talk back to his elders, who knew better than Peer did.

  It seemed all the mothers had conspired to rein in their children. Peer’s friends had the “talking to” also. None of them had the freedom any longer to go abroad after dark.

  “Mother?”

  “Yes, Peer?”

  “May I still go to the Kerstydt Eve pageant? It is just down at the Stadt Huys. I told Rem we would go together.”

  “You will go with me and your father.”

  No appeal. Peer would not be allowed to dash freely through the meeting-hall after Roose van der Demme. No horseplay. He’d be under the thumb—and within reach of the hard knuckles—of his parents.

  “There is to be a fright show of the Devil,” Peer said.

  “Who told you that?”

  “The crier said it.”

  Oyez, oyez, Peer heard the town crier call that noonday, a Christmastide entertainment in the Stadt Huys, come one, come all, at evening drumbeat.

  “Well, maybe there will be, and perhaps good boys who behave may see it, in order to have some sense scared into them. But no roistering about. Promise, Peer?”

  “I promise, Mother.”

  So it was not until Christmas Eve that young Peer ventured out of doors after dark. The sky over the great bay to the west held the last fading light. Stars winked on overhead. Crowds of settlers streamed toward the Stadt Huys. Snow settled on the peaked rooflines.

  Peer blew out his breath, experimenting with the various ways it frosted in the cold air, and tugged his parents forward. He was overjoyed to be out. He had the feeling of urgency, of a great event unfolding.

  Hurrah for Christmas! He is born!

  No wind, but the colonists beside Peer still cupped their hands around their tapers as they proceeded down Beaver Street, merging into another current of people at Pearl. The men wore heavy fur muffs and the women warm capes with close hoods. As families left their dwelling-houses to make their way to the Stadt Huys, Peer could see inside their rooms, a flickering golden light of many candles.

  Dogs ran wild, snuffling the new snow and barking at the holiday commotion. The Stadt Huys loomed above Peer, a thousand stories tall.

  First, the carolers. A Christmas hymn. Then a Bible homily, “Joy in Our Hearts,” Isaiah 9:2–4, Titus 2:11–14 and Luke 2:1–16. A segment of a passion play, acted out by characters in costume.

  “The time has come,” intoned Wilhelm Ruden, dressed as Lord Jesus, “for the lamb to return to Jerusalem to accomplish that which has been foretold.”

  As the Christmastide pageant proceeded, the great Stadt Huys meeting-hall became close, its air clogged with tobacco smoke and human exhalations. Three-legged stools had been arranged near the mammoth hearth, where a yule log the size of an ox smoldered.

  It seemed as though all of New Amsterdam were there. The women’s cloaks dragged on the floor as they composed themselves, and the men sat squarely, their hats in their laps. Most were a bit sleepy, having overindulged on the day’s slices of venison, stews of hare and roasted sweet potatoes, with well-crusted bread and rich, dense cheeses to accompany it all.

  Aet Visser, for one, drank too much gin at the Lion before meeting with Anna to escort her and the children to the show. To Anna’s discomfort, Lightning accompanied Visser. Kees Bayard stood at the back of the hall. Martyn Hendrickson leaned against the wall beside him, his glittering eyes surveying the audience.

  In the crowd, Martyn picked out Polish laborers and Swedish artisans. A small clot of Africans, attending with a few friendly Canarsie wilden from Long Island. The Godbolt family. Martyn could see the girl Hannie, the one who had relayed stories of the witika in the clearing in the woods. And Maaje de Lang, accompanying the soon-to-be-wed Elsje Kip. Off in the far corner, looking typically supercilious, Edward Drummond, sitting so as to display his green-stockinged legs.

  Set thy best foot forward, recalled Martyn, thinking of the “which one?” jokes current in the colony.

  Beside the Englisher, Blandine van Couvering, veiled and hooded, since at present she was in bad odor in the community. A face that pretty, thought Hendrickson, should not be obscured. Her figure, too. Strong as a pony with good little muscles.

  Also in the audience, orphans. They had been much on the colony’s mind lately, and the room was full of them. The twins, Sebastian and Quinn Klos. Waldo Arentsen, a little towheaded boy. The silent one with the Godbolt children. Tara Oyo sitting among the Africans. Dirty-faced Laila Philipe, beside her fellow foster-child Geddy Jansen. Yes, and the child-rogue they called Gypsy Davey.

  The passion performance finished up, with Wilhelm-as-Jesus proclaiming, “If any would come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wants his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good is gaining the world, if you lose your soul?”

  Well, thought Martyn, the good is, you have the world.

  Dominie Johannes Megapolensis assumed his place in front of the audience. “Satan!” he shouted. The chatter of the crowd immediately died.

  “The Devil,” Megapolensis continued in his stentorian tones. “Beelzebub. Lucifer. Accursed Dragon. Old Scratch. Old Harry. Foul Spirit. Master of Deceit.”

  The dominie glared around the huge hall, raising his arms. “I would like to introduce you to the Evil One tonight, since this is the black night before the birth of him who slays all evil, Our Lord Jesus.”

 
; “Amen,” murmured members of the audience.

  “Please snuff your candles,” Megapolensis said. “Go ahead. For the Prince of Darkness will only appear in darkness.”

  The room dimmed as one after another the tapers were extinguished. The women blew out their candles, whereas the men pinched the glowing wicks between their spit-wet fingers. Claus van Elsant, funeral caller principally but the colony’s jack-of-all-trades, went around to each of the hall’s oil-lamp sconces and cupped them out.

  The only light came from the hearth, and the embers of the dying yule log, which had been burning since mid-December but was now nearly consumed. A child whined and was shushed. The muffled sounds of two hundred human souls could not fully dispel the darkness.

  They were already frightened, and the show had not even begun.

  “Have you seen him in your dreams?” the dominie intoned, a voice in the night.

  The black dark, complete. Suddenly, against the white plaster wall that faced the hearth, a shimmering image. A crimson-colored face, black scowling eyes, horns growing from the scalp like knife blades.

  A woman—Gertrude Pont—screamed. Low moans.

  The image flickered out. Darkness again. A frightened murmur rose from the crowd. Had they just seen what they thought they had seen? Had the Old One actually appeared among them?

  Now, in another place, another monstrous image. A man, a Dutch man in a waistcoat and breeches, materialized, and crouched on his back, feasting upon the man’s brains with long, venomous fangs, a teeth-gnashing demon.

  More moans, a scraping of the three-legged stools upon which the burghers sat with their wives, children whimpering helplessly.

  “Jesus save us!” came the cry.

  “He stalks among you!” shouted Megapolensis.

  In the darkness, a few skeptics. Martyn Hendrickson and Kees Bayard exchanged knowing smiles, their teeth gleaming.

  On and on it went as panic rose in the hall, one fiendish image after another. At each display, wails rose and fell like sirens. One of the brave bachelors present bent over and vomited. Audience members stumbled over one another in the dark, trying to find the exit.

  Gradually, the images changed. The skin color of the demon went from red to green. The monster got gaunter, hungrier. Taller, with longer hair.

  It was Hannie who blurted out the name first. “The witika,” she shouted, and soon the whole crowd took up the cry. Wives fainted, plummeting to the broad floorboards without their husbands being able to help. The whelps, Tommy van Elsant, Peer Gravenraet and their friends, turned into sobbing babies. They blundered for escape.

  “Hold!” said the dominie. “Courage! Courage! For the Prince of Peace doth come.”

  But it was too late. Shrieking, weeping, rushing out alone or dragging their loved ones with them, the residents of New Amsterdam performed a wholesale retreat from the Stadt Huys fright show.

  The dominie was there to announce the last of the images, the last of the glass-slide paintings by Emily Stavings, projected upon the wall by the new invention of the magic lantern.

  The magic lantern. Just a lens with a light behind it, but if you have never encountered it before, wondrous, frightening.

  Jesus finally appeared, yes, the Son of God displayed on the white plaster wall. With a familiar face. But the glass upon which the image was painted quickly cracked.

  “Light! Light!” called Megapolensis.

  He, too, rushed out of the room, a shepherd pursuing his flock.

  Claus van Elsant lit the wicks of the oil lamps. Their faint glow reillumined the hall.

  Only five people were left in the room. The funeral caller, laboriously completing his job of relighting the lamps. Martyn Hendrickson and Kees Bayard, observing the room-clearing enterprise with evident satisfaction. Tipped stools and knocked-over chairs everywhere.

  Near the door, observing the other two observers, Blandine van Couvering and Edward Drummond. When Kees saw Blandine with the other man, his face went pale and his thin smile vanished.

  Blandine nodded to Kees and led Drummond out of the hall.

  Outside, in the street, Peer Gravenraet held tightly to his parents. He wished he could have climbed into his mama’s arms.

  The settlers hurried to their homes, still struck by fear over what they had seen. The panic affected them differently. Some wept. Others chattered or giggled self-consciously. But they were all eager to dive into warm beds and duck their heads under their feather coverlets, anxious to drown themselves in the black sea of sleep.

  Beaver Street lay deep in shadow, so when Peer’s foot kicked the foot that lay in his path, he did not at first think what it was. But Aalbert erupted with a “God’s faith,” and a neighbor couple, the Nattersons, pulled Peer away from the grisly find.

  A child’s foot, chewed ragged at the ankle.

  “Witika,” Femmie said, stepping back from it.

  “Call for the schout,” Michael Natterson said.

  Peer buried his face in the folds of his mother’s gown.

  26

  “How many of them have died?”

  Blandine and Edward stood on the New Bridge over the canal, a common meeting place for wealthy burghers, but deserted this Christmas morning after the fright-show hangover from the night before.

  Antony sat a few feet away, squatting at the bridge steps and tossing stones into the canal. Across the river the hills of Breukelen rose, iced by snow sugar.

  “How many? Would you like an inventory, Drummond?” Blandine asked.

  “It might help, Van Couvering,” Drummond said.

  “Died or just missing?”

  “Both.”

  “All right,” Blandine said, beginning to count on her fingers. “Piteous Gullee.”

  “No, first the Hawes boy, up north.”

  Drummond tamped tobacco into a Belgian-style pipe and lit it. At Raeger’s behest, he had taken up smoking. The aroma floated over to Blandine, triggering an intense desire to indulge, which she fought back. Below them in the canal, the tidewaters flowed in, creeping up the ice-crusted ditch a little at a time.

  “Then there’s the scene described by Hannie de Laet and Hans Bontemantel,” Blandine said.

  “The young lovers. Let’s just say, in that instance, victim undetermined.”

  “I guess that could be the place where Piddy was killed,” Blandine said.

  “Or some other child, unknown.”

  “There’s Bill Gessie and his sister, Jenny, who never came back. And Ansel Imbrock, taken but not killed, then retaken. Then this new one.”

  “The random stray foot,” Drummond said.

  “Definitely a child’s.”

  “And fresh.”

  “Ugh,” Blandine said.

  “I mean only that he or she had been recently killed. Who is missing in the past few days that we can match with a stray foot?”

  “I haven’t yet confirmed with Aet. But that’s five, or six, depending.”

  “You forget one,” Drummond said.

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know for sure. But there is the situation of William Turner. The Godbolts’ ward.”

  “That’s just a question of identity, isn’t it?” Blandine said. “Not murder.”

  “But say Aet Visser is right. Say William Turner is not William Turner. Doesn’t that leave us with another missing child? If the real William does not live with the Godbolts, then where is he?”

  “So we have…”

  “Jope Hawes, a Dutch son with two parents living,” Drummond said.

  “I heard tell that the father died. But after the son’s murder,” Blandine said.

  “Two orphans taken, both Dutch. Perhaps a third.”

  “Three African children,” Blandine said.

  “Were any of them orphans?”

  “Yes, all of them.”

  “And all under the age of ten,” Drummond said.

  “Well, the Hawes boy was twelve,” said Blandine. “And finally William
Turner. That makes seven.”

  “Orphans and Africans,” Drummond said. “Can you think of what they might have in common?”

  “I can,” Blandine said. “I have thought about this. They are both highly vulnerable in the colony.”

  “But perhaps it’s just a crime of opportunity,” Drummond said.

  “Isn’t that the same thing? Do you mean that Africans and orphans both get around more than other children?”

  “Out and abroad? Working? Less supervision? Lax guardianship?”

  “One might think so,” said Blandine archly, “unless one knew how closely held children are within the African community.”

  “I apologize, Van Couvering.”

  “Don’t mention it, Drummond.”

  She had to admit that he looked gorgeous this morning, leaning on the balustrade of the canal bridge, in a cobalt cloak and casually unbuckled boots. The man was annoying, but she could yet feel herself coming around.

  “It’s troubling,” he said.

  “I don’t think that quite says it, Drummond.”

  “No, I mean that these five, or six, or seven or however many, are only the ones we have any idea of. What we don’t know is what’s truly terrifying.”

  They both fell silent.

  “Do you have children, Drummond?”

  “No,” he said. “I had a wife and an infant, too, both dead in childbirth. I yearned for that baby.”

  “I’m sorry, Drummond,” she said.

  “And you, Van Couvering?”

  Blandine shook her head, gazing out on the East River. “I’m an orphan.”

  “Last I knew, orphans might bear children,” Drummond said.

  “I mean that this is what I have in common, sir, with some of the victims.”

  “I take your meaning to be that if I don’t myself have offspring, why should I care that someone is murdering those of this colony? Do you seriously ask that?”

  “Children die in New Netherland all the time,” said Blandine. “Murder rarely comes into it. I merely consider your incentive here.”