Page 7 of Dark Tides
“Is that French?” he asked curiously. “The Quin… whatever you called it? D’you call it by a French name?”
“The native tongue. The People of the Dawnlands.”
“We don’t call them that.”
Ned shrugged. “Maybe you do or you don’t; but it’s their name. Because they’re first to see the sun rise. All these lands are called Dawnlands.”
“New England,” the man corrected him.
“Did you come all this way to teach me how to talk?”
“They said in the town that you speak native. The elders say you must come to explain a deed to one of the natives.”
Ned sighed. “I only speak a little; not enough to be of any use.”
“We need a translator. We want to buy some more land, over the river, farther north, over there.” He waved to where the huge trees came down and leaned curving boughs into the glassy water. “You’d want land there yourself, I suppose, you’d want land around your ferry pier?”
“How much land?” Ned asked curiously.
“Not much, another couple of hundred acres or so.”
Ned shook his head, rubbed earth from his hands like a man brushing off sin. “I’m not the man for you. I left the old country to get away from all the moneymaking and grabbing from each other. When the king came back it was like rats in a malthouse. I don’t want to start all over again here.” He turned to go back to the garden behind his house.
The man looked at him, uncomprehending. “You talk like a Leveler!” He climbed up the little embankment to stand beside Ned.
Ned flinched a little at the memory of old battles, lost long ago. “Maybe I do. But I’d rather be left in peace, on my own plantation, than make a fortune.”
“But why?” the selectman demanded. “Everyone’s come here to make their fortune. God rewards his disciples. I came to make a better living than I could in the old country. Same as everyone. This is a new world. More and more people arriving, more and more being born. We want a better life! For ourselves and our families. It’s God’s will that we prosper here, His will that we came here and live according to His laws.”
“Aye, but some people hoped for a new world without greed,” Nedpointed out. “Me among them. Maybe it’s God’s will that we make a land without masters and men, sharing the garden like Eden.” He turned and made his way down the rough steps back to his garden.
“We do share it!” the man insisted. “Share it among the godly. You have your own share here by the minister’s goodwill.”
“The elders’d do better to ask one of the native people.” Ned undid the twine at his garden gate and went in. “Dozens of ’em speak good-enough English. Some of them Christian. What about John Sassamon? The schoolteacher? Him that’s preaching to King Philip? He’s in town, I brought him over this morning. He’ll translate for you, as he does for the Council. He’s been educated, he’s been to Harvard College! I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
Ned fastened the little handmade gate behind him, and ordered his dog to sit. “Don’t come any farther,” he said firmly to the unwelcome visitor. “I’ve got seedlings in here that don’t need treading.”
“We don’t want a native. Truth be told: we don’t trust one to translate a deed to buy land. We don’t want to find out in ten years’ time that they called it a loan rather than a sale. We want one of our own.”
“He is one of our own,” Ned insisted. “Raised as an Englishman, at college with Englishmen. Crossed on my ferry this morning, wearing boots and breeches, with a hat on his head.”
The man leaned over the garden fence, as if he feared the deep river might be listening to them, or the long grassy banks might overhear. “Nay, we don’t trust any of ’em,” he said. “It’s not like it was. They’re not like they were. They’ve gone sour. They’re not like they were in their old king’s time, welcoming us and wanting to trade, when they were simple savages.”
“Simple? Was it truly all so sweethearted then?”
“My father said it was so,” the man said. “They gave us land, wanted our trade. Welcomed us, wanted help against their enemies—against the Mohawks. Everyone knows that they invited us in. So here we are! They gave us land then, and now they have to give us more. And we’d pay a fair price.”
“In what?” Ned asked skeptically.
“What?”
“What would you pay your fair price in?”
“Oh! Whatever they asked. Wampum. Or hats, or coats, whatever they wanted.”
Ned shook his head at the exchange of acres of land for shell beads. “Wampum’s lost its value,” he pointed out. “And coats? You’d pay a couple of coats for a hundred acres of fields that they’ve planted and cleared and forest that they’ve managed for their hunting, and call it fair?” He hawked and spat on the ground, as if to get the taste of fraud from his mouth.
“They like coats,” the man said sulkily.
